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Oral History Project - Tulley, Henry 1984
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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.
Interview NRGNPP 058
File NRGNPP 058-T
TAPE 58
Henry Tulley
Interviewer: Jim Worsham
National Park Service
April 2, 1984
JW: This is Jim Worsham with the National Park Service and I am talking with Mr. Henry Tulley today at his home at Route 10, Edmond, West Virginia. Today is April 2, 1984 and I would like to begin by asking you Mr. Tulley, your full name.
HT: Edward C. Tulley.
JW: The date of your birth?
HT: I was born August 28, 1913.
JW: Where were you born, sir?
HT: Right here.
JW: Right here in Edmond.
HT: In a little house down over the hill from where I am sitting now in Edmond.
JW: That is interesting. What were your parents' names
HT: Howard B. and Gertrude C. Tulley.
JW: Do you remember her maiden name?
HT: Callison. C-A-L-L-I-S-O-N (spelled).
JW: Where were they from?
HT: He was from Edmond and she was from over in Nickolas County in Levi see.
JW: How did he meet her?
HT: She come here to teach school. She taught school here for a number of years. Then they were married and that is about all I know about that. That was before my time.
JW: What occupation did your father follow?
HT: He was a coal miner. His health broke down and then he had a little nursery over here of about 21 acres that he worked at the rest of his life until he died.
JW: When was he a coal miner, do you remember that?
HT: The last years that I know he worked in the coal mines was in the early fifties or late forties.
JW: You don't know when he started?
HT: He started when he was a boy. That was sometime in the early 1900' s.
JW: Where did he work?
HT: He worked most of his life at Nuttallburg, sometimes at Brown, but most of his coal miner life was at Nuttallburg.
JW: While we are talking about him, thinking about him, can you think of any instances he talked about at Nuttallburg when he worked there?
HT: The things that I remember the most as a child was the trouble they had with the coal operators. Of course every coal miners' child has that memory. My memories go back to the coal mine operation when Henry Ford owned the coal mine at Nut tall burg.
JW: Did you ever see Henry Ford?
HT: Yes, he use to come down to visit. He had a railroad train of his own, a car of his own, and he would park it on the siding at Nuttallburg and visit the coal mines and invite all the children to come and visit him in the train car.
JW: Did you go on board?
HT: Yes. Then he had a habit of giving everybody a dime that he come to.
JW: Oh really?
HT: But, I never heard my father as a child talk too much about the coal miners because it was simply or almost an innate experience since I was born. We were coal miners children and we grew up in the coal mines and we knew it wasn't necessary for him to talk about his experience too much.
JW: He didn't want to talk about them too much?
HT: No, not that he didn't want to talk about them, but he didn't think it was necessary. We knew what was going on.
JW: What I am saying is maybe instances that may have happened in in the mines or his feelings about something.
HT: Well of course coal miners have always been vocal about how they feel about their work in the mines. His was a standard average life of a coal miner. He didn't talk a great deal about it except to my mother and we children were not too much interested in his troubles.
JW: I am interested in maybe accidents or explosions,
HT: I can remember one or two accidents myself that took place at Nuttallburg.
JW: While you were working there?
HT: Not while I worked there, but while we lived down there. I suppose I was. we moved there in 1917 and I was 4 years old. We moved back here in 1922. During that time there were two incidents that took place. There was a Kessler boy that was injured in a slate fall and they brought him down to Nuttallburg and laid him on the depot porch and waited for the train to come to take him to the hospital.
JW: Which hospital was that?
HT: They went to Montgomery Hospital. That was the one that all the coal miners paid into. They had to pay medical and hospital fees and this is the one the coal company hired to look after the coal miners. But the Kessler boy that I remember was his forehead was laid open all the way across his forehead and you could see the skull. It made a very vivid impression on me as a child. I remember that.
JW: How old were you then?
HT: Probably six or seven years old.
JW: Was he bleeding badly?
HT: Very badly.
JW: Was he conscious?
HT: I don't know if he was conscious or not. He died later. I don't know that they even got him to the hospital. His name was Oscar Kessler. I don't know if they got him to the hospital or not.
JW: Were they talking about the accident, did you hear any other miners speak about it?
HT: Just the slate fall was all.
JW: They just took it in stride.
HT: Right.
JW: You said there was another incident?
HT: I remember the man that lived next door to us. He was killed in the mines. He was dead when they got him home. They brought his body into the home and the thing that I remember what seems to me to be a degree of callousness. They had his body on a flat board that they had made up at the mines and it was new lumber. The board was covered with blood and I can remember looking out the window where we lived, the home we lived in, and they brought the board out to the front porch of the house and just pitched it down over the hill. Of course they did whatever they do to bodies. His nickname was "Pennick" and his last name was Kinsey. That is about all I remember about Mr. Kinsey.
JW: K-I-N-S-E-Y (spelled)?
HT: Yes. They lived next door to us and that was the two incidents that I remember that made any impact or any impression on me as far as accidents were concerned.
JW: While we are talking about it, you said you were looking out the window in the house where you lived, can you describe that house?
HT: It was a Jennie Lynn construction house.
JW: What do you mean by that?
HT: It didn't have 2 x 4's upright. They nailed the boards to the 2 x 4's along the floor and then there was simply one wall construction between the inside and outside.
JW: No insulation.
HT: No insulation.
JW: There were probably cracks that you could see to the outside?
HT: If you didn't wallpaper over the cracks on the inside and if you recall most of the older houses you can go in today if you can find them, they have pasteboard and paper pasted to the wall and tacked to the wall because there was no insulation and no interior. This was the old coal miner construction type of house. We had four rooms in our house.
JW: Did you have any plaster on the walls at all?
HT: No, no plaster at all. The heat for the house was from a kitchen coal stove or a little grate in the chimney that was hung into the chimney. It was a very crude type of structure as compared with our present kind of building.
We would have chairs and the table. Some homes would have, what did they call them Setees? Some didn't. The houses were designed for service and not for comfort.
JW: You said grates hung in the chimney, you mean on the second floor?
HT: The first floor, second floor wherever there was a room. Almost every room had a grate in it, except the kitchen.
JW: How many chimneys did you have?
HT: Well there would be one in the center of the room that would take care of two rooms, petitioned, doubled back. Sometimes on the outside wall there would be a chimney. I don't remember how many we had but we had a fire grate in each room to heat the house to burn coal.
JW: How many rooms did you have?
HT: Four rooms. It presented a sleeping problem because mine was a big family and at that time 1 had four brothers, five brothers.
JW: Do you remember their names?
HT: There was James, the oldest, I was the second, Howard was the third, and John was the fourth. There was four of us. One baby had died previously, a boy.
JW: How old was he?
HT: He was stillborn.
JW: How did you work your sleeping arrangements?
HT: As best we could. Usually, the boys all slept in the same bed, toe to toe and two headed one way and two headed the other way.
JW: Okay, I was wondering how you worked that out.
HT: That is the way we did it in those days.
JW: I imagine that was an encouragement for them to wash their feet before they went to bed.
HT: Really that didn't present too much of a problem. We all smelled alike. We got use to it.
JW: Thinking back to those days, what kind of furnishings did you have in your rooms?
HT: We would have chairs and the table. Some homes would have, what did they call them, Stetees? Some didn’t. The houses were designed for service and not for comfort.
JW: I guess you have cold memories of them.
HT: Yes, I can remember even before we moved to Nut tall burg, living in a house here in Edmond, waking up in the morning with my socks froze to the floor.
JW: Froze to the floor?
HT: And snow all over the bed.
JW: Really? How did the snow get into the room?
HT: Through the cracks in the wall and around the windows. It was not the most comfortable way in the world to live. Those were the good old days.
JW: What other memories do you have down there. You said you went to Nut tall burg when? How old were you?
HT: I went to Nuttallburg in 1917.
JW: You were five years old then?
HT: About four years old, between four and five years old. We took all of our furniture that we owned and put it on two wagons and we tied the cow the back of the wagon and took it to Nut tall burg to a little place called Seldom Seen.
JW: Is that one word, Seldom Seen?
HT: Two words. It was on the Fayette Station side of Nut tall burg. If you lived in the Metropolis you never saw Seldom Seen and that is why them named it that. It was away from the activity of the neighborhood, the school, the church and the store, and the coal mine temple. They had one water hydrant for the entire neighborhood. They piped water down from the coal mines and they had this water hydrant, and I don't know how to describe it except that is what it was. You take your water bucket up and push the handle down and the water would fill up your bucket. You didn't have to pump it up and down.
JW: That was your only water supply.
HT: That was the only fresh water source we had.
JW: Was it good water?
HT: It was good water, unless you had a rain barrel. 1 can remember my brother talking about a friend of his, he called Scat. Scat had a rain barrel. In the Spring of the year when the warm water come, the rain barrel would get full of wiggle tails. You know what wiggle tails are.
JW: Polliwogs?
HT: Polliwogs. Scat had a tin tub and he would get up in the morning and come out to the rain barrel and he would hit the top of the rain barrel with the bottom of the cup and say “Scat". All the wiggle tails would go down to the bottom of the barrel 1 and Scat would get him a drink of water.
JW: I never heard of that.
HT: I wish my brother were alive, he used to tell us about Scat. Scat lived over at Kaymoor Number Two. I don't know his last name.
JW: So that is how he got rid of the wiggle tails to get a drink of water.
HT: The temple at Nuttallburg was half way up the mountain and the unloading temple down at the foot of the hill was serviced by what they called monitors. Are you familiar with Monitors?
JW: Why don't you describe that. I am basically familiar with it.
HT: Well the monitor was a cylindrical type coal carrier on railroad wheels, or coal mining car wheels or what but it held several tons of coal and it was engineered so that one container would always be at the bottom of the unloaded temple and the other contained would always be at the top of the loading temple.
JW: They used rails like on the trains.
HT: They used rails just like a railroad train.
JW: The same width as a railroad train.
HT: No, they were narrower. Where they passed, they made an allowance for that as they come up and went down the hill.
JW: They had double track only when they passed.
HT: That is right. A double track only when they passed each other about halfway down the hill. They would load the monitor at the top of the hill and the weight of that monitor would pull the empty one back up to the coal temple. Did they have some type of braking device? They had a braking device. A gigantic wheel like type of thing and the cable rolled around as the monitors moved up and down the hill and it had a braking device and the man always was there to operate the braking device.
JW: Did the brake ever fail?
HT: I don't recall it ever having failed.
JW: Did people ever ride the monitors?
HT: I am not sure. I believe they did.
JW: Was the monitor closed on top?
HT: It was closed on top, right. The one at Nut tall burg was.
JW: It was a big cylinder that was filled with coal and they closed the lid over it?
HT: They had an opening in the back, but I don't know that they had a lid over that opening or not. They just opened up the chute and filled the monitor full of coal and released the brake and it would pull the empty one back up to the top.
JW: That is from the mine entrance down to the temple at the bottom.
HT: Right, where they loaded it on the railroad cars.
JW: Tell me about the temple, how did it work?
HT: Well I don't know much I can tell you about it except they didn't use mules at Nuttallburg in my memory. They used motors and brought coal out in small coal cars. I believe they were two ton coal cars. Each coal loader had a check they called it. A little round brass check that they hung on the inside of the car that had their number on the check. As the coal car come out it went over the scales. They had a weighman there who would record the weight of the coal under this man's number. Then they would dump the coal into the temple and the coal car would go on its way. The monitor would pick it up. In later years they were accusations short changing in the weight. The unions hired a check weight, a man to watch the weightman to make sure each coal miner got his just weight recorded on his record of earnings.
JW: Were the scales checked?
HT: I suppose they were, but I really don't know.
JW: When was that, that they had the checkers there?
HT: Well, the check weightmen came after the Roosevelt administration when the unions had a right to organize. That was in 1932 or 1933. The first union that was organized at Nuttallburg was organized here in Edmond in the early 30's, I believe maybe 32, or 33 after the NRA Act was passed.
JW: Who was the organizer, do you remember?
HT: No I don't, but I believe it was a man named George Blizzard.
JW: That was around the National Recovery Act.
HT: Right. It was later declared unconstitutional.
JW: Exactly what was the NRA, do you remember?
HT: No I really don't. Some of it was provisions giving the labor people the right of collective bargaining.
JW: That is what organized under.
HT: They organized under the authority of the NRA Act, or the Blue Eagle they called it.
JW: When you are thinking back to that time, what are the other buildings, a company store?
HT: A company store, I can remember the company store and the script they use to check out.
JW: Did they use cash there?
HT: You could use cash. But who had cash? By the time you drew your payday and the various check—offs and the script that you had drawn during that period you had very little cash if any. Of course, the coal operators wanted to know what did you need it for, we '11 take care of you. They would look after you and provide you with all you would need and if you run out of money we will issue you script in advance and put you in debt to us, etc.
JW: Were most of the miners in debt?
HT: Most of the miners were in debt most of the time because I believe that in 1926 they worked 52 days. Well you don't live very well on 52 days work a year. You don't accumulate a fortune.
JW: That was 1926?
HT: Yes. It was '25 or '26.
JW: There was not much work at all.
HT: The mine at Nut tall burg, up until that time, was one of the highest paid until 1926 when Ford's Coal Company sold the mine to the Maryland New River Coal Company. They were one of the highest paid coal miners in the whole area.
JW: Was that because of Ford?
HT: That was Ford policy. Ford's policy also was that he had a trade school in Dearborn Michigan and if a coal miner that worked for him wanted to send his son up there to that trade school, Ford would pay the expenses.
JW: Really? What else did Ford do?
HT: He just paid higher wages than anybody else and he believed that a happy satisfied workman was a profitable workman.
JW: So the union did not come in while he was there.
HT: There was no need really for a union at that time at the Ford mines, but all around Ford's Coal Company they had the "yellow dog" contract and the black balling of the miners.
JW: What do these terms mean?
HT: Well the "yellow dog" contract was one you had to sign before you could go to work in the coal mines. You renounced and gave up your right to ever join the union. Why do they call it “yellow dog"?
JW: Well, that was just the coal miner's name for the contract. Because it made a "yellow dog" out of you.
HT: They treated you like a dog and you showed your yellow when you signed the contract.
JW: That is even worse.
HT: Yes.
JW: How about the other term?
HT: The Black Ball? If a coal miner in those days became involved in union activity, he was fired and his name was passed on to all other coal operators in the area and his chances of getting a job were absolutely nill as a coal miner. No coal company would hire him. That is what they would call being black balled. I suppose it is the same thing the fraternal organizations do when they select a member. They give everybody a white ball and black ball. If there is a black ball is cast, he is out you know. You know that.
JW: Was this necessary over at Ford's mine?
HT: No, it was not necessary. There was no question about that.
JW: You said that they paid higher wages. Were the miners always in debt at Ford's mine? Or did they have enough to make ends meet?
HT: They had enough to make ends meet, but they didn't work enough. There was not enough work.
JW: The economy was bad at that time.
HT: Right.
JW: Thinking back to your home again, what kind of furnishing did you have. Were there drapes on the wall?
HT: Oh we had… I guess we had curtains, I don't remember.
JW: How about rugs.
HT: Linoleum. If we had one, it was a linoleum rug. A lot of homes that I remember had what they called a parlor. Nobody ever went in the parlor. It was reserved for company. We didn't have a parlor. I am speaking of other homes that I had visited. They parlor was the place that was off limits to the family unless they had company. They had rugs. It was the best furnished room in the house.
JW: Rugs, and nice draperies and all.
HT: I suppose they had curtains, I don't know.
JW: Let's touch on a little bit lighter subject, when you were growing up, what did you do for fun? Swim, fish or what?
HT: We did all of the things that children do back in those days. Mostly roamed the woods and go swimming and play baseball and all of those things that children do.
JW: Was it dangerous to swim in the river?
HT: It sure was. That was one of the reasons my father took me in the coal mines because he couldn't trust me at home.
JW: Why was that?
HT: He forbid us from every swimming in the river. Absolutely we were forbidden to go in the river to swim. The undercurrents and the number of deaths and drownings there during the year.
JW: How many people usually drowned?
HT: There would be three or four people every year during the summer would drown in the neighborhood.
JW: Were they kids?
HT: They were kids, old people, fishermen. Anybody that got into the river and got caught in the undercurrent. There was not much chance they could get out. During the coal miner strike of 1921, he built our home over here. He would come up here and we had about 21 acres of land over there and he built a home on it. When he left in the morning that freed the children of any restrictions.
JW: What about your mother?
HT: I don't remember that she kept that close tract on us. We come back one morning, my brother and I were down at the river and I went swimming. I come out from around behind a big rock in the river and there he stood. Well I was six years old and he didn't discipline me immediately. But he said, "Now you go with me from now on Every day during that summer of 1921, I had to trudge along behind him up the mountain and sit over there under his eye all day while he watched me and then go back home with him in the evening.
JW: Really. How long did you do that?
HT: Just until school started.
JW: You were how old then?
HT: I was six or seven years old. No, eight years old.
JW: Did you go in the mines with him?
HT: Not until I was old enough. I was fourteen I believe when I went to the mines.
JW: Let's talk about that. What was it like?
HT: I did what they called entry work. When you drive an entry of course if you are familiar with coal mine work in those days, off the entry went the rooms. They mined the coal in the rooms.
JW: The entry is the main passage.
HT: Right. The air way was the “air course" they called it. The entry and air course went side by side and an occasional break through from one to the other. Much of my early mining was in an entry where we shot slate. You could stand up after you had cleaned up the slate. They paid you for removing slate by the yard, they called it. Depending of course on the thickness of the slate.
JW: What would they do with the slate?
HT: They would take it outside and dump it over the hill.
JW: It was just a removal process.
HT: All these red dog piles around the country, burning slag piles are slate that had been removed from mines.
JW: Did it have some coal in them?
HT: It had some coal in them. That was one of the complaints made by the coal miners, that they had inspectors at the temple that they had what they called dirty coal. You got no credit at all for that but they would take it up in the slate dump and dump it. It didn't have to have very much dirt they called it, rock or what they called bone—in in those days. It didn't have to have very much in it for the inspector if he was real gung-ho to reject this car of coal and dump it over the hill.
JW: They didn't get paid for that?
HT: They didn't get paid for that, no. The men who drove entries made the most money in the coal mines those days.
JW: What do you mean by drove entries?
HT: They were the ones who started inside the mountain or wherever they decided to make one of those main courses and going in the direction the engineers told you to go. You had to make it high enough to get the electrical lines in and to stand up in and walk. You could walk in an entry standing up.
JW: Who was in charge of making the mine larger?
HT: The entries were to expand the mine, that is right.
JW: So this was the main passage you were responsible for. Blasting back…
HT: …and loading up coal and slate. We separated the coal from slate and loaded the coal and getting the slate out too.
JW: They used the same kind of cars?
HT: The same kind of coal cars.
JW: How did they get the cars out?
HT: In those days they had motors.
JW: Electrical motors?
HT: Little electrical motors what they called gathering motors.
JW: How did they work those?
HT: They had an electrical cable run into the mines and...
JW: Did they have a name for that cable? Some miner mentioned to me a nick name they had for that cable.
HT: I don't remember that they had a name for it or not, but the motor had two pieces of conduits. One they called a nipper that you held in your hand and run along the electric cable and give energy to the motor and the other was the trolley pole. It just rode along on the cable without any reference to the
JW: Now the nipper, did you actually have to hold it on there, or hook it on.
HT: At times you had to actually hold it on. But if you got to the end of the electric cable you hooked it and the motor went on as far as the track went. That is what the hooking on process is for. Otherwise you held it up there with your hand.
JW: When you unhooked it you cut off the power?
HT: Right.
JW: The motor was on the car itself?
HT: Right.
JW: And they used the same kind of cars for slate as coal.
HT: Yes. They was no distinction between the kind of empties they called it. You got empties to load either slate or coal.
JW: You were telling me about you started working when you were fourteen? You went in with your father, is that correct?
HT: Right.
JW: This was back in hand loading days, how would you do that?
HT: You just loaded it with a shovel. You would go in the morning and if you had not already prepared your place, if you cleaned up your room in the evening before the shift ended, the coal cutters would come at night and cut up four or five inch groove, I am not sure what the term is, under that for six or eight feet. That is how long the cutter bar was.
JW: It was one engine, kind of like a chain saw.
HT: Sort of like a big chain saw and it would go in and bury itself in the coal and as I remember in the right hand corner of the working place and move across and then withdraw. Then the coal miner come in the next morning and he would clean out all the coal from under that. Lots of time it was a complete waste because there was so much bottom slate mixed up in it that you just threw it in the gaub pile. Then you would shoot it down.
JW: How did you do that?
HT: You would bore at least three holes, if the place was wide enough.
JW: How high would the ceiling be, first of all?
HT: Well the coal itself would be anywhere from 26 to 36 inches, averaged around about 32 inches high where I worked.
JW: Did you have a high ceiling, or did you work on your knees?
HT: In the rooms we had to work on our knees and crawl. In the entries you could stand up. Then you would shoot the center hole first.
JW: You had a hand dogger?
HT: A hand dogger that you would put up on your chest…
JW: Kind of like a brace and bit, a big one that you leaned into to crank.
HT: Right, you leaned into it and cranked it right into the coal.
JW: How deep did you crank into the coal?
HT: However deep the cut under the coal was. It could be anywhere from four to six feet, at least that. Then you loaded the hole with your shooting material and shot it down.
JW: First of all before you had that chain saw thing it had to be done with a pick ax, didn't it?
HT: Right. I never worked in the mines where you did that.
JW: Now, let's shoot the coal. How did you do that? What kind of explosive would you use?
HT: You used black powder and they come in little cylindrical pallets with a hole in the center of it.
JW: How big were the pallets?
HT: They would probably be an inch and a—half, or maybe an inch and three quarters in diamenter, and maybe two inches long. There would be four pallets in each stick. You had what they called a tamper. That was a steel bar with a copper head on it.
JW: Copper so you don't get any sparks at all.
HT: Right. You would push that pallet back in and if you used the squib.
JW: What is a squib?
HT: A squib was a portable fuse I suppose you would call it. It is not as long as a lead pencil and as big around as a match stick and on one end was twisted paper waxed paper, the whole thing was wax paper and the ignition end of it was rolled up or twisted. To use the squib you had to use what they called a needle which was a long piece of steel pointed on the end that you used to put the power in the hole. You stuck the needle in the hole in the pallet.
JW: The black powder pallet.
HT: The black powder pallet. Then you tapped coal dust, wet coal dust around that needle all the way back to the mouth of the hole. By that time, the dust had shaped itself around the needle so that you could turn the needle and then withdraw it and it would leave a hole from the place of the coal all the way back to the powder pallet.
JW: How long would that probably be?
HT: Four to six feet. Then you would lay the squib up in the hole.
JW: How long would the squib be?
HT: Maybe four or five inches.
JW: You have got the powder back in there and you press the wet coal dust tapped around the needle. How long would the needle be?
HT: Long enough to reach the powder pallet, about four to six feet long.
JW: Did the squib reach all the way back?
HT: No, you laid the squib up into the mouth of the hole and when you lit the paper end of it, a match or your miners' lamp, then you run.
JW: How long would that take?
HT: Well, it would not take more than a minute of two for that squib to burn down to the powder and when it burned down to the powder it forced itself back into the hole. It ignited the pallet and exploded. A misfire was very dangerous.
JW: How long would you wait before you would go back there if there was a misfire?
HT: It depends on the coal miner. Some miners would wait 24—hours, some miners would go back in 15 minutes and get killed. It has happened.
JW: Kind of like firing with a mussel load gun.
HT: Right.
JW: What is the longest you have heard of?
HT: I don't remember.
JW: You say fifteen minutes you could get yourself killed.
HT: You could, very easily. You have to make sure there is not spark or anything left there smoldering, and all of a sudden it will smolder up to the combustible material and light that squib and you would be standing there looking at it. The other method was to use the electric fuse where you put a fuse in the black powder and put it in there and you just tapped it. You hooked your fuse wire to a battery, and you went back a safe distance and shot your coal.
JW: Was this a blasting cap?
HT: That is right, a blasting cap.
JW: You went around the corner in one of these side rooms…
HT: You went to a safe place where there was no danger of you being injured in the explosion or blasting process.
JW: How about gas?
HT: I never worked in a mine that had gas in it. I don't know anything about it.
JW: How about the danger of coal dust in the air?
HT: That has always been a danger. But I never worked in the mines where they had an explosion. Coal dust in the air has always been a danger and coal dust in gaub piles has been a danger and it was a safety hazard then, but nobody seem to be too concerned about it back in those days.
JW: How about ventilation back in the mines? You mentioned one place it was hard for you to breathe.
HT: Sometimes ventilation was good and sometimes it was bad. It would depend entirely on the magnanimity of the operator.
JW: Did they have fans?
HT: They had fans. If the fan broke down you were out of air.
JW: Has that ever happened to you?
HT: No, that never happened during my coal mining experience.
JW: You knew some people that it did happen to.
HT: Right, it has happened. Then there was always the problem of getting too far ahead of the air circuit. The air circuits were constructed so that the outside fan would either pull or push the air. It would pull the air from the coal mines and the air course that went along side the entries in the rooms break throughs, periodically, they would have a break through. They had what they called the bratish. It was a piece of burlap they used to close up the holes. It simply closed off that…
JW: Why would they want to close it off?
HT: So that the air would go on to the next break through.
JW: So if no one was working over there, you would seal it off.
HT: Right, they had already gone past that and they are up ahead and now they made another break through and they closed this last one and the air goes on up to where they were. If you were well ahead of the air, you could suffer.
JW: How would they have the circulation and ventilation, again.
HT: Well the fans were on the outside, or close to the outside and they had two entries, one they called an air course, an the air course was where the fan was and it would either pull the air out of the coal mine or it would push it back in. It made a circular movement all the time the fan was running.
JW: Where would the circle go to?
HT: It would go all the way through the whole working part of the mine and then be drawn outside into
JW: There would be a shaft drilled down for ventilation?
HT: Right.
JW: Was it better to have the air coming in or being pulled out?
HT: I don't know.
JW: I was wondering if you had any preference.
HT: I didn't. All I wanted to do was breathe.
JW: So there has been some times when you had problems breathing down there?
HT: I never did have any problems except over there at the last coal mine I worked in when you shut the coal down you couldn't go back to work for 24—hours because the place was filled with smoke and there was not adequate ventilation over at Browns.
JW: We’ll get to that shortly. we were talking about shooting the coal and the air being filled with dust, normally how long would you have to wait?
HT: Oh, maybe an hour, something like that.
JW: What would happen if you went in there too soon? Would it give people headaches, or what?
HT: You would suffer to some degree. I think most coal miners were sensible enough not to take a chance on losing their lives by going back too soon. They went back to test it and then they had well, they didn't use the safety lamp under those conditions. They used the safety lamp to test for gas. Most experienced coal miners, they didn't go back too soon.
JW: You started work when you were fourteen?
HT: Right.
JW: Tell me a little bit about that.
HT: There wasn't anything to tell you except that my Dad just told me one morning. when I was coming home from school, after school was out, that "Son, I have got you a job, you are going with me.” He took my money and I didn't draw any money, he kept my money.
JW: How long did you work there?
HT: I worked three months every summer for four years.
JW: This was at Nuttallburg?
HT: This was at Nuttallburg.
JW: Does anything stand out in your memory about that work?
HT: Some things stand out but they are personal and I couldn't tell you about them. The old coal miners use to play tricks on the young ones.
JW: Oh they did. What all would they do?
HT: They would ask them for smoke cutters and send them out to get one or a rib straighter, or some foolish thing like that. Then they would keep an eye on them to make sure they didn't get themselves killed.
JW: That is a good idea. I assumed they played a few tricks like that on you too.
HT: Oh yes.
JW: Was there one in particular that sticks in your mind?
HT: No, not any one in particular. My Father had warned me of some of them and told he what to do in case I was the victim of a practical
JW: Did they play some practical jokes on you?
HT: Oh yes, that was one of their practical jokes to send a young green coal miner outside to get a rib straightener.
JW: What is a rib straightener?
HT: It is suppose to have been a thing that you could bring in the mines and it would straighten out the sides of the mines, the ribs, the entry, etc.
JW: The beams there?
HT: It didn't really exist.
JW: I realize that.
HT: But Dad told me if that ever happened to me, you just let me know and you go on out to get it and go on home.
JW: That is a good way of handling that.
HT: He just told me, these people will do that to you now. Before you go off doing something somebody else tells you to do, see me.
JW: That is probably a wise idea. Do you remember any other of these fictional tools, or whatever?
HT: Well the only two I remember were Rib Straighteners and Smoke Cutters.
JW: Smoke Cutters would be interesting.
HT: They would get rid of the smoke.
JW: And the rib straighteners, I still don't have that straight in my mind.
HT: Well they call the sides and entries in the rooms, the ribs. That is where they pitch the gaub dust and dirt before they would begin to haul it outside. The rib was the sides of the coal mine in the entry of the room.
JW: How could they visualize a tool that would cut the smoke?
HT: They knew better.
JW: Then you worked there for four summers you say?
HT: Four summers.
JW: Did you finish high school?
HT: I finished high school.
JW: Then you said you went to work on your own.
HT: I went to work over at Stover Coal Company at Browns and worked three nights. Again, this business of ventilation was a problem over there and I had to buy my tools and…
JW: You don't remember how much they cost do you?
HT: No I really don't. I charged them to the coal company store. The first night I went to work…
JW: Before we get on that, what kind of tools did you get?
HT: I got a pick, shovel, auger, and a pail, lamp, carbide, carbide flask, and all the things you need.
JW: How would you carry carbide?
HT: In a metal flask they called it. I don't believe I could describe it. It looked like a army water canteen only it was thinner and longer. It was shaped like that and it had a bigger top on it. You bought your carbide and put your carbide in it, and stuck it in a pocket some place.
JW: And hope you never got a leak in it.
HT: Right.
JW: Did any of the miners ever get a hole in them?
HT: I don't really know. You asked me about recreation a while ago. That is one of the things we use to do as a boy.
JW: Oh, what was that?
HT: We used to take a tin can and we could put a lid on and drive a nail hole in the bottom of it and put a handful of carbide water in it and put the lid on it and put our foot on it, and stick a match to the hole. You have done that? Do you know what I am talking about?
JW: Oh yes. How far would it blow the lid?
HT: Well it all depended on how big the charge was.
JW: What is the furthest you have blown a lid?
HT: I don't remember. Then we use to bury some big carbide cans, 25 lb carbide cans and blow them up. That was always fun.
JW: How did you do that?
HT: Just put carbide and water in them, buried them in the ground and run a trail to them and...
JW: Was that the fuse?
HT: Usually we tried to use gasoline or kerosene and go off like that and run.
JW: How much dirt did you put on top of them?
HT: Not very much, just enough to hold it down , but over at Browns the first night I went in and shot my coal down of course that was all there was. I cleaned out from under the coal cut and that was all there was. You couldn't get back and you had to wait and there was no ventilation. The next night I went back the place was full of water and I called for the water box.
JW: Tell me again what the water box is.
HT: The water box was similar to a coal car, only it was a box mounted on wheels like a coal car and rode along the track. It was completely enclosed except for an opening at the top on one end and a hole in the other end with a wooden plug in it. You loaded that water box with a bucket or your shovel or whatever you could get a hold of to load it.
JW: How high was the ceiling here. Were you working on your knees in the water?
HT: Working on my knees in the water, there was a room and there it was less than three feet high.
JW: How deep was the water then?
HT: About six inches. I loaded three boxes of water and that cleared the water out of the place and I made 75 cents. It was a quarter a box.
JW: How big were those boxes?
HT: They were about 8 feet long and these measurements are approximate. About eight feel long and two and one—half feet wide two feet high sitting on the coal car train. By that time the shift was over and I come home and I had made 75 cents in two nights work and in debt to the company store for my tools.
JW: You don't remember how much they cost?
HT: No I don't. Then I went back the next night and started to load coal and I worked about three hours and I got up, crawled up and looked over into the coal car and it looked like where a hobo moved his bowels in a box car.
JW: Really?
HT: Excuse my expression. I sat down and cried. I was almost eighteen years old then. I said there must be a better way to make a living.
JW: How long had you been shoveling coal in that car?
HT: It seemed to me like two and one—half to three hours and I hadn't made a dent in it. I picked up all the tools I had, my lunch bucket and threw them in the coal car and come home and I never went back in the coal mines again. That ended my experience in the coal mines.
JW: After that you went to…
HT: I went to the CCC Camp down in McKey ,Kentucky and then up in Petersburg, West Virginia and while I was in Petersburg, West Virginia I enlisted in the Navy and spent twenty—two years in the Navy.
JW: You were in the Navy from when to when.
HT: I went in the Navy in 1936 and retired in 1958, October.
JW: Back to the time right after you left the coal mines, didn't you tell me you were a Hobo for a while?
HT: I hoboed for a while.
JW: Tell me a little bit about that, that is interesting.
HT: I don't know Of any great experiences I had as a Hobo except it was not a profitable proposition.
JW: You were telling me about when you would catch a train.
HT: I use to go down to Hawks Nest at the railroad station and because the trains always slowed down to go across the river, there was a good place for Hobos to meet and to catch the train without too much danger. You could almost step on it because it slowed down so slow.
JW: Did you know many of the other people that were Hobos?
HT: I didn't know them personally, I was with them but I didn't make any long term acquaintances.
JW: Did they share their experiences?
HT: Yes, and if you got hungry you could usually get something to eat.
JW: How would you do that?
HT: You could go to the place and ask them for something to eat or you could go to what they called the railroad jungle where the old Hobos, experienced Hobos were that had gone out and begged for food and brought it back and cooked it. My last experience as a Hobo ended in Cleveland Ohio when I went into Cleveland and had not had anything to eat for about three days, and I went to some charitable organization and as best I remember, it was some kind of workmen of America that fed Hobos and Bums. I was a Bum. I was hungry and they fed me. They had fried corn meal mush and I was so hungry that I didn't check it before I bit it. When I got my mouth full it was so hot, that it stuck to the roof of my mouth and in thirty minutes I had a blister in my mouth that was about the size of a small pullet egg.
JW: On the roof of your mouth?
HT: On the roof of my mouth. That ended my Hobo career. I come home then. I didn't want anymore of that.
JW: When you were out Hoboing and you would catch the train where would you go to?
HT: Wherever the train went. It didn't make any different.
JW: How did you decide where to get off?
HT: Wherever I could. Back in those days the railroad was not so strict with their clients.
JW: They didn't have that many…
HT: No... I have sat out on the cliff on the mountain here and looked down in the valley at the railroads going by and the trains would be loaded with men going from here to there. During the march on Washington, I believe it was the veterans march back in the 30's, every train that went by going East was loaded with men. They were headed to Washington to lobby for the veterans bonus.
JW: So they would hop a freight.
HT: That is the way they got there. They got out when General MacArthur was ordered to move them out.
JW: Thinking back to that time as a Hobo, were there many blacks there?
HT: They were black and white. Hobos didn't have. . . they didn't have a problem with integration generally.
JW: How about foreigners.
HT: The same way with foreigners.
JW: How was that compared with the coal camp, were there many foreigners or blacks there?
HT: We had a segregation de facto, but there were as many blacks as there were whites and there were quite a few foreigners there too.
JW: Were they Italians, or what?
HT: Italians, mostly Italians, Spaniards, but if there was any real problem I did' t know it. I use to go visit the colored people in Nuttallburg.
JW: Do you remember their names?
HT: I remember Mrs. Greene and she made the best corn bread I ever ate in my life.
JW: You would go visit her for the corn bread. Did you know her son or what?
HT: I knew her husband and her son, and 1 knew the whole family. They lived just below where we lived.
JW: You said she had corn bread, did she grow her own corn or what?
HT: No, they got meal at the company store.
JW: Did they grow any vegetables?
HT: Some coal miners had little gardens, but you don't grow gardens on a rock.
JW: How about animals?
HT: Some of them had chickens and we had a cow for a while, but I don't remember that we kept her very long. I don't know why.
JW: Did you have electricity?
HT: We had electricity in those days, but you didn't have any appliances. All you had was an electric light. It was hanging down from the middle of the room.
JW: Just one light?
HT: One light per room.
JW: Did you ever a radio?
HT: We didn't have a radio until we moved back up here many years later. Do you have any recollection of the first radio? Was it a Crossby?
JW: Was that a battery radio?
HT: No it was electrical.
JW: Thinking back on those times at Nuttallburg, did you do much fishing?
HT: Not too much.
JW: Was the fishing good in general?
HT: Yes.
JW: What would people catch?
HT: They usually caught catfish. They would throw trot lines across the river.
JW: What was the biggest catfish you ever saw?
HT: Oh, I believe maybe 30 inches long something like that.
JW: What was the hardest times you remember about the depression?
HT: The depression really, to me, was not important until it was almost over. We lived on a little farm and my mother taught school and I had the security of... a child doesn't miss what he never had. I was safe and we had enough to eat and we had enough clothes to wear to keep warm and the depression never really impacted on me like it did a lot of other people, especially adults who had responsibilities. We didn't have any money, we didn't have a car. Wherever we went we walked. We had oranges for Christmas and didn't miss it. I don't think we were any worse off for it today.
JW: You were speaking about responsibilities and there is something I have neglected to ask you. Where did you meet your wife?
HT: I met her here in Edmond.
JW: Oh really. How did you meet her?
HT: Playing out in the yard.
JW: When did you get married
HT: April 27, 1941
JW: You got married in '41, Where did you first live?
HT: All over. I was in the service then.
JW: There must be a story there.
HT: I was getting ready to go to Honolulu and I had just re—enlisted in the Navy and we got married and I went to Honolulu and she come up there. That is all the story there is to it.
JW: So you had been dating all along then.
HT: We had been dating all long.
JW: When did you first start dating, do you remember?
HT: It was a long time ago.
JW: You joined the Navy in '39 you said?
HT: No, ‘36.
JW: You came back home and dated then.
HT: No we dated before then. We had our eye on each other for a long time.
JW: Do you have any children?
HT: We had one boy and he died.
JW: How old was he?
HT: He was stillborn.
JW: When you were growing up there did you have any Labor Day celebrations with the union?
HT: They had no union.
JW: They had no union then, so it hadn't come in.
HT: There was a union, but it was dead. It was inactive. The first union experience that I remember anything at all about was in 1921. It almost destroyed the union. They just outstayed them, or outlasted them.
JW: Did they have a saloon at Nuttallburg?
HT: They didn't have a saloon at Nuttallburg, no. I don't remember much about drunks and drinking.
JW: Where did they get their whiskey.
HT: They went to Thurmond, Montgomery, Fayetteville, and wherever they wanted to go, or they would go and bring whiskey in whatever they wanted to drink.
JW: What do you remember about the railroads?
HT: Not too much. We used to go down and watch them go by when we were kids.
JW: There were a lot of trains going through?
HT: Yes.
JW: Were they passenger trains or what.
HT: They were mostly either freight or coal trains, some passenger trains. I don't remember the numbers of the trains, but there was Number 13, 3 and 4. The 13 was a local 1 believe and 3 and 4 were thru trains and the didn't stop at Nuttallburg. Two locals stopped once a day at Nuttallburg and two locals on the other side of the river going East would stop at Browns twice a day. They stopped at every railroad station and discharged passengers and picked up freight. They took on passengers.
JW: Did they have a church at Nuttallburg?
HT: Yes. The coal company provided a church and paid the preacher.
JW: Did they have a certain denomination?
HT: No, they had a black church and a white church. The denomination was not a factor. They just had church.
JW: Is there anything else you would like to add to this tape? 1 think we have talked a little about everything.
HT: Not really that I know of. Sixty four or five years is a long time to remember some of the things that took place in our younger lives.
JW: That is the truth.
HT: My mother taught school there, that is the reason we moved there. They had a lot of trouble in the schools and they thought that if they hired a school teacher whose mother was a coal miner they would have better control over the school and they did.
JW: You said better control, what do you mean?
HT: Well they changed teachers every year. Somebody would run the teacher off.
JW: You mean the kids were that rowdy?
HT: It was not so much the kids as it was the parents.
JW: Really?
HT: There was an incident that I remember that my mother had to discipline a boy. That afternoon the boy's father came out and he brought his pistol with him. My father put his pistol in his pocket and went down to talk to him.
JW: What kind of pistol did they have?
HT: My father had a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson and Mr. Boyer had probably the same kind. But later on, it was discovered that our neighbors were all sitting in the windows with their rifles loaded. They didn't want the school teacher run off any more. They had been responsible for having the school teachers run off. Most school teachers lasted a year at Nuttallburg, but before the school term was up they were gone. The parents were so protective of their children.
JW: They would intimidate them with a gun.
HT: Oh, absolutely.
JW: Did anyone ever get shot?
HT: Not that I know of, they left.
JW: You had neighbors that were watching after you then. How did they know this guy was coming?
HT: They really didn't know he was coming, but they could see. The houses were clustered together and they could see from below the road.
JW: How did your mother discipline this fellow?
HT: I don't remember. It was not anything of great importance.
JW: Did she paddle him?
HT: Oh they paddled children in those days. Sometimes they used a switch and sometimes they made them go outside. This was discipline for misbehavior.
JW: Was this a one room school?
HT: A one room school.
JW: What grades?
HT: Starting with the eighth I believe. They didn't have kindergarten then. They had primary up to the eighth.
JW: You don't remember how old this boy was that was disciplined?
HT: He was about my age.
JW: How old was that about?
HT: Seven or eight years old.
JW: So your father met with this boy's father.
HT: Right.
JW: Did they reach an agreement?
HT: They must have. They both lived.
JW: Did he know the neighbors were watching on?
HT: No, he didn't know it at that time.
JW: Is there anything else you can think of.
HT: Not that I know of.
JW: I appreciate very much your talking with us.
[END OF TAPE]
Description
Life in Nuttallburg, 1917-1940, mining techniques, Henry Ford's visit
Date Created
04/02/1984
Copyright and Usage Info