Interview NRGNPP 001
File NRCJNPP OOI-T
TAPE ONE
Mr. Lacy Anderson Interviewer:
221 Hedrick Street Paul J. Nyden
Beckley, W. Va. 25801 Beckley, W. Va. 25801
255-0365
August 17, 1980
N: Mr. Anderson, you said that you grew up in Quinnimont. I was
wondering if you could mention a little bit about your experiences, and
I wanted to ask you a little bit about the town there.
LA: Quinnimont was a very famous town, as far as that part's concerned.
I mean, I was born just a few miles, as we say, up the creek, on Laurel
Creek. But I grew up in Quinnimont, went to the grade school there, and
then from there, I rode the train from Quinnimont to Thurmond, from Thur—
mond up to Mt. Hope, and went to Mt. Hope High School. Then later, I
began work on the railroad, because I went to Wake Forest College for
two years, but I didn't have the money to complete, to finish my college
work. I would like to have. Course I still have my book that I would
like for you to see, with my name in it. But that was a long trip. We l d
jump up of a morning; the train left Quinnimont about six o 'clock, down to
Thurmond; then from Thurmond, we changed trains, went up the Little Creek
Branch Road to Mt. Hope. And in the afternoon, we grabbed our uniforms
from football and ran to, well they say catch the train, but I say ride
the train back down to Thurmond, from Thurmond back up to Quinnimont .
PN: That was every day .
LA : That was every day for five days a week. Only on Saturday and Sunday
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did I see daylight in Quinnimont. Well, that was from 1933 till 1937.
I graduated in 1937.
P N: When were you born?
LA: I was born on April 17, 1918 at Export, which is a little town three miles up the creek, where the trains, well, Laurel Creek Branch, as we called it then.
P N: Tonen you were growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, how many houses were there at Quinnimont then?
LA: There was a number of houses at Quinnimont, because it was not a coal camp. Most of the people that lived there, some of the people were coal miners, some of them worked in the logging camps, but most of them are railroaders at Quinnimont. Then eventually, I don't know the year exactly, I think it was about in, in the mid—twenties, they moved the headquarters to Raleigh [a town just outside of Beckley] , and a lot of the people moved. But they still had a big headquarters at Quinnimont. I mean, there was a lot of people working there.
PN: How many houses were there, would you say?
LA : I would say at one time at Quinnimont, there was at least 30.
PN: 30 houses?
LA: The big house on the hill was built by the Galdetts, who were the originators. And then Mr. Galdett, John Galdett, Jr. , was a quite a movie executive in Hollywood . But then the Lawtons took the house over, Mr. George Lawton, and the Lawtons ran most everything up at, well, from
Quinnimont on east up the creek.
They owned the mines?
LA : They owned the mines; they owned the property and they owned the mines . Well, there was Export, and there was Laurel Creek, and then there was
Big Q, and there was Hemlock, and then on up. Now they did not own Lay land ; Lay land was owned by the same people that owned the Kaymoor mines at Minden.
That was not New River Company now, that was Quinnimont Coal Company. New River Company is a complete different outfit from Mt. Hope.
P N: How many people would you think would be living in Quinnimont during the time when you were growing up .
LA : I would say two hundred and f ifty.
PN: hundred and fifty?
LA : There was at least that many.
PN: Were the homes usually like homes in other coal camps?
LA : Jenny Linds, Jenny Linds. Just like the homes in the coal towns . Some—
times they were taken care of real well, and sometimes they weren't. When
Mr. Wilson vas the superintendent , the man I worked for, he was a good
| pe r son. in 1937, a dollar and kept | When I first started working with them, it may seem sort of odd that a boy coming out of high school in Mt. Hope, T worked for a day. And mean a dol lar a day. r worked; I mowed the lawn the flowers neat. But I was lucky, because nobody else had a job. |
And then after that, I got a job with the construction outfit from Elkins
that was moving the houses. Oh, man, I made fifty cents an hour. T was
living in high clover .
P N: Let me ask you a little bit about those houses. Are they called Jenny
Lind houses?
LA: Well, what we called a Jenny Lind. Next time, whevever I can get with
you, when this man comes in, I don't have it right now; but I can show you
a picture of the house that we lived in that you wouldn't believe. But 1
mean, you had coal stoves that you had to use. And there was no such thing
as a warm morning; you took everything, well anything you could get to heat
your house with. And a lot of blankets, and a lot of quilts; but we were happy. Of a morning, when it wasn't school time, if we wasn't going to
school, a bunch of boys, we played baseball on the old river bank, we hauled
coal, we looked in the woods and cut logs, you know, for the, that would
be used in the fireplaces. And we roasted, many a time we roasted our potatoes —
I bet you've never had one in the ashes of coal. And a lot of the people
that may hear this will know that they did . You put t em back under the ashes.
PN: Would you heat the houses both with coal and with wood?
LA : Coal and wood was the only thing. There was no gas, there was no oil, there vas no electric heat in those days.
But you would use wood also sometimes?
LA : Oh yes, because you had to buy your coal and you could get your wood from the river banks or from the hills. It was there and it didn't cost you anything. A little bit different from what it was. Of course, I mean today, I t d like to have the same situation. But Go ahead and point some questions at me so I can, go ahead and recapitulate.
How many rooms were in each of the homes?
LA : Usually about four or five, maybe six. And it's what you did yourself that built the homes, because they didn't do very much to the homes. It was all outbuildings as far as your toilet was concerned. At Quinnimont, they did have running water. They got it from up in the creek, Old Kittle Run, and piped the waters into the houses .
PN: You were talking about the homes. How would you say the different rooms were used? Was one used as a living room, or how
LA: Oh, you always had the living room, or as they called it, the parlor; and the bedrooms, they were good , they were nice as far as that part's con— cerned; and you had a front porch, and such as that. No, there was ample space in the rooms; they were not little, small rooms. Well, I 'd have to give the credit to Mr. Wilson at the coal company there up at Quinnimont.
They provided pretty well for you. If the porch went bad, or something like that, they had a carpenter that stayed there all the time. And he'd repair the porch, and repair the rooms and the roof and such as that. It was not run—down until later on.
P N: would you say it started getting run—down?
LA: I t d rather you cut it [the tape recorder] off. [This discussion is deleted here, but takes place again, on tape, toward the end of the inter— view. ]
P N: When you lived in Quinnimont, what types of food did you eat, and where did you generally get them?
LA: Well, most of the food was what they had in the so—called company store. But, in other words, we were railroad people, so we had free transportation. And they would ride the train to Meadow Creek, to
Beckley, and to Montgomery and buy their foods. We had good food.
People that lived in Quinnimont .
LA : You had free transportation, so while the head of the household was working, the women would go buy their food, which was good. Like my mother and the rest of them, and the kids would go with them. To Meadow Creek, with Mr. Garten, was a good place to deal; and to Hinton; and, of course,
Beckley was the most near town. That's the reason Beckley is close to me.
Even while living in Fayette County, Beckley was close to me. So people came to Beckley, and one of the best places in Beckley Is a man who is still living, Ed Armstrong. He had Raleigh Cash Grocery, while it was next door to the railroad station, at Beckley, the old railroad station.
So many people dealt With him .
From Quinnimont?
LA : That lived in Quinnimont. And today, I think he's one of the finest men I ever met in my life. But he run the Raleigh Cash Grocery; it was just across from near the depot. So people dealt with them.
Was there many people who raised their own food in gardens?
LA : Oh, everybody had a garden; I mean when you could have one. My dad was one of those old people that had, I mean not old, but an old—timer that had the habit that he was going to plant his corn, and get everything in the ground early. St. Patrick's Day was it. He was not Irish; in fact, he was German and Dutch. I 've, me and my twin brother have covered up corn whenever it was snowing. But he was going to plant 'em on St. Patrick's Day; it didn't make any .
PN: Did people raise animals as well?
LA : Oh yea, everybody. We always had at least three hogs, as we called them, pigs or hogs.
PN: Did most people have hogs?
LA: Yea, because it was back in the area where, they'd take them back in the area, you know, where that there was no odor. We fed them the good food that, I don t t whether you 've ever been around the river banks where it vas. There was a weed that was especially good for em. But, of course, they bought food for the hogs too. They bought middlins and much of their other feed, like we did. But whenever the first, when the fall, when the first time it got real cold, that was hog killing time. You hung them up to the tree there after cleaning them real good; usually had some people to help with them. We had some awfully good people that knew how to really butcher a hog, I mean, in their way, which was good.
PN: When you butcher a hog, then several people would probably come?
LA: We had to usually have, well there was two or three different men, one of them was a, I say colored because it's a little tough for me to say Black, 'cause I wasn't used to that. Oh, he was one of the best. He could kill a hog quicker than anybody you ever saw in your life. Well, what he done was that, with a '22 right here [pointing to the middle of his forehead] and would stab him [pointing to his throat] and get that blood. He'd get that jugular vein and drain it. Then we t d throw it into the big barrel of hot water, and then the other guy jumped in and started scraping the hair off of him, until it was clean as a whistle. No two ways about it. I mean, you hung him up, of course, to drain the blood. Most of the people I knew down in there did not save them. But now, I hope you don't tape this entirely in its consensus [sic] . But the, well 1 say colored people, they would kill a hog for you to get the chitluns.
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Thes would?
LA : Oh ves. But they took them to the creek bank, and washed them gnod . And you could smell chi tluns for mf leg. And then, of course, the head wag only used for vhat thev cal led ' 'hog choege." But my mother, we never did
can sausage l ike a lot of people. T mean, we fixed it up, but there wag no
deep freezers then; there were very few refr fgerators. r n fac t , T worked on an ice truck. They'd bring the ices In by the 300 My dad worked
in an ice house at Quinnimont when I was a little kid. But then after that fron in from an ice house / Hinton where they had a big place. Three hundred pounds .
By the railroad?
LA : by the railroad, oh yea, everything was by the railroad. There was very few highways; there wasn't any roads. No two ways about it; makes me sound like an old man, doesn't it? But I think that my experience and every— thing else like that, by going to Mt. Hope school, if you don't mind me saying it, by going to Mt. Hope High School, which I got a good education. And after that, I did everything I could to educate myself, because, I had a scholarship to Wake Forest, then college, now university. And I wasn't good enough to compete with the big guys that was coming in from
Pennsylvania, and so I only had a couple of years. But after that, then
I came back and I vas going Co get married, and Frankling Roosevelt sent
me Chat letter of greetings. My brother met me at the door back; her father vas judge of Hanover County, Virginia, and
while I vas working on the railroad, a lovely person. That after I came I had met her was the girl
I was to marry to begin with. And I 'm still in contact with her. But then, I remember her father died and I came on back home, and my brother met me at the door with that letter of greetings from President Roosevelt. And that was it. See, I have a twin brother that is at Oak Hill. Our numbers wasn't even close, and my brother — he's up at church now he'll be back in a few minutes
Let me ask you a few more things about the time when you were growing up . What did, did you have a radio in your home during that period?
LA : The first radio I ever heard was now, I think, in 1927; md we went to a friend's home and listened to the Dempsey—Tunney fight. And then after that time, of course, the radio was the only thing because there was no television. I never saw television, not till 1947, no one else did; I was in Chicago, I was working on the railroad.
Vsmat did people do for recreation and fun?
LA: Well, I think the biggest thing was the Sunday ball games. The Sunday ball games, we had people come in from Hinton, and people from Rainelle, and other areas, from Kaymoor, Fayetteville, and even a town Romont, which is near Ansted. And they had good ball players. Baseball was our game then. We did play basketball at an outdoor court at Quinnimont, and maybe a little touch football and such as that. But until we got to go into high school, sports like that other than baseball never got into mind. But whenever we 's
kids was coming up, it was baseball.
Were people on the teams mostly miners, or railroaders?
LA : They were railroaders; they had railroad teams. We would play a team from Hanley, it's below Montgomery, it was a big railroad exchange. Well, Hanley was always one of our teams to be played, from Quinnimont; and Hinton was always big, and Meadow Creek. From there, then we branched on out into places like Ansted, and Rainelle, well, so many places it's almost hard to say, but, Rupert was one of them, and Anjean. In other words, you played a game every Sunday. Well then what we did on the Fourth of July, that was something that always stuck in my mind, we had a double— header in Quinnimont. You played one game in the morning; then we took the men from Hinton home with us for their dinners. And Howard Huffin was one of my best buddies; and he and my brother had gone to school together at Hinton. And after that, you had another game in the afternoon. And that was the Fourth of July. That was it. A baseball doubleheader on the Fourth of July was it. And the boys fished an awful lot. And, of course, every boy hunted. And I guess the girls did their housework. But whenever nightfall came like that, it's nothing like it is now. I mean, you were home; you read a book or you went to bed. In fact, I can, the thing that reminds me more than anything else whenever I was growing up, there was, we had what they called a power company at Quinnimont. My brother—in—law worked at the power plant, and my dad had worked at it. What it was is they, you didn't have no lights in the daytime. They turned the power on at night, so you could have some lights; very little power, you was only allowed so much. And I 'm not exaggerating a bit in the world, because I can talk to people that knows it, and relies it completely [sic] .
What was that power generated by, by water or by coal?
LA : By coal, by coal. And like I said, my brother—in—law was one of them. IOnen they cut the power on, then I mean you could have the lights. And that's when people started to buying electric washers; up until that time, they had gasoline washers.
l•mat year was that, do you remember?
LA : I 'd say the late twenties. I can't remember exactly on it, cause
I can remember the late twenties, because I 'd be growing up in that time. And, oh yes, I remember the election of 1928, because my dad was a, well, we were reared as Democrats. Not my grandfather, they were reared as Republicans, and so we got two sides of the family. But my dad got word on his job, if he did not vote for Hoover, if he voted for Al Smith, that everything would be run from Rome. The Catholics would run everything from Rome. That was it. The only thing you was reading was the Cincinnati Post; you didn't get no Beckley papers. So my dad voted for Hoover, because they told him he had to.
PN: Was he in the coal mines then?
LA : No, right on the railroad. Then he was only getting about two or three days on the railroad, even a man his age. But my dad started working on the railroad when he was 11 years old, trapping in the mines at Stone Cliff [sic]. Well that's how come, from Prince, then to the old McHenry
Hospital area —— and which that's all gone and then to Thayer —— well there's a lot of people that live at Thayer; Dr. Wurst, I think still lives there —— but then the next place was Dunfee. And from Dunfee, the next place over there you went to was, as my dad always, he had a name for it, I forget, I can't remember 'em all. But Claremont, then from Claremont you went to Stone Cliff, from Stone Cliff to Thurmond, and from Thurmond we went on, well, there was two places; one across the river, Rush Run. And from there, then you went on down to Sewell; I don't know whether I can keep them in my mind or not. Then to Fayette, as they call it; South Fayette was on one side of the river. But there was Caper ton, which this man over here where they 've got, the man who owns Glade Springs [a wealthy community south of Beckley] , I think they just sold it; from what I can understand, I think Philpot t bought it. The Caper ton mines, and then there was Nut tall burg, and then Fayette; I '11 try to give you the proper respective if T can, perspective rather. And then off down there, a little town, Ames, which was new to all of us; but from there you went on into, to Sewell, and to Hawk's Nest, and where Billy Richardson have you ever heard the song "Billy Richardson's Last Ride" Q. well, at Kanawha Falls is where he got his head cut off. Kanawha Falls, and you went on into Mont— gomery, and I can't keep 'em in the right, even though I know them like a book. Then from there on into Montgomery; Montgomery was sort of the terminal for the people going to shop. They would go from Prince and Quinnimont on the train to shop in Montgomery.
PN: When you lived in Quinnimont, would say that most of the people were white, or were there also some Black families?
LA: Oh yes, they were, no, they was mainly, well there was a few immigrants,
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because of the coal business, those people coming in. But most Americans , most of the people I'd say were white Americans, but there was also a number of people that, I say colored, whenever they use the word terminology Black. Well, we worked together on the railroad, and we went and shopped at the same stores, we lived in different houses, we went to different schools . But 1 'd say that right then, that the people there were as good a people as you ever met. And I still have a number of those people that are friends of mine, and descendents there. Like I say, we went to different schools and we went to different churches. But we would go to the, well right where I lived at Quinnimont, for a number of years, 1927 to 1937, right below me was the colored church, as we called it, the colored church. Now the people didn't live there; they came from different areas of Prince and Quinnimont .
To come to the church?
LA : To come to the church, and they were great people. And when they would have a revival, they always would invite us, and we always went. We went too; we'd take our places in the back, because after all, it was their church. And right now, the man that's living at Prince down there is a minister in this area all through here, he's not the old man who was in the paper the other day —— William Carter. There's not a finer man I know than Bill Carter. I think that everybody in the world respects him. And
Allen Brown that runs that restaurant right near the service station there.
Well, we was all raised together whenever you was working on the railroad. So we have, we had no animosity whatsoever. You can [have trouble] now, someplace, but not with us. We worked and we done our separate jobs, and went our separate ways. And nobody hated anyone else, everybody 1 i ked, we had a couple of midwives there at, Allen Brown's mother was a midwife. She delivered many a baby in that area. And another girl, woman, was Aunt Vicey Childs, as we called her. And both of them were midwives, and they were good. And they delivered many babies around that area, I '11 tell you.
Both white babies and all kinds?
LA : All kinds, it didn't make any difference. It didn't make any difference.
You said that when most of the immigrants came, that the coal companies brought them to work in the mines?
LA: Well most of those people, I mean, they would come from different areas, and maybe they would work on what we call Piney Creek, and up on Laurel Creek like that. But there wasn't too many, well, when I say im— migrants, there was some Polish people that came in, and some Russians, and a number of Italians. And they mingled right in with the people, what we called "the ordinary Americans" mainly reared and born in Virginia, which was the big deal for us. But otherwise, there was, we got along well. At the little church, when I grew up as a little kid, I mean I 'm talking about before my teens, there was a community church at Quinnimont. They would have one service, they had the Christian Church, and they had the Methodist Church, and they had the Baptist Church, and no one felt anything through it. And then the big church that was built up on the hill, that we called the Big Church, was a Baptist Church, and most people went there.
And the other people that moved in here, like Mr. Wilson and his daughter,
Mrs. Ferlin, and that man out here, do you know him? They're great people.
They went to the Christian Church here in Beckley.
Was there a Catholic Church in Quinnimont ever?
LA : No, the people from there had to go, went to Hinton. There was a few Catholics there, they'd ride the train to Hinton.
On Sunday mornings?
LA: Mr. Giles, he was my brother—in—law's daddy, he was a devout Catholic, and he would take the weekend off; he was the old carpenter, and he went to Father Jenkins in Hinton. I never will forget that name on account of that I heard it so many times. And then the other people, no, most of the people were Protestants. They went their separate ways, but most of them went to the Baptist Church. I was reared as a Baptist, and then after I came out of the service, and where l t d gone to school at Mt. Hope, and knew so many of the people, there was so many new people, as I say, at Quinni— mont —— it was mainly the people that come in from the lumber company when Criss had taken over the lumber business and bought the place there. so I went with my friends to the Presbyterian Church in Mt. Hope, ülich I still go. This is the first time I 've missed in a while.
PN: Did the town change mainly from railroad people to people who worked in the forest cutting down the trees about that time?
LA: It was the people in that end, and then the people that was getting their benefits from, well, getting their commodities, that didn't have an awful lot to live on, like that. Because the railroad people, they moved so many trains out, that the railroad people moved out. They moved here to Beckley, and there was very few railroad people left in that area.
And there's few there now.
P N: In the twenties and thirties, were there any bars or taverns in
Quinnimont?
LA: No, you know it was not until 1933 whenever they legalized beer. That was in 1933 when Roosevelt came in, when they legalized beer. Oh, there was bootleggers; naturally you 're going to have bootleggers. But it was mainly moonshine. Other than what people that, well, usually from back in the mountain areas. And, of course, a lot of people did go down into Virginia and Kentucky and other areas, and, you know, bring your whiskey in. But it was not what I 'd say, I don't know how the terminology, but rambunctious. But people made their homw brew. And it was moonshine , people bringing it in. Of course, they had to watch like everything. So many people was caught that, I can't elaborate. One lady, she was caught so many times. Judge McClinic was in Charleston. You are going to edit this aren't you? And Judge McClinic told her, he said: "If you come before me one more time. She'd been there about three times; she made her moonshine . She said: "Judge, Il' ve got ten kids to take care of . And she said: t ' I 'm going to have to have some kind of a living for them. "
And he give her two years in Alderson. I remember the day she come from
Alderson; I remember exactly. Her son is still out here; he lives in
S tanaford .
PN: She actually spent two years?
LA : She spent two years, for moonshining, because they had got her, I don't know how many times. And Judge McClinic sent her up there; he was tough. I know the day she came back, because T brought herself in my car up from the depot at Quinnimont onto the hill where the church is right now.
They lived on top of the mountain, Highland Mountain. And her son was there, and you know what she rode up the mountain in? A sled, a big old sled about that wide. She said: "1 made them pay me for everything I done up there. Well, they paid em two or three dollars, maybe a week; they made quilts and such as that. I'm not going to use her name, because I shouldn't do that.
P N: you got your fu miture, did you usually buy that at the company store?
LA: No, we usually, most of the people in our area there bought their furniture in Hinton. You see, you could go up on the train to Hinton, and we had so many trains running them. At one time it was, I 'd say at least ten trains running every day. And so most of the people went either there or came to Beckley. You came to Beckley and got your furniture; we bought many, a lot of things from over here and we bought from Hinton. And some people would go to Charleston, to Huntington, not all the way to Huntington. But then Mr . Garten of Meadow Creek, he had a general he would buy cabinets and such as that, if you wanted it. But most of ours, we bought in Hinton. Well, one thing that bothers my oldest sister who still lives there, she's 80 old this past time, and they knew everyone in Hinton, so we bought most thing from Hintonon account of the transportation. See, when people would say, what they say move, you go from one town to the other, somebody moved out —— they would move a boxcar, as we called it, at the depot at Quinnimont . And you put your furniture in there, and you moved down to
Sewell .
In a boxcar?
LA : In what we called a boxcar on the railroad.
Was there a union for railroad workers this wh le time?
LA : There was, but see, it was hard, it was tough until Franklin D. Roosevelt came in in 1932. You had to struggle, they had for railroad workers, and even coal miners, and everyone else then. But it wasn 't strong. It couldn't be, until like, people like John L . Lewis and them came in to make it strong. And now, that part of it was tough. But one thing about it, the food was inexpensive; and like I say, you raised your own garden, and you canned. My mother canned always 150 quarts of blackberries, and we picked them ourselves, me and my brothers and even my sister. mienever we got up, we put leggings on, and a little bottle of turpentine, and we hit the berry fields. My mother canned them, and she made blackberry preserves and such as that. And then she canned other things from the garden, It was canned; there was nothing frozen.
PN: What type of vegetables did you grow usually?
LA: well, we always had green beans and corn and, of course, we always
had our potatoes. We buried our potatoes; you put your, you know how you
bury potatoes, I t m not going to go into that, but we buried our potatoes.
And with blackberries, and, like I say, a few strawberriesyou didn't
get too many strawberries then; most of the strawberries we had then was
wild . But green beans, and well, sun squash, tomatoes aw, you canned
oodles and oodles of tomatoes . But you didn't have any, no you never
froze lettuce. When you got lettuce, that was a specialty on Sunday, or
some time when you could go up to the store and buy some lettuce.
You never grew it though?
LA : We grew lettuce all the time, but you can't preserve it. I mean,
maybe now, we freeze some now in our freezer, but you didn 't have any back
then. It wasn' t a rough life. Now, that I 'm looking back on it, it was
sort of rough, but we didn't worry about it. You didn't worry about things
then. And then when Uncle Sam called, and I went in the service, that was
- I spent, me and my two brothers, just went in here; and my twin brother,
our numbers wasn't even close in the draft, but we all got called the same
way, and we all left home the same day. We left from Lookout, and rode a
bus into Huntington, and from Huntington, they went and give us the examination,
and they put us on a train and took us to Fort Thomas, Kentucky. And the
third day, I believe it was, my brother over here left the one that's in here left; we was on K. P. together, that's him here [in Beckley] , we was on
- P . together. AndI never saw again until I got off the train three years
later at Prince.
And when you came back to Prince after the service, did you
LA :I stayed for a little while, but we lived at Quinnimont. We lived
at Quinnimont. After about 15 days, I told my mother, I said, ' 'I 'm going
back to work. I already had a job on the railroad. And she said,
hope you do; you 're about to worry me to death walking around the house,
nothing to do. 'l That was in 1946. In 1947, a house was available at
Prince, and I bought the house in Prince for Mom and Dad. And they was
tickled to death, and we moved to Prince. And from that time, until
they moved up into here, we lived at Prince. Till we bought this place here.
When did you move up here?
LA : Four years ago.
Four years ago? You lived in Prince all the rest of that time?
LA : All that time, because we were railroad men, and our jobs were there.
My brother here, and my job, I was Signal Maintainer. He worked at Raleigh,
and he worked at other places as a Clerk. And he was more fortunate than I
was. The clerks' union was different from the signalmen's union; we had the
best union, there's no two ways about it.
PN: The Signalmen's Union?
LA : The signalmen's union. The only thing about it is, they don't have
the clause like the clerks had that, when the clerks and the telegraph
operators combined, then there were so few jobs. I mean, closing all the telegraph stations such as that, they bought his job for $15,000. And whenever I took off, they didn't give me a penny.
PN: They paid him S 15,000?
They bought his job, and then he went on disability pension. They pulled me out of service on account of occupational disability. And I didn't get a thing. I just, for one year, I got my regular disability benefits and pension benefits, and then when that was over, that was it.
So what I t m on right now is occupational disability.
PN: did you finally
LA: In 1973 is when they pulled me out of service, on the railroad, they pulled me out of service. I 'm not retired now, Mister, when I get through talking with you, I 'm going to see Mister; he called me yesterday, he said, "Lace , I need you at the unfinished furniture. " And he said, "Lace, I need you. And Mr. French is a good man; I wouldn't want a finer person to work
And he said, '1 1 know you need a job. ' t I want something to do. I was thinking of mowing the lawn; you can see it needs it right now. Well, my sis ter works hard at her flowers, as you can probably see here. And I love my flowers, my mother did. We 're crazy about our flowers.
PN: When you used to live In Quinnimont, did people usually grow flowers like this?
LA: Oh yea. Everybody, everyone, you had flowers and you had a garden. But everyone had a few flowers. You had dahlias and such ag that, and
roses. Everyone. That was a clean community for a long time. But 1 Ike I say, when I came back from the service in 1946, I came back in January, well, the Criss Lumber Company had taken over. And the only thing he wanted to do is get them trees out of that hi. 11, and that was it . That was it. The hell with the town and everything else. And the town went down. Naturally it went down, because, well, the people lost interest, and the railroad people started to move here to Beckley. And the people who was coming in there was, I hope you will edit this [out] , they were people who wasn't used to the money that we were making. Even though we were making maybe two or three dollars an hour, they were making fifty cents an hour.
PN: What did they do? Worked in the lumber
LA : They worked in the lumber for him.
He brought them up from the South?
LA : In the woods, he brought them from Virginia and in there, from North
Carolina.
PN: He didn't hire local people?
LA : No, he wouldn't hire them, because they wouldn't work for his pay .
They wouldn't work for his pay. My goodness, those guys, if they was getting
1 . 24
forty cents an hour, they were lucky.
Forty cents an hour?
LA : Forty cents an hour, were lucky.
At that time, if you worked on the railroad, you'd make two or three dollars an hour.
LA: No, you didn't make that an hour; you made more than that [ forty cents] , but your benefits was so much better, on the railroad.
What did you get an hour at that time?
LA : At the time I started work?
P N: No, the time when you were saying that this lumber company would pay forty cents an hour? This was around 46?
LA: I was getting $1.85, But you see I had to move, I mean, I couldn't get it at Prince. I wasn't an old enough person to hold that much rights.
And so I went down to Virginia to work, I went to Indiana, I went to Kentucky ,
I went to Ohio, I went to Illinois; that was what we called the C&O system.
PN: But your home was still in Prince?
My home was still in Prince. I came home about every two or three
weeks, on account of that Mom and Dad was living, till both of them passed away in 1955. And then when I came back, then I stood for a good job. 1 mean, I want to say a good job, making more than the average person would, making as much, if not more, than the coal miner would then. So I took the job as maintainer at Prince.
PN: As a maintainer, that's what they called you?
LA: i',That they call signal maintainer. You intain the signals. Jus t like the signal lights you go through here in town? Ours is different. They had to be perfect. And I 'm proud of the fact that I was one of the best; I could do some work that no one else could. I 'd like to take you sometime, if we get the chance, Paul, it'll be perfectly legal, to go into one of those relay houses and relay cases. Oh man, people don't realize what's in there and what happens. The biggest thing that I was especially in —— I don't want you to use too much of this on here because I t m not working with the railroad anymore —— was the hotbox detector. You know what the hotbox is on a boxcar that goes like that. The Timkin, they're using more Timkins than anything else .
PN: Timkins ?
LA : Timkin is the one they're using more than anything else. And it's the best; you never have to exchange it . But the other ones, you have to put what we called ' 'dope" or put some oil in it and put some, actually, rags . I mean, that would show up; as it goes by, if there was anything defective about that, that indicated, an indication went to Hinton from Thayer —
Hinton, which is the main place the detector wag [in Thayer] , the worst place in the world because it was hard to get in to. It wasn't for me, be— cause 1 used a yellow motor car. But I knew, I studied that blueprints, and I worked on it hard until I felt I knew that; a lot of them didn't. If they
get any trouble, the first person, they had to call me. I've had a lot of experience with it; I mean, it is a technical thing, my. It's one of those things like, with these computers, that gets a hairspring. That's it. Usually a little adjustment on a nut in there; I mean, you could just move it a hair.
P N: When we were talking about Quinnimont before, you said that the Beurys
were the people that once owned it.
LA: The Beurys was the people that owned it the major time. Now, before that time, from what I can understand, it was Smith. And that 's where they got, from the mountain back there, the Smith Mountain part of it. Then the
Beurys took over, and then the Lawtons operated it. And while the Lawtons were operating it, that t s when they had the store at Prince, I mean at Quinni—
mont; they had a nice store there. And when it burned, I saw it when it
burned.
PN: When was that?
LA: Oh, l t d say, maybe '49, or '50. I was working at Prince at the time,
and we saw the big blaze over there at the old coal company store. And
Mr. Watkins, the man who was superintendent, it was his brother both of
them are dead now —— that was operating the store. And they had a good
store, they had a good meat counter. They Ind fresh meat every week; well,
it was only once a week; that's the reason, well, usually, Armour would bring it to the company stores. But most of those company stores like that had good butchers, like over at Mt. Hope right now. Well, a classmate of mine, Charles Craiger, why, that's the best butcher in this country. He graduated with me from Mt. Hope High School. He's still at the company store at Mt. Hope; he r s the chief butcher there right now; and he's tough.
And he's a Lion's Club member with me too; I belong to the Lion's in Mt. Hope, have for years. I 've not been very active lately. I '11 tell you, whenever you 're on retirement like I am, this EIS, the way the gas costs right now, you got to watch how you travel. Cause a lot of people that I know out here that are getting perhaps Black Lung are getting a lot more than I am. Like I say, this is the first Sunday I haven't been over to the Presbyterian Church, cause I sing in the choir at the Presbyterian Church. 1 am very proud of that. Three years ago, I was President of the men of the church. It's just people that I know, that you like be with people like that. I grew up here. I heard Hulett Smith not too long ago, the former governor, you know. He's a wonderful teacher, he knows the Bible; he's one of the best teachers you ever heard. I don't know what church you belong to. Are you a Catholic?
A Methodist.
LA : A Methodist. My sister in Hinton is a Methodist Republican, and that's
all there is to it.
PN: One more question. If you had to sum up in a few words the differences between living today and, say, living in Quinnimont back in the twenties and thirties, how would you describe the differences in a few words?
LA: I don't know. I think it's equal in a way. I mean, so many changes have happened . I always like to think that the changes are for the best; maybe I t m not the best politician in the country. But I think that the changes that have come in in our schools, and such as that, they're for the better. When I look back, it was enj oyable; it may have been a little rough, but it was what was going on. And you took it the way it went. And so , I don't know, I wouldn't change anything then, and I don't think I 'd change too much now. I think it's sort of, maybe the word's not appro— priate, but equilibrium, don't you? I think it's just as good today as it was then. We t re all the time fussing about how times change, and how things are getting worse all the time. I don't think they are, do you?
I 'm very optimistic about, I '11 tell you one thing that I do know. Like I say, I 'm a Democrat; I have great respect for anybody that's a Republican; it doesn't make any difference, I have great respect for them. I like Underwood; I don't like Moore. But I '11 tell you, the three speeches that I heard this past time at the Democratic Convention is the best, I 'd like to get a tape on that. When the man from Florida spoke, the governor; and then Mondale gave a wonderful address, in my estimation; it wasn't a speech, it was an address. And then whenever Carter it, a good address. I mean, I was a little wondering about what was going to happen. But I 'd like to have a copy of those three addresses . I think that's three of the best I t ve ever heard, and I 've listened to some awfully good ones in my years .
heard some awfully good, I 've been to a lot of places.
[END OF TAPE]
