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Oral History Project - Chandler Merritt 1983 Part 1
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These interviews are presented here in their original form, unmodified, in an effort to preserve and share the history of our park and its surrounding area. The memories, comments, and viewpoints shared by interviewees in the materials of the New River Gorge Oral History Project and related documents do not represent the viewpoints of the National Park Service.
TAPE FIFTY
Interview NIRGNPP 050
File NRGNPP 050-T
Mr. Merritt Chandler
National Park Service
November 22, 1983
JW: Mr. Chandler, will you first of all tell us your full name?
MC: Walter Merritt Chandler.
JW: And your date of birth?
MC: October 18, 1907.
JW: 1907. So how old are you right now?
MC: Sixty… seventy—six.
JW: Seventy—six years old. Where were you born?
MC: I was borned in Braxton County.
JW: You don 't remember where exactly?
MC: Yeah. Newville.
JW: Newville in Braxton County?
MC: Braxton County.
JW: What were your parents' names?
MC: My dad's name was Will Chandler and my mother's name was Chandler .
JW: What type work was your father in?
MC: Well, he mostly worked on section on railroads and on sawmills.
JW: Where exactly were the railroads where he worked?
MC: Well, he worked for a little railroad that's been discontinued for years. Name of it was West Virginia Midland Railroad. It run from Hollow Junction in Braxton County to Webster Springs in Webster County.
JW: Okay. Where did he work on the sawmill?
MC: Well, he worked at several different sawmills. One of them was at Palmer, WV; Oak Run, WV; Camp Run, WV; and he also worked at Longbottom, WV.
JW: He worked at Longbottom?
MC: Yes.
JW: What did he do at Longbottom?
MC: He was nightwatchman; took care of the engines and had them ready to roll the next morning when the train crew came out. Had them all fired up and watered up and coaled up and so on.
JW: You said the engine. Were you talking about the sawmill engine?
MC: No. I'm talking about the railroad locomotives.
JW: OK. This is on the Summers side?
MC: No. On the Raleigh side.
JW: For what were the railroad cars used over there?
MC: The engines, they hauled the logs out of the mountains.
JW: Was this a spur track, or your own railroad there?
MC: Yes.
JW: How long was this railroad?
MC: I'd say the longest probably was eight or ten miles. It went across up Falls Branch, across the mountain I don't know what they called that mountain over into Pinch Creek.
JW: What kind of engine did they use?
MC: They had geared engines. They were climaxes. They was two different kinds of geared engines to my knowin'. That was the Shay and the Climax and we had three climax engines.
JW: OK. Now where were the other sawmills where your father worked? What type work did he do there?
MC: Well, mostly it was nightwatch.
JW: I was just curious to see what you may have learned from him since you worked in a sawmill yourself.
MC: Well, I didn't learn too much from him fer I never did do the work that he did.
JW: When did you start? What was your first job… let's back up to that.
MC: Oh, my first job was when I was fourteen years old workin' on a real small sawmill at Newville a wheel in' sawdust. They had no chain conveyor to haul the dust… the sawdust away from under the saw. And I shoveled it and loaded it in a wheelbarrow and dumped it and come back and got another wheelbarrow load.
JW: What other type of work did you do in the sawmill?
MC: Well... just about everything in the' yard. I've piled green lumber and I've tipped green lumber
JW: You 've what, now?
MC: Piled green lumber
JW: Yeah. You said you tipped. . .
MC: Tipped. . . that's a handin' it to the man on the lumber stack that piled it and made it neat. . . piled up, which would go anywhere from twenty—five to thirty. . . thirty feet high.
JW: How long did it take the lumber to dry out before you'd sell it?
MC: Well, usually they wouldn't ship anything under thirty days.
JW: So you'd let it dry out about thirty days?
MC: At least thirty days.
JW: OK. You say your first job was there hauling sawdust . What was your next job that you had?
MC: I guess the next job I worked at Oak Run, which is located in Braxton County, in dry lumber a loadin’ lumber into boxcars to be shipped to different points.
JW: How much would a boxcar hold. . . how much lumber?
MC: Usually about… as well as I remember, around… somewhere around twelve-fifteen thousand board feet of lumber.
JW: How much would that weigh? Would you have any idea?
MC: I wouldn't have no idea. I used to know. I graded some lumber. I got to a point that I could.... I wasn't the best at it but I did grade some lumber and fill in extra if somebody was off or anything.
JW: How would you grade the lumber?
MC: Well, you have to grade it to. . . if it's got a rotten place in it, you'd cut it down a grade or . . . You could take maybe a board that you could make so many cuts in it, then make it a perfect board and so on like that.
JW: Now , you graded lumber No. 1 and No. 2?
MC: Yeah, that's right.
JW: What was No. 1 lumber?
MC: Well, No. 1. . . I 'd say it was a second best . No. 1 Select was a perfect board.
JW: There were no knotholes or…?
MC: Yeah, just perfect.
JW: How much more did that sell for?
MC: Well, I really don't know. I know No. 3. . . No. 3 Common at one time they said would sell for around $25,000 a thousand.
JW: A thousand board feet?
MC: Thousand board feet, yes.
JW: So, its No. 1 Select, No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 3 Common?
MC: Yeah, and then they had what they called a "cull” that wasn’t worth much of anything. It just wasn't hardly worth saving.
JW: What? It had rotten places, or what?
MC: Yeah. Rotten places and wind shaken and something like that.
JW: I didn't ask you, as far as your early back ground, about your brothers and sisters. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
MC: Yes. I have two brothers and a sister still living.
JW: What are there names?
MC: My brother's names is Letcher Chandler and my youngest brother of the family is Burl Chandler. Letcher… everybody calls him "Doc" . He lives in Martinsburg up in the eastern panhandle of the state; and my baby brother, he lives in Mansfield, Ohio.
JW: OK. How about your sister?
MC: My sister, she lives in Kent, Ohio. Her name is. . .
JW: That's Canton, Ohio?
MC: No. Kent.
JW: Oh. Kent, Ohio, where Kent State is? OK. Go ahead.
MC: And her name is Evans. . . Geneva Evans. They was ten of us in the family.
JW: What happened to the other children?
MC: Well, three of them died young. I had two sisters and a brother, and my brother one sister both died in one year... 1912.
JW: What did they die of?
MC: I don't know. My brother died of 'membrance croup’.
JW: What, now?
MC: What they called 'membrance croup'. It's. . . you get mucous in the throat or something. And back at that time, they was nothing they could do for it.
JW: You don't know how to spell that, do you?
MC: No, I don't.
JW: OK. Membrance croup. How old were they when they died?
MC: I think my brother. . . he was about four. And, my two sisters, they were a little over a year old. We didn't know what was wrong with them.
JW: Now, where did you say you were raised?
MC: I was raised up Newville, Braxton County. It's the central part of the state is what it is.
JW: OK. What are your earliest memories?
MC: Oh, goodness! (laughter) I don't know. . .
JW: When did you first come to the New River area?
MC: I come down on New River in January of 1927.
JW: Why did you come down here?
MC: Well, I… I wasn't quite twenty years old, yet. But I was a workin t in the mines down between Clarksburg and Fairmont . It was a deep—shaft mine and I t d heard people talk about mines a blowin' up, you know. And I’d worked for this company before , up in where I was raised in Braxton County. At one time they had a big mill up in there. And I knew the foreman and I got afraid in the mines and so I asked. . . I went and asked Mr. Golden if they needed anybody and he said, “Yeah, come on down.” He’d put me to work.
JW: What was his name?
MC: Golden. Hayd Golden .
JW: Hayd ?
MC: Hayd. Hayden was his name but they called him Hayd.
JW: Hayden Golmen .
MC: Golden . So I went down there in January of 1927.
JW: I was working at a place they called Carolina, between Clarksburg and Fairmont, for Consolidated Coal Company.
JW: How near is that to the New River?
MC: Oh, that's a long way. That's up in the northern part of the state.
JW: OK. I was curious as to how you got to the New River area.
MC: Oh. Well, at that time, you traveled by train. I came from. I'd went home for Christmas. Of course, I come on a train from Burnsville, WV to Charleston , stayed all night and catched a train from Charleston to Longbottom
JW: Now, why were you going back to Longbottom... that's where your father was?
MC: No. That’s where I was going to go to work.
JW: Oh. How did you get the job at Longbottom?
MC: I talked to this fellar that I knew and he had come in for Christmas. He hadn't moved down there yet. And he come in for... to his home for Christmas and I talked to him and he told me to come on down and he'd give me a job.
JW: How did you get to know him?
MC: Oh, I'd worked for him before.
JW: What? In the mines?
MC: No, on a lumber job.
JW: Which one was that?
MC: That was at Camp Run.
JW: Camp Run? OK. So when did you move to Longbottom?
MC: Well, I just come there... I boarded there, you see. I come there in '27. I don't know exactly the date, but it was in January. And then, I got married there the first time.
JW: What was your wife's name?
MC: Faye Ballengee.
JW: Faye Ballengee? Was she from the Hinton area?
MC: No, she was raised down at Sandstone.
JW: When did you get married?
MC: Ummm… I believe the last part of… I'd have to look it up, but anyhows… the latter part of '27.
JW: You said this was your first wife. How long were you married to her?
MC: We was married 35 year.
JW: Thirty—five years? OK. You say you started to work there in '27 at Longbottom for the sawmill.
JW: What did you do for them?
MC: I worked in what they called 'dry lumber' loading lumber off into the box cars.
JW: Loading lumber into the box cars, so you had to work in the Summersside there?
MC: Yeah, I worked over on the Summersside.
JW: OK. What memories do you have of the different people you worked with there?
MC: Oh, I guess, a lot of memories of different ones.
JW: Anyone stand out in particular?
MC: Well, not really.
JW: When you think about the sawmill, what do you remember? Describe that to me... the sawmill... the best you can.
MC: Well, I could I guess I could start when the log train come in, they had their logs loaded on flat cars...
JW: What kind of logs did they get? Were they after any kind of wood in particular?
MC: No. Huh—uh.
JW: Soft wood or hard wood?
MC: Soft wood and hard wood.
JW: They used both.
MC: And, they would unload it... they had what we called the 'pond. t It was a big hole dug out in the ground. They' d unload these logs into this pond in order to wash the dirt and stuff off of them so it wouldn't dull the saw so bad.
JW: I hadn't thought about that. How large was the pond?
MC: Well, it was a... I'd say a hundred foot long and approximately fifty feet wide.
JW: So after they washed off the logs... go on from there. This is interesting.
MC: Well, they had an endless chain that, you see... the mill where the saw was… was on the second level of your mill. Underneath was where all your belts and your pulleys and they was a tremendous amount of belts and pulleys to run the whole mill, you see.
JW: This was also the pulley situation that carried them across the bridge?
MC: No.
JW: Something different.
MC: This was to manufacture the lumber. And, ah. the main big engine... I don't know what horsepower it would be, but it used a 36—inch wide belt... that's a big belt... to drive for the main drive belt. Anyhow, this endless chain that went from the pond up into the mill on the second level and then they put a tun... they had a little down—slopin'. They rolled the logs down there and then they put them on the carriage. What they called the carriage... a thing that went backwards and forwards. And, every time it would go forward, it would cut a board off. Whatever, if you wanted an inch board, they had a man on the carriage… had two men on the... One on each end. They called one the ‘block setter’. He would... the sawer stood over there and run this carriage, he had a lever, and he'd run it forward and back. And whatever he'd motion him, he would set that up... that log up. If they wanted to cut an inch board, they cut an inch board. They cut an inch and a quarter or an inch and a half.
JW: I guess that was determined by where in the log you were cutting and what type log it was?
MC: Yes and what grade it looked like it would be to him.
JW: Was this dangerous work? Was anybody ever hurt?
MC: Oh, yeah. We got people hurt once in a while.
JW: Anybody killed?
MC: Had. before I got there, they had one man killed on the mill.
JW: What happened?
MC: He got tangled up in one of these big... in one of these pulleys in the belt and it just took him around and around and it just tore him all to pieces. Now, that was before I went there.
JW: When did they first build that Longbottom sawmill?
MC: Really, I don't know, but it must have been in the early Twenties.
JW: What was the official name of it?
MC: The first company?
JW: Yeah.
MC: The Board and Lumber Company was the first name.
JW: The Borden…?
MC: Board.
JW: The Board Lumber Company. And then what was it changed to?
MC: And then when this company that I worked for bought it out, they called it the New River Company.
JW: New River Lumber Company.
MC: But it was a branch of... it was really owned by the Atlas Lumber Company in Cincinnati, Ohio.
JW: Uh—huh. The one that you worked for.
MC: The one I worked for. And the president of the Atlas Lumber Company , I have met him. His name was Bonner, E. M. Bonner. I never will forget that name.
JW: What, he came down to visit?
MC: He would come in every month or two months or something. But he was president of the home office, the home company.
JW: What was he like?
MC: Well, he was a nice guy.
JW: He came in on the train, I assume.
MC: Yeah, he could get on the train at Cincinnati and get off at Longbottom.
JW: That’s right. You could. I was talking about. . . asking about the dangerous working conditions there. You said that one person was killed and several people injured. I was thinking about the saw, being around that. Was it that dangerous?
MC: Well, we had a few people that got fingers cut off. I know of one fellar that got a thumb cut off and I know another boy that got a finger cut off.
JW: Was it his index finger. . . his pointing finger?
MC: Yeah. And the other one was his thumb. You had to be very careful. Back then they had no safety rules to amount to anything, you know. The Government or Federal Government had no inspectors going around like they do around the mines now.
JW: What would you do when someone got hurt like that? How would you treat them?
MC: Well, you just treated them the best you could and. . .
JW: Was there someone around there to give them first aid, or was there anyone with the company that could do that?
MC: Never. . . I never heard of first aid. But, if they's bad enough to go to the hospital, they'd send them to the hospital. But you had to wait on the next train to come by, the next passenger train, to get 'em to the hospital.
JW: How often would passenger trains come through there?
MC: Well, they was four local trains a day that we could flag over there. . . see, that was just a flag station. They was a gang of trains that went through there. But they didn't stop at places like that, but they was four a day two each way, two east and two west.
JW: How far apart were they spaced?
MC: Well, let's see. No. 7 would leave Hinton at 5:30 in the morning, go to Huntington and come back that night at 8:4 now that was talk in' when it would pass Longbottom, and it would go by at 8:45 back to Hinton that night. It had been to Huntington and back, that was the local . And then they was #13 coming from over in Clifton Forge way; I don't know where it originated from. It'd come through there about 10' clock in the day going west to Huntington. And #14 would leave Huntington and it would pass Longbottom there about somewhere around 12 : 30 or 1: 30, I don 't know exactly.
JW: At night?
MC: No. In the daytime, going towards Clifton Forge . And then they was. . . at that time, they was a gang of passenger trains. Let’s see, there was #1, #2, #3, #4, 5 and 6 and, of course, 7 and 8 was local and they wasn't no 9 and 10 or 11 and 12. Then they was 13 and 14, local; then 101 and 102. . . they were more or less mail trains, 101 and 102. They was running different times, night and day and so on.
JW: Well, back to the sawmill over there you were talking about, they would saw the boards there, then what would they do?
MC: Well, they would go to what they called the 'edger'. That was a machine that set down here and it had five or six different saws that you could move a lever up here and space the saws so far apart. And the edger. . . the edger man, he would set those saws and take off the edges of the board.
JW: Those were straight edges. You didn't do any tongue and groove or anything like that, did you?
MC: No. No, just. . .
JW: Didn't have a planer there either, did you?
MC: We had a planer later over on Summers side.
JW: You did? OK.
MC: But, he'd run that thing through that edger. . . that ends to the boards, like, you know, bark here and bark here. He'd cut that board and sometimes it would be in the middle. . . rotten in the middle or something. He'd set saws to cut that middle out and also cut the edge off all at the same time.
JW: Oh, really?
MC: Yeah. And, going on... what we called 'live rollers'. You know, rollers that rolled all the time, and they'd get down there and they'd go to what you called trimmers, that trimmed the end. Now, our trimmers there… I run those. They would go from eight feet to eighteen feet, every two foot was a saw and you had peddles like drivin’ a T-Model Ford. You' d press this peddle, the eight—foot saw would pop up; or you'd press this one and a ten or twelve or fourteen and so on. But you had one out here next to you that was stationary. It cut the... that end of the saw next to you got that end of the board all the time.
JW: What did they do with the trimmings then?
MC: They'd fall down into the conveyor chain, endless conveyor chain, and go out and go into... I guess you'd call it a burner that burned up all the refuse, down next to the river.
JW: And this was used to power the machines that were in this.
MC: Not that. No, that went on out there and was just burned up.
JW: It was green when it was cut?
MC: Yeah.
JW: You started to say something. I'm sorry, I interrupted.
MC: But, we had… I know you 've seen them around. People has them around now on trucks that they '11 cut a tree down and grind it up right there. You 've seen those? Well, we had one of them and these slabs and then this trimmin' where it come through this... them strips where it come through the edger, they'd cut them up and had over there what they called a 'cut—off saw' over from them a little ways. And we had one that we called it "The Hog”.
JW: What did The Hog do?
MC: And that's what this is. It'd cut that slabs and other stuff up and now that's what went into the boiler room. And your dust from your saw. They had up where your bandsaw sawed the board off the log, it went down into an endless chain that carried it into the boiler room.
JW: So you burned most of the trimmings from the sawdust? Now how did you run the pulley situation to take the lumber across the river?
MC: Had a big friction, I think it was. I don't know... three foot in diameter. Two frictions come together . You push it... you had a lever upstairs on our level of the floor and you push it one way and that put that friction together and that 'd take it across.
JW: It was powered by the main engine though?
MC: Powered from over at the mill. And, then you'd push it back this a way and it 'd bring your empty of whatever you had back from across the river to the mill. It was double must have been... oh, that thing was…
MC: Was it a big wheel?
MC: No, it was some kind of frictions worked together.
JW: Kind of like a clutch?
MC: Yeah, something similar to a clutch.
JW: How much would be sawn in a day?
MC: Well, usually, if you had... depend on a whole lot the logs you had. If you had good logs, you could do better. It'd run anywhere from 30 to 35 thousand.
JW: Board feet.
MC: Board feet a day. And, at one time, I remember we had a full day of run of hemlock. I don't know whether they had planned it that way or what, but the logs run... they were good sized logs, nice straight log and not knotty. And they run from eight to eighteen feet. Eighteen feet was as long as we could handle. And you know we cut 54 thousand board feet of lumber that day.
JW: Fifty—four thousand!? That is a bunch!
MC: Had two of us... see when it come off of this trimmer... I missed that a while ago... come off of this trimmer, had little chains with little hooks that hauled these boards, you know. Here d come that chain that would catch these boards and you had to go... you couldn't go... had to have them go even to cut, square. Well, they cut it and it come down over onto what they called the chain, and me and another fellar… I worked at that... that was the most I worked while I was there... pull off, what they called pull off a chain. We had throwed all those cars, I don 't know whether any of them's in them pictures or not . I think they are. We... different grades would go on different cars.
JW: Who would grade them?
MC: … and they had a man over on this side that it would come off the gra... trimmers and that's that X. Smith that I showed you. And they'd come down and he'd grade 'em and measure and put them on a tally sheet. And, me and Bud Appletree and, I believe he still lives at Rainelle, we were both young. We handled that 54—thousand board feet of lumber that day. Course, it was all, practically all two—inch stuff.
JW: Two inches thick?
MC: Two inches thick.
JW: How wide?
MC: Well, from four to twelve inches wide.
JW: Now, you'd load it onto a car?
MC: This car and then they' d take it out and put it on... hook it onto this rope and cut across the river.
JW: Immediately after it was sawn, it was sent across the river?
MC: Yeah.
JW: And that was where it would wait for at least a month before it was shipped out?
MC: At least a month.
JW: How much was stored over there?
MC: We had three big long docks and, I know, during the Depression, everything was full. Two different times they shut down there a year. We couldn't sell lumber, you know, in the Thirties... '29 and 30, the Depression.
JW: How did the Depression effect you?
MC: Oh, man! We shut down two times there, a year each time!
JW: You shut down for a full year?
MC: Yeah!
JW: What'd you do?
MC: Well, we didn't do nothing. What men stayed around there, course they was... you know, what men lived away, they went home... stayed at the boarding house, they went home. But the ones that lived in the company houses, if they'd get an order for car lumber, well we'd take turn about a loadin’ that lumber.
JW: Would that provide enough money to support you and your wife? Did you have any children then?
MC: Yeah. Yeah, my children was born in '28, one in '30 and one in '32. So that got me right in the middle of it. Well, yeah, but we all raised a garden and I went up there agin that steep hill and cleaned off a couple acres of ground and took the brush and made fence so the cattle couldn't get in. Cattle run out then.
JW: Cattle were running wild?
MC: Well, they wasn't wild, but people let their cattle run out. They didn't have to fence them then... They wasn't no cattle law. I cleaned off a couple acres there and it would be good for a couple years and, of course, it was so steep that the soil would wash away.
JW: What would you grow there?
MC: I'd grow corn and potatoes, beans and stuff like that.
JW: So you lived off the land in that sense.
MC: It helped a lot.
JW: Plus whatever they could help you with… with any orders that came through?
MC: Yeah. And, of course, I t ve walked to Hinton and carried me back a sack of flour and maybe something else. You could go to Hinton on Saturday, a special day at Krogers, and you could get a bag of flour, 25 pound bag of flour, for thirty—nine cents.
JW: Twenty—five pound bag of flour for thirty—nine cents?
MC: Absolutely. I've bought it.
JW: And you’d carry the 25 pound bag back?
MC: That was six miles back down the river.
JW: How much did they pay you during the Depression? Do you remember how much you got then?
MC: Least I got was fifteen cents an hour; a dollar and a half for ten hours. We worked ten hours.
JW: How many of you were working there during the Depression?
MC: Oh... oh, maybe they was ten or twelve that was eligible for work, I’d say.
JW: What'd you mean eligible... old enough, or...?
MC: Well... that lived there.
JW: About the other people that worked there at Longbottom at the sawmill, were there any blacks?
MC: No.
JW: You mentioned this one German fellow . Were there any other foreigners there? Were there any Irish?
MC: I don't know whether they had any Irish——oh, yeah! Man, that was an Irish settlement! You know Irish Mountain down there?
JW: Yeah. That was the reason I was asking.
MC: Yeah. Course now, we didn't have, ah… let’s see. They was some Gwinns and Connors and Fitzpatricks. They'd be one or two, but wasn't too many Irish.
JW: Fitzpatricks and Connors?
MC: Yeah. One of the Connor boys that was a friend of mine just died about a month ago down here.
JW: Did you ever visit down on Irish Mountain, the Irish settlements?
MC: I've tramped every foot of it. (laughter)
JW: What were the settlements like? How much. . . how Irish was it?
MC: Oh , they wasn't -too much Irish, the younger generation. Now the older generation, course. . . you ever been to the Irish Church up on Irish Mountain?
JW: I 've seen some pictures of it.
MC: I 've been there to funerals.
JW: You have?
MC: I was there at two different funerals.
JW: Was it someone you knew?
MC: Yeah. One of them was a fellow by the name of Gwinn and the other' n was an old lady by the name of Hurley. You’ve probably heard of the Hurley place up there.
JW: I 've heard the Hurley name, yeah.
MC: Yeah . At that time, I don't know how he ever got all that much land. Course, a lot of it was rough and rocky and hilly, but they was two Hurley boys and they were Irish . And, they had one girl. I never did see her. She was a nun, they said. But Joe and Jim, they were both. . . they were railroaders out of Hinton. Course, you know, they lived up there. . . they owned 500 acres. I guess the estate still owns . the Hurley estate still owns that property, I don't know .
JW: Five hundred acres. That’s a lot of land. We were talking about the people that worked there and the company there, did they have a company store there?
MC: Yes.
JW: What did… did they have company scrip?
MC: Scrip? Yeah.
JW: You mentioned going to Hinton to carry the flour back, did they have food there at the company store?
MC: Oh, yeah. But it cost too much. . .twice as much.
JW: Cost twice as much at the company store, huh? Now the company scrip they issued, did they give you that instead of pay?
MC: Yeah. Well, I know, they would issued scrip in even money. Course, you know, you couldn't go in and say give me a dollar and seventy—five cents in scrip. That d be too much work on the bookkeeper. You'd cut a dollar scrip or, that's the least you cut. Or you'd get two dollars or so on.
JW: Now this would be paper or coins in scrip?
MC: Coins. . . brass.
JW: Brass? OK.
MC: And if you. . . let's see, now I believe, you'd cut the scrip and they'd give you a paper slip and then you'd give that to the store manager, store clerk. Usually just one man run the store.
JW: Do you remember who that was?
MC: Yeah. R. S. Taylor. He was killed here in Beckley in a car wreck a few years ago. But, ah, if you bought forty cents worth of stuff, give him your dollar or your slip of paper, he'd give you back sixty cents.
JW: OK. Turning to the living conditions there, what was your house like that you lived in there in Longbottom?
MC: Well, it wasn't much of a house. It was livable.
JW: How many rooms did it have?
MC: Well, the first house the wife and I had was three rooms and then they was a house got empty up there. . .
JW: Was this a company house?
MC: Yeah, a company house.
JW: How would you compare the company housing of the lumber yard, the lumber mill, and the coal mining company houses.
MC: Well, the coal company was better houses... the ones around, just here that I knowed about, for they were... lumber company houses, they were just put up boards, you know. Stood on the end and nailed in there. What'd they call them? Jenny Lind?
JW: Jenny Lind.
MC: Jenny Lind, is that what they called them? And then they'd cover them cracks with four inch strips, you know, where there were cracks in the boards. They covered them. Then, inside, they would put up a heavy wallpaper. You didn't paste it up. You put it up with tacks.
JW: This was the coal company or the lumber company?
MC: Lumber company. But the coal company houses, you see, they were weatherboarded and they were sealed inside with regular sealing. Coal company houses that I know anything about was much better than the lumber company houses. One reason, lumber company, they would work out all the timber that their territory had and they wouldn't lay as near as long as the coal company houses.
JW: How long did you work at Longbottom?
MC: I worked there from '27 until 1934.
JW: Was it about closed down then?
MC: Yeah. It didn't last long after I left there. And, after I left there, they tried to organize. Labor tried to organize.
JW: Did they have problems there?
MC: Yeah. They had it shut down and, of course, I didn't have much communication with them during that time. I moved over here and I didn't have no car or anything. But I'd see somebody from over there and they'd tell me about what was going on.
JW: Any violence?
MC: No, I don't think they had any violence to speak of.
JW: On the lighter side, when you think about the New River, what did you do for recreation there?
MC: We stayed home or would get out and set around like you seen in them pictures.
JW: How about fishing?
MC: They wasn't too much fishing going on at that time. Not near as much as they is now.
JW: Was it that good or that bad then?
MC: No, it was good. Fishing was good, but most people just fished with trot lines for catfish.
JW: Is that how you fished?
MC: Yeah. I fished some. Not no whole lot. I had a bookkeeper come in there from Hinton . They needed a bookkeeper and they hired this fellow. And, he's the one that got me into fishing. Him and I would get up early of the morning and go out and run our trot
END OF SIDE ONE
Description
New River Lumber Company, Longbottom
Date Created
11/22/1983
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