Audio
Oral History Project - Brandt, Grace and Emmett 1980
Transcript
Interview NRGNPP 01 1
File NRGNPP 011-T
TAPE ELEVEN
Grace and Emmett Brandt
Interviewer :
Paul J. Nyden
Beckley, W. Va. 25801
October 7, 1980
PN: Just to start off, I was wondering if I could ask both of you when and where you were born.
EB: I was born in Greenbrier County, Lewisburg, West Virginia.
GB: And I was born in Sutton, Braxton County, West Virginia. What were the dates that were your birthdays?
EB: Nineteen and two, January the 25th.
GB: And nineteen one, October the 26th. That's soon.
PN: When did you first move to Glade? 1924.
PN: And you both moved from Lewisburg over to Glade in 1924?
EB: That's right. November the 1st, nineteen and twenty—four.
PN: What year was that?
EB: That was in 24, nineteen and twenty—four.
PN: When you moved to Glade, what was the type of work that you did when you went there?
EB: I went there railroading, on the railroad.
PN: That was the main C & O line?
EB: That was the main line of the C & O, yes.
PN: What were you doing in Glade?
GB: At that time, I wasn't doing anything, except that I did some sub— stitute teaching there.
PN: What was the year that Glade was originally started as a town, do you know?
EB: It was round about 1900, when it started.
PN: What were the main industries there, in that period?
EB: The lumber business, lumbering.
PN: And railroading.
EB: Yea, and railroading too.
PN: Was there one main lumber company that was operating?
EB: Well, there was one that was operated a good while, and then It went out of business, and then another one come and set up on the other side of the river. The first one was on the, on the, it was in Fayette County. It was on the Fayette County side. And the next one was operated on the Raleigh County side. And they had to put a railroad bridge in across New River, to get over to, you know, the main line of the C & O.
GB: In was built about nineteen and a…?
EB: Nineteen and twenty.
PN: Maybe you could describe again [they had done so previously before the taping began] what the name of the other town was, and the relation between the two towns.
GB: Hamlet.
EB: Hamlet was across the river. Now it was started about 1920 over there. That's when the first saw mill went in on the Raleigh County side, on that side of the river.
GB: And then on the Glade side, they just called that Glade.
EB: That was on this side [the same side as Meadow Creek].
GB: And the river divided them, you see.
PN: Yea, and both were saw—mill towns then?
EB: Yea, that's right. Glade was a railroad town, and on the Raleigh side it was a lumber town.
EB: No it wasn't, hon. There was a lumber town on this side too. It was, in Fayette County, on this side of the river. That was the first lumber mill that was there at Glade. That was before we went there, but these old—timers told me about it. And then there were signs of it there too, you know pieces of the old mill and all that stuff there. And you remember the old piers on each end where the boats landed on each side of the river there. They was in there when we first went there.
GB: Yea, that's right.
PN: They had a ferry?
EB: They had a big ferry, yea.
PN: When you moved there in 1924, how many houses were there in each of these towns?
EB: Well, there were close to, I expect there was 75 houses over on the Raleigh County side, and there was about 20 on our side. About 20 altogether, Gracie.
PN: How many people lived, you know, on each side?
GB: Well on our side, I figure, do you mean family—wise altogether or?
PN: Yea, the total number of individual people.
GB: Personal, personal individuals. Well, I expect…
EB: There were 75 people on our side. That is on…
GB: I expect there was.
EB: And on the other side, there was, well there at one time, I think they employed around 200 men on their saw mill. And in the woods too, you see. They had a woods gang that worked in the mountains in the woods cutting the timber. They had what they called the logging camp back in the mountains. And then they had a railroad, about 15—mile long, that went up Glade Creek; come out on top of the mountain up at the dam. You know where the dam is over there. It went all the way up to that dam, crossed the road up there. Got some of the logs beyond that road.
PN: That brought the lumber down to…
EB: Yea, they brought the timber down; they would saw it up at Glade, there at Glade.
GB: And they put them on the mill ponds.
PN: What did the houses look like?
EB: Well, they were just lumber—camp houses, what we called Jenny Lind houses built up and down, tar—paper roofs on them; there was nothing fancy.
PN: They were pretty much like the houses that would be in a coal town?
EB: That's right, like the same kind, yea.
PN: Inside, did they paint the walls, or was there wallpaper on the walls?
EB: Well, there was mostly wallpaper, or sealing, lumber, you know, sealing inside.
PN: What do you mean, something that sealed it from the wind?
EB: Yea, that's right. And, you know, some of them, I think, was sheet rock, wasn't they inside? Some of the houses?
GB: I don't remember.
EB: Yea, I think there were some of them with sheet rock. But they didn't call it sheet rock then; they called it
GB: Beaverboard.
EB: Beaverboard, I believe that's what they called it when it first come out.
GB: But on our side, the, most of the houses were papered. And of course, there was this tongue—and—groove sealing, siding, under them on the inside. What do you call where they're sealed on the inside?
EB: Sealing. It's lumber, sealing.
PN: How many rooms were there in the homes usually?
EB: Well, there was about from four to six, four to six rooms.
PN: And what did people use the different rooms for, generally.
EB: Well they used one for kitchen/ dining room; it was a combination mostly. And then they had a living room and a couple bedrooms.
PN: Could you describe the kinds of furniture that people would use, as a rule?
EB: Well, they had a, you know, we had a wicker outfit, you know.
GB: I 've got the table to the wicker suite downstairs. I can tell you what we, how ours was, what we had. But of course, some of them weren't quite as fortunate as we. But now we had Aladdin lamps, and I had a kerosene refrigerator, and a gasoline washer. I had all conveniences with the exception of things that operated with electricity.
EB: But we didn't have that for a good while.
GB: Well, but we had it.
EB: Before we left Glade we had that.
GB: We hadn't been there very long.
PN: What did people eat back then?
GB: They raised their gardens.
EB: Gardens and…
GB: And their own meat.
EB: A good part of them did. We kept a couple of cows most of the time; I raised two to three hogs, and had our chickens, and stuff like that.
PN: Did most people that lived there keep animals?
EB: Well, the most of them kept a cow, and maybe a hog or two, a few chickens, and stuff like that.
GB: I think that nearly all of them had animals.
EB: Yea, that's what I'm saying.
PN: How about raising gardens; would you say that mostly everybody did that too?
EB: Yea, most everybody had a garden plot.
PN: Was there any store, or company store, where people would buy their food?
EB: Yes, there was a company store, and also a private—owned store. The Redden store was there when we first went there.
PN: That was the privately—owned store?
EB: That was the privately—owned store.
GB: And across the river was the company store.
EB: It was a company store.
PN: That was on the Raleigh County side?
EB: That was over at the saw mill, where the saw mill was too. They had a, what they call a “club house" over there. You know, it was kind of like a hotel. The travelling salesmens would stay there. And then they had another boarding house where the men that worked on the saw mill the single men boarded. It wasn't quite as nice as the one where the salesmen stayed in.
GB: And they had a doctor's office.
EB: They had a doctor's office. They had a church.
GB: A post office.
EB: And barber shop. Of course, the barber, he just worked part of the time, you know. He'd do something else when he wasn't barbering, of course; worked on the saw mill.
PN: But most everybody that lived on that side of the river, though, did work in the saw mill?
EB: Oh yea, they worked at the saw mill. They either worked at the…
GB: The ones on the Raleigh side; railroad, on our side, on the Glade side, they was railroaders.
EB: Well, there's some of them, Gracie, that worked across the river too, you remember. There was Manuel Richmond and that bunch of fellows that worked there; they worked on the, over at the saw mill.
PN: Back in the 1920s, when you lived there, what did people generally do for entertainment?
GB: Well, I'll tell you what we did. All of the children on our side of the river gathered up at my house, and we'd sit there and sing.
EB: Well, they pitched horse shoes, and had croquet, played croquet.
GB: They had their bicycles.
EB: They'd get out, and most of them might have had a, well if they didn't have a boat, they could get a boat, and boat—ride the river. And done a lot of fishing and hunting and trapping and all that stuff. I used to do a right smart trapping.
PN: What kind of animals did you…?
EB: We caught mink and muskrat and foxes — caught lots of foxes - bobcats.
PN: What did you do, did you sell the hides for furs?
EB: Oh yea, that's right.
PN: What did you hunt for, or what did people hunt for?
EB: Well they coon—hunted and squirrel—hunted and
GB: Rabbit.
EB: Rabbit—hunted. Turkeys there was some wild turkey down there, plenty of them. Grouse, quails there was some quail In there at that time. A lot more to hunt for then than there is now.
PN: Did you hunt for deer?
EB: I didn't then not when I was there. I do now though.
GB: I don't think that anybody down in there did hunt for deer then.
EB: No, it don't seem to me like there was any deer in there. I can't remember being any in there at that time. But of course, they were in there later. They stocked the place back in there, and they got scattered down in there.
PN: Did you have radios?
EB: No, we didn't have any radios when we first went to Glade. And it was several years before we got a radio.
GB: Well now, when we first went to Glade in 24, people had never heard tell of a radio. And then, I guess we got one of the first radios they ever had, and then Buren Martin.
EB: Buren Martin got the first one; he had the first one over there.
GB: Well, however. We got an Airlines from Montgomery Wards, and it was battery—operated. It was, it wasn't a table model, it was…
EB: Had three or four big batteries you put in.
GB: And at that time, along the way, they begin to talk about they was going to come out with a radio that you could see the people talking. And of course, that was television, but they didn't say it was television. But they said they was coming out with a machine that you could see the people that sat in New York talking. And we'd sit and wonder how could you see 'em on a little, just a little dial like that.
PN: What types of radio shows did you listen to?
GB: I guess we listened to just about everything that come on.
EB: You don't remember none of them, do you?
GB: Well, we listened to all…
PN: They had the Grand Ol Opry on there?
GB: Yea, country—and—western music, things like that.
PN: When you mentioned singing before, do you remember some of the songs, or types of songs, that you and some of the kids used to sing?
GB: Well, "They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree”, and "Lamplighter Time in the Valley, and…
EB: What was that one Benny
GB: Yea, “Springtime in the Rockies” and right off hand, just about every song that come out, we knew it. “They Cut Down the Old Pine Tree”, did I say that?
EB: Well they had Victrolas with records during that time too.
GB: We had a Victrola with the records. And of course, we didn't have this one then [pointing to their modern radio and phonograph], but I gave my grandson in Cleveland not very long ago an old phonograph that had the horn.
EB: And three or four big boxes of records.
GB: One of our records that we memorized and sang so much was "The Preacher and the Bear”.
PN: Did they have any bars or taverns?
GB: No, no.
EB: They had a lot of moonshine though [laughs].
GB: But we didn't.
EB: But every other family down there made it or sold it.
PN: So there wasn't any problem getting it?
EB: No, oh no. It was pretty wide open.
PN: Did people make it right there in Glade?
EB: Well, right around, you know.
GB: Well, no, there wasn't anybody that made it right in Glade. They made it up on that Redden Mountain [which is on the east side of Glade Creek, on the Raleigh County side of New River], on the Raleigh side.
EB: Well, they made it, listen, listen. There was some made it right there close around. Oh yea.
PN: Did they have any baseball teams then like they did in some of the other…
EB: No, they didn't have none there. They just, you know, the kids would get out and play ball a little bit.
GB: It was just plain old ball. It wasn't anything like the World Series, or anything like that.
EB: The kids would get out and play ball — girls and boys and all of them would get out.
PN: It wouldn't be like some of the coal towns had baseball teams?
EB: No, no, no. They didn't have any regular baseball teams.
GB: What you would call the regular baseball team, I've got my very serious doubts that, at that time, that they ever heard tell of a regular baseball team.
EB: Well, you know Rosemary, let's see, she got her nose broke playing baseball, didn't she? Ray Durrett, you know…
GB: Throwed the bat…
EB: She was in back catching, and he was, she was supposed to be the catcher, and he was batting, and he swung the back bat and hit her on the nose, and broke her nose. That was our oldest girl. Had to take her and have her nose fixed up to the doctor.
GB: And another thing on the Glade side, the track would, there was a swamp. And the track come by this swamp, and the whole bottom fell out of the thing, and the railroad kept going toward the river. And they had to bring the man in there, and she said the railroad was just swinging, I don't know how far. And then that big flood in…
EB: '40, '42, '3, or somewhere along there; it was in the early 40s. It done an awful lot of damage. The river got up over the railroad down there in some places, up in the houses, washed some houses away.
GB: Dowm the river under the bridge; it…
EB: Well, it washed houses over to Meadow Creek here, and Sandstone on down.
PN: What was that year, '43?
EB: That was either '41 or '43.
GB: I think it must have been about '41.
EB: It was right in the early part of the 40s. Oh, it done lots and lots of damage.
GB: And they brought Haley, Chisholm, and Morris from…
EB: Over in Virginia. They come over there and, you know, made a lot of fills and cut their road bed back into the mountain, and lined the track to the mountain, so they'd have, you know, a road bed. It just took the road bed right out from under the railroad in lots of places.
PN: What was that, a construction firm or something?
EB: That was a construction firm, yea. Well, it was the same, they put in the second Big Bend Tunnel up here Haley, Chisholm, and Morris did, when they got this job done down here, you know, up at Hinton. They're the ones that drilled that second hole through the mountain up there.
PN: Back in the twenties, what was the religion of most people there?
EB: Baptist.
PN: And they had only one church in town.
EB: Let's see, no. They had church across the river where they had their schoolhouse up there. Didn't they preach at the schoolhouse, or did they have a church over there?
GB: Well, no, they had a church building up there, and a schoolhouse on the Raleigh side. On our side, we had the schoolhouse and…
EB: Up there at the church that's Lewis Durrett, you know, the church building.
PN: So there was one church on each side?
EB: Yea.
PN: Both were mainly Baptist?
EB: Yea, I think they were both Baptist.
PN: Did many immigrants live, were there many immigrants from Europe that lived in either Glade or Hamlet? poles or Hungarians?
EB: Them Italians, you know, over there.
GB: There were some DeLorenzos.
EB:They were Italians. The blacksmith that worked at Glade a long time.
GB: They were Italians.
EB: An Italian blacksmith. And then Louis, he was a Hungarian, Louis, oh, done the timber cutting, contracted timber cutting, Louis…
GB: The DeLorenzos…
EB: They were Italian.
GB: They were Italian, and
EB: Louis Mohair, Louis Mohair, he was the Hungarian. And he had a camp in the mountain up there, cut timber.
PN: He worked in the lumber industry then?
EB: He worked in the logging camp, you know, cut the logs, cut the timber, and pulling the logs out, get them up to the railroad where they could to them with the train, you see. He had horses, and the men done the cutting then; they didn't have chain saws, they cut it with cross—cuts. Those Italians, they carried 1 reckon you call it sort of a tribal name, you know. The man's name was Louis DeLorenzo. The oldest son 's name was Louis Halley DeLorenzo. They had one names Louis; his name was Louis Halley Louis DeLorenzo. And they just carried the first name of all three of them.
PN: Were there any Black families that lived there at the time?
EB: No, they was all white. No, let's see, wait a minute, listen. I made a mistake when I said there wasn't any there. Bill Fisher and his wife was there, you know, when we first went there. But he left right after we went there.
PN: What did he do, did he work…?
EB: He worked on the railroad; he worked on the railroad. And this colored fellow that she's a' talking about [in the background of the tape], he come there as a, well he was a machinist, and he worked on the saw mill. He was the engineer on the saw mill. He's the man that looked after the motors, you know, the steam motors, the steam engines that they had there in that mill. He was a real man on that stuff. And he'd come from a, oh, job over here at Babcock.
GB: And there was no way for either side of the river on the Raleigh or Glade, or on our side, the Fayette side that you could get out of there, only by passenger train.
EB: That was the only mode of travel we had in and out was passenger
train.
GB: Five miles to Quinnimont and five miles to Meadow Creek — it was a
ten—mile stretch there that there was no road.
PN: So nobody would have a car who lived in the town?
GB: No. No. We voted, we went from Glade to Quinnimont.
GB: We voted at Quinnimont; that was five miles below. And we either walked, or they had a local freight that run, carried freight. And they’d pick us up there on the depot platform at Glade, and take us to Quinnimont, where we had to go to vote, and let us off. And then the Raleigh run, if it come back after we voted, why they let us in the caboose, pick us up and let us off at the depot.
EB: You know we could wait on Number Eight, that passenger train that come up late in the evening, and ride it back to Glade.
GB: Yea, we could do that, but we usually come back up on the Raleigh run on the caboose.
EB: Yea, I know, to keep from staying too late, you know, or staying down there so long after we voted, we'd ride that freight train back down. And we had motor cars, you know, the section crews used motor cars to transport men to their work and back. And mostly on pay days, we 'd come up here to Meadow Creek; and if we wanted to buy anything up here at these stores they had more stores here in Meadow Creek than they did down there, they had about three stores up here we'd come up here and get our groceries and haul them back down on the motor cars. We did that a lot. And then the women, if they wanted to go to Hinton, well they could get on the passenger train down there and go up to Hinton and spend half a day, and come back down on the next passenger train that runs, you see. Or down the other way, they could go to Beckley. You see, they had passenger trains run up Piney Branch at that time. They could go down to Quinnimont, and get off there, and catch a Piney train and go up to Beckley, and stay about all day and come back home, yea. They had a lot of rail travel then, you see. We had 12 passenger trains, six each way.
PN: Were there any streets in the town, or was it mainly pths between…?
EB: No, there was just walkways like, you know. Just a railroad bed, about all. Now across the river, the bridge across the river, they put a board walk in between the rails to walk across the river. We walked the railroad bridge over and back, you see. Of course, we had to know when the train would be coming. If the train hadn't never come over and went back, you'd have to be a little bit careful about that, you know. Of course, the train crew would look out for everybody; if they seen them coming, why they'd stop and let them get on the engine and ride them on over.
GB: The people on the Raleigh side, the only road they had was the railroad track.
EB: Well there was, you know, there was several fellows that lived around Glade worked down the river on the railroad too. There was Harry Ward, and Jimmy Martin they worked at Quinnimont and lived in Glade, you see.
PN: Did the women that lived there ever do things like dye clothes or make soap, or things like that?
EB: They made soap, some of them.
GB: They made soap, yes, and they did dye clothes, some of them too
PN: Would they work at preserving meats or fish?
EB: Oh yes, we had our meats.
GB: We had our own…
EB: Beef. You see, during that time, around in the nineteen and twenties, we didn't have refrigerators either. We had to either can our meats, or salt 'em down to keep them.
GB: But then they come out with a kerosene refrigerator. We'd been in Glade about five years, I reckon, and they come out. When we first went there, they didn't have anything like that; you couldn't get it. Till Sears and Roebuck come out with a kerosene refrigerator. And as soon as they come out with that, it defrosted itself, and we got a refrigerator then. And then we got the gasoline washing machine. And they come out then with Aladdin lamps, and we had Aladdin lamps.
PN: What were they? Kerosene lamps?
EB: Yea, they used kerosene, used kerosene.
GB: But they made a whiter light actually than, well…
EB: They made just as good a light as electric lamps.
GB: As a hundred watt bulb in a dressing lamp.
PN: What, did you actually can meats in some way yourself?
EB: Oh yea.
PN: How did you do that?
GB: Well, I'll tell you now how we did our beef. We killed our own beef. And in the meat house we'd kill it late so it wouldn't spoil you know [late in the year] we'd hang the beef in the meat house.
EB: Let it cool out good.
GB: We'd let that beef hang there, and it would hang, part of it, of course we'd use off of it all the time. But the quarters hanging — they would freeze and thaw and drip; freeze, thaw, and drip. Until when spring would come, there'd be blue mold on them, and they'd be like dried beef. And then, by that time, why it begin to get warm, then he'd take what beef that we hadn't used, and he trimmed the mold off of it, and bring it in. I'd, he'd cook, and I'd help him cut it up in blocks, little…
EB: Chunks.
GB: Chunks, and I 'd wash that, then I'd dry it, so there’d be no…
EB: You know, dry it with a cloth, take the…
GB: Because you wasn't supposed to wash it and can it, but it's supposed to dry. And then I 'd just pack it in half gallon jars, and put a tablespoon full of salt in it, and put it on, and cold pack it. Didn't put any water in it — let it make it's own juice. And you can't get things like that today.
EB: No, you'd can that you know, cold pack. Well, she cooked it so long, when she calls cold packing it, she packs it cold, and then puts it in the, you know, in the hot water and boils it. You didn't cook It before you put it in the jar, you cold packed it. And then you put your, you put them jars on cooking for so long.
GB: You cooked them for three hours.
PN: That would preserve the meat?
EB: Yea, oh yea.
GB: They'd fix them just like peaches or anything you'd seal in jars.
EB: And it would be already—cooked meat. All you had to do just open the jar up and heat it and it was ready to eat. It was really good; it had the flavor in it too, you see, all the flavor cooked right in. It was better than fresh meat. And hams and stuff like that, if we had them left over, I have had hams that kept for two years, cured hams . And I would sugar cure those hams, hang them up, you know, and let 'em dry after I put the salt and the sugar on them. Then in the spring of the year, when the weather start to getting warm, why I 'd put them down in a feed barrel like a, you know, or an iron barrel, and put, well you could use middlings. You know, that's a ground—up grain you feed cows. And put that right down in on top of that, and that would keep the, everything out of it, you see. Or you could take dry wood ashes and do the same thing. But you'd have to wrap your meat up good before you put them down in, if you put that ashes over it, you see. And it would keep from now on that way. You could keep it 20 years, I guess, wouldn’t nothing go through them ashes. We done it that way.
GB : Well, you don't get meat that's like that now.
EB: You take one of those hams, and take it over there and cut it, and man, you can smell that frying for a mile.
PN: What kinds of fish did people catch?
EB: Well, they caught catfish, and bass, and walleyed pike, and suckers, and red—eyes. Mostly catfish is what they got out of New River then.
GB: And bass and pike. Oh yea, there was bass and pike. They done trot—line. And then most of those old—timers that really went in for fishing used them fish traps. Course it was agin' the law to use them, but they used em anyway.
PN: What were they, like big nets or what?
EB: No, they make them. They made ‘em like a, make ‘em so big around, and then they'd build a funnel, build a funnel. And to build that funnel, make it a, the strips that they used on 'em were hickory splits. Then they'd catch them things; I've seen 'em have a boatload of catfish.
GB: Then they'd take corn and put in the trap and, of course, the fish couldn't get out.
EB: Soured corn's what they used.
PN: What was that, you mean preserved corn?
EB: No, you take corn and let it sour good, you know, and put it in that trap, that would make your bait. And they'd go in there after that corn, and they'd get trapped in there. Then they, what they'd do, they'd pull them traps up out of the river there, take out what fish they want, and just drop it back with the fish in it. They had fish in the trap out there all the time there. A lot of them keep them like that.
PN: So they'd just keep the fish, whenever they wanted to eat…
EB: Yea, if they wanted to eat, they'd go out there and get what fish they wanted out of the trap, and clean 'em up. I’ve helped a fellow or two raise traps there, and he'd raise them, and take out what we wanted, and he'd just leave a whole bunch in there if he had a lot of feed in there for them. They'd just stay in there, and eat, and get fat, you know. Great big long trap, they'd be some of them eight or ten feet long — took two men to raise them up.
PN: These traps?
EB: Yea, oh yea.
PN: Could you do this the whole year round, or just in the summer?
EB: Well, he didn't do it in the freezing, when the river froze over, you know. Course I have seen the river froze solid down there. I’ve seen them haul coal across the river with a sled and horse down there. Don't never see that no more. But I guess on account of the dam up here.
GB: Well, across the river they had mules that they did a lot of their lumber work with.
PN: Did the people do anything to preserve fish like they did meat, or not?
EB: Not as I know of. They just had all the fish, most all the time, that they wanted to eat anyhow. Fresh fish. And another thing they had too was a ice house, across the river. The lumber company put, built them an ice house, and packed it. Well they'd order ice by the car load boxcar load and put in that ice house. And during the winter, [correcting himself] during the summertime, hot weather, if you wanted ice for your, now they had what they called regular ice boxes. You get that ice and put it in the box, and then you could set your milk, your butter, and your vegetables and stuff in that and keep it cool like. Of course, it wasn't like a refrigerator. It wouldn't freeze, it would just keep it cool. And then you'd have the ice to put in your drinking water. Some of them even made ice cream.
GB: On the railroad side, though, they sent ice from Hinton down in blocks [referring to the Fayette County side].
EB: Yea, the railroad men got theirs from Hinton. It come down on the passenger train every day. Dropped a big piece of ice off; the baggage men would come, you know, every morning, drop that big piece of ice off.
PN: Did people ever keep plants of any kind in their homes, just for decoration?
EB: Plants?
EB: Oh yea, they'd keep flowers.
GB: We had house plants, and then of course we had all kinds of flowers in our yard.
EB: And we burnt wood and coal all the time; we didn't have oil or gas.
PN: One thing I meant to ask you before about your jobs and your parents - where did your parents come from and what did they do?
EB: Well, my parents was farmers. My dad was a farmer.
GB: Up in around Lewisburg.
EB: Yea, they were all from up in Lewisburg, up in Greenbrier County. And her people, they were farmers. And your grandfather, he was a saw mill man.
PN: In Greenbrier County?
EB: Yea.
GB: My grandfather Stokes, he, in Braxton County, he had a mill. And then he, he had a saw mill, over in the Rocky Mountains somewhere.
EB: In Colorado, he was up there a while.
GB: My father now, my father's father, my father is, where is he?
EB : Your father was
GB : Up there at the top [discussing and pointing to old photographs hanging on their living room wall]. This was his father here, and he comes from Hamburg, Germany. No grandmother, I’m wrong there, Grandmother Marlowe come from Hamburg, Germany; and Grandfather Marlowe, from Lincolnshire, England originally. That was my immediate grandparents. And then my Grandmother Stokes’s father was from Sutton. Now that was my Great—Grandfather Stokes and my Great—Grandfather Sutton. See, the town of Sutton was named for the Suttons.
PN: Were those pictures from the Civil War?
EB: Yea, that's the Civil War.
PN: They fought in the Union Army?
GB : Yes, uh huh. Yea, they fought on the North side; they were Union soldiers.
EB: You used to help them the babies to Glade too, lots of times, didn't you, help the doctor?
GB: I done a little bit of that myself, even before the doctor got there.
EB: She was everything almost, postmistress.
GB: They’d send for me, and then holler for the doctor.
EB: Only a part of the time, they had a doctor. Most of the time, they had doctors in Glade. The first doctor we had there was Doctor Stokes. Then Doctor...
GB: Wilson.
EB: Ring.
GB: Doctor King, Doctor McClung.
EB: I guess McClung was the last one, wasn’t he, that we had. Who was the last? Johnson yes.
PN: When you worked on the railroad, what were the hours that you worked, say, back in the twenties?
EB: Well, I worked ten hours.
PN: A day?
EB: Yea, ten hours a day. But now, this job of bluff—watching that I had, now that was seven days a week. If there was 31 days in a month, I worked 31. If there was 30, I worked 30. It was seven days a week straight on through the whole year.
PN: Ten hours a day?
EB: No, it was eight hours, eight hours then. But now when I first started to work on the railroad, see I started back in 1917 on the railroad, it was ten hours then.
PN: Did you get any days off then?
EB: Only Sunday. You would work six days.
PN: At ten hours a day?
EB: Six days, ten hours a day, at a dollar and seventy—two cents a day. That was 1917. That was before we moved to Glade; that's before we moved to Glade.
GB: That was before we was married.
EB: It was in 1918 that they started the eight—hour day on the rail— road, in 1918.
PN: Did the railroad workers have a union?
EB: Not at that time, not at that time they didn't, no.
PN: When did the union come in?
EB: Well, around a, it got pretty strong about 1935, somewhere along there. Most everybody, course it was a…
GB: About the same time as Social Security.
EB: It was a voluntary thing, you know. You wasn't forced to belong to a union then. There was lots of the men didn't belong to a union. I did. I 've got a 35—year certificate, belonging to the union.
PN: What was the specific one you belonged to?
EB: Maintenance of way; maintenance of way. I 've got it in there on top of the cupboard.
GB: He worked 50 years to the day when he took his pension.
EB: From the day I started. Of course, I was cut off some. I was cut off one time back in Woodrow Wilson's time, long about in the twenties, the early twenties. I was cut off about three or four years during that time. That was before I was married; I wasn't married till 24. And when I got called back to the railroad then, why that was in '24. And that same year, we was married, 1924. And I give the mines up then.
PN: You worked in the mines?
EB: Yea, I worked in the mines for about three or four years.
PN: Where, around Glade?
EB: No, it was up in Greenbrier County, up above Rainelle on the G & E Railroad. Worked up at Leslie, and Quinwood, and I worked at Bellwood too. Did more work at Bellwood than I did at any of the other places.
GB: Then he went to work on the railroad, and took that job of watching. He made, his paycheck was $92.54 a month.
PN: For watching the bluffs?
EB: Yea, uh huh. That was a regular month's pay. They paid by the month — 31 day or 28 day a month. You take February 28, you got the same as you did for 31 day. It was a salary pay, you know.
GB: And we reared three children on that.
EB: And sent them to high school.
GB: And saved some money too.
EB: We saved a little bit of money. Of course, you see she operated the post office a while, and I carried the mail on the side, you see. I stayed on this three—to—eleven job most of the time on the railroad, from three in the afternoon till eleven at night. Well then you see, I could come in at night, I could be at home in ten minutes after I left my job. I lived right close to the job.
PN: This was the bluff—watching job?
EB: That was that bluff—watching job. I'd be at home, and be in bed, and asleep by 11:30. And I 'd get up the next morning about eight or nine o 'clock. I had all day to work in. That's when I done my farming. I also carried this mail across the river about noon. I'd be done with that about 2:30 in the afternoon, go to work again at three.
PN: How many days a week did you work then? That was when you worked every day?
EB: That was when I worked every day. But I worked on the mail carrying just six days a week.
PN: Your main job was to make sure that boulders…
EB: Oh yea, that's right, flag the trains…
PN: So they wouldn't…
EB: That's right, hit the boulders. Now I have had several different occasions, I've had both tracks blocked all the way across. And I had a train coming each way. And buddy, I had to move around. I didn't know which train I was going to get first. But I generally put out a fuse then one way, and flagged with my lanterns the other way. I done this 24 years that I worked there. I don't know how many different times we’ve had one track blocked, and had two tracks, both tracks blocked several different times. I never let a train hit a rock. I had a good record there, but it was just…
PN: What did you use, flags and flares?
EB: Yea, that's right. But I was lucky, I was just simply lucky. That's all there was to it. I was lucky. I remember one time, it was in February and the ground had been froze as hard as could be for a long time, and it come a quick thaw and a big rain. And I was on the west, [correcting himself] on the east end of the track, and I heard something far away down the road. I couldn't tell whether it was a big tree fall across the river or whether it was something fall on the track. And it was almost time for passenger train Number One — the George Washington and I walked back, and back down that track to the lower end of my beat. When I got to the lower end of my beat, I had one of these headlight lanterns that throwed a light ahead of me a good piece. And I seen something on the track down there that didn't look right. I went down there, and there was a big boulder had come down on the westbound track and knocked one rail over plumb against the other one, cut four ties in two, and had jumped over and was laying up in the eastbound track had them both blocked. And it wasn't, I started back with my flag. I knew Number One was due at the time. And when I got back up the road a little ways, I heered him blowing for Meadow Creek. I knew he wouldn't be long till he'd be there, and I got him flagged. And he had to back all the way from Glade to Meadow Creek, and come down the west track. But he had to hold him down there until the section crew got up there and put jacks, and jacked this big rock off of the other track before he could get by them. Oh, he'd have went in the river that if I hadn't have been there.
PN: He would have just derailed and gone off?
EB: Oh yea. It would have derailed him sure. One rail, it hit the one rail and just bent an elbow in it like that, and cut four ties in two. It knocked that track right over against the other track. It come off of the mountain with a lot of force. Oh it was big; it was, I expect, ten foot square and more.
PN: The boulder?
EB: The boulder was. They had to dynamite it to get it out of the track.
GB: Our children rode a school pass.
PN: After they graduated from eighth grade?
GB: well no. We sent Rosemary and Louis to Ronceverte to school until they got old enough that they could ride the train. And they started, 1 guess they was about the sixth grade when they started to riding the trains. And then of course my baby doll, she never did go to Ronceverte; she rode the trains all the time.
PN: I guess this tape is just about to run out.
[End of Tape]
Description
Railroading and Lumbering, Glade, Hamlet
Date Created
10/07/1980
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