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PN: Mr. Brown, maybe to start off, you could just mention where you were born and what date you were born.
AB: Well, I was born at Quinnimont, January the 13th, 1910.
PN: What did your father do for a living?
AB: Well, my father, he was a cook. He was born at Union, and he came here — I don't remember the exact date - he was married, he was a cook on, for the railroad. In later years, he worked at the hotel. And after the hotel burned down — I believe it was 1914 or '15, I don't remember the exact date he went to work for the railroad C. and O. Railroad — maintenance of way.
PN: Where was the hotel you mentioned?
AB: Down in Quinnimont.
PN: In Quinnimont?
AB: See, that used to be your main, as I before said, your transportation getting into Beckley was train. And back in those times, you had what you called "drummers" travelling salesmen. They'd come up on the night train, stay at the hotel overnight, catch the Piney train the next morning, go to Beckley, take the orders, come back, stay at the hotel another night, and go back west the next day.
PN: And where did you grow up? You grew up right here in Quinnimont?
AB: In Quinnimont.
PN: Have you lived here for your whole life?
AB: My whole life.
PN: When did you begin working yourself?
AB: When I was, I quit high school when I was 16 years old, and went to work for the C. and O. Railroad, 1926.
PN: I know you mentioned this before when we were talking. Could you just mention the different areas and towns that you 've worked in along the railroad?
AB: Oh yea, I worked for the Hinton division, from Hinton to Handley [in east central Kanawha County). That was our territory. See we was a division; I was division man, and like I before said, you take, you go up from Thurmond on down to Eagle, and Nuttall, Sewell, and Fayette all those places there by side Of the railroad. They all isolated; they, towns blowed out, people moved out. Just ghost towns. Same thing up Piney Branch, from McCreery to Raleigh. Some places, you see the old foundation of houses, and that's all People moved out.
PN: What were the different towns along Piney Branch, that used to be but aren t t there anymore?
AB: OK. There's Wright, Wright Two, Norval, Stonewall, Lanark, and Stanaford, and Piney Pokey. Coal mine at Piney Pokey.
PN: What then, the railroad went down around towards a…
AB: Raleigh.
PN: Where Raleigh is today, along Piney Creek there?
AB: Right.
PN: When you started working in 1926 along the tracks In those towns like Nuttall and Sewell, how were those towns then? Were they big and pretty active?
AB: Oh yea. Plenty people living there, and the people had nice yards, company store, and had theaters, everything. They also had a theater over here at Royal, and a store. That was a beautiful little town too. You know the bridge a' going towards Beckley? Beautiful place.
PN: Before you get to McCreery?
AB: Yea, that's right, down at the other end of the bridge.
PN: That's amazing, and there's almost nothing there now.
AB: Nothing.
PN: How many years did you work for the C. and O.?
AB: 42 continuous years. See, I started in 1926, worked till 1928, quit, went to Cincinnati. And the Hoover Depression started 1929, and I came back here in 31, and was re—hired back in 42. And I retired in 74, which gave me 42 continuous years. [He meant '32, not '42 when he was re—hired.]
PN: What did you do between 1931 and 42 when you were living here and you weren't working for the railroad?
AB: Well, just loafing around a little, living off of Mom and Dad. No work back in those times. Then, if you didn't have a job, there was no money, cause there wasn't no checks, no welfare. Well, I did work a little bit on this road out here [referring to Highway 41, which goes through Quinnimont]. It was N R.A. - It wasn't a W. P. A. — out on that rock five days a week for thirteen dollars and some cents a day. Not a day, a week.
PN: Thirteen dollars and some cents a week?
AB: Yea.
PN: For doing what?
AB: Putting this road through here. You got rock out of the woods, and they'd nap them up, make a base for the highway through here.
PN: What does "napping" mean, just crushing them?
AB: Yea, big hammers, breaking them up small. When we got a rock, probably as big as that [points to a fan about three—foot square], just keep on beating up small pieces, maybe like, that make a good base. Thirteen dollars a week.
PN: How were the mines right along New River doing in this period of time, when the Depression began?
AB: Wasn't doing nothing. Part of them was working, and part of them wasn't. And most of the mines then was just like they were in my department on the railroad - didn't have no union. The union was busted. But after 31, Roosevelt came in, they had a chance for all of them to organize and set up a union. And then things begin to pick up.
PN: Was that true, you said, for the railroads too?
AB: Yea.
PN: That the unions were pretty much hurt or destroyed during the twenties?
AB: That's right. Now your trainmen, conductors, but I was in the maintenance of way.
PN: And there was no union for those workers until after Roosevelt came?
AB: That's right. And on top of that I will speak the facts until I think it was 37, I ain't couldn't even belong to the union. They made it possible then, that is '37.
PN: I was going to ask you about that. They discriminated against you, in the membership?
AB: Yea, yea, that's right. They discriminated because it was, they had that in the, a long time, and I believe that it was when I was in the service during World War 11, I believe I seen it in the paper — I was in Florida that Roosevelt had got after them about 10t accepting Blacks in the union. And he was told that was the agreement between the union and the company. The union didn't want them in there. But afterwards, what the reason they accepted the thing is because we all was getting the same pay, and they figured we was just freeloading on them. And so they had to accept you to get your dues. That's the onliest way.
PN: It was 1937 you said that the Black workers along the C. and O. here
could finally be members of the union?
AB: Yea, that's right. They wanted to force in there then, make you pay.
[laughs]
PN: You said that you were working in the Hinton division of the C. and O.?
AB: Yea, between Hinton, well see, they have divisions. They have what they call certain territories cut up in divisions. From Hinton to Handley, that was our territory.
PN: Say, in that area, the people that were working on the maintenance of way, what percentage of them would you say were white, and what percentage were Black workers in this section?
AB: Well, when I first started in 1926, it was pretty rough. They, the percentage of the white was much lower than it was for the Black, because it was pretty rough. Most of the time, I worked, myself, in a gang, like extra force, and maybe you wouldn't see but three, four whites in the gang of maybe 35 or 40 men. We had a boss, assistant foreman, timekeeper, and a water boy. They the only four.
PN: What, and they'd be all white?
AB: All white, and the rest was all Black.
PN: All the people doing the actual work were Black?
AB: Yea. But in later years, they begun to kind of migrate in. Because it was pretty rough work. If you didn't work, you'd get crippled up. I was an overgrown boy. As soon as I got up there — “If you don't look, I'm going to throw a rail on you. I 'm going to do this.” I said, "Come on.” I was just overgrown for my size, you know. And I could just about match up to the rest of them. But in the later years, then they brought in the "Safety First.” So you didn't “I'll cripple you up”, they'd call you up for investigation. Proved I crippled you on purpose, they'd fire you. And then so many accidents, it proved you was unsafe, take you out of service.
PN: You mean if they, they would claim that you caused your own injury, and they'd get rid of you?
AB: Yea, if I caused it deliberately, you understand what I mean? They could say you was unsafe to work so many accidents.
PN: In some of the other unions — like for the conductors on the railroad, you know, and the clerks, and the signalman did they allow, or have Black people working in those positions?
AB: I was just a very small boy, and I remember on Loup Creek and Laurel Creek up here, they didn't have no air brakes. And it was all the stem brake. They'd probably leave up in Lay land and made it ten, fifteen cars, and the only braking power they had was on the engine. Well they had a head man, middle man, and a rear man — three brakemen — and the conductor, engineer, and the fireman. Well, when they come on a steep grade, that rear man, he'd work toward the front; head man, he'd work toward the rear and help the middle man tie up brakes to hold the train. Well, you was continuously tying up brakes and knocking them off, typing them up and knocking off and they were all Blacks that did that. And there was several was crippled and was killed, you know, by the track and they would get rocked off the top of the cars. Loup Creek was the same way. But in later years, they got air, and then they didn't have to do that. But most of those older guys then, why they was about, just about the same as were on the track — they wasn't too numerous — it was pretty treacherous work.
PN: So it was mostly Black workers?
AB: Yea. And in later years, they had air. So all they had to do set those retainers so they'd leave?
PN: What did you call them?
AB: Retainers.
PN: Retainers?
AB: Yea. Set those retainers about a forty, forty—five degrees. That helped checks the brake, you got an automatic brake, all the way down the hill. When you get on level, you can't pull it; you got to just stop and knock the retainers down. It releases that air.
PN: When you talked about the danger, people would fall off the top of cars. What, did they get caught between the cars sometimes, and couplings or anything?
AB: Oh yea, a lot of time, they'd do that too. But what I was speaking of, fall off, see, the cars were loaded, see, and here you're walking across here, and that car reeling and rocking and maybe it's doing ten, fifteen, twenty mile an hour you got to have pretty good balance, you know, and they'd fall off.
PN: Where were the brakes operated from, the top of the cars?
AB: Top of the car. Stem brakes, this way. In the later years, they did away with all those stem brakes. They had what you called "A—Jack”. You could stand on a stool and tighten them this way.
PN: A-Jack?
AB: A—Jacks, A—Jack brakes they 're more substantial than the old stem brakes.
PN: You know, when you see those wheels on the back of freight cars, were those where brakes were?
AB: The old one?
PN: Yea.
AB: You seen the one that stick up what they call the old stem brake. But now, the A—Jacks, you seldom see them unless you look In between the on the car [Indicating about two or three feet], about waist high. Very easy to handle.
PN: So you got to see most of the mining towns along the New River Gorge in the course of your work. Did you talk to coal miners much? Did you meet them often?
AB: Oh yea, oh yea. Yea, quite a few of them. I had a job, I mean, I did get a job down at Glen Rogers. Once I decided 1 'd quit the railroad — I wasn't getting but 40 cents an hour, $3.20 a day — go to work in the mine on a machine. And boy, I got on the job down there. And I got to thinking about it, I said: “It’s too dangerous; I’ll go back to the railroad." [laughs]
PN: How long did you work at Glen Rogers in the mine?
AB: I didn't work; I didn't go. No, I chickened out [laughs]. See, working on the machine, you know, is pretty dangerous. Sometimes the machine jumping back on you, you know, shovelling bug dust, you know. There it is, I don’t regret it. Always in for the money, but I just figured I, I did never work in the mines and none of my people. We was all railroaders, so I just pursued the old tradition.
PN: You said your father had worked some on the railroad?
AB: Yea, he was a cook. And as I before said, and after so many years, you see, they had moved him around on different parts of the division. He didn't want to go, so he just quit that and went to work at the hotel here. And my mother, she cooked up there.
PN: What was the name of the hotel?
AB: Quinnimont Hotel.
PN: And that's not standing at all now, is it?
AB: No, just an old foundation there. They also, see they had a saloon there, in the bottom of that hotel.
PN: They did?
AB: Yea. And see, on up until Prohibition time, the states went dry, see Raleigh County was dry and Fayette County was wet. And all the people in Raleigh County, they had to come to Fayette County here, from up around Raleigh and Beckley, to get their whiskey.
PN: When was this, in the thirties?
AB: No, it was on up until, I guess, before I was born on up until, I believe it was, I don't know when the state went dry, I don't know if it was '14 or '15, or! 13, somewhere along in there. It was in the teens, early teens.
PN: Did the saloon close down after Prohibition, or did they keep it open?
AB: Yea, yea. And it wasn't too long, I don't know, probably about a year after they closed it down, till the hotel burnt down.
PN: And the C. and O. never rebuilt the hotel?
AB: No, that belonged to the Quinnimont Coal Company
PN: But that was never built again?
AB: No , no.
PN: Were Quinnimont and Prince always mainly railroad towns, would you say?
AB: Yea. Of course in later years, they had a little saw mill in through here. I believe it was nineteen thirty, thirty—eight. M. E. Criss Lumber Company, they came in - started to cutting timbers up at the saw mill.
PN: Was it the M. E. Criss?
AB: M.E. Criss Lumber Company. In later years, they cut most of the timber, they sold it out.
PN: Let me ask you another general question. If you had to estimate, say from here on up through Sewell and Nuttall and Caperton that whole area — in all mining towns back, you know, In the twenties and the thirties, what percentage of the miners would you estimate would be Black, and what per cent would have been white back then?
AB: Well, to the best of my estimation, I think they was pretty well equalized. And too, back in those times, there was a lot of Italians. And they was your main miners too. Of course, you don't see too many of them around anymore, you know, but they, there was quite a few of them around.
PN: Were there people from Poland and Hungary and countries like that too?
AB: Yea, all classes.
PN: Do you think there was less discrimination in the coal mines than there was on the railroad?
AB: Yea, there was less in the mines, because see everybody, what they wanted, they wanted the coal. And they didn't care who got it. [laughs] They didn't care who got it. And it was hard work too; most of that was hand work.
PN: I was just going to ask you, what you thought was the reason that there may have been less discrimination in the coal mines than there was along the railroad.
AB: Well, you see, in the mines, see, a man had to go in there, and you had to drill, shoot, and hand—load that coal so much a car. There was no day wages. If you didn't load so much, you didn't make anything. And I heard a lot of guys say they was cheated out of half of that. If you made a shot that was all rock, you had to load that rock. You didn't get no pay for that. See they paid for the tonnage on your coal.
PN: But the easier jobs, say on the railroad, were generally the ones they'd reserve for whites only?
AB: Yea. Well, as it begin to get easier, they'd begin to come in, you know, more and more and more. Now if you watch your gangs along side of the railroad now, you may see one [Black worker]. And nine out of ten gangs, you see, you don't see any, anybody.
PN: So as the work became easier and they used less people, they began excluding Black people from the industry?
AB: No, they didn't exclude now, they didn't exclude. Now see, they hired you, but somehow, I don't know, this younger generation of Blacks, they didn't go.
PN: For railroads?
AB: No. Now you see we have in the last seven or eight years, they begin to hire more young Black brakemen. And they have one engineer, I know, at Hinton. See that came in this Fair Employment Practice. We had a boy her he was a white boy — and he used to come here all the time. He asked me, he tried to get a job on the track. He finished high school. I said, "Go up to the office; go up to the office." He said, “Go up there, can't get no job." So I knew the division engineer, he used to work up there one day, and I asked him, I said: "Sterling, say I got a nice boy finishing high school. “I'd like to get him a job." I said, “He's a white boy; he's a good boy." “That don't make no difference now," he said. “We can't hire him”, he said. “But I’ll tell you what you do. You tell him to go up to the Employment Office, put in an application. And when we need a man, we'll call the Employment Office. They'll send him to us, and that's when we hire him.” You see, since this Fair Employment Practice went into effect, you see that stopped it. It used to be, a lot of thses gangs, well up until 1937, like working track, if a foreman didn't like me, if he got mad at his wife or something, and I didn't look to suit him, he could just fire me, on the spot. And he come right along, he'd hire his cousin, or hire his son, hire his daddy, hire anybody. Well see, they stopped that. Everything went through the office. He couldn't hire, or neither fire. Stopped that. I know a lot of gangs, there wasn't nothing but just in—laws. [laughs] But the Lord blessed me, and I weathered the storm.
PN: Yea, what did you say that you did during the 44 years…
AB: Forty— two.
PN: The 42 years that you worked?
AB: Track maintenance, keep up the track. Laid rails.
PN: That was the whole time?
AB: Yea, absolutely. And the year, I figured in the spring of '74, the supervisor came to me one day, and said, "We're going to have to hire some colored foremens, mostly colored foremen." So he wanted to know if I'd be interested. "No sir, I wouldn't." I said: "Now if that was offered to me 10, 15, or 20 years ago, I would accept it. But I don't want the responsibility now. Cause I’m retiring this year." See, I was 64 years old then. It would have been something nice, you know, if I could have got it ten or 15 years [ago]. But see, that came under Fair Employment Practice, see; he had to hire on a percentage base, promote on a percentage base, see.
PN: Supervisors.
AB: Yea, foremens, things like that. There's been quite a many changes went on down through the course of time, than it was when I first started. But no resentment. If I didn't like it, I could have quit. But I enjoyed what I did. Yes sir.
PN: No matter where you were working, you always were based here in Quinnimont?
AB: No. Well sometime I, well see '62 to '63, I was cut off Hinton division; we had a seniority roster. And I didn't stand for nothing here. So they put on a tie—gang just put in ties Hinton division Clifton Forge division, And we worked over through Virginia, around Lynchburg, Charlottesville, and down the James River and there, putting in ties. We had camp cars. I'd leave there Sunday evening, we stayed in those camp cars until Friday afternoon when we come home, get a change of clothes, go back Sunday. Two years I experienced that.
PN: So you spent the weeks down in Virginia near the job, and come back here on the weekend?
AB: Yea, that's right.
PN: How did that affect you?
AB: Pretty rough, pretty rough. I was tempted two or three times to quit. My wife begged me to quit. "We'll make it. Come on home. I said: “No, got too much invested in there now to quit. But I weathered the storm. I had about two years of it, and finally got back to Mabscott where I retired. Spent the last ten years there.
PN: Working on track?
AB: Track.
PN: What types of equipment did you use when you were working on the track?
AB: Most of it, it was all — there wasn't no equipment [laughs] it was manual labor. Pick and a shovel, pick and a shovel, and a fork, different things. Of course, several other times, different times, you know, in laying rail, you know, you had regular edging machine.
PN: What?
AB: Edging machine. Like when the plate cut down in the tie, well they had, this edging machine come along and smooth that down, you know, to lay the plate on. Then you had your spiker, drill, other different equipment. But now, everything is did by machinery. You see all the men, he don't pick up a hammer, he don't pick up a pick, he don't have to do nothing. Everything is did by machinery now.
PN: Really, you mean laying ties now is not the manual labor that it was when you were working?
AB: No, no, no. Everybody getting machinery. And they're monthly men; they don't have this on day wages.
PN: So now you get a monthly salary, rather than by the day.
AB: Yea. Altogether different.
PN: Did you have to work at putting more stone, or making sure there was enough ballast?
AB: Yea, that's right, that's right. You see, you had what they called a tamping machine, they come along, he'd tamp, had a prong, get down on that tie like that. Well, after he hit it Wo or three times, well that rock, you used a fork probably, throw a little more ballast and tamp each side. Follow him along every day like that. That was in your servicing gang — "smooth— 'em —up" is what we called it, fixing up low joints.
PN: Fixing up low joints?
AB: Yea.
PN:That's what they called that?
AB: Yea. And swagging the track, joints, would swag mostly in the joints, you see. And then you jack it up, tamp those ties around — you called that "smoothing up”.
PN: That's so the joints were, the train wouldn't always bounce when it hit them?
AB: That's right, low places.
PN: It sounds like they probably maintained the tracks a lot better then than the railroads are able to do today.
AB: Oh yea, that's right. Because the men taking more pride in their work. And they did every job like they thought the railroad belongs to them. And they didn't want to be criticized about their work. So you didn't do this, you didn't do that. Everybody taken pride in their work. But now, you see, those machines go along and do that; they 're not perfect. The machines do no more than what you make it do. Like a computer; just like that. So your best track, maintaining them, was did by hand. I know once in surfacing track that was pulling It up, putting it under new ballast you go ahead and crimp up between each tie, all that old dirt, dirt and mud. Clean it out. Dump new ballast on, and then you pull it up and put it on clean ballast — good drainage. And if you got about 18 rails a day, that was supposed to be a good day's work. And now they '11 get a mile a day or better.
PN: Eight or ten rails a day…
AB: Eighteen rails.
PN: How long was each rail?
AB: Well, on the average, some would be 30 at the least. But the average rail now is 39 foot. And then, since then, you have what you call the "ribbon rail”. That was joint rail, 39 foot, standard.
PN: And you would do 18 of them, you said?
AB: Yea, yea. But now you have the ribbon rail; I guess they 're about pretty close to a quarter of a mile long, each strand of that rail.
PN: How do they lay that?
AB: Well, they have a machine, a string of flat cars, a strand of that rail on there just lying. They '11 have that machine, and they '11 pull that rail off on the middle of the road, else on the head of the ties, you understand?
PN: Yea.
AB: That's unloading it. And when they get ready to lay it, they'll go back, have a machine that set it right in place.
PN: Let me just ask you a few questions about Quinnimont when you lived here. You know, in the twenties when you began working, and the thirties, how many people would you say lived in Quinnimont?
AB: Oh, I guess we had 35 or 40 families here. See, we had two schools here, two junior high schools a school down at the corner here was the junior high school, and we had one about three—quarters of a mile up the road, right beside the highway, a junior high school.
PN: How many houses were there back then?
AB: Well, I 'd estimate probably roughly guessing, about 35 or 40. Had a company store. And there was one time that Armour's had a storage place here at Quinnimont too, a pop factory.
PN: What was that, Armour?
AB: Mm. Armour' s meat.
PN: I was going to ask you, did they can meats?
AB: No, they, it was shipped in here by carload, and they had a storage place
PN: And there was a pop factory too?
PN: And there was that hotel you said which was burred down in the teens?
AB: Right.
PN: Were there any churches?
AB: Oh yea. Two churches. A white church here, Baptist church; and a colored Baptist church.
PN: Both were Baptist?
AB: Yea.
PN: Were there any other buildings, like churches, schools, stores?
AB: Here?
PN: Yea.
AB: No. You see, after the store burnt down, well I believe it must have been '51 or '52, '53 whenever it was; but anyway, they never had another store here since. I don't remember the exact date.
PN: Before the road was built, the only way to get into town was along the C. and O.?
AB: C. and O., that's right.
PN: You said that you worked on building the road in the early 1930s?
AB: The highway, highway, that's right.
PN: How about before that, you mentioned earlier…
AB: See I was hired, I quit high school in 1926 and went to work. See, they had a flood on Laurel Creek — washed all the track out. I always wanted to be a man. And I shouldered a man's load when I was 16, and I had to carry it ever since. And that's when I got my first job on the railroad. I think it was November the 15th, 1926.
PN: That you started?
AB: Yea. And the last time I started was June the 29th, 1932. But 1 worked continuously on through after that.
PN: After June 29th, 1932?
AB: Yea. Had no other choice then.
PN: That was the railroad?
AB: Railroad.
PN: You got the job on the railroad in '32?
AB: That's right.
PN: You were here about a year, or something, between the time you came back from Cincinnati and the time you began to work again?
AB: That's right.
PN: You were mentioning something before about, before they had, you know, the highway, that they used ox, oxen to…
AB: No. This Mr. Prince, that's what he had. Well now, this monument down here, that was brought in here by a team of horses, down here, brought up in sections. [He is referring to the obelisk—type stone monument between the highway and New River which commemorates the shipping of the first ton of coal out of the gorge in 1873.]
PN: And you also mentioned there used to be an iron mine?
AB: That's right.
PN: Maybe you could say a few words about that.
AB: Well, I was asking several people about this iron—ore mines down here. And the mines, and that furnace was here before the railroad mainline system was through here. See at one time, see this road was built to Stone Cliff, and I think some of the contractors, they went broke. And then in later years, they extended it on through. And I asked them, I said, “Well, if the mines was here, ore mines, how did they get the ore out?" They said, "The ox carts.” I said, "No wonder they shut down." And I think they taken the old tram, had to go up Batoff, old tram over in there; and it taken them down to about Deepwater, down in there somewhere. And they loaded it on boats till they got it out.
PN: So they brought it over to the other side of the river and put it on the tram?
AB: Yea, that's right.
PN: Where was this iron—ore mine located?
AB: Up on the mountain at Quinnimont, about, oh about two miles up on the mountain here.
PN: Up toward Layland?
AB: No, it's called the, on the Backus side here.
PN: How come that shut down? There wasn't much ore there?
AB: Well, there's too much waste, See that whole bottom down in there, that's full of that old slag rock, where they refined it out, that iron out of there, you know. The bottom's full of that old rock down there. There's too much of a waste; it gets too expensive; then too much to get it out.
PN: So it was a low—quality ore? Not too much iron in it?
AB: Yea, right.
PN: That's interesting. Do you know of any other ore mines they used to have along the gorge?
AB: No, I don't know of anymore. But they used to have coke ovens here too, Quinnimont.
PN: Down this far too?
AB: Mm.
PN: Did they have any at Quinnimont?
AB: Yea, Quinnimont .
PN: They had coke ovens here?
AB: Mm. Some of the old ovens is still standing up the road here about smile, up the road here now, where they used to get coke. Old ovens.
PN: Back in the twenties and thirties, did many people raise gardens and have animals around here?
AB: Yea. Had cows, hogs, chickens. See, r raised hogs and chickens on up till vent in the service, Everybody came back, feed was so high, I wouldn't fool with any hogs, so I raised chickens till r moved up here.
PN: Why, it cost too much to buy the hogs?
AB: Yea, well the feed.
PN: The feed, yea.
AB: I went into the service in '43, you could get 100 pounds of feed for $1.25. Came out it was $5.00 something. Me and my wife, you could buy your meat cheaper.
PN: What was the main form of recreation or entertainment or social life back say when you were growing up in the twenties?
AB: Well, we didn't have any, anything in particular. I told a lot of boys, people asked me, they said, "You fish any?" I said, "Nope." And I got more beatings as a boy coming up by going in the river swimming. That's where stayed in the summer. And I never, I think I caught two fish out of the river In a lifetime, And then this time of year, we'd, boys would go back in the woods and hunt chestnuts, grapes, and get late apples, fall apples, things like that. Otherwise, no major recreation. Of course, we had a ball team. One time, they had enough white and colored boys, you know, around, about the same age, both had a team. We 'd all get together and play ball.
PN: Would you have to use the ferry to get across the river at that time, or was there a bridge?
AB: Well, everybody crossing then, you had to cross the railroad bridge.
PN: Oh, the one that's still up there?
AB: Yea, the old railroad bridge. See, there's two there now the high— way and the railroad. But the only means of transportation walking across that bridge.
PN: When was that bridge built, do you know?
AB: I, I don't, I didn't know, I don't know just, '95 or '95 that bridge was built. And see, before that bridge was built, see they had coke ovens on this side at Prince. In Royal, they had mines across the river; that was in Raleigh County. But they'd bucket that coal from Royal to Prince before that railroad bridge was built.
PN: Then they put in ovens over here?
AB: That's right.
PN: What's the main benefit that you think that the union would bring to railroad workers?
AB: Well, a lot of different benefits. Because when I first started — no vacation, no sick benefits, no nothing. Foreman didn't like you, he'd just fire you. Now, if the union, if you are fired; if the foreman want to fire you, he have to call for an investigation. Just the same as you going to court, and they'll decide who was wrong. And you have to do something pretty bad on the railroad to be fired. See, the reason I tell a lot of these young boys seeking jobs with the railroad. I say, “Now boys, let me tell you something, experience. Now they won't bother you too much about your work; after 90 days you qualify. But don't you steal from them; don't get fighting on the job; and don't be drunk on the job. Cause they'll fight you, they’ll fire you right now about those three things.” Nothing else will matter. But if you qualify, they 're nice people to work for — good company. No regrets. I had it tough to start with; but the last was nice.
PN: And the road hauled mainly coal, right?
AB: Coal and other freight. They have four, I guess two, three, I don't know now, just down to about four manifest trains nothing but merchandise, oil, and that's all boxcars.
PN: Manifests were fast freights?
AB: Yea. They just run on schedule. They was more accurate at one time than passenger trains were. These run on schedule.
PN: When you were working for the railroad, did you travel much around, just for yourself? Or were you working so hard you…
AB: Oh yea. Well, in the earlier years, I used to take vacation. I had a couple' of brothers in Cincinnati at the time; I'd go down and spend some time with them. And my first wife, she's deceased died in '67 she had a sister in Albany, and we'd go up and spend a week or ten days.
PN: In New York?
AB: In New York and back. Then come back, probably two or three days to rest up, and that was it. And always probably save me a week for around Christmas. Never was much of a travel ling man. Always at home.
PN: Did you enjoy living along the gorge for your whole life?
AB: Yes sir. I laugh and tell some of them, I say, “That's the Indian in me.” I say, “You take an Indian, and he always wants to be close to water.” [laughs] Sure, I do enjoy being here. My wife, let's see, I married the last time in '68 to my wife there, a girl I knew when she was just 14 years old. And after I lost my wife, and she'd lost her husband, through my brothers living in Cincinnati, we got in contact. And we were married in 68. But she's from Ohio; she don't like here, but I do.
PN: It's a lot different from Cincinnati.
AB: That's right. That's the way the ball bounce. But I think I could be happy anywhere, as long as I have a decent place to eat and sleep.
People easy to get along with, that's the main thing, you know that?
PN: Is there anything you think's important to add that you haven't mentioned already?
AB: Well, I wouldn't know of any, I don't believe. Course I'll think of a thousand different things after you're gone. Yea, my two brothers, they worked for the railroad in the earlier years. They worked at the roundhouse down here.
PN: Oh yea?
AB: Quinnimont used to have a roundhouse here. See up until 1920, '21, all these crews would call out of Quinnimont to service the mines up Raleigh County — go up take empties and bring loads back. But there was a little confusion, I think around about 20, '21 about some property down here. Well, the C. and O. moved all the roundhouse, shops to Raleigh. Well, that's what killed this place. There was plenty of people here — all railroaders. And my brothers, they worked at the shop, maintaining the engines, you know, when they weren't on the road. But they both left here early. One went, well they both went to Pittsburgh to start with, and they both later settled in Cincinnati.
PN: When did they leave for Pittsburgh?
AB: About 20, '20 or ' 21.
PN: Did they work in the mines up there or the steel mills?
AB: No.
PN: The railroad?
AB: I don't know what kind of work, I know too — they worked construction work in Pittsburgh. And then in later years, they settled in Cincinnati; that's before I went there in '28.
[End of Tape]
Oral History Project - Frazier, Stewart H. Jr. 1980 Part 1
African american, Railroading 1929-1969, Thurmond, McKendree Hospital, Black Churches
PN: Just to begin, Rev. Frazier, maybe I could ask you where you were born and when you were born.
SF: I was born in Minden, West Virginia — Fayette County — on November the 22nd, nineteen and eleven.
PN: And what did your father do for a living in Minden?
SF: He, he was a miner.
PR: Were his parents miners as well?
SF: Now I don't know too much about his parents, because shortly after I was born, he and my mother separated. So I never did get to know much about his people.
PN: But your father worked in the mines for his entire life?
SF: As far as I know, he did, yes,
PN: Did he work in Minden for his whole life?
SF: No, this was not a lifelong occupation for him in Minden. But being a miner, by occupation, I'm satisfied he worked in several other, other mines, and lived in several other mining communities.
PN: Were they all in West Virginia?
SF: Yes, yes.
PN: Was your dad born in West Virginia too, do you know?
SF: No, I think that he was born in North Carolina.
And what town did you grow up in?
SF: I grew up mostly between Thurmond and Dunloup, on Loup Creek. I lived in two or three mining communities along Loup Creek. But I think I spent more time in and around Thurmond because one of the little towns was two or three miles from Thurmond. And I was, I consider I spent most of my time on the river. This is what most folk in the area refer to as people from the river.
PN: What were the names of those different towns that you lived in when you were growing up?
SF: Newlyn — this was on Loup Creek, Meadow Fork, and for a short time I lived at Sun, West Virginia, and Dunloup. All of these are mining communities on Loup Creek up from Thurmond.
PN: Did you ever work in the mines yourself?
SF: Oh, for a short, for a short period of time. I went into the mines with one of my uncles, and that was a short duration. Then 1 hired on the railroad, and I spent 40 years working for the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company. And all of that time, I was employed at Thurmond.
PN: What was the first year that you began working for the C. and O.?
SF: Well this brings back a memory. The fifth day of March 1929 was my first day of employment. And I remember that so well because I sort of make a joke of it. Herbert Hoover went to work on the fourth of March, and I went to work on the railroad on the fifth of March.
PN: So you were about 18 years old when you began?
SF: Yes, in my eighteenth year.
PN: What was your job then?
SF: I was a, I was a station laborer. I worked first at the freight house as a freight handler. And then in the later years, I was promoted to a clerk. And my last employment was crew caller.
PN: As a crew caller?
SF: Crew caller, yea. That was a clerk of the second, second group, not first—class clerk, but while that 1 was eligible to have been promoted, but after the great number of years that I had accumulated seniority as a laborer, and then when I was promoted to a second—group clerk, I felt comfortable staying where I was, because it was just going to be a matter of time till I would be retiring. And it was more profitable to me not to take promotion as a group—one clerk.
PN: What would have happened then? Would you lose your seniority?
SF: Well, I wouldn't exactly lose, have lost my seniority, but I would have gone low on the employment roster. And whereas remaining where I was, why I was near the top of that roster. So during a cutoff period, I didn't have to suffer. But if I'd have moved up to the higher bracket…
PN: They would have laid you off?
SF: Yea, because during the mine shut—downs and so on, why the younger men were always, not necessarily Black, but the younger men, you see, on the bottom of the roster, they would be the first ones to go. So I couldn't see myself losing this kind of money. So really I made more by staying on the group—two roster, because my employment was steady.
PN: What was the year when you finally retired from the C. and O.?
SF: The fourteenth day of April 1969.
PN: I wanted to just ask you if you could maybe describe a little bit about what the responsibilities of each of your jobs were when you were working on the railroad?
SF: Well, when I worked as a station laborer, the first duties that I had was handling freight, unloading freight from the cars. Thurmond was sort of a terminal, a terminus point for the local areas of Thurmond. And then when I had a little more experience, then I was taken over to the baggage room, and I helped to handle the mail baggage. And then when I was pro— moted to a group—two clerk, my duties then consisted of calling the train crews out for, for their work assignments. They used to call that a good job, a person on the job "call boy."
PN: Call boy?
SF: A call boy. And I was amused, one afternoon I was in the store, and the cashier heard me talking with one of the boys that I worked with. And he had said, "Well, here's my favorite call boy. " And she leaned over and said, “Listen, do call boys do the same thing that call girls do?" I says, "Oh, no. This is a different kind of call boy.” She knew better but this was, this was her time to get a joke going. That was the extent of my duties there. I was responsible for seeing that all the men were notified when to report for work. And it was often my duty to keep a record of the crew board, to see that all the men were called on their proper turn, or sequence, and that the crews were called in their proper order.
PN: When you began to work in 1929, did many of the railroad workers have a union to represent them?
SF: No, no, there had been a union, but during the strike in, probably in 1922, a long time before 1 was hired, the union sort of went down. And it did not become active until in the, in the thirties. And even then, the Black employees were not permitted membership until some laws were changed. And then later, in the early fifties, then we were permitted membership . Now they had some sort of a satellite lodge where all Blacks could join after a period of time. But then this didn't last too long. Because after the Civil Rights Movement started, why then all was changed. So I am a member now, even though retired, of the Brotherhood of Railway, Steamship Clerks, and Airline Employees. That union has merged with ours.
PN: When you began working — this is kind of a complicated question I guess you were a yard laborer?
SF: Station laborer.
PN: A station laborer.
SF: Yes, see I was in the transportation department. And this had to do with the employees that worked around the trains and around the station ticket office — janitors and so on.
PN: And there was no union for any of the employees at that time, whether they were white or Black?
SF: The white employees had a union, but it was dormant there for a period of time. See, they'd had a strike and this all but destroyed their union, but then it finally after a period of time, they were able to revive it. And now they have the most viable union.
PN: What vas the first year that you were actually permitted to be a member of the union?
SF: A full—fledged member, that must have been 1950.
PN: That was different from the United Mine Workers then…
SF: Oh yes.
PN: …which didn't discriminate in terms of Its membership?
SF: Oh yes, this was very different. And it was about when, full membership was permitted, it brought about lots of changes. And some of us benefitted by it, and in some departments there was some of us that lost jobs because jobs were cataloged into certain areas. For the [benefit of the] membership, you see, the Black employees were not permitted membership, and this gave the white members a chance to build a lodge like they wanted it, long before we were permitted membership. So when we were permitted to join the white lodge, see this put us way down on the list. But I was, have not been bitter toward that, because this was a transition. And change is pretty devastating: some of us survive and some of us don’t. But I think that in the long run, why, I was among the few that survived the change and by staying close to the job's working schedule, doing my work religiously, minding my business, why I didn't have too much problem.
PN: When you began in 1929 and the early thirties, what percentage would you say of all the people that worked there In Thurmond were Black, and what percentage were white?
SF: Well, I wouldn't know just how to break that down. Now on the, in the maintenance—of—way department, most all the, all of the employees with the exception of the foremen were Black. In the train service department, around the round house, all the laborers were Black. And I wouldn't have any way of knowing how many were employed, because at the round house, they worked three shifts. And there were a few Blacks who helped break the strike and they, during that period of time, they got some good jobs. And there were one or two boilermaker helpers, and several were employed as machinists, and there were two Black hostlers — and these were the men that moved the engines around at the roundhouse for cleaning and repairs and so on. And so, there were a goodly, there were a goodly number. I do know this much — there were more people employed at the freight house than they have total in Thurmond now. And so the change has wreaked havoc with the employment force, of course, with the coming of the diesel engines, and the slowing—down of the mine operations, and mechanization too has had its toll.
PN: You were talking about the strike a minute ago — do you remember what year that was?
SF: As best I can remember, this was 1922.
PN: Oh, the '22 strike?
SF: Mm.
And you 're saying, what, at that time, the union was white only?
SF: Yes.
PN: So if a Black person applied for a job, he didn't get it, right?
SF: Not through the union. But when they struck, they hired lots of non—union people, even whites. And, of course, as the old cliche "The show must go on." And they were labelled "scabs" and so on; well, later on, they called 'em strikebreakers, but for the most part, that nasty word "scab…
PN: Let me get your reaction to this. In a way it would seem that if the union — which was all white — didn't allow Black members, it wasn't exactly fair for them to turn around and call a Black person who took the job a "scab," when he couldn't even work otherwise. Do you think that's accurate.
SF: Well, that was their attitude. But this was unfair, because if Blacks had been permitted in the, membership in their union, they would have struck just like everybody else. And, of course, you take a man who had never had a meaningful job, and then all of a sudden he has a chance to make a good living for his family, why it takes some doing for him to say, "No, thank you, I’ll have no part." And, of course, this was true of lots of white people who did not think kindly toward the union, and they grabbed those jobs as fast as they were offered to them.
PN: It would seem in some ways and maybe you could comment on this — from what you were just saying, that maybe the history of the railroad workers' unions and the miners' union were somewhat the same. Cause 1922 was the year that I know the miners' union was broken, and you were talking about the parallel there.
SF: With the exception that the miners were all in one big union.
[The United Mine Workers always organized coal miners on an industrial union basis since its founding in 1890; the UMW also generally had a policy of organizing Black and white miners into the same locals, even in the Deep South. The railroad workers' union, on the other hand, was fragmented and was actually several unions, organized along the lines of different crafts. Railroad workers' unions, moreover, had a history of excluding Black workers, more or less openly.]
Much of that now has been overcome, due to legislation that has passed, made it almost impossible now for this kind of thing to exist.
PN: When you worked in Thurmond, where did you live? Did you live right in Thurmond, or did you live out here in Harvey then?
SF: Oh no. For a number of years, I lived in Thurmond. But when I was first hired, I was living at Meadow Fork. And I walked or caught a ride with somebody down to Thurmond. And then later on, then I started to “batching" down there. After I was married, why then we finally got a house to live in there at Thurmond and, of course, I was right close to my work. And we lived in Thurmond then for a number of years, and we moved into this community in 1945. And I had to commute from here then to Thurmond. Of course, by that time, in the fifties I guess it was, I was able to buy an automobile, and I drove in my own car.
PN: When you lived in Meadow Fork, what type of a house did you live in?
SF: It was just the average coal company house.
PN: And then when you moved to Thurmond, and said you were batching, where did you live then?
SF: I lived in one of the shanties that were made possible by the railroad companies for its employees, because see they didn't have too many accommodations for the employees, and most especially the Black employees. And they set off several boxcars that were outfitted for fairly comfortable living. And this is how we had to, we had to live.
PN: Are those similar to the boxcars that still sit along the road?
SF: That's right, you see some of them now. I lived in one of those boxcars.
PN: How many of those boxcars were there, would you say, when you were living in them?
SF: Oh, when I was living in one, I guess in that particular area, there must have been, maybe eight or ten, maybe 12.
PN: How many men would live in them?
SF: well sometimes there would be three or four men to a car. You see, and then in some instances there were more. Of course, they had double bunks in them, and maybe there would be four men sleeping in one end of the car, and the other end was the kitchen and the cooking area.
PN: Where were the boxcars located then, in about the same place they are now?
SF: Yea, the same place they are now.
PN: Did many people come in and work during the week, and leave during the weekends?
SF: Oh yea, see many of the people — lots of the whites too, for that matter — lived in, come out of Virginia. And they would work through the week and then go home over the weekend. See this was just a temporary thing. There were just one or two men, maybe, who for a short period of time moved their families into a situation like that. Most of them came from Buckingham County, Virginia and Louisa County, Virginia. And oh, it would be a sight to see them, oh with their suitcases going home for the weekend.
PN: Let me ask this question which just occurred to me. Several people that I have spoken to have mentioned Buckingham County, Virginia. Do you any explanation why so many people who worked in Thurmond and along the gorge seemed to come from that particular place?
SF: Well, it was sort of like a chain reaction. You see, Virginia 's farming country. Well, when the mines, the coal mines opened up, well here was the kind of money that those people had never heard of. And many of them came out here and worked in the mines. And they commuted home the same way, although many of them moved their families into the mining communities. And it was sort of clannish—like. For instance, I come out and get a job, and I'd get a job for, recommend my brother, or my uncle, or so on, or good friends. And so word passed, word passed along. And there for a long time, most of the men — Blacks who worked at the round house came out of Louisa County, Virginia. They were either related or good friends.
PN: And what years would you say they first came to Thurmond?
SF: Well this goes farther back than I could remember, because when, see I was born in 1911. Well now, I didn't have whole lots of knowledge of what was happening around until I was, well about eight or nine years old. And see, this was going on then. But I would suggest that when the mine industry opened up in this area, why people started to coming into the area. There were lots of people that came [here] from the Deep South. They came, they came mostly into the coal—mining communities. They used to run what they called "transportations”. Here would be a man that knew lots of people in a certain area. Well, he would be given x—number of dollars to go and round workers. And the coal companies would pay him and pay their fares. And they called this “transportation" this is where lots of people came into the area.
PN: What states would they come from, generally?
SF: To begin with, most of the people who came in that I have, as far back as I can remember, came out of Alabama. Now there were lots of, there were a few people out of the Carolinas. But many of the mining communities were filled with Alabamians.
PN: Would they come from, say, Jefferson County or Jasper County, Alabama?
SF: Well, it's a funny thing about people from Virginia and the Deep South too; you would never know exactly where they came from. Because they'd have a mailing address at some large town. See — Bessemer, Birmingham in Alabama, now those are principal cities. Most all of them would give you that kind of an address. And the same way with the people In Virginia. The people in Buckingham County, they mostly said as their address Buckingham Courthouse. In Louisa County, it was Louisa County Courthouse. You get off the train and ride all day to get out in the woods where they live. But it sounds prestigious, you know, to have a mailing address at those larger towns. [laughs] I used to have a friend who was a native Alabamian. And I'd ask him sometimes, just for the fun of it, "Where did you come from?" And he would say, "Pittsboig". But here was that southern accent, see, but he was really an Alabamian. But he didn't want that touch. But he'd always say "Pittsboig”.
PN: Were many of those men miners in Alabama before they came up here?
SF: I don't think so. I think they got more of their mining experience here in West Virginia, although there are coal mines in Alabama.
PN: Let me just go back to some other things you were mentioning. You said that after you got married, you moved out of the shanties or boxcars into a house. That was in Thurmond?
SF: No, I didn't move to Thurmond then. I moved to Newlyn.
PN: Newlyn.
SF: Mm. We lived in two rooms that we rented from a friend who worked in the mines. And of course, he was the landlord. But we were good friends, and he rented us two rooms to live in until we could establish something better.
PN: What year was that?
SF: In 1931, the ninth day of August, is when we married. And the next week, then we moved into the two rooms that we had rented up in this coal—mining community .
PN: And what did you use the two rooms for? One as a bedroom and…
SF: Yea, we just had a bedroom and a kitchen. The kitchen was an all—purpose place. [laughs]
PN: How long did you stay there in Newlyn?
SF: Oh, we lived there maybe two or three years. And then, when the panic came, or the Depression, why I had to, I was furloughed. And I worked in the mines again for, from 1933 until 1935, when I stood for re—employment. And during that time, I worked for the Newlyn Coal Company for a while. And then, I wasn't doing too well there. I left there, and went to work for Mason Coal Company over on Piney Branch.
PN: Mesa?
SF: Mason Coal Company. And this was an experience. I loaded coal with another companion for, at Newlyn, and we dug it with a pick, for 41 cents a ton. And then one day, the superintendent came in, and they gave us a long talk — lecture — and informed us that they had reduced our per—ton rate to 40 cents. And I’ll never forget; he said to us, “Now, if anybody can't live with it, why you're free to go and get you another job." But where were we going? And the thing that upset me, he took about an hour to explain this all to us when I could have been loading another car of coal But I left there and went over to, over on, to the Mason Coal Company on Piney Branch, and I had a job there loading machine coal. It was cut with a low—vein machine. Now this was a real experience. The coal was 26 inches tall; it just come up to my knees. And we, my friend and I, had been given a job on the night shift. And I never will forget the first night that I reported for work. I kept looking for the coal. And finally I asked him, one of the fellows that was taking us in, and I said, "Where's the coal?" And he said, "There it is." And about six inches above the top of the rail was a little vein of coal. Of course, after we got deeper in to where we were going to work in what they call a room, just off of the entry, well the coal turned out to be 26 inches tall. And they had to shoot slate above the coal for the roadway, so you could load coal. But when you get back into where you were working, why you had to, you had to get down on your knees and almost kiss the ground to get the coal up. But I learned to make a living like that. But I was very happy, I was very happy when I didn't have to go into that place anymore.
PN: Was that cut with a cutting machine?
SF: Yes, that was cut with a, that was cut with a coal—cutting machine.
PN: A coal—cutting machine?
SF: Mm.
PN: And then you came in and loaded it after…?
SF: Yea, after the machine, yea, after the place was cut, the machine backed out. And sometime, we would have to shoot the coal down, move the, they called it "bug dust," move that dust out from under the cutting place. They cut it from the bottom, from the bottom. And we would load that bug dust out, and then put a shot In, and shoot the coal down. And they'd run the car then up the center of the place. And my buddy worked one side, and I worked the other side. And this is how we made a living.
PN: How did you manage to get yourself in there and a shovel in 26 inches of coal?
SF: Well, you had a straight—handled shovel. You couldn't use a shovel with a, what they called a high—vein shovel. See the shovel was flat.
PN: A high—what shovel?
SF: A high—vein shovel. You'd tear your hands all to pieces, in fact you just couldn't work. The shovels were straightened out flat and you would crawl up. I would take my dinner with me, and I'd leave it out on the entry. You were so cramped up, nobody ate while they were in there. Most of us ate our dinners when we came outside. I lived about three miles, maybe four miles, from where I worked down at Royal, across the river from Prince. So I had plenty of time to get the exercise and digest the food after work, now. That was an experience.
PN: Was it even possible, like to drink something when you were in that low coal?
SF: Oh yea, you'd get out in the roadway where the slate was shot, see, to give you, the motor travel room. You'd drink water. But you just didn't want to eat in there all cramped up like that.
PN: How many hours a day did you have to work at that time?
SF: We worked eight hours.
PN: What did you get paid for that?
SF: Well see, we got paid per ton. And we would, we could only load about four, maybe once in a while we would load eight, cars between us. And the cars would weigh around two ton per car.
PN: And that would be two men?
SF: Yes, we split that on the tonnage straight down the middle.
PN: What did you get paid a ton at that time?
SF: For that machine coal, we got paid 35 cents a ton.
PN: And then in 1935, you got your job back?
SF: I didn't get that, my regular job back. When they started, when we were coming out of the Depression and they started to rebuild the tracks, they extended the privilege to all the men who had been furloughed to sign for a job on the section. And I worked that summer on the section. And then by fall, why I stood for extra work then at the freight house and baggage room. And I worked extra then until 1936, and I fell heir to a regular job. And then I had a regular job from that time until I was retired in 1969.
PN: What does extra work" mean?
SF: Well, you worked when someone laid off; or when there was an excess of freight to be handled they'd call one of the cut—off men. See, this was extra. I made lots of money working as an extra, because most all the men were older men, and they would want off for some reason or another. And when they knew that I was willing to work their shifts for them, why I picked up, at one point, I guess I made almost as much working extra, as an extra employee, as some of the regular employees. But I managed to survive.
PN: When you didn't get extra work, did you work on the section then?
SF: No, they wouldn't allow us, they wouldn't allow us to work on two payrolls. When I stood for extra work, or when I was marked up back in the transportation department, I had to stay with that. And when I didn't have anything else to do during hunting season, why I took my old trusty shotgun and went out shot me a squirrel or two or a rabbit.
PN: This leads me into another thing. What did you usually do for re— creation, hunting and fishing?
SF: I never did learn to fish, but I taught myself to hunt. And this was a rewarding experience. You go out in the woods. And some days I would be successful and kill, during squirrel season, kill several squirrels; during the rabbit season, kill a few rabbits; or shoot a quail or so, a pheasant. And there for a long time, that was the meat on our table. Because during the Depression, the wages at that point, my wages was $2.84 a day when I worked an eight—hour shift. And some days, I would not work eight hours continuous. We'd work a split shift. We'd work so many hours, and then they would relieve me, or relieve us. And then we'd come back and work four more hours. And there have been times when it took me 12 hours to get six hours actual work — paying, because of the on and off.
PN: Did you live right in Thurmond?
SF: Yea, I lived right in Thurmond, yes.
PN: Did you live on the south side or in the main part?
SF: No, I lived over in the north side, the main part of Thurmond.
PN: Where, above where the Banker's Club is now?
SF: No, the Blacks were not permitted to live in that part of town. We had some houses up east of the railroad station on the hill.
PN: On the hillside?
SF: Mm.
PN: Is that where, if you take that road which goes up the hill today, in that vicinity?
SF: Just east of that road, yea. When you take that road around the hill, it turns right where it used to be a community church. Now we lived on beyond, on beyond that. There used to be, I guess, maybe 12, 15 little huts stuck along the hillside. I lived in one of them.
PN: How many rooms were in those?
SF: The house that I lived in had three rooms. Most of them had three, or four small rooms.
PN: Did the railroad build them?
SF: Oh no, no. They belonged to the McKell heirs. See, the two brothers, one of them was, well their father bought lots of land from Thurmond back up Loup Creek. They had lots of coal interests, and they owned that part of Thurmond and they rented those houses out.
PN: When you lived in Thurmond, in terms of your social life, did you often meet miners from some of the surrounding communities?
SF: Oh yes. You see, Thurmond was sort of a terminus. And people, at one time, the railroad was the only outlet for the mining communities. It was a long time before they had a highway down there. And the trains that travelled up Loup Creek that touched all the coal mines. And this was the only mode of travel.
PN: In these years, in the thirties, did you ever grow a garden?
SF: Oh yes, yes, you learned to do lots of things. [laughs]
PN: Was that a significant part of your food, or your diet?
SF: Yes, yes.
PN: What did you usually grow?
SF: Well beans and potatoes and corn, small stuff like that.
PN: Let me just switch slightly. I want to ask you something about this before the tape runs out. When did you, you know, build a church? And did you have churches before when you were working on the railroad?
SF: Yes. Now the first Black church was started, was the outgrowth rather, of debating society literary society. And this commenced in what was the living quarters for the employees at the old Dunglen Hotel. And they got along so well they organized a Sunday School. And from that then, they organized a church. And this took place from my mother's history, I believe; she has since passed about 1913 or 14. And that is when the group grew too large for the limited quarters they had on the south side, at the living quarters of the old Dunglen Hotel. They moved across the river to a rooming house, and they were permitted to use the large room, assembly room, upstairs over this restaurant, combination restaurant and a rooming house. And then, in the later years, must have been around in the teens — '17 or '18 they got together then and moved the church services back across the river to a school building. And in the early twenties, then they were able to, with the help of the McKell heirs, they were given a little piece of ground and they built a church on the side of the hill, in what was known then as the Dunglen section of Thurmond. The railroad, it was a railroad station stop, and they called it South Side. I went to, I went to church school in that setting when I was old enough. And my wife and I became Christians the same year in that little church. That holds some fond memories for us.
PN: And is that same congregation the congregation that you 're the pastor of today?
SF: No, no, they're only two Black people in Thurmond now — a widow woman and a friend of mine, Clinton Tinsley. I imagine you may have run into him.
PN: Clinton Tinsley?
SF: Yea, has an artificial leg. He lives in the little house after you get into Thurmond before you cross the railroad bridge, where the road turns and crosses Loup Creek and goes up New River. He lives in a little house right at that bridge.
PN: When did you become a pastor of a church yourself?
SF: Oh, in 1936, I guess I became pastor of my first congregation. And that was down on Cotton Hill Mountain. And I would ride a train to Cotton Hill, and walk up the mountain to Beckwith.
PN: Oh, cause you lived in Thurmond?
SF: I lived in Thurmond.
PN: And when was the church right next door here originally built?
SF: This is the white Methodist church, and I would have to look on that bulletin board.
PN: Oh, you 're not associated with that?
SF: No, no. We 're good friends; but see, I am a member of the Baptist church. And our church is the church that you see down over the hill, just as you follow the road around. Our church sets down over, below the, below the road.
PN: Are you still the active minister of that church?
SF: No, no. I 'm not the active minister here. This is the church of our membership after we left Thurmond. But my pastorate was, up until the first Sunday in October, was at the First Baptist Church, White Sulphur Springs. I commuted from here over there. I was with that congregation for 16 years.
PN: Wow, until last month?
SF: Until, yes, until last month. And I'm the minister at the First Baptist Church, Union, over in Monroe County now.
[The first of two reels for Interview Twenty—Two ended on the previous page. That part was conducted on November 12, 1980.]
Oral History Project - Frazier, Stewart H. Jr. Part 2
African american, Railroading 1929-1969, Thurmond, McKendree Hospital, Black Churches
— The second of two reels for Interview Twenty—Two begins here. This part was conducted on November 25, 1980.
PN: Rev. Frazier, maybe we could follow up some of the material that you were discussing in the last interview. First, I was wondering if you could describe your experiences at McKendree Hospital, when you were the chaplain there.
SF: Well that was a wonderful experience. I had been asked at various times if I would come and just give 'em a service. I kept putting it off. But finally I had the time, and I decided, well, I’ll run up there this Sunday, and I’ll get this off my back. And so I rode the local train, Number Fourteen — just the even numbers run east; the odd numbers run west. And I had planned to conduct the service and get back on Thirteen, and then I would be through with McKendree. But I was so overwhelmed with what I found there, and the needs that I found, I not only spent the whole Sunday afternoon and rode the late train back to Thurmond, but I had agreed to go back to the home each convenient Sunday. And finally I resigned a local church that I was pastoring, and gave that time to the institution and its people. And another church that I was pastoring down at Stone Cliff - oh, the church that I resigned was at Thayer — and the church at Stone Cliff finally went down because the mines blew out, the people moved away. And I found myself giving full—time to the old folks at the institution. And for a long period of time, I conducted three services each Sunday two services up on the ward and then, two services in the chapel, I beg your pardon, and one service on the ward. I say on the ward, this was on the ward where the immobile patients were. And 1 carried the service to them. And then I would go on Wednesday evenings for a mid—week service. And during this time, I was employed by the C. and O. Railway. And it was just my good fortune to have a boss—man who was in sympathy with what I was doing. And he allowed me all the free time possible. And so I was never penalized on my job for the time that I spent minstering to the inmates. And this was, this was a most wonderful experience. But here it started out as just a service to get rid of something. And all of a sudden, here I find myself going full—time.
PN: What was the year that you conducted the first service there?
SF: This was in, I guess 41.
PN: And how long did you continue?
SF: I, I stayed with the institution until the institution was finally integrated, and they moved the older, old folks back to Huntington. Well, they spread them out, carried some to Denmar [near Hillsboro in Pocahontas County] and other places. But the, the institution per se, they relocated back in Huntington. This was in the fift—, the early fifties.
PN: And they closed down McKendree?
SF: They closed, yea, they down completely.
PN: Do you know what year exactly that was?
SF: Not as I can remember. That must have been in 51 - '50 or '51.
PN:And do you know what year that McKendree changed from a hospital to become an old folks' home.
SF: No, not being associated with the institution at that time, I didn't pay much attention to that.
PN: Was that a negative step, in some ways, do you think that they closed down McKendree, and took that facility away? Or do you think that was basically a positive thing?
SF: Do you mean when they moved the old folks back?
PN: No, this was a positive step. You see, because prior to that it was a segregated institution. The white people, older white people, were at Sweet Springs, and our people were there at McKendree. And so when they integrated the institutions, this was a, this was more positive. And oh, I missed the association with the, with the people and so on, but I was glad for them because this meant for a better, a better life for them.
PN: When, in the years between 1941 and 1951, that you were travel ling to McKendree every Sunday and Wednesday, I was wondering if you could just describe what the town looked like. Or, is it correct to call it a town?
ST: Well, it was just, just a little, just a little, a little community. No, it wasn't, wasn't a town, just a little community. Cause the hospital was the only thing there.
PN: Were there any stores, or anything like that there?
SF: Maybe at one point, there vas a little concession across the tracks from the, where the train stopped. But this was just an indi—, an individual type of thing. You know, how people see probably an opportunity to make themselves a little, a little extra change. And I don't know who the people were that lived there, but they had a little concession stand there for the benefit of people that would be getting on and off of the train.
PN: Did the people that were employed at the institution at that time, did they live in McKendree?
SF: Yes, yes, they, they had rooms there at the, you see, what, what used to be the nurse's home and the doctor or staff quarters this was converted into living quarters for the employees. The superintendent of the institution and his staff lived, lived there, and the employees. Oh, they may have been, maybe one or two employees that drove in. But for the most part, they, it was a live—in situation.
PN: Were most, or all, of the employees Black at that time?
SF: With the exception, for a while, of the farmer. Now down below the institution, there was a farmer. This was a carry—over from the old hospital days. He was resident farmer.
PN: A farmer?
SF: Yes, and for a while after the institution was changed, why he farmed, run the farm for the institution. But that didn't last too, too long. And aside from him and his family, why then the other employees were Black.
PN: Did the farmer grow most of the food?
SF: A goodly portion of it.
PN: Really?
SF: I don't know just how much, how much acreage they had there. But they, they had a pretty good—sized farm. And this was all that he did. He raised vegetables, and he raised hogs, and chickens and so on, yea. And it was, it was a pretty nice affair. But then as the appropriations grew smaller, you see, now when the, when the old folks, when the West Virginia Home for the Aged, of course, moved in, I think they moved them in there on the appropriation for the state hospital, which at that time I'm pretty certain was $56, 000. But then they didn't have an appropriation that large afterwards. And so there wasn't money enough then, and it wasn't productive either, to main— , continue to maintain the farm and the farmer. And so then they moved away.
PN: Is there anything else about McKendree that you think is significant to mention?
SF: Well, I think, I think this, I think this perhaps is significant. Cause we had some of the finest people there as staff as, as you would find. The first superintendent that I worked with was a Dr. George Banks from Huntington. And he wasn't there too long after, after I started going in, until the, they appointed a Methodist preacher and a retired Army officer, Lt. Theodore Thornhill. And he was, he was a most unusual person, and the care for the people. Now the institution wasn't as clean as he thought it should have been, and he spent a lots of time and money cleaning up those to make it presentable and desirable place for the inmates. And I will never forget how rigid he was with the employees. He didn't allow the old people to be abused by the employees. And there had been a few times that he had dismissed employees on the spot for their apparent abuse of the inmates. And he never allowed anything on his table, or the staff's table, that was not on the inmates' table. And this was most unique, because in so many instances, why they have the finer things for their, for the staff, and the inmates have what's left. So I think this would be something that would be worthy of mentioning. And it became the last stop for the Institutions Investigating Committee. They always wound up their tour of the institutions at McKendree so that they would have dinner at the Home for the Aged Colored People at McKendree. So that gives you an idea how nice the place was.
PN: Was Mr. Thornhill white, or was he Black?
SF: He was Black, mm.
PN: You mentioned that when you were very young that you went to McKendree as a patient.
SF: Oh yes. My mother took me to the hospital. In fact, she at one time was employed at the hospital. And I developed this adenoid and tonsil problem. And she carried me to the McKendree Hospital. That's where I lost my adenoids and tonsils. And so even though I was just a youngster, going back there in later years to carry a religious service to a group of old people had a sentimental touch to it.
PN: And how old were you then when you were in the hospital as a patient?
SF: I was between six and seven years old. So as I'd walk around through there, through the halls where, I had the memory of one time that I was down in the operating room.
PN: Was the hospital segregated at that time in any way?
SF: Well yes, most everything was. The colored people, or Black people, they were on wards to themselves just like the, just the white people were.
PN: Were the employees, such as nurses and doctors, did they stay either on the white section or the Black section, or did they move around?
SF: Well now, they, yes, they, they had, they had their separate quarters; yes, they had their separate quarters. Now I don't know of any, of any Black nurses at that, at that time. But the cooks and the orderlies and the maids and so on they were all Black.
PN: They were all Black?
SF: Mm. Of course, this was the, this was the trend. You consider the period of time that you’re thinking back into, and this was not an unusual thing .
PN: What years are you talking about, the twenties?
SF: I'm talking about before the twenties, yes, before the twenties. So this was not frowned on too largely, because it was the commonly—accepted thing.
PN: Was that true up through the twenties and the thirties also?
SF: Yea.
PN: When was McKendree Hospital originally built, do you know?
SF: No, I don't, I don't know too much about that history, because when I became old enough, got old enough to know, to notice what was going on, the hospital was there. Now this Clinton Tinsley that I referred you to some time back, now he could give you that background information.
PN: And after 1951, when the institution finally closed down, what, what happened to the physical buildings there?
SF: The vandals wrecked it. To have gone back there a year after the place was abandoned, and to remember what it was like two years before, you couldn't help but shed tears.
PN: That quickly?
SF: Yea.
PN: So you couldn't even recognize it really after…
SF: No, no. Oh, the old structure stood, but then people just went there and carried stuff off and destroyed all of it. This, this was a, was a beautiful, was a beautiful place there.
PN: The pictures I 've seen, it seemed to be a really beuatiful place. Let me switch to another institution, if that would be OK.
SF: All right.
PN: When we were speaking last time, you talked a little bit about the Dunglen Hotel. I was wondering if you could describe that a little bit more fully, and everything that happened there, and what that meant to the community.
SF: Well, I don't think I would be able to, to describe everything that went on there, because there were so many things that happened. But the Dunglen Hotel in Thurmond was, this was just like going to Philadelphia or New York. This was, this was the meeting place of businesses, the coal operators sit there; buyers for the company stores [went] to the Dunglen Hotel to meet the salesmen well, they called them “drummers" then. They would bring their samples, and they had all these display rooms there, and they would spread their wares out. And the people did their buying. NOW I guess the Dunglen Hotel in Thurmond had the same kind of prominence, considering the difference in the time, as the Greenbrier enjoys now. And I've heard em talk about the poker games that went on and on and on. But just it is known at the Greenbrier, you could go there to the Dunglen Hotel and you wouldn't have to leave. You could get anything that you wanted, and some people got lots of things that they didn't want. But it was, it was, it was a great place. And there was a bridge that spanned the Loop Creek and went over to the train stop on, on the South Side. And of course, at that time, there were passenger trains up and down Loop Creek, and they all stopped for persons going to the Dunglen Hotel. And to have seen that place at night, now this was something beautiful. Because the bridge was, had lights on it, from the hotel all the way across to the main station, railroad station, up on the north side. And they turned those lights on at train time. Of course, this was, it was not only, not so much for the beauty, but for the safety of people who, that walked across there. Because very few people dared to cross New River going into the hotel or going over into the little settlement they called Ballyhack.
PN: What was it?
SF: Ballyhack, that was, that was, there was a little town, a little settlement…
PN: Ballyhack?
SF: Yea, and they called it Ballyhack. And that too had lots of colorful history too. Because there was a saloon over there, and one place, and one great huge building they called the "Blackhawk. And this was, was where lots of things went on too. It's just, it's unbelievable to see what is left, and remembering what, what used to be there.
PN: Where was Ballyhack? Was that on the Thurmond side of the river?
SF: This was on what they called the South Side.
PN: The South Side?
SF: Yes, this was on the same side as the hotel. You see the town of Thurmond was all across, all across the river over to the north side, where the passenger station, railroad station was.
PN: And the bridge you were talking about, it went over Loop Creek?
SF: Yes, this was just, this was a small, this was a small bridge that connected the Dunglen Hotel with the, the railroad coming across from Thurmond. They had a little, they had a little, little canopy of affair there with seats, and the people would wait under that shelter for the Loop Creek passenger train to come across from Thurmond, and go up Loop Creek or to return from Price Hill back into Thurmond…
PN: Say, if people wanted to go from the Dunglen Hotel to the main station over at Thurmond…
SF: Yea, they walked across that bridge that spanned the Loop Creek, and then proceeded to, on across the, the big bridge into, into Thurmond.
PN: Then they'd walk across the big bridge that's still there today?
SF: Yea, that's still there today. See, it had a walkway on it, and, and it had the lights all the way.
PN: On the big bridge?
SF: Oh yes, oh yes. Nobody walked across there unprotected after dark.
PN: When you mentioned Ballyhack, who lived there? Was that railroad workers?
SF: Well, yea, there were lots of railroad workers that lived there. And, I don't know how many houses. Well, just everywhere there was a little space, there was, there was a house there.
PN: That was down towards the south of the Dunglen Hotel?
SF: Yes, back in the direction that the highway follows now, coming up Loop Creek.
PN: Was it mostly Black people or white people that lived in Ballyhack?
SF: It was Black and white, yes.
PN: And you'd mentioned Weewind before. That was further up, wasn't it?
SF: Yes now, no, no. Now this was still on the South Side, but about a mile or so below Thurmond. Weewind was almost straight across from Thurmond.
PN: And that's where Arbuckle…
SF: That's where Arbuckle Creek empties into New River at.
PN: And who lived there, anybody in particular?
SF: No, I didn't know too much, I didn't know too much about, about that place. Now, this was just a little mining community, but I do believe that
PN: Weewind was?
SF: Yes.
PN: Mining?
SF: Back in the twenties, some people by the name of Bear, operated the mine there for a while.
PN: What, Bear?
SF: Bear, yea . That was, well see most of the little places that were beginning to fade out, and finally became non—existent. It's only in the minds of people who did remember it.
PN: And you said that the Dunglen was a pretty wide open place, or something.
Maybe you could elaborate a little bit on that, if you wanted to.
SF: Well, they, they did some of every, some of everything there. They did some of everything there. Just like you find, well, on a smaller scale, you could compare it with Las Vegas.
PN: It must have been pretty lively.
SF: Oh yes, yes it was lively. And when I was in my early teens, I worked at the Dunglen Hotel as a porter. The man that operated the hotel at that time was a railroader. His name was Robert Higgins. He and his family operated the hotel. But of course, the, this was the, the prominence and so on had begun to fade out. Now that was, it wasn't the big thing that it had been in times past, or he would have never been able to have gotten a hold of it. And toward the last, it became more or less just more or less a rooming house.
PN: Really?
SF: Mm.
PN: You worked there for a couple of years?
SF: Oh about a year. For $25 a month, and board and room. But I was too young to occupy my room at the hotel. I had to report to my Mama, my mother's home every evening shortly after 7:00. I went on duty at 7:00 in the morning, and stayed on duty till 7:00 in the evening. But my mother didn't think that that was a desirable place for a kid 15 years old to spend the night by himself, so I had to [laughs] to sleep at home.
PN: Where did they serve meals? Did they have big, big dining rooms?
SF: Yes, they had, yes, they had a big dining room. I don't know how many waiters [and] waitresses that they must have employed there. But it was, it was it was a sumptuous place. Were most of the employees Black at the time, or…?
SF: Yes, yes. They, they had Black and white employees. But the Black employees were maids, porters, and bell boys, and handymen, and maintenance people. But here again, this was not a unique thing in itself, because this was, you know, [the] pattern for the, for the time. And I guess that those people were just as proud of working at the Dunglen Hotel, as lots of people enjoy the same prestige now working in some, in some of the more prestigious positions. They had their own power plant, and their own ice—making plant. Then they had a small farm too along the, along the river bank. They raised their hogs, and plus they, the feed cost, they fed the scraps from the, from the hotel to the hogs. Of course, they had to supplement with other, other food. But then this was how that they, they managed it.
PN: The hotel owned the farm, and the…
SF: Yea, yea, mm.
PN: How many people could stay at the hotel, if it was full?
SF: Oh I, I, I wouldn't have an idea how many would at the capacity then. But I do know from the conversations that I've had with people who were much older, there were times when you couldn't get a room.
PN: What was the year that you were working there - 1925?
SF: Yea 1925, '26.
PN: And at that time, it was beginning to…
SF: Oh yes, oh yes, it was, the bottom had begun dropping. See because here you just coming into the, to the Depression. And it was on its way, on its way out.
PN: And this transition you mentioned between being strictly a hotel, and being a rooming house, had already begun to take place?
SF: Oh yes, it had already begun to, begun to take place.
PN: But you could still get a room for an evening, if you wanted to?
SF: Oh yes.
PN: If you were passing through on a train?
SF: Yes, yes. At that time, there was no problem getting a room. If you had, you had the, the, the money, you could get a room all right.
PN: What did it cost to get a room at that time?
SF: Well now, I don't know what the higher—priced rooms were, but two or three dollars for the cheaper rooms. There were certain sections, you know, where it was kind of rough. Those rooms were, were a little cheaper. And in that part, why you was there almost at your own -risk too. [laughs]
PN: You mean right in the hotel there were real different sections?
SF: Oh yes, yes. There were some residents who were not allowed on the, in the higher class section.
PN: Really?
SF: Oh yea. Street people, they didn't allow them up. Now they, they were up on the third floor, and then the, the higher class people, see, had the, the better part up there of the hotel.
PN: So that wasn't necessarily segregated by race?
SF: Oh no, no, no. It was, see now, it just was not, a Black person renting a room at the Dunglen Hotel this was just out of the question. See, because there was, you understand, this was still back in the, in the period of segregation. And so they didn't have any problem because the Black folk knew not to, not go there expecting to rent a room. To be a maid, bellhop, or porter — well this, this was the extent. And then they had quarters for the Black people to live in. This was a huge building a few hundred yards from the hotel. And this was where all the Black employees stayed. Of course, the white employees stayed in the main hotel; they had certain sections there for them too.
PN: What was the other building you referred to? Was it like a boarding house?
SF: Yea, well they, they called it which I guess was the proper name for it — they called it “The Quarters”. This is where the, where the
Blacks stayed.
PN: Was that owned by the hotel also?
SF: Yes, that was, yea, that was owned by the hotel.
PN: Say some, you know, Black person was travelling through on the train, and wanted to stop at Thurmond overnight. Was there a hotel that he or she could go to?
SF: Yes, now over on the, on the Thurmond side, or the north side, there was a, a restaurant and a rooming house, just a short distance from the, from the passenger station, I mean this is where Black people stayed.
PN: What was the name of that, do you remember?
SF: I don't think it had any particular name. It just was sort of a combination affair — the store in the lower part and the restaurant, and then upstairs, there were rooms for rent. It, just a rooming house more or less, sort of a combination rooming house. It didn't have any particular name.
PN: Do you remember when we were speaking the previous time, you talked that, or you mentioned that there was a, that church services were held in the basement of the Dunglen where there was a room?
SF: No, the original services started in, I guess it would have been the recreation room at the, in the service quarters. And it started as sort of a literary society. And from that, they commenced to having prayer meetings, which caught on pretty well. And then they decided to, to organize a Sunday School and a church. So then they went across the river then, and they got permission to hold religious services in the, I guess it would have been considered the lobby of this, this, this rooming house upstairs. And from there then, they worked out plans to establish a church and for, but when they outgrew that place, then they got permission to conduct religious services in the county schoolhouse across, they went back across, came back across the river and used the, the county schoolhouse for a number of years. And then in the early twenties, a group of people got together and they got, they were given a little land from the McKe11 heirs. And they built a church building, still on the, on the South Side — just up the tracks a little ways from what used to be the old Blackhawk. Now this was a dive, sort of, we would call it now a jungle. But they built a church, and they had good attendance. In fact, the old church building still stands. But there's only just one Black person now living in Thurmond. But there's a minister who, up until last year, continued to try to have services there, because there were a few people just out of sentiment, see, would go, go back there. And I was converted and joined a church there at Thurmond. And this is where I married my childhood schoolmate, sweetheart; we were married in that church. And a year after, just about a year after we were married, I commenced preaching. I preached my first sermon in that little church.
PN: Was that 1929?
SF: No, this was in 1932. We married in 1931, the ninth day of August. And on the third Sunday in June of the next year, I started the ministry.
PN: When you mentioned that the congregation, or church, was originally founded as a literary society, and met in "The Quarters, what year was that?
SF: This carries me back now before this, I believe I remember Mother telling me that in 1912 or 1913.
PN: The year it started?
SF: Yea. Because it was during the time when she was first employed at the, at the hotel. And this, these were the early years that she was, that she was employed there.
PN: What did she do when she was working there?
SF: She was a maid?
PN: And she lived, and you lived right in Thurmond, on the South Side there?
SF: She lived at the, at the, at the quarters. See now, I, of course, did not live with her. I lived with my grandmother up in Minden, West Virginia. I was a pretty good—sized boy — I must have been six or seven years old - before 1 knew anything about Thurmond. Because it was long about that time when my mother took me; and of course she had left the hospital then, and she had worked at the, at the, I meant to say the hotel, she had worked at the hospital for, after…
PN: Before then?
SF: After that time. And I guess it was because of her acquaintance with the hospital that made it easier for her to take me. That, of course, was the only hospital that was available to us too during those years. I guess the other, the other closest hospital was down in the Montogmery area.
PN: During this whole period then in the late teens and the twenties, what, what would you say, or what role did the B lack church play there in Thurmond?
SF: Well the, the Black church was, it was a stablizing force in the community — well—attended and supported. There were lots of transients too in Thurmond. Lots of people, mostly out of, out of Virginia, that worked, personnel on the railroad. And they worshipped at the, at the church. And they would go back to their home churches, as they call it, for the summer homecomings, or the anniversaries or something like that. But then they worshipped and supported the church. And it was meaningful during those years.
PN: Were there any Black—owned businesses in Thurmond or the area?
SF: The store that I mentioned earlier and the combination rooming house and shoe shop. It was a Black, what do you call them, shoemaker. there in Thurmond. And this was all of the, this was all of the businesses.
PN: Those three?
SF: Yea, yea.
PN: So it was a rooming house on the north side?
SF: Yea.
PN: And the shoe shop on the north side?
SF: The shoe shop, for a while, was on the South Side. And then finally, in the later years, this old gentleman set up business over on the South Side [meaning the north side] . He was in business there until the, until there was a fire back in the, in the twenties that, that destroyed: the drugstore, the general mercantile store, the shoe shop, theater, and so on. And he than had to, had to find another location. And this is when he found a suitable place over on the South Side. In fact, he was in…
PN: The South Side?
SF: On the [correcting himself] north side, in the basement then of the, what had been the rooming house and, combination rooming house and store, he had his shoe shop.
PN: The store that you mentioned that was Black—owned, was that over on the north side?
SF: Yes, that was on the north side.
PN: Was that connected with the restaurant, or was that a sep—, and the rooming house, was that a separate…
SF: Well, I don' t know too much about the set—up. I think maybe there were several people in this to—, in this together. And just like you find in some of the modern complexes; you get two or three people that, that have a business in a general location. But that was, that was all of the, all of the businesses. In fact there was no opportunity, or no particular reason for any other, any, any kind of business there.
PN: you were talking briefly before about the roads being built, in the CCC and WPA, I was wondering if you could just say a couple of words about, you know, the role of WPA.
SF: Well, see that was a sort of relief valve for people during the Depression, and this took a lots of people off of direct relief. And they, wherever there was a little road to be built or other, some of the, some of the, the communities had sanitary work that was done by people on the WPA. And there Isn't really much to, to say about it, because it was just sort of a stop—gap, you see, between starvation and walking around, and making, eking out an existence. It was one of the, you know, one of the political things that happened for, to help the economy during that period of time.
PN: And they'd hire both white and Black people, didn't they, to work?
SF: Yea, yea, of course, your politics made the difference as to whether you got a job or not — just like it, just like it is now. [laughs] If your politics were right, why you got a job on the road. If they weren't, why you got a, some kind of a subsistence check.
PN: You said that most of the work that WPA did was in building roads?
SF: Yea, building roads and shoring up embankments that were sliding in, and so on.
PN: Were there separate crews for Blacks and whites, or did they work together?
SF: No, no, they, they all worked together then.
PN: That was pretty much what I wanted to ask you. There are about two minutes left on this tape. Is there anything else you want to add?
SF: No, I don't, I don't think there's anything more that I can, that I can add to that. Maybe you've got another question that you would, about something that you'd like to touch on.
PN: One other quick thing you mentioned before, I was wondering if you could discuss this — that there was an explosion at Red Ash, and they renamed the town after that?
SF: Yea, Rush Run. Well, now I was too young to know much of the back— ground about that. See, that's just what I picked up after years that I got old enough to get around and, and discuss and hear people discuss the thing. But this is principally what, what happened, what happened there.
PN: And they renamed it so…
SF: Well, there's lots of places that they had bad accidents and they closed them down for a while, then they'd rename 'em. And of course this made it more attractive, made it easier for, to hire people, see. Because a lots of people would not know anything about a place under a new name. But if you would tell them that this was such—and—such a place that exploded, why then maybe they wouldn't want to go to work there.
[End of Tape]
Oral History Project - Jackson, Ada Wilson 1980
Homemaker, African American, life in the coal camps, Women's Auxiliary, 1943 strike
[The subsequent interview, tape twenty—seven, is with Mrs. Jackson's mother, Mrs. Lula Lall Jones. Mrs. Jones makes an occasional remark during this tape; and Mrs. Jackson makes an occasional remark during the subsequent tape.]
PN: Mrs. Jackson, just to start off, maybe I could ask you where you were born?
AJ: I was born in Kentucky. I 'm a bluegrass woman. I was born in Kentucky.
PN: Really?
AJ: Mm. And raised in West Virginia.
PN: What was the town you were born in?
AJ: Erlington, Erlington, Kentucky.
PN: And then you moved to West Virginia?
AJ: My mother moved, we moved to West Virginia.
PN: What was the date that you were born?
AJ: August the 23rd, 1912.
PN: How old were you when you moved to West Virginia?
AJ: Four years old, wasn't it? Four years old.
PN: So you don't have too many memories of Kentucky yourself?
AJ: No, no, not at all.
PN: Where did you move when you moved to West Virginia?
AJ: We moved to Gary, West Virginia.
PN: Why did you move there?
AJ: Well, my daddy had a guy, he was just a miner, and he got a job there in Gary in West Virginia. And we moved from Kentucky to West Virginia.
PN: He worked for U. S. Steel there?
AJ: Yes, uh huh.
PN: How long did you live in Gary?
AJ: How long did we live in Gary, Mom?
DJ: About ten years.
AJ: Ten years.
PN: Ten years?
AJ: Mm.
PN: Did you move up to, to…
AJ: Concho, to, to Number 6, West Virginia.
PN: Which was Concho?
AJ: No, that's Gary, that's still in on over on the N. and W. Number 6, West Virginia. That's still on N. and W., up at Gary, over where Gary, you know; it's all still Gary.
PN: And when did you move up to the town of Concho?
AJ: In 1922, October the 31st.
PN: Why did you move? Did your father have a better job?
AJ: He had out a job, a better job over here.
PN: What was he doing in Gary?
AJ: Mining.
PN: What did he do, though, in…
AJ: Load coal.
PN: He loaded coal?
AJ: Mm.
PN: What did he do when he came up to Concho? Did he load coal?
AJ: Load coal.
PN: What was the mine that he worked at when he lived in Concho?
AJ: Rock Lick Smokeless Coal Company.
PN: Was that the only mine that they had?
AJ: No, they had one down on, up the hill, was Erskine. But they were both the same mines. But they called that one Erskine, down up under the hill because you had to go down on a little car to get to that one, to Erskine.
PN: And the mine that he worked in was right there at Concho?
AJ: My Daddy, no my Daddy worked at Rock Lick. He didn't work down to Erskine; he worked down in Rock Lick.
PN: Rock Lick?
AJ: Mm.
PN: How many, was Concho right near Rock Lick, you said?
AJ: Yes, about over a mile, a little over; that's where the store was.
PN: Where, at Rock Lick?
AJ: Uh huh, and then they put a store out at Concho.
PN: When he went to work, how long was the walk for him to go to work?
AJ: About, about three miles up there from Concho to where he had to go to work.
PN: Every day?
AJ: Every day, they had a ride. And some, one time, they would go through the drift mouth — up there on top of the hill at Concho. And then they would ride through that. And then they would get to Rock Lick.
PN: How many, did most of the people that lived in Concho work in the Rock Lick mine?
AJ: Yea, most of them worked in the Rock Lick mine.
PN: When you lived, when you moved to Concho in 1922, how many people lived there, would you say?
AJ: Bow many, Momma, I don’t…
PN: About 60 families.
AJ: Mm, about 60 families, she said, uh huh. Mom, you come talk, you know better, how more to talk than I do?
PN: Maybe I could keep on talking to you, and them maybe after talk to her.
AJ: Uh huh.
LJ: I can't talk too much; I got a sore throat.
PN: You said that Concho was right on the top of the mountain?
AJ: Uh huh, right up on top, looked right over the hill down to Thurmond. We used to walk down the hill to Thurmond — go to the movies. And then there were stores down there. And the station was down there then, the C. and O. station was down there. All the trains came in to Thurmond at that time.
PN: How did you get down there? Did you just walk straight down the mountain?
AJ: Why, right straight down the mountain, and down the railroad track.
PN: Where did that, where did you come out at, that little town called Weewind?
AJ: That's right, a little town called Weewind. Cross the log, and go on, and get on the track, and go on to Thurmond.
PN: When you were living in Concho, and you said about 60 families lived there, were some of them white and some of them Black?
AJ: Well, at first when we moved down there, they were mixed. And then, the most of the white people, they moved down to Rock Lick. And then there wasn't any, any, there were Black people out there then.
PN: That lived in Concho?
AJ: Uh huh,
PN: How long did Concho stay in existence until?
AJ: Nineteen and forty—two, wasn't it? Yea, 1942.
PN: What happened then?
AJ: The mines blew out.
PN: So everybody just started moving away?
AJ: Move, moving, and just strayed away, and came, some came to New River and same, some went other places.
PN: But most of the peo—, most of the miners had to find…
AJ: Jobs, they all of them, all of them had to find jobs, uh huh.
PN: Was that hard for people to find jobs at that time?
AJ: Not, not, not too bad, no, not at that time. Some went up to Carlisle, and some went to Minden, and some came to Whipple, and some came to, you know, different mine around, over on, near Beckley Cranberry and all over in there.
LJ: Minden.
AJ: Minden, Lochgelly, and Summer lee.
PN: You said that there was a, that they built a company store in Concho?
AJ: After, after, yes they had a, had a company store in Concho. The first, it was at Rock Lick, but then they put one around Concho.
PN: Because there were so many people living in Concho?
AJ: Uh huh, so many people living there.
PN: When did they build that?
AJ: Oh, I don't…
PN: In the thirties?
AJ: Along about in the thirties, just about in the thirties.
PN: When you moved there in 1922, were there any other buildings in Concho besides just the houses?
LJ: Nothing but homes, just homes around there.
AJ: A schoolhouse, schoolhouse, there was a schoolhouse.
PN: What, did the schoolhouse go through eighth grade?
AJ: Yes, it went through the eighth grade.
PN: Was there any churches there?
LJ: Yes, we had a little church sitting up on the hill overlooking Thurmond.
PN: What kind of a church was that?
LJ: A little wooden church.
PN: What was it, a Baptist church?
LJ: Bap— , Baptist church, yes it was a Baptist church.
PN: Was there a regular preacher there?
LJ: Yea, Rev. Craig, Rev. H. C. Craig.
PN: Craig?
AJ: Mm, Rev. H. C. Craig.
PN: Was he a full—time minister?
AJ: Yes, he was a full—time, until he retired him.
PN: Did he work in the coal mines too?
AJ: No, no, he didn't work in the coal mines, cause he lived in Beckley.
PN: What would he do? He would come up, you know, on a Sunday?
AJ: On Sundays, mm.
LJ: The company paid him $20.
AJ: The company paid him $20 a Sunday.
PN: Oh really?
AJ: During then, to come to preach.
PN: To preach?
AJ: Uh huh, during that time.
PN: How did he get up there from Beckley, take the train?
AJ: Catch a bus, Greyhound bus, and walk from Oak Hill or Rock Lick, if he didn't catch a ride.
PN: Oh, cause they had a bus service back then?
AJ: Oh yea, we had Greyhound bus service,
PN: The Rock Lick mine that you said your father worked in — how many miners were working in that mine?
AJ: Oh, a gang of em, oh quite a few. Cause there was Concho, Dunedin, and Rock Lick; in all, there's three different little old mining towns down there. They all worked at the same, down around Rock Lick.
PN: So what, all the people from those three towns worked at the same mine?
AJ: They all worked, worked in the same mine.
PN: Were there as many as three or four hundred working, do you think?
AJ: Oh there were more than that, mm.
PN: Maybe 600 or so?
AJ: Yea, just about that many.
PN: How many of them were white, and how many were Black? What was the rough…
AJ: I couldn't, couldn’t guess that.
LJ: More white than there was Black.
AJ: Mm.
PN: When your father was loading coal, beginning in 1922, was he able to get another job at any time, like, like being a brakeman or running a motor?
AJ: No he didn't, he didn't do anything. He never ran a motor, or didn't brake, do any braking. He just loaded coal.
PN: How many days a week did he usually work there?
AJ: Oh sometime in 1930, he worked seven days a week.
PN: Seven?
AJ: He'd go, it'd be dark when he left home, and dark when he came back.
PN: But he worked every single day?
AJ: Every single day; he didn't miss a day. And he would come home some— time, and he would have to, he wouldn't even get to change his clothes, because he would just lay down behind the stove or in front of the grate, and get up and go back to work again.
PN: How many hours a day did he have to work then?
AJ: They didn't have, they didn't have no special hours. You worked till you brought the, they tell you: "Bring your tools, or bring the cut or bring your tools." And they didn't ask what they'd have to do. They have to stay in there till they get through.
PN: What if you didn't finish your work, they, they told you to get out?
AJ: That's right, nun, that's right.
PN: When did the United Mine Workers get to be organized again, when your
Dad was working there?
AJ: Now, when was it? That was in, I can't remember that now, but
PN: About 33?
AJ: About '33 or 34, somewhere along in there.
PN: Did you know when he was working in Gary, earlier, was the United Mine Workers down there? When he was working…
AJ: No, there wasn't no United Mine Workers then, no.
PN: Do you remember any, any differences in the period when there was no union and the period after the union came back again?
AJ: Yes, mm.
PN: Maybe you could talk about that a little bit.
AJ: Well, in the first starting of it, when they weren't making, he was getting 33 cents a ton for coal in the, in the, when the, when there wasn't a union. But then they raised it to 47 cents a ton, and then they raised it up to 60—some cents a ton.
PN: That's when the union came in?
AJ: That's when the union came in, then that's when they began to, you know, get a little more.
PN: Were the men protected a little bit better, and not able to be fired so easy?
AJ: Yes, after the union was in here, and they got the union in, they were.
PN: Would you say that the people felt a little bit freer to speak?
AJ: Yes they did, speak free, they felt freer to speak.
PN: Would you say it helped the Black miners in any particular way?
AJ: Yes, it helped them a whole lot, because they got the same basis, you know, that the white, the white man did.
LJ: See, so we could buy just what the white man bought.
PN: Before that, in the days when there was no union, did the company sometimes pay, pay the Black miners less than they paid the white miners for the same work? Or was it…?
AJ: No, I don't know, no, I don't think that, no.
LJ: Well, the white miners didn't load coal until, they always did the other kind of work run the motors and do things like that, machines and everything. Didn't nobody load coal but the Black man. I was surprised when 1 came to West Virginia, and the white man was loading coal. Cause the Black man, that was the Black man's job.
PN: Back when you were living in Concho, did you get married at any time in Concho?
AJ: I got married in Concho?
PN: You did?
AJ: Mm.
PN: In the little church there? Or at home?
AJ: At home.
PN: At home?
AJ: Mm.
PN: What did your husband do?
AJ: He was a brakeman.
PN: In the same mine?
AJ: In the same mine, mm.
PN: How long did he work there, do you remember?
LJ: He worked there 12 years, and then he came to Lochgelly.
PN: He was a brakeman, though?
AJ: Uh huh, and then he started being a machine man. He was a machine helper, a machine helper when he got over to Lochgelly.
PN: What years did he work there at the…?
AJ: In, from 1928 on up until 1942. And at first, he was making S 2.88 a day; then they raised it to four, $4.50. And then when President Roosevelt got in, they got seven dollars and some cents a day. And then from then on, it went up. But he was working for $2.88 cents a day. And he would go, it'd be dark when he'd go and dark when he came back.
PN: That's when you were first married?
AJ: Yes, when we were first married, mm.
PN: In 1942, is that when he went to Lochgelly?
AJ: He came here; yes, he came here and went to Lochgelly. He came to
Lochgelly in 1942.
PN: Where is the Lochgelly mine; is that right up the road here?
AJ: No, Lochgelly doesn't have a mine. Summerlee has the mine, but you, you pass by the White Oak Country Club; you'll see, see, when you get past Tyree Funeral Home, and you’ll see Summerlee Road. And that's, the tipple is over at Summerlee.
PN: That's where he worked then?
AJ: No, he worked at Lochgelly; but when he was working at Lochgelly, there was a tipple at Lochgelly. But after Lochgelly blew out, the tipple was over at Summerlee.
PN: Let me, af—, say, say after you got married in 1928, and your husband would be going to work in the mine every day, what would you spend most of your time during a typical day doing?
AJ: Housework, housework, taking care of the children, sewing, cooking, feeding chickens [and] hogs, working in the garden.
PN: I was going to ask you about that too.
AJ: Working in the garden, working in the garden, raised hogs, chickens — had more chickens out there than there was on any chicken farm. Hogs, cows, just anything you, anything it was, you name it, the people out there had it.
PN: You had cows too?
AJ: Yes, we had cows, horses.
PN: Horses?
AJ: Mm.
PN: What types of things did you grow in the garden?
AJ : Everything, everything that could be grown, just everything.
PN: Did you also buy some types of food at the company store?
AJ : Oh yes, we bought plenty of food at the store. Sure you know, we bought, we bought food at the store. But we canned a lot of food too.
PN: Would you say most of your food, you got from canning, or…
AJ: Yes, we canned and raising the hogs and things, but still bought food from the store, you know, but not like that you canned.
PN: If you slaughtered a hog, what would you do to save the meat? Would you salt it or…
AJ: Yea. First you had to have to salt it down, and let it stay so long. And then you turn it, you'd have to turn it over, you know, to keep it dry, you know. And then after you cure it, you put it in a bag and hang it up. And you had your hams, your shoulders, your bacon, and that.
PN: So you could keep that for months then?
AJ: For years, mm, for years. Just cut it out there and put it in the smoke house.
PN: What did you, you know, did you keep the cows mainly for milk, right?
AJ: Milk and butter.
PN: Did you ever slaughter steers or cows?
AJ: They slaughtered everything over there veal, calfs, everything.
PN: Did the people that lived in Concho, did they go fishing down in the river a lot?
AJ: Oh yea, mm. Hunting, fishing.
PN: What did they catch when they went fishing, usually?
AJ: They were mostly catfish, and different kinds, most any kind out of New River.
PN: How about hunting? What did people…
AJ: Oh, you hunted everything over there: rabbits, squirrels, deers, different things like that.
PN: Did you ever go fishing yourself?
AJ: I'd go down there, but I didn't fish. I’d go to the river every day, but I didn't fish. [laughs] Didn't never stick my foot no further in, then I'd go up to my knees in the water [laughs] Ride down on the cage; that's what it was, ride down on the cage and get on a sandbar and stay all day, and come back up the hill, you know. And I used to have, when my husband worked at Erskine, if I didn't fix his breakfast before he left, I would have to carry it down that incline, ride that truck down that incline, or walk down there.
PN: Really? Where was the driftmouth? Was that halfway down or…
AJ: The driftmouth was sitting up on/ top of the hill. But see, he worked, that's the one that went through to Rock Lick, the driftmouth. But he, when he was working at Erskine, you had to ride this cage down, you know, this little car down the hill.
PN: Where was the entry to that mine, to Erskine, at the bottom?
AJ: Yea, Erskine was at the bottom there, and there was houses down there at Erskine too. Mostly Spaniards lived down there.
PN: Really?
AJ: Mm.
PN: Where did they come from?
AJ: I don' t know where those Spaniards came from. I just knew they, it was one Black family down there. That was, what’s the name? Oh, Mary's husband.
LJ: Down where?
AJ: Down at Erskine. Mary, Mary Chambers. Mr. Chambers, the Chambers lived down there. They were the o n1y Black people practically down to Erskine.
PN: Were the Spaniards, did they come from Mexico? Or did they come from Spain in Europe?
AJ: I don't know, but they were just. You might know some of them, one of them that worked down there runs Skyline over here now. One used to work down there, Ebelina. He runs the Skyline Drive—In over on the road now [in Hilltop].
PN: Oh he does? He used to work there?
AJ: He used to work down to Erskine, uh huh.
PN: Did they speak Spanish often?
AJ: Oh yea, they all
PN: Did they speak English as well?
AJ: As well, mm.
PN: When you went down there during the day, when you rode the truck down and stayed around New River, did you just sit on the sandbar and…
AJ: Yea, and let the children play, mm. And some would be fishing; and some would be swimming; and all like that.
PN: Was there a problem swimming in the river with the currents?
AJ: Oh, but they didn't get that far out, no. Just, just a little ways out; no, because too much, too many currents in New River for them to get too far out in there.
PN: Oh, you'd be sitting there and watching them.
AJ: Just watching them. No. I own 12 bathing suits and can swim like that stove, about like a rock. [laughs]
PN: Did many other mothers bring their children down there?
AJ: Oh yea, we used to go down there, mm, nearly all the time. And we walked down there to the movies, go to Thurmond to the movies until they put the movies up in Oak Hill. Because you had to go to Thurmond; that was the only place you could go to the movies.
PN: Where was the movie theater, over where that Banker's Club is now?
AJ: I think, yes, I would imagine so. I don't know where the Banker's Club is; I haven't been down there. [Short interruption here.]
PN: You were talking about the movie theater in Thurmond. Was the theater segregated back then?
AJ: Yes, they were, mm. Yes, they were.
PN: Did they have separate section for Black people and for whites, or something?
AJ: Yea, mm.
PN: How about the union though? The union, though, would always organize everybody in the same local union, wouldn't they?
AJ: Yea, they all were, all the men were, the miners were, you know, like it is now, they all.
PN: What else did you do for entertainment? You mentioned going down to the river and going to the movies. Was there anything else that people did for fun?
AJ: Oh yea, they had a big nice ball club out there. They had a big ball club. They'd, everybody, Kingston, everywhere around, you know; they played ball, go down here on the river everywhere. They had a wonderful ball club out there.
PN: What vas the name of that? Do you remember?
AJ: No I can't remember the name of the ball club. They'd go up in Ames, Jean, and all up in there and play ball.
PN: Was that at Rock Lick there was a club?
AJ: That was at Rock Lick, at Concho; that was at Concho.
PN: It was at Concho?
AJ: Uh huh, and Rock Lick together, both of the, they were combined.
PN: Where was the baseball field?
AJ: Over there just where the schoolhouse used to sit.
PN: In Concho?
AJ : In Concho, mm.
PN: And then people would come from other coal camps to play at Concho some time?
AJ: Yea, yes they would.
PN: Was the ball club, was that an all—Black club?
AJ: No, they were mixed. There was both?
AJ: Mm.
PN: That's interesting, cause I know in Raleigh County, it usually seemed to be like all—white or all—Black ball clubs.
AJ: No, they were mixed; they were all together.
PN: Were all the people on the baseball club, were they coal miners?
AJ: If they weren't miners, if they wasn't loading coal, coal miners, they were all miners, yes, they were all miners, they were all coal miners.
PN: Do you know that if, if down in Thurmond, did the railroad workers, did they ever have a baseball club?
AJ: No, I don't believe, no.
PN: Cause I had never heard of one there, I was…
AJ: The women had a baseball club over at Concho; we had a baseball club, no softball.
PN: Oh really?
AJ: Yea, softball. We used to go down to Thurmond and play, and around different places.
PN: So the softball club would go to different towns and play different softball clubs?
AJ: We went to different, uh huh, yes we did, mm.
PN: Back in 1922, when you first moved to Concho, did many, did you have a radio, did people have radios then?
AJ: Yea, [they] had radios then, and that's cause, that, cause they used to have Ma Perkins and oh I can't think of the others, other programs. We enjoyed it as well as you do the television now. Cause you didn't have to stop to watch that; you just, Helen Trenton, Ma…
LJ: Idell Sunday.
AJ: Idell Sunday and all were on the radio then.
PN: People used to listen to them a lot?
AJ: Mm, that was, that was the, their day.
PN: Did people play cards much?
AJ: Yes, they played cards.
PN: Did the women play cards too?
AJ: Yea sure, we played cards.
PN: What were the games that you usually played, do you remember?
AJ: Whist, five—up, setback, that's what we played.
PN: Did the men play poker a lot?
AJ: Well they didn't play in Concho. They would go off, you know, to other town [s] and play poker. They didn't play around Concho.
PN: Was it hard to get moonshine, or liquor, if you wanted it back then?
AJ: Until the liquor store came in, until the liquor store came in, you didn't get it, you know; you didn't get any whiskey like that.
PN: Did many people make moonshine?
AJ: No, not down around Concho, no. Didn't nobody around Concho make any.
PN: How about Thurmond?
AJ: Thurmond was rough. I don't know, you know, Thurmond was a rough town in those days, only thing I couldn't tell you about those people down there. Cause we would just go down to go to the stores, and just go down, you know, to the movie and things like that.
PN: So when you lived in Concho, you [would] shop both in the company store right there…
AJ: Mm, or else, come out to Oak Hill or around to Rock Lick just, either one of them you wanted to shop, you know. You didn't have no special one, just any one you wanted to shop. Because the company store had just as nice as stuff as it was up town and anywhere else. They had much better stuff.
PN: Would they give you scrip?
AJ : Yes, you had got scrip, mm.
PN: Could you use that scrip in some of the other stores?
AJ : Yes you could, up town, anywhere, mm.
PN: So if you went down to Thurmond, and bought something there, could you use your scrip there.
AJ: No, just up in Oak Hill and around, around there, up town, because they didn't use it out Thurmond.
PN: When you were talking before, you mentioned that you said you thought there was a real community feeling in Concho. Maybe you could talk about that a little bit, and why you think that existed then, but doesn't exist so much today.
AJ: Well, people in those days, they were just neighbors. When they didn't, just anything, if I want, I had, you had. I could come get some— thing from you it wasn't anything said. Or you just, you didn't just, come over, you could come over and say, “Well, I want so and so and so and so.” Well, that was all of it. And if I went out and seen something that I thought one of my other neighbors wanted, I 'd bring it back. Or if the other neighbor go out and see something I want, they would bring it back. And so, that was that. Children got along fine.
PN: If one miner got hurt in the mine and say, couldn't go to work for four or five months, and couldn't make money for his family…
AJ: Well, he didn't have to worry cause the people take care of him. They would take care of him. He wasn't worried about nothing, whatever. My husband or my Daddy or the next one would give his wife their card, scrip card, or whatever it was. And all they had to do was go get what they wanted. They didn't have to worry about a thing. Course he didn't have all the utilities you had to pay like you do now. Only thing you had was coal. And you go get the coal, and that was that.
PN: What did the houses look like then?
AJ: Beautiful then; they were beautiful around there. I lived in a big, two—storey house. And the man that bought, bought our house. The baseboard looked like oh it was beautiful, and he, Skaggs, a man named Skaggs — lived right here at Oak Hill - he bought our house. We had an upstairs and a downstairs, and then a basement, and a attic. And we had four rooms upstairs and four rooms downstairs. And the cabinets in the kitchen looked better than any cabinet you can buy now. And Mike Seminary was the one that was selling the houses, and he tried to g et everybody to stay in Concho. And Concho would have been a paradise if the people had a stayed there. And my, my front porch was all the way around the house. Great big house sitting up on the hill.
PN: Was that a company house that you rented from the company?
AJ: Mm, yea, that was a company house. All of 'em were company houses till they started selling them.
PN: And your family was the only one that lived in that house? When you lived there, or was that two families that…
AJ: Two families — my husband's mother and myself that lived there in that.
PN: How many people were in your family, or how many children did you have?
AJ: Two.
PN: Two?
AJ: Mm.
PN: Was the house made out of wood, you said?
AJ: Yes, wood, all of them were made out of wood.
PN: Were they painted?
AJ: Yea, beautiful, mm, different colors, mm.
PN: Was Concho, were the houses in Concho better than in many of the other mining towns around?
AJ: Oh yea, yes they were, they certainly were.
PN: Why was that, they were so good there?
AJ: I don't know, but they were, one time they didn't allow no colored people in Concho. Couldn't no Black people live in Concho. They didn't allow them to even come through Concho. When they came up the mountain from Thurmond, you couldn't come through Concho. And then after the mine started and all the union started, then they began to let 'em live in Concho.
PN: When did that change take place?
AJ: I don't, that was a little bit before we moved from over on the N. and W. over there.
PN: What was Concho first? It wasn't a mining town when it was built first?
AJ: I don't know about that; I wouldn't know about that. I wouldn't know about that.
PN: What, what did your husband's father do?
AJ: He was a coal miner.
PN: He was a coal miner too? Where, right on the New River?
AJ: No, Concho, and he moved, after he moved from Concho, he went to Beckley, and he retired.
PN: That was your husband's father?
AJ: Uh huh.
PN: And he was a coal miner for his whole life too?
AJ: Yes, he was a coal miner for his whole life.
PN: Let me just ask you a couple of more things about some of the other people. You mentioned that there were, you know, Hispanic people living down at Erskine.
AJ: On down to Erskine. Spaniards - they all lived down at Erskine.
PN: Did they live in many of the other towns? Or were they concentrated there?
AJ: Well, they just lived down there. Some lived around Rock Lick too.
But most of them lived down at Erskine.
PN: Were there many immigrants, like Poles or Hungarians or Italians that came in to work in the mines?
AJ: No. There was some Italians around there. But they were just, you know, they would inbreed, inbred. They just came there.
PN: They did?
AJ: Uh huh. Just, you know, like they would come from different mines to get a job, and things like that.
PN: What did they do in the mines?
AJ: Well, they loaded coal, then different things like braking, loading coal.
PN: How about the Spaniards? Were they all coal miners mostly?
AJ: Yes, they were all coal miners too.
PN: Did many people live in Concho, did they have cars?
AJ: Yea, they had cars. Yea, after the union came in, they had every— thing they wanted.
PN: And when you travel led, did you use [a] car or did you use [the] trains?
AJ: Like going where? Out of state, or what?
PN: That was another question. How much did you travel then?
AJ: Oh, well there was, it used to be a little train would come up from Thurmond up to Minden. And well, they cut that out. And then when you get, get ready to go, you had to go down to Thurmond to catch the train, you know, to go some other place, like, you know, going out of state or some— thing like that. And you could, you could go anywhere you wanted to on a train. You could go to Charleston and back in the same day on a train, cause there was 13 trains running then.
PN: Did you often go up to Charleston?
AJ: We'd go, went everywhere.
PN: You did?
AJ: Just all the time.
PN: Did you go down in the other direction, towards Prince and Hinton?
AJ: No we didn't have to do a thing but go right down the mountain to
Thurmond and get off and come on back home.
PN: So you wouldn't go down in that direction.
AJ: No, wouldn't go down Prince until they started cutting off all the trains, you know, and taking the station out from down Thurmond. Then you had to go, that's when they started having to go to Prince.
PN: When you travel led, did you usually go up towards Charleston.
AJ: No, up towards Charleston, Cincinnati, and that—a—way, mm.
PN:Did you ever visit Cincinnati yourself back then?
AJ: No, I never did. I only just, you know, during train stops. I always went to Chicago. That's as far as I got, as far, Chicago, that's all.
PN: Did you have relatives up there?
AJ: Yes, I have relative, I have three brothers up there now.
PN: What were they doing back then? Were they…
AJ: They were going to school; they were young. They were going to school.
PN: In Chicago?
AJ: No, here in West Virginia, in West Virginia. No, they were in West Virginia.
LJ: That is Steven's father in Chicago.
PN: Did many of the women back then make their own clothes?
AJ: Sure, everybody had a machine sewed, quilted, embroidered, did everything like that.
PN: Would they make more things than they would buy, do you think?
AJ: That's right, mm. Make more then you'd buy.
PN: Did women ever do things like, like make soap? And things like that too?
AJ: Sure, mm, everything.
PN: They did? Were there any kind of lodges or fraternal orders that
AJ: Yes, they had em a Masons, a Masonic lodge; that's the same thing, isn't it - Masons?
PN: Was that just white, or was that both white and Black?
AJ: Well, the white had theirs; the Black had theirs.
PN: [If] someone that lived in Concho belonged to a lodge, where would their lodge be back at that time?
AJ: It was down Harvey, down here at Harvey, West Virginia, you know, they'd have to come to Harvey.
PN: Oh, was that the Black…?
AJ: Uh huh, mm.
PN: And then did the white Masons have a lodge at Thurmond?
AJ: Yea, they had; no, they had theirs up in Oak Hill.
PN: There was a lodge in Thurmond at one time. Do you remember that at all? [This lodge was a white Mason's lodge.]
AJ: No, I don't remember that one.
PN: Were there any other types of organizations that people would belong to?
AJ: Well, the Auxiliary after the union came in. The women had a, a organization called the Auxiliary.
PN: They did?
AJ: A branch off from the Miners.
PN: What did, did you belong to that?
AJ: Yes we did.
PN: What did, maybe you could describe what you did.
AJ : Oh well, we had a little fund, you know, and to help the needy and different things like that. And we had a meeting about twicet a month. And everybody would get together. Now that, both Black and white was in that.
PN: Really?
AJ: Mm.
PN: Was that one of the only social organizations where both white and Black people belonged to it?
AJ: That's the one, that's the Auxiliary.
PN: Did you help out during strikes?
AJ: Oh yes, mm.
PN: What did you do then?
AJ: Well we, we'd stand on that picket line keep 'em from going in the mines. Cause we stood up here for 53 days, up here at the top of the railroad track, right up here. And so we had it, we had a nice, it was nice, just, just, some of the women just, we loved it. Because that we were out for the men and the miners, and we stuck with it for 53 days.
PN: What year was that?
AJ: That was in, let me see, when did President Roosevelt…
LJ: '43 wasn't it?
AJ: For ty— , around ' 43, that's when it was, around '43 or, around ’43.
PN: 33?
AJ: ' 43, around T 43.
PN: And Roosevelt was still in?
AJ: Yes , uh huh.
PN: What were the people trying to get in that strike? Was It higher wages mostly?
AJ: Higher, more wages and better benefits, and mm.
PN: But the union had already been around for…
AJ: Yes, the union had been around for a while, but they were, they were wanting more money.
PN: Yea, it's interesting though; were the women as active as the men in the strike, would you say?
AJ: They didn't allow the men up there. The men couldn't come up. Couldn t none of them go up there but women.
PN: Was that because of a court injunction, or…?
AJ: Yes, the men wasn't allowed up there. See, just the women were allowed up there. We were right up there, it was just where this big gray building, that was a barn, where they used to keep the horses. Well, some would stay up there, and some would be right here at the railroad crossing to keep…
PN: Right at Whipple here, you 're talking about?
AJ: Yea, right up here at Whipple, uh huh.
PN: That was for the Rock Lick mine?
AJ: No, this was the Whipple mines, and Loch—, some , Whipple mines and Carlisle.
LJ : And also the Loch—, the Lochgelly mine.
AJ: Uh huh.
PN: Cause he was working there then?
AJ: My husband was working at Whipple then. Then he left Whipple, and went to Lochgelly. And so I was picketting up here at Whipple for Lochgelly. But Mama and them picket ted over to Lochgelly. All the mines, the women was at the mines then, for those 53 days.
PN: Wow. So, so every, so all the different local unions…
AJ : That's right.
PN: Would have their Women 's Auxiliary
AJ: Uh huh, picket.
PN: Did you get to meet women from other towns and other mines too?
AJ : Oh we knew, you know, we mostly knew each other from Lochgelly, Summerlee, and some up here on the hill, and down to Carlisle. We all knew each other, and so we were just, you know, be together. But most of them would be the women from Whipple here, women from Carlisle up there, and the women from Carlisle and Whipple that was the only two mines that was working down this—a—away then.
PN: If the men had come on the picket line, what would have happened?
AJ: Well see that was a, the union would, the company would have got after them, you know, the company didn't allow the men up there.
PN: Could they have been put in jail or something for doing that?
AJ: I, yes, I'm sure they would have. But see, that's the reason the women went out, cause the men couldn't picket.
PN: What did the men do during that period? Did they stay at home?
AJ: Stay at home, cook, wash, iron, do the work.
PN: Did they enjoy that, or not?
AJ: Well we enjoyed on that picket line. We couldn't get up there fast enough. We was on shifts; it looked like our shift wouldn't come I [laughs] fast enough to get up there. And the day they told us, they said: "Well, the strike is over." Some of them said, “Well, we're glad they 're gone back to work, but we sure hate to leave off of this line.” And everything came by, every bus but the Coco—Cola. That's the reason I don't care for Coca—Cola now. Every bus, the bread truck, and everything that come by up there — they would give us something. Only the Coca—Cola Company, so now I don't like Coca— Cola. He never would; some of them, they'd put out as much, as many as a case, or a couple of cases of sodas. People from down in Montogmery could send doughnuts, coffee, and everything up there. And A. and P. and Kroger and all, they'd send groceries and things down there for us.
PN: They were just kind of donating it to the strike?
AJ: Don—, donated it to the strike, to the picket line.
PN: How many women used to be on the picket line?
AJ: About 25 of us, or 30, maybe more than that.
PN: And did you go.
AJ: In shifts.
PN: All around the clock? Or did you have two shifts? Or how did you work that?
AJ: We went around the clock.
PN: You did?
AJ: Yea.
PN: Twenty—four hours a day?
AJ: Yea, to keep them from going in the mines, cause see we going in the mines.
PN: But they wouldn't cross a picket line?
AJ: They wouldn't cross a picket line in the day time.
PN: That's interesting.
AJ: You know, we had a tent, even had a tent sitting up there. So if it rained, we could go inside. We had some would kind of want to buck, but we had the water on. We didn't take no stuff off of them. Just tell them: "No, you can't cross.”
PN: And they wouldn't?
AJ: No, they wouldn't. They wouldn't cross.
PN: What else, did you build little fires there? Or was the strike in the summer?
AJ: It was in the spring of the year. It was in the spring of, I don't, I can't remember whether it was in May, April or May, I can't remember when it was but, it's been so long. But it was warm.
PN: Did the women take over the picket line from the very beginning?
AJ: That's right. Yes they did. We would go up there and sit all day and all night and have a time. Sitting up there cooking, going on.
PN: Wow. What did you cook on. Did you build fires?
AJ: We had a friend now, she had a, Mrs. Pringle, she lived right across, the house right across the street. And we'd cook up there at her house most of the time. She would do the cooking, and bring it there. And then sometime, we'd have other food.
PN: After the strike was over, were the men happy to get back to work?
AJ: Yes they were, yes they were happy to get back. But they weren't going back until they got what they wanted. Yes sir.
PN: Do you have any memories of the strikes around 1921 and '22, when the union was broken in many areas?
AJ: No, I can't remember that. No, I don't remember about that.
PN: How long did the Ladies' Auxiliary last?
AJ: Well after the company, you know, began selling the houses, and people began scattering, it was, was no more mines around there, no mines. That's when it went out, after the mines blew out.
PN: What was this, in the fifties, you'd say?
AJ: Along in the forties, it was '42, around '42 around about '42, because the mines blew out in '42.
PN: But then there was no more Women's Auxiliary?
AJ: We had no more Auxiliary, cause see everybody went other places and got jobs, and so we didn't have any more.
PN: How many years did they last for, would you say?
AJ: Oh about five or six or seven years, along in there.
PN: But that was the '43 strike you were talking about though, that you were on the picket line for so many days?
AJ: Yes, mm, mm.
PN: During the war?
AJ: During, during the war, yes, mm.
PN: Was that the strike when the men finally got portal—to—portal pay?
AJ: Yes, that's when it was.
PN: That was the same one?
AJ: Uh huh, the same one, mm.
PN: What did they think about that? That was an important issue, wasn't it?
AJ: Yea, yes it was. Because they weren't getting it. See, they were just working them, and they wasn't getting it.
PN: So by that, say in '33 when the union was organized again, how many hours a day would your husband have to work?
AJ: Well he worked from dawn till dawn [meaning dawn till dusk] for $2.88 a day.
PN:This was in
AJ: Mm, 30 and '30 ' 30, ' 30, ' 31, and ' 33.
PN: Before the union came in?
AJ: Before the union, he didn't even know, the only time the children seen him was on Sunday morning. Him and their grandfather.
PN: Were the hours shorter for the men after the union came in?
AJ: Oh yes, oh yes, they put eight hours; they didn't, they didn't have to work but eight hours then.
PN: They couldn't make them stay for 12 hours then?
AJ: No, unless they got, you know, over [time] .
PN: And then in '43, the working day was made a little bit shorter?
AJ: Seven hours, mm.
PN: With portal—to—portal?
AJ: Mm.
PN: Maybe this is a hard question to answer. But were you happy that you lived in the coal towns for most of your life?
AJ: Yes, mm, yes, mm.
PN: If you had it to do all over again, would you do
AJ: I certainly would. I could go right, I wished I'd a stayed in Concho. Everybody wished they' d a stayed in Concho that left there. Everybody wished they'd a stayed out there. Mike told them: "Why don't you all just buy the houses?" And it would have been a paradise out there; it would have been beautiful. Cause you had, everybody had plenty of room, plenty of land, plenty [of] everything out there.
PN: So you had plenty of room to grow a garden there?
AJ: Garden, anything you want, anything, anything, lawn, garden, anything.
PN: Did many people plant flowers?
AJ: Oh, we had the beautifulest flowers ever was around there. An orchard, we had an orchard. And I think the trees has, just have gone bad since nobody's out there. There was plum trees, apple trees, peach trees, just any kind of fruit you want.
PN: The miners and their families planted this originally?
AJ: No, it was, the company planted this orchard.
PN: The company?
AJ: Uh huh, and then the people planted their own fruit trees. They planted their own fruit trees and things like that.
PN: Why did the company plant it, to sell in the store, or…
AJ: No, no, no, no, for the people to have.
PN: For the people to have?
AJ: Mm. For the people to have.
PN: When it came to, to planting flower seeds and growing flowers, did the, did the women take care of that mostly, or did the men?
AJ: Yea, the women. The men did work, women taken care of that.
PN: Did the women do most of the gardening of vegetables?
AJ: No, men did. Women just did a little bit, you know, just a little bit of gardening, you know.
PN: But when it came to taking, to raising the hogs and the cows and the chickens, did the men or the women do that mostly?
AJ: Well we both, both did that, nm. Cause the women feed them in the morning or [correcting herself] in the evening. And then the husband feed them, mostly the husband would feed them in the morning, because he would be up earlier. And then in the evening, the women would feed them.
PN: Then you had eggs and milk most of the year?
AJ: The year round.
PN: All year?
AJ: All year round.
PN: Some of the people I spoke to that lived in the gorge say there was such little land that they didn't have any room to raise cows or have too many animals.
AJ: Mm, there was a lot of places were like that.
PN: So a place like Concho was better in that respect?
AJ: Yea, yea, in that respect, yes it was. Plenty of gardens. Cause Mrs. Drake had almost a farm back up there where she lived. She lived back toward the mountain. And she had, oh, she had everything up there.
PN: Was Concho pretty flat, where it is?
AJ: Mm, [it was] flat. Some of the houses were up on the hill. Now let me see — one, two, three houses out where we lived were up on the hill. And the rest of it was just flat like.
PN: You could walk towards the edge of town and then look down over the, Thurmond?
AJ: That's up at the church, uh huh, now. Now I don't know what they've done; this man bought it, and they called theirself fixing a park out there. So now I don't know which way you could get to the church, you know, get to look over the mountain. But they say you can look over there now.
PN: When your husband worked in the mine, did, did he ever get Black Lung from that?
AJ: That's what he died from.
PN: Really?
AJ: That's right.
PN: When was that that he passed away?
AJ: 1972. And he started went to work in the mines when he was 12 years old.
PN: Wow. Here in West Virginia?
AJ: Yea, over to East Gulf.
PN: So he worked in the mines right around…
AJ: 42 years.
PN: In Raleigh and Fayette Counties?
AJ: Raleigh and, East Gulf's in Raleigh County, isn't it?
PN: Yes.
AJ: In Raleigh and Fayette County, yes, that's right.
And then he got Black Lung towards the end of his life?
AJ: Mm, that's right.
[End of Tape]
Oral History Project - Jones, James 1980
African American , coal miner, Nuttall 1917 - 1950's, race relations in the mining camps
PN: To start off, maybe you could mention where you were born and what date you were born.
JJ: I was born at Nuttall, 1901.
PN: What did your father do?
JJ: He was a coal digger; he dug coal when they had mules in the mines. He dug coal and load it, you know, in the bank cars at old Nuttall mines.
PN: Was your father a miner for his whole life?
JJ: Yes, yes.
PN: When did your father first come to Nuttall.
JJ: He moved from Buckingham County, Virginia. Now I guess, let's see, I don't know exactly what year, because he moved from Buckingham County Virginia to Nuttall, and that's when he started in the mine. I don't know exactly what year it was, but I was born there.
PM: Did your father meet your mother when he moved to West Virginia?
JJ: No, he married in Buckingham County, Virginia.
PN: And they both moved up here together then?
JJ: Yes.
PN: And when did you start working in the mines?
JJ: I started in 1915.
PN: What, when you were 14 years old?
JJ: Yea, trapping, trapping in the mines.
PN: And how many years did you end up working in the mines yourself?
JJ: Altogether from the beginning until, up until the present time when I retired, I worked in the mines 41 years. That's a long time, isn't it? [laughs] I worked right in the coal mines 41 years.
PN: Did you work in Nuttall that whole time?
JJ: Well, I worked at Kaymoor [about] five months. That's when Nuttall wasn't working, you see; they had shut down, you know, for probably some repair, you know, doing some repair work.
PN: What was the year that you finally retired?
JJ: I retired in 19 and, let's see, 1959, I believe. Yes, I believe that is the year.
PN: Were you still working in Nuttall mine at that time?
JJ: No, I, when I retired, I was working, I worked three years on the State Roads. Then I left the State Roads, then I retired.
PN: What was the last year that you worked at Nuttall?
JJ: 1959.
PN: And you were working at the Nuttall coal mine then?
JJ: Yea.
PN: In '59?
JJ: Yes.
PN: When did the town of Nuttall finally have everybody move away from it?
JJ: Well, they moved away from down there just about, let's see, they started to moving away, I guess; Jimmy Lenari - he was an old coal miner — he was the last one to move away from down there in 19, I guess they started to moving about 1952.
PN: What was the name of the last man that lived there?
JJ: Jimmy Lenari, Jimmy Lenari, he was the last man that left from down there.
PN: What, nobody lives there now?
JJ: No, not as I knowed it, I don't think anybody lives. If they did, they just, no, because I don't think there's any houses down there left. I think all the houses was tore down. Oh, there might have been a few old houses down there, back in the west part of Nut tall that they couldn’t get out, you know, handy. But I don't think there's anyone living down there; not to my knowledge is anyone living down there.
PN: Let me ask you some questions back around 1915 or 1920. Do you remember back about then pretty well?
JJ: Yes, not very well.[laughs]
PN: Let me get back…
JJ: When you get old, you know, you can't think too good, and your memories get weak.
PN: Back about that time, around 1915, 1920, when you were a young man starting to work in the mines, how many people worked in the mines there at Nuttall?
JJ: When I started, when they had mules in the mines, I guess there's around 300 people worked there at that time.
PN: How many people lived in the town?
JJ: I guess, let's see, I figure, I guess it's about around 350 families live there.
PN: About 350 families?
JJ: Yea, because they had coke ovens, you know, down there. And a good many of them worked on the coke ovens.
PN: What was the total number of people? Do you have any idea — would it be over 1,000 — 1, 200 people would live there, including women and children?
JJ: Well now, Henry Ford, you know, they bought Nutta11 out, you see. Old Nut tall mines was owned by a company named Beury Coal Company, from up here this side of Thurmond, you know, it's old Beury mines up there. That company owned Nut tall. Then they sold It to, in, it was 1918, they sold it to Maryland — New River Coal Company in Winona over here. Of course, the headquarters was in Pittsburgh of Maryland — New River Coal Company. And they sold it to, no, let's see now, Henry Ford owned it. Let me get this now; can I back up on that?
PN: Yea, just keep talking.
JJ: After old Beury mine — that's Nuttall mine - after they blowed out, why they sold it to Henry Ford. And Henry Ford, that was in 1918, Henry Ford bought it. And he repaired that mine all the way through. He scaled the top, widened out the entries, that's the main entries, and he put telephones in the mines, and they put a inside office in there for the inside mine foreman, and they widened out the side tracks — lengthened them out, made them longer. They had two mainline side tracks in there, you know. No, they had, let's see, the mainline motor that run from inside to the outside — brought the coal outside, it was, it would haul around 50 or 60 cars, about 60 cars. Well, they had a inside motor, it would pick up the empties and take them to the other side tracks inside the mine, you see, where they had the gathering motor would bring it to the side tracks inside the mine. So he'd gather the coal from the side tracks inside the mine. I think they had about four, four inside, side — track gathering motors, at one particular time. Then he would gather from them four side tracks, and bring it to this mainline motor side track which held about 60 cars. He'd bring the trip there, and he would bring out anywhere from 50 to 60 cars from inside to the outside tipple. And they would run it from the outside tipple down to the bottom tipple. That's when they put it in the railroad car. They had a conveyor line, that they run it down the conveyor line, from the top tipple to the bottom tipple.
PN: How many houses were there in Nuttall at that time, 1915, 1920?
JJ: Well, I couldn't, I, you know, I'd just have to guess at it, I don't know exactly. A good many company houses, you know. How many families I said lived there?
PN: About 300 families, 350.
JJ: Yes. Well, I guess that they had that many houses.
PN: It was a pretty big town then really?
JJ: Oh yes. You see when Henry Ford taken it over, you know who Henry Ford are?
PN: Yes.
JJ: Well, he spent a lot of money there. He's the one that put in a conveyor line. When this other old company had it, it had monitors. They would run it over the hill with monitors. You hear tell of this, didn't you?
PN: Yes.
JJ: Well, that's the way they used to run it from the top tipple to the bottom tipple.
PN: When Henry Ford bought it, did he build more houses and improve the houses?
JJ: He improved them some, but he didn't build any more. He improved the whole camp, cleaned It up, had it whitewashed, and it looked pretty. White — washed the rocks, and cleaned all the brush and stuff away from around the houses and trees. It was a nice looking camp.
PN: What did the houses look like themselves?
JJ: Well, they were just, just rough company houses, made out of rough lumber. There wasn't no dressed lumber. They were just built out of rough lumber. Of course, they had the houses painted, you know, they had them all painted.
PN: They did? Were they different colors, or the same color?
JJ: Practically all the same color.
PN: What was the color they painted most of them?
JJ: It was kind of gray like.
PN: Gray?
JJ: Yea.
PN: How many rooms were in most of the houses?
JJ: Well, some of them, I guess, they just company houses, I'd say four rooms in most of them.
PN: How did people use those rooms?
JJ: Well they, just like they used to use any other house. They’d cook in them; they had a kitchen, you know, small kitchen, dining room, and bedroom. Some of them had, you know, I guess two bedrooms.
PN: So if they had four rooms, they used two of them for bedrooms usually?
JJ: Well, some of them would. And some of them, you know, if it's a small family, they would give them a smaller house, you know, three rooms.
Just a man and his wife, and maybe a couple of kids, they'd get a smaller house, you see. And a man has a larger family, why they get a larger house. They had some two—storey houses down there. There'd be three rooms downstairs and three upstairs.
PN: And those were given to larger families?
JJ: There'd be two upstairs, and three rooms down. Yes, yes.
PN: In a house like that, that had two stories and five rooms, how many usually of those rooms would/ be used for bedrooms?
JJ: Well I couldn't exactly tell you how they'd use them, you know. I didn't go into all of them, you know. I guess, you know, they would single them out some ways, you know, to get the family comfortable.
PN: What other types of buildings did they have in the town?
JJ: They didn't have, they had a company store, you know. And they had a garage built, you know, wooden; a garage, you know, long, you see. People that had cars, they could rent them, you see, so much a month — about, it run around about a dollar a month. And every garage had a number on it, you see; every man knowed his garage, you see; there wouldn't be no confusion.
PN: Did they have a club house or any kind of a hotel?
JJ: Yes, yes, yes. They had a club house; had a big, pretty large club house.
PN: Did they have churches?
JJ: Yea we had church. Had two churches down there white and colored churches. m-lite and colored club houses.
PN: What denomination were the churches? Was it Baptist mostly?
JJ: Yea, Baptist, Baptist church. Both of them.
PN: How about schools?
JJ: Yea, they had schools down there. And they had the white school and colored school, you know, back, that's the way it was you know. It wasn't integrated. The company had all of that built.
JJ: Roughly, out of the, if there were 350 families there, how many of them would have been white and how many would have been Black, at that time?
JJ: Well there was, it had been just about equal, you know. They had, you know, a lot of men worked from up here, you know, lived up here on top of the hill, you know. They had some company houses up here on the mountain.
PN: Right here, like at Edmond here?
JJ: Yea, they close right here. They had one right out there. They had about one, two, three, four, about five company houses right here close where the mens work at. And then a lot of outside men had, owned their own private, you know, homes, you know. They worked there too.
PN: Did the outside men make a little bit more money, or something?
JJ: No, no. They just had their homes. They got jobs just like anybody else. They paid them the same. They didn't discriminate against nobody.
PN: In the schools, would the white school have white teachers and the Black school have Black teachers?
JJ: Yes, sure, yes, that's the way it was. And that's the way it was until they integrated, you see, the schools.
PN: Would the company hire the teachers?
JJ: No, no. The Board of Education, they would hire them and pay ‘em too, you know. They hired them and paid them.
PN: What was the highest grade, eighth grade?
JJ: Yea, it was right around about the eighth grade, yes.
PN: Did many of the students go beyond the eighth grade at that time?
JJ: Oh yes, some of them went, you know, after they graduated from free school, they went on to high school and college.
PN: Where would they go to high school, if they went to high school from Nuttall?
JJ: Most of the colored kids went to Montgomery High School. It's West Virginia Tech now, isn't it? So that's where the most went. And some went to Mt. Hope High School.
PN: How would they get there?
JJ: And some went to Bluefield. They didn't, they would just get ‘em a place and, you know, board, you know, stay there.
PN: If they were going to high school, or college, or both?
JJ: Well, that's the way they went, you know. They had to stay where they went, you know; get 'em a boarding place.
PN: Even high school after they finished eighth grade?
JJ: Yea.
PN: Did anyone take the train back and forth to Nut tall?
JJ: Yea, sure. That's the onliest way they had to travel, you know, on the train.
PN: When the students were going to school, though, would they live in Nuttall and take a train and go to high school and come back every day? Did anybody do that?
JJ: Some of them did. Some of them boarded, you know. Just like, some of them went to Bluefield, why they had to board there, you know. I had a sister went to Bluefield, and I had a niece went to Bluefield. They had to board up there, you know.
PN: Was there any differences back then in the types of jobs in the coal mine that the company would give to white miners?
JJ: No, indeed, no, no if you could do the work, you got the job. If you could load coal, or run a motor; of the coloreds, you know, they seems like they were better motor runners. They got most of them running the motors. Not all of them, but some of them.
PN: How about on the coke ovens, who did, was that about half white and half Black?
JJ: No, it had, about the same, about even, you know.
PN: On the coke ovens?
JJ: Yea.
PN: Did the coke ovens operate year round?
JJ: Yea, night and day.
PN: Night and day?
JJ: Coke ovens, you know, they would, they would pull the coke, you see, at nights, you see, and load it in the racks, big racks. I don't know if you ever seen the racks with them old coke, you never have seen no coke ovens?
PN: Yea, I 've seen some more modern ones. I’ve never seen the beehive ovens work.
JJ: You haven't seen no cars they haul It In? It's big rack, railroad cars, and then they'd have mens that pull that coke at nights, you see. And then on the day shift, they would load it, you see. Course, I never did work on that, but I know how they operated.
PN: What did it look like when they were pulling the coke out?
JJ: Well it just looked like cinders, you know, great big old large cinders. See they used "slack" you know; that's what they burned in the coke ovens "slack”*. And they had the ovens, you know, they put it down. They had a lorry [pronounced “larry" by Mr. Jones]; my wife 's brother used to run the lorry down there. It was on a wheel and it had a great big bed on it, and it would go up underneath the tipple. And that slack would come down, you know, into that, into that bed on that thing, the lorry. And it had wheels on it; it had track going on along, along the coke ovens. And you see a big hole in that big oven, made with brick. It [the lorry] would have a spout on it; and it would dump some slack down in this oven. Then he'd go a little piece further, and he'd pull that lever, and he'd dump some down in there, you know, to keep it burning, you know. And that's the way they would do all day long, till they made enough, you know, coke for them to pull that night, you see.
* "Slack" is "bug dust" or fine coal dust. Some of this dust was produced when coal was shot down underground, or later when mining machines cut into the coal face. Additional slack was made by grinding up chunks Of coal in the tipple. Only slack was used in the coke ovens, according to Mr. Jones. Other sizes of coal, which were shipped to markets, were: pea coal, nut coal, egg coal, and lump coal. Phone conversation with James Jones, November 2, 1980.
[Note: Limestone was also sometimes referred to as "slake," which can be pronounced either: “släk” or “slak.”]
PN: What was that called? Slack?
JJ: Yeah slack.
PN: Yeah what was that?
JJ: That s coal, coal out of the mine, you know, slack.
PN: So they kept on filling up the ovens then during the day?
JJ: And they had fellows that come early in the morning and pull all that coke out there, you see, pull it out. They had a big rake; they would pull it out. Then they had special fellows to load it, load it in the railroad cars, in them racks. And it was, I never did work on that, but I know, you know, I came up when they was running all their coke ovens all around up and down the river here. All these, Ansted, Kaymoor, Elverton, all them mines had coke ovens with them. And they put it on the market, just like they would coal.
PN: Was there a lot of smoke?
JJ: Oh, yes indeed, yes indeed. I don't see how people stood it.
PN: Did many of the people that worked on the ovens develop problems with their breathing?
JJ: Yes, a lot of them. But they didn't know, see they didn't, this silicosis that they're having now; you never did hear nothing about that, you know. That's what it was from that, you know, smoke and dust and stuff.
PN: Was it worse working on the ovens than working in the mines?
JJ: I think so, I would think so, yea. There was so much smoke down there. And a lot of people in the camp, you know, would breathe that, you see. That. smoke, that was terrible; you could smell it way before you. Course, it didn't bother people up here on the mountain, you know. But most of it, it'd go down the river, you see. Water draws smoke, you know; and it would draw it on down the river.
PN: That would affect everybody that lived in the camp then.
JJ: I imagine it did affect, you know, but the old doctors, they didn't know nothing about no silicosis. They'd call it asthma, you know; they got so they couldn't breathe, you know. They didn't pay nothing for it, you see. A lot of them just got so they couldn't hardly breathe, it would affect them so bad.
PN: What would they do then? Did they just retire?
JJ: Well, they keep on trying to work until they die. Like a horse, you know, when you get so old, you know, put him out in the field and die. Pick up what he can pick, you know, grass and then the next thing, he's gone. And that's the way they did. The doctor, you know, would give them medicine, you know. They'd go to the doctor, they had a company doctor. They'd go there, try to get something. He'd give them something to relieve ‘em or something. So you had to work, you know, just to live. No Social Security then, you know. Wasn't nothing, they didn't have nothing to go on then.
PN: So a lot Of the men, even though they had a hard time breathing or felt sick, they would just continue…?
JJ: Trying to work, you know, just trying, trying to make good, cause they had to make a living. It was pretty rough on them.
PN: When they used to take the coke out of the ovens in the morning…
JJ: Pull it out with a rake; they had a long thing with a handle on it. It was made at an angle, you see, just like a, just, you know, to rake it out, you know. And they'd go in there, they had special men go in about three o'clock in the morning; some went in around about 2:30. After that burned out, you know, the slack burnt up into coke. And so, you need to go down and pull that out, you see. And then they had special men to load it into the rack, into the railroad car.
PN: Did that light up the whole sky when they were doing that?
JJ: Yea, they would, you could see, you could see it was all lit up — the coke ovens. They had about, let's see, one, two, I'd say about 25 ovens. And they had to pull all them ovens, you see. After they pulled them all, that would make about two railroad cars of coke. Them railroad cars, you know racks, they was much higher than these just regular railroad cars. They had special men used to load that; they was colored fellows. I knowed them; one of them was about six foot eight. He was just tall, and he could load one by hisself. Yea, they started loading round about four o'clock in the morning, and he loaded one by, you know, the day. By eight o’clock, I guess he would load one by himself. You know, he was champion. They had these big forks, you know. They was wide, about that wide [indicating about 18 inches with his hands]. Just made like a shovel with a handle on it, you see, a long handle, pretty long handle. And that's what they loaded with, just like a pitchfork, you know, but it had, it was wide.
PN: You were talking about the mines before; let me ask you a couple of more questions about that. Did the Black and white miners work on the same crews and the same sections?
JJ: Yea, yea, yes indeed.
PN: When you were talking about the club houses, you said there were separate club houses?
JJ: Yea.
PN: Were they pretty much equal?
JJ: Oh yea. They had a nice Black, you know club house down there. And they had a nice white. They had about the same amount, you know, pretty much the same amount at each.
PN: Was there any foremen or bosses the company hired that were Black, or were the bosses white?
JJ: Well, at that time, they had, when I started in the mines, they had mules in there. They had a boss, you know, a boss, boss driver they called it, mule, mule boss driver. And they had tipple foreman, bottom tipple foreman [referring to the tipple at the bottom of the gorge], he was Black. And the top tipple foreman was white; Grover Siler, he was white. And the one down at the bottom, the bottom tipple, was, he was Black. And the mine foreman, inside mine foreman, was white. And the outside mine foreman, he was white. They didn't discriminate working in the mines.
PN: Was the housing generally segregated? Was there a Black section and a white section pretty much in town?
JJ: No, they was mixed up, you know.
PN: Just mixed up, wherever you got a house?
JJ: All over, yea, all over the camp.
PN: Were there any Immigrants from Europe, like from Poland or Hungary?
JJ: They had Poland, Polish, and what do you call them, Bolacks, what do you call them, and Italians, and Hungarians. Yea, all nationalities mostly worked there come and go, you know.
PN: What did they do, worked in the mine?
JJ: Load coal.
PN: Load coal?
JJ: Load coal with a shovel. they put machines in there to cut the coal after they took the mules out of the mines. They put machines in there. Then that's when, you know, a lot of people. Henry Ford, when he took over, why, one time they had around 500 men was working there, a little over 500 men I guess was working there.
PN: When was that?
JJ: As he took over, he bought the mines from this Beury I was telling you about — I believe his name was Tom Beury - in 1917.
PN: When did he get it up to 500 men?
JJ: Well, after he bought the mine, he taken the mules out of the mines. And he, that r s when he overhauled entirely inside the mines. Put in longer side tracks, put telephones in the mines, put electric lights all up and down the main entry, and put telephones on the side tracks where he could call, you know. And he scaled the top, made it, you know where the slate was bad, he scaled that and took it all down. And he bought new motors, new machines cutting machines, coal—cutting machines.
PN: When was this, around 1920, or when would this be?
JJ: Between 1917 and '28. In 1928, he sold it to Maryland New River Coal Company. He did all of that between 1917 and 1928.
PN: By the end of that time, by 1928, you say there were 500 people working there in Nuttall?
JJ: Well, let 's see, one time when Henry Ford was running it in full scale, after he got all of this done and put the conveyor line, he got the conveyor line, he put the new conveyor line in. Then he got ready to, you know, run, got all the entries and rooms in shape, why the people just poured in after jobs. And he hired them just as fast as they come in there. All nationalities would come in. And around about 20, 1921, ' 22, I guess he had around 500 men working there. He took one year to repair those mines one whole year he didn't run a pound of coal. And after he got it repaired and got, laid 60 pounds of steel on the main line, after he got it repaired, he brought three mainline motors and he had about 20 gathering motors he bought all of them new. He knowed he was getting the mine in shape and getting good machinery. He bought, I don't know how many cutting machines, ten or 12 cutting machines. And after he got it in shape, why then he started to, you know, they had men here, you know, just waiting, you know. A lot of them was already working, helping to repair the mine. I worked every day during the repair of the mines. A good many of them worked every day. Just as quick as they got the mines in shape, and got the machinery and everything, the conveyor line built and every— thing, now that's when they started to hiring new mens, you see. And he had about two, three hundred men working there, was already working there before he, you know, bought the place.
PN: Is that when a lot of the immigrants came in?
JJ: Yea, that's when they started to, a lot of them, some of them were here before that, you know. Some Hungarians, they had several families there, Hungarians.
PN: Did they bring many Black families up from the South, say from Alabama, like they did at some other mines?
JJ: No, no, no. There was enough of them around here, you know. There was a few come in from the South, but not too many.
PN: You were talking about the immigrants before. Did they have any
Catholic churches for them in Nuttall?
JJ: No, no.
PN: I guess many of them were Catholics?
JJ: I don't know what the denomination was. I know they come and go, you know. There was some of them come, and stay four or five months, then gone somewhere else. It was mines all up and down the river here then, you see. There on the other side of the river, you had Nutall, there was mines all up and down Elver ton, Browns, Kaymoor, Fayette Station — clean on down, all down, down till you hit Kanawha County.
PN: What did people usually do for fun or entertainment?
JJ: A lot of em used to gamble down there [laughs]. Course I never did gamble. A lot of them, mostly, you know, gambled, mostly got along, you know. Never nobody getting killed or nothing. Once in a while, they'd have a argument, somebody 'd get hurt — shot up, cut up, or something, but not too much. Not like it, nothing like as bad as it is now.
PN: Where would they gamble? At home or in the club house?
JJ: Down in the camp. Some of them had shanties, you know. They would, shanty, we called them shanty—mens, you know. They just shantied down there and worked in the mines.
PN: What did they have; did they have real little places?
JJ: They'd have about a three—room house… They had shanties down there, just for, you know, single men to come in.
PN: So people would go over there often and play poker or something?
JJ: Well, they didn't build it just, they built the shanties just for them to work in the mines, you know, not to gamble. But, you know, they would turn it into a gambling place, you know. They had to have some recreation. And they'd have a little place down there to play ball, baseball. And they'd go to church. They was happy times then.
PN: When they were gambling, what would they gamble with — company scrip?
JJ: No, they made money when Ford was there. They made good money; he paid more money than any of the other companies did.
PN: He paid cash, or did he pay in scrip?
JJ: No, he paid cash. Of course, if you go to the store and deal it up, why, you could go to the store and cut scrip, you see, and buy what you want. And what's left over, what you, after you, you know, your store count, why you draw that you know. He wanted his men to draw money.
PN: He did?
JJ: Yes indeed. Yea, he wanted to…
PN: Why? Would he figure he 'd attract better workers that way, or what?
JJ: Yea, and he, that's about the way he was, I guess. Yea, he liked to see 'em draw money. And he had some men down there, he would give them a bonus at the end of the month.
PN: Did they produce more?
JJ: Yea, they'd go in there and load 25 cars. They drawing into opposition agin' one another, you know. One try to load more coal than the other to make that bonus, you know, get that bonus. The one that'd load the most coal would get a bonus.
PN: How much was the bonus?
JJ: About ten dollars [laughs]. Wasn't very much to kill yourself, was it? [laughs] That's the way they did it. A fellow by the name of Flowers, he was a great coal loader. And another fellow by the name of Booker Spradley. They were the champion coal loaders. And of 3 course, he'd give them, you know, advantage, you know, places, good places to work.
PN: Were they white or were they Black?
JJ: They was Black. And they had some more down there was good coal loaders too.
PN: How many hours would you work a day, back then when you started?
JJ: We worked eight hours.
PN: Was that portal—to—portal, or once you got inside?
JJ: Well that's, you had, well that's just eight hours a day, you know. See, we didn't have no union when he was there. He didn't recognize the union. Wasn’t no union nowhere around here in 19, when he taken over and stuff.
PN: Was there a union when you were very small, do you know?
JJ: No, no, no.
PN: There was no union in 1901, when you were born?
JJ: No, no, no, no.
PN: When did it finally come in?
JJ: You used to work ten hours a day in the mine. Yea, my father, when I was a kid, he was working ten hours. Leave home it'd be dark, when he get back in it was dark.
PN: When did the union finally become organized in Nuttall?
JJ: In '30 and '31 is when we got it. It was organized once in '17, but it didn't last long, you know. It went under. The Baldwin thugs, you know, broke it up.
PN: Do you remember them being around the coal camp before the union came in?
JJ: They never did come around this camp down here, but they went to some camps, you know, and beat up a lot of mens, you know. They beat 'em up, you know. They was trying to organize, and they had a time.
But they, I never remember them coming around here.
PN: Do you remember Mother Jones coming around?
JJ: I remember her, but I don't remember her coming around here.
PN: Did you ever see her at any time?
JJ: No, I never seen her, just only her picture.
PN: Did many people raise gardens in Nuttall?
JJ: Yea, they had a little garden patch. They didn't have much place, you know, to, a lot of rocks. They'd raise a little garden, not much.
PN: What types of things would they usually put in a garden?
JJ: Onions and beans. Some of them had a little patch, they could just put a little bit of everything in there, you know, they could get in there. But they wouldn't have much space, you know, so much rock down there.
PN: Did they grow them right in back of their houses usually? Or up on the mountain?
JJ: Yes, yea, right in back of the houses.
PN: Did people plant flowers sometimes too?
JJ: Some Of them did, some of them did, yea. You'd have flowers on the porch, you know, and things.
PN: Did people keep like pigs or animals?
JJ: Yea, yea, yea.
PN: They did?
JJ: They'd raise pigs down there, some of them did. Cows, some of them had cows.
PN: Did the people ever have pets, like dogs or cats?
JJ: Yea, dogs running every whichaway. That's all they did have, dogs there, you couldn't hardly get down there. They had a company store down there too, you know, a big company store. And that's where the people down there dealt at, you see, done their dealing, their buying. Practically everything you got was from the company store. The company, you know, have a store there, you know; and they, the company wants you to deal at the store, you know. Some of the companies, if you didn't deal at the store, they'd get red of you. But it never was that way here, you know. But that's the way that some of the coal companies back at, during that time.
PN: Did they have any bars or taverns there?
JJ: No, no, no, no, they didn't have nothing like that.
PN: Was it hard for people to get moonshine if they wanted it?
JJ: No, you could bring it in. [laughs] Them gamblers, you know, they gambled, they'd bring in the moonshine, you know, in there. They made, a lot of them made this home—brew. You ever hear tell of that?
PN: Yea.
JJ: Some of them made wine, and anything they could make it out, you know.
PN: What did they make wine out of?
JJ: Sour grapes, make wine, and they had blackberry wine, grape wine, peach wine. They'd make something to drink, you know, something to get real crazy with, But it was mostly moonshine then, you know.
PN: Did anybody control the moonshine? Or was it just local people making it and selling it?
JJ: Yea, just people, different ones would make it and bring it in there, you see. They'd go around underneath these cliffs up around there, put 'em up a still, and run it.
PN: What did they make moonshine from mainly, corn?
JJ: Corn, I reckon. I never did see none made, but I 've drinked it. And I know one thing, some of it would make you crazy. But you know that back in them times, people got along good, you know, never much killing and nothing like there are now. People looked like they were more civilized.
But now people are crazy. I 'm scared of little kids anymore; they're on this dope, you know, drugs and this, what do you call it, marijuana, and all this different kind of stuff. It's a sin and a shame. There are kids, you know, that ruin theirself. Yea, it's everywhere too.
PN: Is there anything else you think is particularly important to say about Nutta11?
JJ: I think I 've about said everything I know. Well, let's see what I can say here now. I stole that woman [pointing to his wife, who had just walked into the room].
PN: Did you ever go fishing in the river there?
JJ: No, I never did go fishing. People used to fish down there.
PN: Some of them did?
JJ: Mm.
PN: Did some of the people hunt for anything?
JJ: Hunt groundhogs, and rabbits, you know, and possum. People would eat anything then, you know, because they wasn't making too much, you know. Yea, a lot of people did a lot of hunting. Used to be lots of groundhogs there down on the mountain. Then they'd hunt rabbits and possums, squirrels, coons, and anything they could hunt.
PN: Did you have refrigerators or anything to preserve meats, or did you salt them?
JJ: Back way back, let's see, when did the Frigidaires come in? What year did it come in? I know at home, we had a cellar underneath the house, you know, we made, you know, where we kept meat. We used to raise a cow or something, a heifer to kill every year, you know. Then they'd cut, my father, he was a butcher like. Then they'd raise hogs, chickens have eggs, have our own eggs and chickens. And have our own meat, you know, beef and hogs. Sell lard. We got along fine. In fact, everybody raised something then, you know, especially people up here on the mountain that worked down there. They had land, and they'd raise all they could, especially if they had a family. We got along just about as good as we get along now. Some people, you know, they act like it's hard for them to get along, I don't care if they was making a hundred dollars a day, they just look like they on a, just barely existing. They squander it. I guess that's about all I can tell you. [laughs]
PN: It's about to run out anyway.
JJ: [laughs] That's the first time I’ve ever had one of these things around my neck [referring to the microphone].
[Many words during this interview were difficult or impossible to decipher, but not because of faulty equipment or recording technique. Mr. Rivers is 77 years old and nearly blind, and he was often difficult to understand. It was thus necessary to add, or guess at, words at some points in order to make the transcript more understandable. These words, and the places where Mr. Rivers could not be understood at all, are indicated with brackets.]
PN: Mr. Rivers, maybe I could start off by asking you when you were born and where you were born.
CR: Oh, I was born in 1903 down at Charleston, South Carolina.
PN: Really? What did your father do?
CR: My father?
PN: Yea.
CR: My father was a watchman there on the Ironside Works in Charleston, since he [gave up] his own business. He used to run a, run a boat, a freight boat from the country to Charleston, haul things for them farmers. When he had to give up that, then they give him a job as a watchman in the big Ironside Works as gateman that time.
PN: That was in Charleston that he was a watchman?
CR: Yea, right there at Charleston, South Carolina, mm, yea. But he used to work for hisself before, you know.
PN: He did?
CR: Yea.
PN: What did he do then you said?
CR: He run the farm…
PN: He was a farmer?
CR: He was a farmer, and he hauling them stuff from Charleston, Fourth
Street, and boat for them farmers, see. Getting paid for that, you know.
PN: He did?
CR: And when he go back, he carrying a load of wood, cordwood, [from the] city.
PN: He did?
CR: He had a freight—boat like. He was March Rivers. See, I 'm Charlie
Rivers, and he was March Rivers.
PN: March?
CR: Yea, he was named March Rivers. I was born in 1903, the 12th day of
March.
PN: What did your mother do?
CR: My mother?
PN: Yea.
CR: Oh, she worked around the house then, you know, and gardened, that's all. But they had, they had another boy on the farm, helped to take care of the farm, plowing you know. He had to hire them fellows to do that.
PN: Did your mother work, did your mother come from Charleston, South Carolina also?
CR: We were raised there in the South there. My mother born in a place called Beaufort, South Carolina.
PN: Oh, I know where that is.
CR: You know where that is?
PN: Yea.
CR: Right where she was born at.
PN: In the Sea Islands there, in that area?
CR: Huh?
PN: What Beaufort, around the Sea Islands of South Carolina?
CR: Yea, on the other side of Charleston, the island. You know, on the island. Charleston's on an island itself, just about. Cause see, Cooper River on one side and the other — fresh water on one side of Charleston and salt water on the other. The big, the bridge there run from Lyons Street across the Cooper, you ever been there?
PN: Yea.
CR: You know I know where it is.
CR: Cause down below there, down below there, over there my Grand—daddy had a had a wood yard down there.
PN: In Charleston?
CR: Yea. And up there, where the old street—car line used to be, [where] a little there gulley come in there where/ used to be a street car, Sam Robens had property over there, his brother.
PN: That was your grandfather?
CR: Grandfather ['s] brother.
PN: When was your grandfather born?
CR :Mm ?
PN: What year was your grandfather born in, do you know?
CR: No, you've got me now, I forgot, I forgot that [laughs]. But my grandmother lived to see 95 years old.
PN: Your grandmother was 95?
CR: When he died.
PN: What, your grandfather?
CR: Grandfather, he died fore my grandmother, uh huh. But I, I didn't keep up with that.
PN: Did your grandmother and grandfather remember the days when there was still slavery there?
CR: My grandmother did.
PN: She did?
CR: She remember, she was a small kid, you see. She remembered.
PN: What did she say about that?
CR: In slavery, them had to work for, people had to go work for Massa, and stuff like that. Farm and different things. And then [?] eat, girl, remember that.
PN: When she was a girl?
CR: Yea, when she was a girl, my grandmother. She told us all about that.
PN: Where did she remember that [from]? Was she living around Beaufort also?
CR: Yea, well you know, she telling that after I born. After I born, you talking [with her] 'bout that; you see, I don't know nothing about that. I know all the people talking about It, you see, you know how folks just talk. [?] That's all I know about it.
PN: What made you decide to come up to West Virginia?
CR: Who? Me?
PN: Yea.
CR: Just travel ling.
PN: You were just travel ling?
CR: Just travelling. I been New York first, worked in a brick yard there in New York.
PN: In New York City?
CR: Yea, and lived there and gone down into Chicago where my cousin is, and stay there a while.
PN: What did your cousin do in Chicago?
CR: Him? He worked in some big factory. I didn't work; I was only there for a visit, that's all. And I, but I work in Middletown, Ohio a little bit.
PR: In the steel mill?
CR: Yea, in the plant, yea. And I leave there, and went up to Jenkins, Kentucky.
PN: You work in a mine there for Bethlehem Steel, or something?
CR: No. 6 Mine. I didn't stay there but a week. [laughs]
PN: In Jenkins?
CR: Yea, in Jenkins, Kentucky. Just a store and stuff right there and you go right around a curve like that — No. 6 Mine.
PN: It's Bethlehem Steel, isn't it?
CR: That's at Jenkins, Kentucky, up Big Sandy [River].
PN: How come you only stayed for a week?
CR: I didn't like it. That water [?] I think it's a rock fall. Shit, 1 didn't like it and I leave out there. And I started at C. and O. [in] 1923 in Ashland, Kentucky.
PN: You did?
CR: Right in the yard. I started at C. and O. and I ain't worked in no other company from 1923 until ‘69. I retired from C. and O.
PN: Wow, you worked with them for 46 years, then?
CR: That's right. That's where I got on the roster there and stuff.
PN: Pardon me?
CR: I said that's where I got on the roster and stuff. But I wouldn't work the same job; 1 had different job, you know. Cause I started on the track, and transferred from the track to the shop. And I run that big coal tipple down there.
PN: Down at Thurmond?
CR: Yea, I run down there that six years, in the night.
PN: When did you first come to Thurmond?
CR: I come, stay on the South [Side] in 1928.
PN: Right down here in 1928?
CR: Yes sir, Fayette County from 1928 up to this present time. Cause I had moved out of Kanawha County when I come to Thurmond.
PN: You lived in Kanawha County, and then you moved out of there?
CR: Yea, and come here to Thurmond.
PN: When you first came to Thurmond in 1928, where did you live in Thurmond?
CR: I lived in Thurmond, right across the river from Thurmond.
PN: The South Side?
CR: Yea, on the south Side. Place called Weewind. You could see it from the shop.
PN: Weewind?
CR: Yea.
PN: That's what they call it?
CR: Yea, it's been a coal mine up there, you know. Was a coal mine there.
PN: Did you live in a mining camp then?
CR: Well, the mine done blow out. And this car distributor Hyre Ervin — he had them houses and places and that —— the only way, only place you could get a house to rent.
PN: Where were they?
CR: Right at Thurmond on the South Side. And you see, up on the hill, it [was] Erskine. You see, but down there was another company, but that mine done blow up, [correcting himself] blow out. Cause the man, the superintendent, he live — that mine blow out — he stay on that big house on the front. And that second house from this three—room house, that's the house I rent to stay in when I come here, me and my wife.
PN: So you rented a three—room house when you came in there?
CR: When I come, that's the only place where you could get to stay. Everything was crowded in Thurmond, couldn't get no place. And I stayed there. And our girl was small, and she walked from there back over the river and go up on the hill by the station to the school. And them yards stayed full, the trains switching all the time, them coal trains. And then I moved back to Charleston, so that girl didn't have all that stuff to go [over]. We didn't have time to check our little girl every day. I was a 'working.
PN: So you moved back? When did you move back to Charleston?
CR: I moved back to Charleston in, what was it, the forty—?
PN: In the 1940s?
CR: No, no, it was 1929, in the thirties, in the thirties. And when I come back out from Charleston then, [moved back to] Weewind. I stayed there a while and got a house at Rock Lick, at Rock Lick, from that company, Smokeless coal company.
PN: When you worked during the week here then in Charleston, [correcting myself] when you lived in Charleston and you worked here, did you stay in a house or a shanty or something here, during the week?
CR: No, well I stay up there, I stay with Charlie a little while up here at Minden. That’s the only shanty I stay in, with some boys, during the week. Then I move, I get a house up in there and stay, mm. And when I lived at Rock Lick, moved right [to] Harvey.
PN: Harvey?
CR: Yea, that's in 1944.
PN: What, you 've been living right here then since 1944?
CR: Right in this camp, but not in this house. Cause this house hadn't been for sale then. I rent, come here, jump off, get out of the car one evening, go over to the superintendent up in here, he were cleaning up - Hess. I jumped off and asked him any house to rent. And he say: "Yea we got a few house to rent, but who do you, what company you work for?" "I work for C. and O.” “Oh yea, I give you this a house. C. and O. for 4% in this company.”
PN: They did?
CR: That's what he told me, that's what he told us.
PN: What was the name of the company here?
CR: That's the New River.
PN: New River?
CR: Yea, New River. See, there's two New Rivers New River Pocahontas and this New River Consolidated, yea. Minden and all that Pocahontas; Clare—[mont] Pocahontas; and down yonder, down the road there at the, on the track, ain't working now, that's, that's the New River. And over yonder, New River got some running now. But this mine, the biggest mine they had down here at Minden, on the bottom used to load two car on one track.
PN: That was New River Pocahontas?
CR: Yea.
PN: When you came to Thurmond in 1928…
CR: '28.
PN: You were working in the shops then?
CR: No, I was working on outside a while there in the yard. I was checking them switches in the yard there, you know.
PN: Switching?
CR: No, I wasn't switching technically, I wasn't switching. No, I had to keep them switches greased, up and down. And keep them lamp, you know? They had them lamp on them switches, you know? You had to fill them with oil.
PN: Lap?
CR: Lamp on them switches.
PN: Oh, the lamps.
CR: Yea, you see it on the railroad, you know? It's green and it's blue— like. You had to fill them up once a week. And a lot of time, sweep out them switches. Some of them greasy, keep it so the brakemen [can] use it. Cause two colored fellow Carter Bradley and Clem Holland was braking in the yard out there, colored guy. And here Carter living up here at Hilltop, right where Jones got that store. He got that big, had that big house on the other side of the store. And Clem was living down in the shanty; he wasn't married. Carter was married. One of his girls is a school teacher; and one is a doctor. But Carter died.
PN: Then there's still shanties? Are those little houses on the side of the road, are shanties, right?
CR: Them boxcars down there?
CR: Them shanties. But let me see, there's one boy, he had a boxcar there, for one of the shanty boys. And the mainline boys, and they had one there for the branch line. See they had different, see the branch line, they had their own shanty [s] down there. And the mainline boys on the yard, they had a shanty [s] down in there. And they had a little shanty around the curve.
PN: Towards where, up towards Beury?
CR: Yea, on the left—hand side, you're going to Beury from Thurmond. You've been down there. Them boys, [they stayed] in the shanty [s] This boy's been a shanty boy, he married and I mean his wife living now, but he's dead — he's lived there. He had another boy, he had a boxcar up there, the boy stayed in, on the other side of that shanty.
PN: He was staying in a boxcar on the other side of the shanty?
CR: Yea, he had a boxcar, another fellow, you know with a wife. He called the mainline; he's at Deepwater now, but he's retired.
PN: So people are still living in those shanties down here?
CR: Oh yea, a boy and his mother living down there. That boy retired hisself now.
PN: What was it like, living in the shanties?
CR: Well, you know, you know, that just like sometimes, two [or] three men live in the shanty. In the weekend, some of them live in Virginia. Some would go home every, every week. Going on [Number] Six, then come back Sunday night, and ready for work on Monday. Cause when I working down at Newport News, I used to ride Number Two. And Two wouldn't put me down to Newport News till 11:30 that next day. And I go to work there at three o'clock, but I was working on them coal pier. I was firing then, you see, I 'd fire up this…
PN: You got fired?
CR: Yea, right down at the shop, that's where I retired, as a fireman.
PN: Oh, as a fireman.
CR: I retired as a fireman.
PN: How long , you were working in Newport News some of the time?
CR: Well, when they killed that station there in the first of June, summertime. That's coal, you know. Kill them the first of June, and don't fire em back up till the first of October. Don't keep 'em going in the summer, you see, kill them. See, cause it's warm and they don't need no steam around in there, anyway that's the way they do.
PN: Was that the station that made steam for the whole town?
CR: Keep steam for the station, the commissary and a 11. And down, down [at] that big tipple down in there see that big line running down there?
PN: Yea.
CR: Steam down there — keep them coals thawed. And a lot of time when I run that tipple, I had to climb up both sides and it froze — and break loose them coals up there next to, next to the, in the cement, so it would run down…
PN: You had to break loose the coal from the top of the tipple?
CR: Yea, you know, right beside, you know where you pull your thing down for your coal chute [to] come down.
PN: Yea.
CR: And it stuck up there to that cement when you ran coal on that river— side, buddy. I had to climb them ladder, them long ladder in there, go up in there, cut it loose. I mean you got to cut it loose then. Pull that string, and there's so much get on there, and then I let it back up. You got one — there for the hand—firer and one for the stoker [he pronounces it "stogie"] — on both mainline and the…
PN: One for the what, for the hand…?
CR: You know, when you had the Lilly Engine, you'd fire them with your hand, they 're lump coal them small engines. But them big engines gor stoker; you can feed them. Yea, I done all that; that's what I retire on.
PN: What were you saying there? There was hand coal…?
CR: Hand—fire. Well that station there, firing there, all that was hand; there was no stoker in that station there. Now on that small engine, you sit down in your shop, great old pit. That's the engine, you see. And you see, you have to keep the steam there. And any time you clean them, you have to open up and shake your grate. And the ashes go down in that pit. And you turn that water loose, and you wash it down next to the creek.
PN: Do they wash the ashes right out into the creek?
CR: Yea, out [of] that pit down there. A big pipe like that, you open it, you get it off the mainline like that.
PN: And the ashes went into New River?
CR: Don't go there [?], some get there, but you know, they pile up. There’s some piled up out there about that high, between there ans…
PN: Where, on this creek here [referring to Dunloup Creek]?
CR: Up Thurmond, up Thurmond, from the shop. See there's a big flat place from the shop to the creek. See, a long ways before you get to the creek. But sometimes when the water get a little high, some of ‘em go in there.
PN: What creek are you talking about? What's the name of the creek?
CR: New River.
PN: Oh, New River.
CR: Around there, New River, New River. You see right now they kill that station during the summertime. I can get, I can work right here, right at Thurmond. But my rate was high, and any job I could take. I didn't work there. So they send me down yonder where I can get my regular rate.
PN: Down to Newport News?
CR: Yea.
PN: Did your wife stay here when you worked down there?
CR: Yea, she be right home here.
PN: And you came home on weekends?
CR: I come home some time, I come home every weekend. Sometimes I came every two weeks.
PN: Two weeks? Why, cause of the type of work they gave you?
CR: Huh?
PN: Cause of the days of work they gave you?
CR: Well you see, we, I'll tell you how it was. A fellow like me, Lou
Helen was general boss over the whole thing.
PN: Lou Helen?
CR: Yea. And he's the one that called men, you know. Well, his Daddy used to be a shop foreman, long time ago. Lou Helen's daddy, guy I know, I worked under. He'd been to Hinton, look over these shops, diff—. He had so many shop to look over as superintendent. And I remember, down at that one there, been down there don't cost me nothing to go down there, got a pass and I was going to work five days, five days a week. That's the way they worked. And I come in the first week, I come in the big bath—, they got a big brick bathhouse. Haul them coal water in there. And the men, men some right and the sea right over there come in that thing, and get up high, and they splash water on that road. And that road go right on that's 15 coal piers right up there. And go up a little farther, big cafe there.
PN: A big what?
CR: Cafe, get something to eat if you want.
PN: Oh, oh.
CR: And the next thing is 14 coal tipple. And their office right in there. But the bigger office, Lou Helen's up yonder, up past [Pier] Nine. That 's where the ore, that's where the ore—pier is; when you get the ore, they unload it over there.
PN: The oil?
CR: Ore, ore.
PN: Ore, ore, yea.
CR: And they got about eight or nine them other pier.
PN: At Newport News?
CR: Yea, merchandise pier all the way back there, about nine of them back there. But I didn't work on none of them. 1 just [worked] on the coal pier and the ore pier. I used to work with them hopper and stuff in there. And I'd go in there and break them coal loose. And them big roll that long, that belt
PN: Belt?
CR: Wide as this table [five feet wide] or more. Yea, coal come in there. The way they do it, you see them boys, I mean, they didn't bring them coal in the yard. They got a yard there. So many coals [coal hopper cars] go to each one of them chute. Nine track go to this side, nine track go to that side — it's a double tipple. When you in the middle, it's steel from you all the way up to the top. You can dump car over and dump car over. And when that empty go up there, after that fellow up there throw the switch, that empty go that—a—way outside. And a boy up there can slow ‘em down, just punch the button, slow 'em down.
PN: That boy could do what?
CR: Fellow up in the office up there, you know? When the cars got off that hump, empties go on back, take off, you know. That boy punch that button and ease 'em down till they get them; when they get down here, that man down there couple em up. And when you go down there, and these boys bring a loaded one, they stop right at that mule, they drop that big a, that big line from up there, man, that they pull. Drop that big line and come right in and you go under the car. And you got something that can draw, you hook up this car on this side. Came back up, go up a hill like that, hit a level there's a fellow up there. See the empty car, he done shoved that knuckle in. So when this loaded car come hit him, he gone. And that go back that—a—way, yea. That's what you call the "goat" up there.
PN: The goat?
CR: Yea [laughs].
PN: What was the goat, the man that worked up there?
CR: Yea, he throwed that switch up there. I did get that, that and the brakeman, but that fellow up there get a little more than them brakemen.
PN: He got more?
CR: Yea, on the goat.
PN: When you moved to Thurmond back in the 19—, in 1928 and the 1930s, did they discriminate in housing? You know, could Black railroad workers live on the Thurmond side, or did they have to live on the South Side?
CR: You lived there you could get a house at. That's the way it was. There wasn't no, we didn't have any discrimination there.
PN: So a Black person could get a house in the town of Thurmond itself?
CR: Yea, some been living right up do you know right down there where you got that, they got that Banker's Club?
PN : Yea.
CR: That boy, I know all them. Right up those steps, you see those steps go up in there? ["That boy" is referring to Erskine Pugh.]
PN: Yea.
CR: All them house up there colored was living in.
PN: It was?
CR: Sure. All up there, down and, down there. Cause this McKell owned all that part there all the way back, on that side of the river.
PN: Yea.
CR: And when you get down here and go across, and go up to Minden. And when you go up that step, McKe11 line go right there. And go up on that hill, and go back and hit Beury and wome out, McKendree and hit Prince, and come back in and go back over yonder - Mt. Hope, McKell owned that. But on this side here, this was, this place here, this here was a, the school, Harvey, Harvey College's place.
PN: What?
CR: Harvey College.
PN: Harvey College?
CR: Yea, here and up there.
PN: Who?
CR: His property.
PN: On, that was his name?
CR: Yea, who the property belongs to. Blackburn had to buy it for Harvey; Blackburn and Patteson bought this for Harvey College. McKell didn't have nothing to do with this, but McKe11 got all that on the other side. See McKell [?] , he had some of them lease it. He had it leased and had lease it up. When it come to sell, McKell wouldn't sell you no property.
PN: No?
CR: No.
PR: So some Black people lived right over there above the Banker's Club then in Thurmond?
CR: Oh, they used to. You know, ain't no boys in Thurmond now. All them leave out of Thurmond, you know, moved from Thurmond. Some died or they moved out.
PN: When were you talking about though, 1928 and 1930?
CR: Oh yea, all them houses were full up back in Thurmond there, they're all back there. Cause they used to give a, old Dunglen Hotel running then. Me and the boys used to have the Elks Club ball down in that hotel.
PN: What, the Elks Club?
CR: Yea, yea man, you could get just most anything you wanted to at Thurmond then. Yea, there wasn't no dif—, no, at Thurmond then, it was as big as Cincinnati. [?] Thurmond then was like a big city. Cause the C. and O. paid, had to pay, that city so much a year tax, you know, comes in there.
PN: The what?
CR: You know, where you have to pay that city so much a year to come through there?
PN: Yea, pay the city so much a year?
CR: Yea. That mayor of that city, now he got the money; have to take care of the city.
PN: Cause the C. and O. paid that tax?
CR: Yea, he had to pay the tax to go through there, yea. I know that, I didn't think about. I know, as a boy, every mayor that have been in there. I think that boy is the mayor now, that got that club Erskine Pugh. I know 'em all [the Pughs]. I know when some of them boys going to school man, girls and all. The oldest girl up here, in Beckley right here — Geneva. She going, you know where that A. and P. store, coming from this way? You know where that big brick thing up there? That's her husband. She married; they wasn’t married till Erskine come out of the Army, you know.
PN: Till when?
CR: The one running the Banker's Club? And this girl up there. They’re the oldest.
PN: Oh.
CR: This boy, Starr, he's next. But that girl and Erskine, Geneva up there and this Erskine down here.
PN: Back, back in 1928 and 1930, when you lived in Thurmond, what did you do for entertainment? For fun?
CR: For fun?
PN: Yea.
CR: I tell you, we used to, we used to go to, have a ball there once in a while. You know, we could give anything you want. We use one of them hotels, give it at that hotel. But you know, you wasn't no great big, that's all been there, you know, where you could give them big entertainment. You got a church down in there, but…
CR: Us got the church down there now a little white church on this side of the river on the hill up there. Old Man Collins and them used to come there. Come to that church.
PN: Who was Collins?
CR: He's dead; he used to be a big undertaker around here. That building there…
PN: Was he Black or white?
CR: Yea, you see that building there that Banker's Club in?
PN: Yea.
CR: That used to be a, Collins building. That used to be the, I believe you called it the First National Bank like. But when I first come, Collins had a store — you know where you go near the station, and go right up on the hill there?
CR: Collins got a big store right up there, wood store.
PN: What kind of store?
CR: You know, you know, wood store, big store —— upstairs and downstairs. His office sitting up there. He had Bolen, head of the store, and he had some more help. And Miss Grace, she'd tend to the stuff. Used to go to New York, and all this stuff,
PN: Bring it in from New York?
CR: Yea.
PN: What did you do for fun, though, usually, say types of things did you do?
CR: Well we, you take it like this, we used – up there at Glen Jean, they had a big dancing hall, right there as you go down the hill. They tore down now. Right there, as you come down Glen Jean you see where you turn?
PN: Yea.
CR: Right over in there, there used to be a big dancing hall. Be in there almost every Saturday night, or something like that.
PN: Did both white and Black people go in there?
CR: Well, they come in if they wanted. Everybody 'd drink together and everything in there. Them boys [that] worked in the mines, that didn' t make no difference, don't look like to me. And I 'd meet a lot of them that worked in the mines. ' 'Hey Charlie, " so—and—so, when I used to drink there. Oh, let's get some. I work on night shift, man, they come. Boy, I say, "Man, I got to work. I can't afford you. "
PN: How did you get liquor then? Did you buy it from bootleggers?
CR: Yea, the state was dry, you [had to] buy it from bootleggers. Cause, see, colored fellow down there at Dewitt used to be a miner down in Dewitt one day he used to make liquor. And up to Glen Jean, good God! Them Easleys.
PN: Easleys?
CR: Easleys. You could buy liquor in them things. Oh boy.
PN: What did they do, did they make it themselves?
CR: Yea, they make it themselves, some one way or another. But I know he had some liquor. And I, lot of time here when I pulled liquor, sure enough. I used to go to Kentucky and get liquor myself.
PN: Were the Easleys, were they white or were they Black?
CR: What?
PN: The Easleys. Were they white people or were they Black people?
CR: Oh, he was colored.
PN: Yea?
CR: Over around there, sure old McKe11 [would] back up them boys, especially them boys work for McKell. Shit. McKell’s a big shot, you know. He owned all that property there, all them house and everything.
PN: McKell back them up, more or le ss?
CR: If they were work [ing] for him.
PN: Yea?
CR: Yea, he, them boys got anything. Shit.
PN: McKell would get a cut out of the money that they were getting?
CR: [Misunderstanding the question] He'd pay em more than the union, you know. He didn't want his boys to join the union. “Hey man, don't join no union. I pay more than you all anyhow. He had them boys' wages higher then the union. He had a little thing, like a streetcar, running way up yonder, from Price Hill down right there in front of the big store by the track. And he'd go on, and he'd pay his way hisself.
PN : He did what?
CR: He'd pay his way on that thing just like anybody else. It was his thing, but he paid on it.
PN: McKell paid?
CR: Yea, shit, he paid.
PN : What was the relation between McKell, you know, and the bootleggers and moonshiners?
CR: Ain't no relation at all. He had no liquor, yea, as I know. Cause the other branch (?) used to live over here at the, in the state where the place up yonder. And he had that city up there [Chillicothe, Ohio — ?] , and not far from that penitentiary up there [Moundsville — ?] And he died, and leave all he had, that McKell, he had a bank up there. McKell, that's a, McKell had a little bank right there in Glen Jean. You see where they build that place there, that big building? McKell had a big gold thing there in that window, a big window.
CR: Inside the bank, a big gold ball.
PN: Oh yea?
CR: Cause I know one time, when we first, me and my wife, when we first come up there. You know, we didn't come to stay there, you know. I was working up there but, you know, but we didn't move up here yet. And she got a check from Macon, Georgia. And I never remember where Erskine got that store — old man running the [store]. And she present the check in there, and she didn't, the man look at the check. Well I didn't know much up here then myself, you know, cause I wasn't living up here. He tells, he tells her: “Well, you got to, yea, you have to get some boy to represent you. I can't, I can't cash it." Well, she said, "All these people are crazy. We got to have my name signed and all that thing.” Well, they didn't know me, cause I wasn't living up here then. I was around New River, didn't go to New River. So one day, we stay up there at Shamrock. You see, this road didn't cut right straight through to Beckley then. You had to go down, you come up a footpath, you go up there right to that old building, you know, in the back, down by the swag there.
PN: Down where?
CR: You know, right to Glen Jean, you know, there's a road straight through to Oak Hill now. But when I come here, that road wasn't straight through; you had to go like going to Whipple. station, go right through them woods stayed up there. Just as you got up And turn off there on that filling up there, and go on. And I, so we there, that big used to be a big store, that big white building, nobody in it, after you leave Glen Jean, you know? And there's two house [s] between there and them other house [s]. So the woman been there, called by the name of Clara, and my wife know [her]. We come, and had gone up this Frank, Frank Crockett, run a taxi. He lived in Glen Jean, back over there. We went up to Clara that night and we stay up there. So, I think we stay up there. I was working there. We stay up there, riding on a car probably. And I gone down, we gone down in Oak Hill, I mean start. I said; "We ought to stop here McKell. I bet you get your check cashed,” I say, a $300 check. And he [ the teller] gone to cash the check and look at the check right there. He said: "Your check is good, all right." He was a good Samaritan. You know a "secret—order" check? My wife's mother died, and leave that; that thing willed to her, you know, from that order.
PN: So who cashed it for you, McKell?
CR: He [the teller] look at it like that and said; “Hold it a while. I know you can get it cashed." And he call, called up to McKell. McKell was up on the top, there sitting down, legs crossed. His house, you know, he could sit up at the top. And McKell, he say: “Where are you from? And we told him: “From Macon, Georgia.” "What kind of check?" He say: "Cash it! From Macon, Georgia, and your name on it written down, and the other name on it, the way it was?" He [the teller] said: “Yea, I seen the name myself, her husband right here.” "Cash it!" And he cash it and give us $300. And we take $50 out then and leave the rest in there, you see.
PN: Let me just ask you some more questions about these bootleggers. Could they, did the police get them often?
CR: Oh yea, some did get after you, you know, if you can see, you know. Yea, they get after you, yea, they put you in jail too, if they could catch you, you know.
PN: Did anybody protect them?
CR: Well, a lot of them, you know; just like McKell there, if you work for him, you know, he go there: "Turn 'em loose. I’ll see about it."
PN: So McKell would, you know, protect some…?
CR: His, his boys, they work for him, you know, just like, and them old one [s] that ain't working for him, you know, now been in there a long time, yea, man.
PN: What did they do for him, work in the mines?
CR: Man, he had mine [s] all up the hill there.
PN: Did the bootleggers, were they usually miners too?
CR: Well some of them keep up that track; and some of 'em in the mine, you know; and some ain't working now, ain't been working now — some old, they just been living there a long time, you know.
PN: But McKell helped them still?
CR: Yea, he helped them up when they get in the cramp, McKell helped them. Yea, Frank Crockett didn't work in the mines at all and he'd been around there. Every time McKell ready to go to New York or sometime [meaning some place], Frank Crockett bring him down in his car, taxi. He run a taxi. And he put it so Frank Crockett, then the old man, he had, you see how the station built down there? A car could park up there, and the rest of the cars park around there over the. I know the man then, run a taxi from Glen Jean; but he ran it a long time, you know. And he run that, Frank Crockett, he didn't have a mark up there you know. And Frank Crockett, and he [McKell] tell Frank: “Park in my place." Frank was hauling taxi, running taxi too.
PN: Was that Frank Crocker or Parker?
CR: Crockett, Crockett, Frank.
PN: Crockett?
CR: Now he's got a lot of houses up in Mt. Hope now.
PN: What was the Dunglen Hotel like when you first moved to Thurmond?
CR: Wide open, wide open — bottom and top. Colored had the bottom, and white had the top.
PN: Oh yea? In the Dunglen?
CR: Yes sir. All that belonged to McKell.
PN: What could you, I mean what types of things happened there at the Dunglen?
CR: Gambling, and drinking liquor, have a party. That's the way they do. Go up right from the, there's two section house been over there then. One of them section house for the branchline man and one for the mainline man. And Miss Duncan live right where that little house is right there now.
PN: Yea.
CR: Great big house there. Miss Duncan used to keep a lot of brakemen there, had no place to stay, him and his wife, he had a, they'd get a room, you know, stay there.
PN: The hotel or…
CR: No, right over here, right over there on this side here, on this side.
PN: What were those — shanties or a big house?
CR: Oh, a big house, man, just like a boarding house. The way that thing burned down sometime. Old Man Collins had a big undertaker right there in front there, right [be] side of that track. As you come from across the river, you know, where you turn and go the other way and this road come in here? [Old] Man Collins big undertaker, that's where he was undertaker till he bought this business and he move him up here.
PN: In the Dunglen, was there any prostitution or anything like that?
CR: Well, well, old Silas Green [a travel ling minstrel show] come in there every year and all like that. That big lot was open then, it wasn't built up like it is now. He come in there and all like that, shows and stuff come in there like that. But man, people [come down] from Glen Jean and the Dunglen. One time, you had light all the way across that bridge. Every time the train come in, somebody from the hotel meet the train and see if anybody want a hotel. And some meet em and carry 'em to the Lafayette Hotel.
PN: Do what?
CR: Meet these train, you know, come in, passenger [s]. Sometimes they go to the Dunglen, some, the other one, the Lafayette Hotel down the street, you know, where they burned down, down there . I went there one night [from] work. And I work, and the boys say: "Fire over there,” and they come over and hollered at me about a fire. They got a big pump over there and they got fire hose and spigot. The man says: “Charlie," he says, "go up, get you a line yourself. You can help em. I say: “Get them boys to knock a hole under the track then, and I put them through there." And so they knocked a hole under the track. Got a line through, them big pipe. And this Andy…
PN: What did you do? You knocked a hole, holes on the track?
CR: Yea, cause the train, you know the track up there, and you know, and ties like this. You ain't going to leave that hose on top of that track, you know a train coming through. Knock em through them brick (in the hotel] and let em run the hose through. And I get over there then. I got inside there man, them thick plaster walls. I was busting them with that hose, man. Had that thing down, Dick, Dick Farrell, rooming down there. Dick said: “Hell, Charlie, get this Miss Bannister. She's living in Oak Hill now. She was living down there; she used to run the post office. [Note: Interview 18 is with this same person, Jane Graham Lawson; Bannister was her maiden name.] And the Oak Hill Fire [Department] come in there, and I let them pull them hoses back over, cause I put that big pump on over there. And that big "son" was shooting water, man. And I had it almost conquered, but I couldn't stay over there but so long, cause I got to tend to my, right over the shop, right over there. I had to look out, don't get that engine get dry, cause shoot, it'd be ruined. If water get up to the engine, that'd be ruined. Cause that thing goes blowing around, everybody get scared that thing would blow up there, and the water get down off that shield up there.
PN: The what, the water what?
CR: The water get down in the steam engine. Down in that crown shield. Hear that whistle start to blow, you better do something. Get so low, you better dump that fire, and leave that grate open. Don't try to put no water in there.
PN: That was the place they heated up the Dunglen? [I was confused here.]
CR: No, that's in the shop, I talking about. When that start that night, and them fellow come here with this wagon from Oak Hill, and they say they'd take over. And shit. They had them little hose there and man they, shit, the fire done got ahead of them, man. That's when that thing burned down. But 1 can still, 1 [was] working; but the company don't mind helping them. Because a lot of times, you know, in the city there, if a fire get around there, in close to the shop, put a hose on the yard engine. Get the yard engines out of there, they're so close to the track.
PN: Did they have, you know, different women and stuff in the Dunglen Hotel?
CR: Different woman?
PN: Was women there?
CR: Both kinds be there. Yea, when they have them parties, both kinds be there. You couldn't walk out there, man. Well on the end of the week anyhow, there don't be nothing there but just plenty of people out there in front of that store. Right from over this side up over on the other side - drinking. I never get, we had a party there one night - I living down the river in there — and them boys, they [say]: "You ought to get time and come up. I say: “I know I should come up there, but I might get [in trouble].” They say: "Bring something with you." I had, I had some liquor. And I had three pint. And right there from the section house, I leave two right down there in the grass, and then I cross the track there. And I had one time, my bro there tell me if I come, then bring one down there. And you know this, I got, then you could walk right there, right over the bridge, right down [to] the hotel. You didn't have to go around you know, that bridge. Walked, and I got down to walking, and just as I going to get in the door, I come right between two state police.
PN: Oh no!
CR: And they looked at me. I said: “How're you, sheriff?" I just keep walking. Well, I had it sticked down my side, my coat on, you know. They didn't bother me like that. And after a while, I sneaked [it] out there. And then them gal, running around, and that pint of liquor gone. That women drinked that stuff. Man, they'd be around there a lot of times. Down here at Cabin Creek, before I came onto the division [at Thurmond], I'd go up to Dry Branch every Saturday night. Woman up there give a dance - Minerva. I’d go up there every, every Saturday night. Had a girl that was working, what, helped in the power house, there helping the head lady, you know. Lived right across the track in that red house, a green house on…
PN: What was that, Dry Branch?
CR: Cabin Creek Junction.
PN: Up in Kanawha County?
CR: Yea, Kanawha County. You know where Cabin Creek is at?
PN: Yea.
CR: You know where they used to run a train up there? And as you get up there, Dry Branch, Dry Branch, you have Wet Branch up there. Minerva used to live on that side, right next to the creek. And I was talking to Joe, he had a house up in there. He's been married, but he'd been single, oh a nice—looking woman. She helped cook over there. I helped, I helped him cook then, in a car. I was a flunkey — second cook.
PN: You were what?
CR: I was the second cook on the car. Every car, you know, Cabin Creek freight depot, been right here, and the station down there. And that side track way off from the road, we used to have the car parked over there. And he come down the road, the reason he got down in there.
[A short story follows here about Mr. Rivers taking a woman he met there home with him, but it is nearly completely incomprehensible on the tape.]
I work all up them hollows now and then. But right here, yea since I been, since ‘28, I been right out here, headquarters right here at Thurmond. Yea, first one I was under, Baldwin Ferry, not Baldwin, not Bald—, Baldwin Ferry, yardmaster. Cam Porter was assistant shop foreman. Pete Bradley — he was general foreman. And you go in Oak Hill right now, you know where that pawn shop, you go behind the bus terminal? You know where this man used to run [the pawnshop], he died? Roy, in Oak Hill, you see Roy's widow in there? You go in sometime, you see a fellow sitting in there; he done married Roy 's widow. She was his secretary down there, daughter [?] . mien things got low, he done take that job in Hinton, Chief Secretary, and he retire [d] from Hinton. He got a nice, his wife is dead, his wife was a school teacher. He got a nice house in there, and he married this woman. Yea, all them, all them fellows, we used to work together. Yea, but that's all right here. I come here, I worked in the yard for a while, and I transfer over to the shop. And I helped boiler watcher, helped; that wasn't my steady job over in there. But when the helper been out, they shoved me in there. My steady job, and I’d been everywhere, the engine watchman could send me down, go right down to Gauley, and watch that engine, if that fellow took sick.
PN: You said you were a yard watcher?
CR: Engine watchman. But you know, you had one at Gauley that [used] coal. You got, you got a diesel down there now. But with them steam engine, you had to have some boys down there [to] watch it, you know. Them diesels, you can fill them up and chain them down.
PN: What did you say? "Wash" it?
CR: Watch it, watch it, you have to steady watch it. See, a steam engine, when you have it, you have to keep this coal in it, and keep the oil in it. Where these diesels, you can fill em up; there all night, you don't have to watch em. That's different - that's the reason so many man got cut off, yea.
Note: Questions asking Mr. Woodson to repeat things he previously said are the result of having originally conducted the interview with the tape recorded set on "playback" rather than "record. The interview was conducted a second time immediately after the first one was completed, with the switch in the incorrect position.
PN: To begin, Mr. Woodson, perhaps you could mention when and where you were born.
DW: I was born in Kaymoor bottom on August the 5th, 1922. I began to work in 1936, when I was 14, at the Kaymoor mine until I went into the service in 1943. When I came back, I went back in the mines at Kaymoor in 1946. I left there and went to England Branch from there. And I left England Branch in '46 and come to Sprague, and been with Sprague New River Company ever since until 57. Worked at Sprague, Skelton, and Cranberry. Last work I done was at Cranberry on conveyors.
PN: Why did you stop working at Cranberry in 1957?
DW: Well, they worked out and put me on hand—loading. and I wouldn't hand load at Cranberry. Then I went over here beside the water dam and worked a while in a punch mine for Bill Ellis. And he didn't pay off, and I wouldn't work, and so he cut me off, and so on. I've been doing janitor work ever since.
PN: In the United Mine Workers headquarters?
DW: No, I've been working for Ballengee Furniture Company ever since 1951. And then I've been down here, it’ll be 17 years in June. No, I started my 17th year in June. This coming June, if I still be here, it'll be 18, start on my 18th year.
PN: Let me ask you about your parents again, to repeat the same questions.
DW: My father was born in Buckingham County, Virginia. I don't know where his parents was born at. My mother was born at Claremont, and moved from Claremont to Sprague. She left Sprague in 1918 and went to Kaymoor, and stayed at Kaymoor until the late fifties. And then she moved to Minden. And stayed at Minden till my daddy died, and then she stayed with my brother, and then she left there and went with my oldest sister in [Elkton], Maryland.
PN: And you said that your families was one of the last families to leave Kaymoor?
DW: I think he was about next to the last. I think there was two families when he left, or one, when he left there, when he moved out. He was one of, about the last one that moved out.
PN: What year was that?
DW: It was in, it was in the fifties. Because my boy was born, see I got a boy that's 27 years old. He never was in, down in Kaymoor. We carried him to Kaymoor top one time; he waited till we come back up. It was in the late fifties. We left out there and went to move to Minden.
PN: What was the town like right before your family left? Were all the old houses still standing?
DW: Yea, all the houses were standing, but folks there, they had moved them out cause the mine was working out. And just as soon as they could get an empty house somewhere, they would move them into the other coal camps.
PN: So it was almost like a ghost town there or something.
DW: Yea, and a couple years after everybody moved out, somebody set the houses on, set a house on fire down there, and they were so close together, they just kept going till they burned them all up but two. And they was up next to, on the other end of the company store up next to Browns. And then they come back and tore the company store down. But that hoist that you go down on, it run several years after that, because they had little punch mine down there. And folks went down there to work in the punch mine.
PN: At Kaymoor bottom?
D: Halfway, halfway, the mine was halfway the mountain. I think they closed the store down about six months before everybody moved out. We had to go out on Kaymoor top, or else Fayetteville, to ger what you used.
PN: Back in the twenties and thirties, as you were saying before, if you wanted to go in and out of the town, how did you do that?
DW: You went in and out on the train. You had one that would go out, you come in once a day, come in twice a day, one run about eleven and one run about five. And then you come down on the haulage, over the haulage, and it held 18 people. A rope let it down and a rope pulled it back. And then after 12 0 'clock [midnight], it quit running, you walked down the steps. Or else go to Fayette Station and walk up the railroad tracks. That's the onliest way you had to get in there.
PN: And they called that little car a “truck"?
DW: Haulage, yea.
PN: How did that operate? Was that on wheels?
DW: Yea, it's on four wheels, made just like a big old box. And it had like steps in it, and folks sit on them. And it held 18.
PN: The steps that you were talking about that went up and down the mountain, was that like a ladder that people built?
DW: It's wooden steps just like you put on a house. But they had them going down the hill, and then thay had them going thisaway, and back thisaway, thisaway, going over the cliff. You walked on them, you walked down, they had them halfway down the mountain to the mine. Then you just get on the railroad track and walk down the hill from there.
PN: The rest of the way?
DW: Yea. Then when you walked down there, you'd be sore for the next two days. Your legs up in here [indicating the backs of his thighs]. But I got so I got used to them; it didn't bother me. I could walk down and walk back any time. And just like you was on that ruck when the power go off, it stopped dead. It throwed several peoples over the front of it.
PN: When the power went off.
DW: Yea, it stopped dead. Some dogs like was picking, it stopped dead. And they to have three crews of men to move that truck; one run it eight hours, the next one eight hours, the next one eight hours. That's the onliest transportation you had besides the train. All this stuff would come into the company store in boxcars. The train would run up to the station, and stop, and they'd take it in the store.
PN: How many people lived in Kaymoor bottom when you started working in the mines?
DW: Oh, it was 500 or more down there then. There was a lot of kids too. Thev had two schools - a white school and a Black school. But we played together; all of us played right together - didn't make no difference. And this foreign family lived right above me. Shit, I'd go up there and eat. Went home, they'd come down to my, down to our house and do the same thing. Wasn't no fighting and carrying on. You got to fighting - quite natural kids would. But next day, they'd be right back to playing and carrying on together again. Fish together, swim together, shoot marbles we would shoot a lot of marbles. Cause that's the most only thing you could do.
PN: Was that a real popular game?
DW: Yea, marble game was a good game down there. We played knucks, rollovers, that was a popular game down there — rollovers.
PN: What's that?
DW: You'd dig four holes, and you'd make them two or three times. And the last one, you'd have to put your hand down over in there, and they 'd get your knucks. The older folks played that too. We'd go from house to house and play cards, and drank whiskey, and stuff like that. And most everybody made him some home brew or some whiskey. And a man down there named Lee Jones and Irving Jones, one used to play the guitar and one played the piano. Dancing, each house, this house this week, next house next week. We used to have a good time down in there. And if we got ready to go to a show, we had to go up on the haulage and walk to Fayetteville — three miles or ride a cab If you had money to ride a cab. Or you could walk if you had time, or thumb. And then if you had a bicycle, you'd take your bicycle up there and go. Then ride back down Fayette Mountain, up the railroad tracks back home. But I was fortunate enough [sic], never did own a bicycle. It was a big family, none of us, we never had no bicycle.
PN: What did you go to Fayetteville for?
DW: That's where the theater was at and grocery stores, where your shopping, little shopping centers was at — in Fayetteville. See that's the closest town to Kaymoor Fayetteville. You know where Fayetteville is?
PN: Yes.
DW: That's the closest place we had to come to town and go to the show. Or else we could catch Number Eight, and go up to Elverton, and go to the show, and walk back again. But now, they cut that out in the early forties, it would have been in the early forties.
PN: Was Elver ton a bigger town than Kaymoor at the time?
DW: No, it was about the same. It was an old coal camp. In between Elver ton and there was another one named Browns. And then you would cross the river at Browns, and go over to Nutta11. And then you could go from Nuttall — you could bring a car down there you could go up into Winona, Cliff top, up In there then. If you was fortunate to have a car. There was several folks on Kaymoor bottom had a car, but they'd leave them up on top of the hill. The company had garages they would rent you. The haulage, the truck would carry you up every two hours, every hour.
PN: The company built that truck and everything for the people?
DW: Yea, well see, they had to let the miners down halfway the mountain too; the miners rode it too.
PN: How many miners worked there in the thirties in the mine?
DW: Oh, it was four or five hundred worked there. Kaymoor always had been a big operation. And then you, see the truck would bring three loads from the top to the mines, then come to the bottom and get one — cause there wasn't that many at the bottom — carry them up and then go back to the top and bring three more halfway, then you come to the bottom and get another one.
PN: Because more people lived at the top that worked in the mine than lived down at the bottom?
DW: Yea, because they come in cars and trucks and things most of them come in thataway.
PN: Where did most of them live, do you know?
DW: Oh, they lived in Gar ten, some lived [as] far as over here in Beckley used to drive from Beckley over there. All around over in Gatewood, Cunard, Brooklyn, they would work around everywhere. Even they'd come out of Ames, Edmond Mountain, rode down there, then go down on the truck.
PN: Let me ask you a couple of more questions about your parents. Did your father work in the mines for his whole life?
DW: Yea, ever since he come up from Virginia to come up here, and that was before World War I. And he worked in the mines till in the fifties, when we come out.
PN: And you said he had Black Lung or silicosis?
DW: Yea, Black Lung killed him. You see, he worked, he come from Virginia up here to Sprague; and he left Sprague and went to Kaymoor to his peoples. And he left from Sprague and went in the service, and my mother went down to Kaymoor in 1918 to his peoples, and stayed down there until they moved them out in about '55, about '58, I believe. My oldest brother was born in Sprague, but he was carried to Kaymoor when he was a year old, and he stayed in Kaymoor the rest of his life. I think he moved out of Kaymoor about '54 or ‘55 when he left out of Kaymoor.
PN: What did your father's father do for a living, do you know that?
DW: No, I don t. All I know Is he stayed In Buckingham County, Virginia, down next to Bremo. I never did see him.
PN: Was he a farmer or something, or don't you know?
DW: Yea, I guess that's what was all that's down there. Ain't no coal miners or nothing down in there. I was down there one time, but I was too small. I don't know nothing about it.
PN: How about your mother's parents, your mother's father?
DW: Well, he was a coal miner. He coal mined at Sprague for years and years. He moved from up at Claremont into Sprague, and he stayed there the rest of his life. And I don't know how old Mama was when she left Claremont, but she was born in Claremont. There was 19 of them in the family; I think all of them but about three was born in Sprague.
PN: And your wife's family was also, you know, a coal—mining family basically?
DW: My wife's family, they come from Virginia. They come into Claremont, they come in, they left Thayer, they was living at Thayer. When Thayer shut down, they moved from Thayer to Kaymoor. My wife was born at Claremont. They was Covington; all their people, they was from Covington.
PN: What did they do there at Covington?
DW: Worked in the paper mill.
PN: In the paper mill there?
DW: Most of them all, that's the only work around there is the paper mill, and stores, and stuff like that. My wife's daddy worked in the coal mines a long time too. He died about three years ago. Black Lung or silicosis killed him too. Her brother started in the mines a year ahead of me. When he come back out of the service, he went to Michigan; in 46, he went to Michigan. He ain't been back to this, he just come back to visit, he stays in Lansing, Michigan.
PN: You said you started working yourself in 1936.
DW: Right, 14 years of age. Started in May, and in June, and then in August, I was 15. Swore an affidavit, put my age up. And I stayed in the mines until ' 57, all but the three years I was in the service. I come right back out of the service, went back in the mines. That's all, onliest jobs I had, that's all I know is coal mining. There wasn't nothing else down in Kaymoor to do but coal mining. Or carry coal on your back, and you couldn't make — ten cents a sack. You had to carry a whole lot of coal making ten cents on a sack.
PN: What are the different jobs you did when you were working underground?
DW: Oh, I 've done just about everything in the mine. I've loaded coal, I've helped to lay track, I've worked on the machine, I've run motor, I have broke, I’ve run, I worked on the jack hammer, I've done just about everything in the mine that you can do but boss. Worked on supply crew and all that.
PN: Like we were talking before, back in 36, when you began working in the mines, what proportion or percentage of the miners was Black, and what percentage was white?
DW: Well, there was more Black in the mines in '36 than there was white. And then after the work started getting easier, the more white started going in. See in 36, you had to get it, you had a pick and a shovel. You didn't have this machinery stuff then; you had a pick and a shovel. If you didn't load your coal, you didn't make no money. You had to dig it and load it to make your money. Now some motor runners, I think made seven, not quite eight dollars around in the mines; the brakeman was making seven something; the trackman was making seven something; and the machine man was cutting by the ton. He'd go on a section, and cut a whole section up. Maybe there were 15, 20 men that work on that. The more coal they'd load, the more he'd make. Sometimes he would stay in and stuff the mines a day and a half at a time to get his coal cut up for the mens to work.
PN: He would - for a day and a half?
DW: Sure, he'd go in in the evening sometime, and it'd be the next evening before he 'd get out, [depending] on what kind of place he had to cut. The machinery wasn't good like it is now, break down, and all that. And if he didn't cut them places up, keep the men in coal, and they wouldn't have nothing to do, he wouldn't make no money. So he'd stay and get it cut up.
PN: What kind of machine did he use then?
DW: Well, down at Kaymoor, they had these little old Goodmans.
PN: What did they have, a big thing coming out in the front they used to cut?
DW: Well, it's got a, it's a big square thing, sitting there and con— trolling everything behind. And then it's got a cutter bar in the front six, sometimes, six—foot long. And it's got bits around it; and he'd cut so many places, and the bits get dull, he had to take a wrench, take all them bits out, and re—bit it, and go back to work again. And then the machine—runner had a helper, and he had to set the jacks, and shovel the dust to keep the machine from stopping up. You had to keep all the dust out of the mine.
PN: Was that machine what they called a duck—bill sometimes?
DW: No, that's this new equipment [although the duck—bills were made obsolete by the continuous miners]. That was just, it run on four wheels and on a pony truck, and then when you pulled into a place, it would un— slide off it, and set a jack and pull it off of that. Sump it, and cut across the face, and bring it back, and get on and go to another place. Go out that place, throw your switch and come back up to another place, unload it, and [do] the same thing .
PN: So the machine itself wasn't on wheels or anything?
DW: They had a pulley—truck, they called it, that runned them. But the machine themself didn't, but the truck did. And then you would have a slope on your, bring your, set your tail back here; pull it up on there; and knock your tailpipe; and you would couple up and go to another place. You had a controller, everything on it, and go in another room. Then when you cut that place, you load up, and go on down to another place, and another place and do the same thing. But now, they got them on rubber tires. They just go right through the breakthroughs; they don't have to go all the way out like they used to. But if you had 25 places to cut, you 25 switches to throw and tram to get to your places. You don't have to do that now; they got them right on the bottom with the rubber tires, and they just go from breakthrough to breakthrough.
PN: When you worked at Kaymoor, how high was the coal?
DW: Well, I 've broke a many day — eight hours — in a two—nine entry . And the rooms and all were two foot nine. When you got a place at Kaymoor that was four foot, you thought you had big coal. That's right. It was all low coal — three foot, two—nine, three foot, four.
PN: You said when you worked at England Branch that the coal was a lot higher?
DW: It was 12 and 14—foot. I was surprised. And then one day, they told me, they said, "Big Boy" I was weighing about 200—some pounds then — they say, "You're going to the low coal today.” So I got kind of worried. I said, “What they talking about — low coal?" I know what was Kaymoor. And I got around the hill where they was talking about, it was six—foot clean coal. I told them, "Man, this ain't no low coal. You ought to go where I come from.” And I worked at England Branch, not quite six months. I left England Branch, and I come to Sprague. And I worked at Sprague till it worked out. And at Skelton there, it worked out. And from Skelton to Cranberry. Cranberry worked out; that's the last mine I done. Except I went out here at the water dam, and worked about three months for Bill Ellis in the punch mines. That was the last part of 57; I ain't been back no more.
PN: What thickness of coal do you like to work in best?
DW: Well, about four—foot coal is the best coal to work in.
PN: Why is that better than say, six or ten feet?
DW: Well, I just ain't never been used to nothing no more than that. A lot of folks won't work in no coal under six, seven foot. But before I went to England Branch, I didn't know there was 14—foot coal. Of course, I hadn't been but up at Kaymoor in that low coal. That was the Sewell seam there in Kaymoor, and that's a low seam of coal. And then they had some down there lower than that. They had some down there the machine couldn't get in: they had to pull back and leave that. Just couldn’t get a car in. See, when I was in the mines, you had a trackman go up there and lay your track, lay your switch when you start off a room, you double that room up, and you pull it back. But now, they tell me, I ain't been under, this, you know, they don 't switch they got everything on rubber tires and stuff like that. You just in there and cut, and go about your business.
PN: When you lay a switch, what does that mean?
DW: Ok, that's when you got a mainline coming down through here — as straight track. And then you lay a switch, and then you turn off and go this place. And then you go down here so far, and you lay another switch, and turn off to some other place.
PN: Oh, the tracks going to the other sides?
DW: Yea, you slack off the main road up there, just like you turn on different streets? That's the way lay your switches and come off in the coal mine.
PN: Back when you started working, to repeat some of these questions again, would you say there was any discrimination in the mines, you know, against the Black miners that worked there?
DW: No, because there was more Black in the mines then than there was now. But now, they did, then they didn't, you seen maybe one or two Black motor—runners. The rest of them was white motor—runners and Black brakemen. But then on up the years come, they got Black brakeman and Black motor—runners just like they had, they had white motor—runners. And you had Black machine—runners and trackmen, and everything, cause there's more Black in the mines then than there was white. The easier the work got, the more the white went in.
PN: How about in terms of some of the foremen?
DW: Well, when I went into the mines, you didn't have nothing but white foremens. But when I come back out of the service, they had Black foremens then. Now, I don't know how they got in there, but they had a school around everywhere. And they went, and they learned it, so they had to give them the opportunity to do it. And I think for sure the first Black safety man around here was Russell Matthew. And he's still living; he lives in Oak Hill now. But he done retired now; he was with the state a long time. And then they had assistant night foreman at Kaymoor when I come back; he was Black. But now I never worked for a Black section boss, cause there wasn't none in no mines I’ve been in. But all down here on the Gulf, and places, they got them now. They have had them a long time.
PN: Where, the Gulf, you said?
[The Gulf refers to southern portions of Raleigh County, centered on the Slab Fork district.]
DW: Yea. We got a girl work here now, a young boy, he's a fire, he's a boss [referring to the son of one of the secretaries at the District 29 headquarters]. But when I was coming up in '36, you didn't see that.
PN: In housing, was there a white section and a Black section in Kaymoor at one time?
DW: Yea, at one time. But they got out from that, and just as one move out, a Black move in, move into one of them houses. A white move into the Black section. They just, they done that. Then we played up and down the road together — Black and white. Go to each others house and eat, and carry on like that. There wasn’t no hard time down in there at all.
PN: You said there was two schools and two churches in Kaymoor?
DW: Yea. You see, you had church in the schoolhouse.
PN: You did?
DW: Yea, yea, church and school were the same thing. You had, Sunday you had church in it and during the week, they had school in it.
PN: Were the preachers in the church full—time preachers, or were they coal miners most of the week?
DW: Well they was coal miners most of the week, and then they 'd preach on Sundays, yea.
PN: What kind of churches, what denominations?
DW: Baptist .
PN: Both the Black and white church were Baptist?
DW: Yea, down in the bottom it was.
PN: What did you do for entertainment there, in the evenings or the weekend?
DW: Fishing or swimming and drinking whiskey or home brew or something like that. There wasn't no recreation buildings down there. Down at the white school, they did have a few swings and a see, and a couple of
seesaws. That was all. They'd all go right down there and play on it. And they a little place up there they level led off — it wasn't big as a tennis court, we used to get up there and try to play ball. Choose up and play; we’d have a good time.
PN: You were talking before, maybe you could mention this a little bit again, about the baseball teams that they did have.
DW: Well that was up here in Raleigh County where they had the baseball teams: New River Giants, and the Raleigh Clippers, and Slab Fork had a team, and Coal City. But now, each one had a white team and they had a Black team. It wasn't mixed then. I had several uncles was good ball players. If you could have got in the major I ague then, they would have made major league . I had an Uncle David Toney, he was a pitcher; and Robert Toney was the first baseman; and Harvey Toney was a catcher and a third baseman. They played ball with Grover Lewis [a Black miner and ball player living in Beckley, who was featured in a 1980 article I wrote for Goldenseal]. They used to go off in Kentucky, and bring good ball players in here, and they'd give em jobs, fool around. The company would hire a good ball player; they had good ball teams. The Raleigh Clippers played down here [just below the UMW offices in Beckley]. Sprague had a park down there where the shopping center is now. There used to be a big ball diamond in there [referring to the Heck's/ Sears/ Wilbur's shopping center off North Valley Drive].
PN: How many people would come to the games?
DR: Oh, four, five, and six hundred people. It would be loaded on the weekends.
PN: Both white and Black people would come to the games, right?
DW: Yea.
PN: Did Black teams play white teams often?
DW: Yea, they'd play each other. And then down at the ballpark at Sprague, during the week, they would play poker in there. Used to have a man sell whiskey down there called Kenny Trump. He usually met you on the hill, on the railroad track right there on the hill below the ball diamond, until England broke him up.
PN: He did that too down here?
DW: Claude England? Yessir. I knowed him when was a state police and I knowed when he was an alcohol agent. Cause he run into me two or three times when he was an alcohol agent, trying to catch me around making whiskey.
PN: Who was he working for then?
DW: The alcohol division [the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms]. Yea, I've made a whole lot of whiskey in my lifetime. They caught my daddy making it right on the stove in the house, and put him in jail. And he stayed in jail at Fayetteville for one year. They put him on trusty to come home Saturday evening and go back Sunday evening. [Claude England, unfortunately, won election as sheriff of Raleigh County in 1980. England is a Democrat of extremely conservative, and demagogically conservative, persuasion.] Then they had a, I don't know what that thing they called it, you would go to town, and they would give groceries to Mama for the kids while he was in jail.
PN: Really?
DW: Yea. We stayed right there in the house till he come back, till he come out of jail. They put him back to work, put him back to work in the mines. Companies used to be a whole lot better than what they is now. They would, a man would have to do an awful lot for them to fire him back in them days. But now they'll fire you for the least anything. They tell me, I don't know, I ain't been in the mines since '57. I’ve been doing janitor work around groceries, down at furniture stores; I've been working for Ballengee Furniture here since 1950. And then I went on the payroll in '51, been on the payroll [referring to the District 29 payroll] ever since. No, that's Ballengee Furniture. I works two jobs now.
PN: Oh, you do?
DW: I’ve been working 8:30 down at the furniture store on Valley Drive and stay till 12:00, and I come down here at 1:00.
PN: You do?
DW: Yea. I’ve been here, starting on my 17th year the first of June, starting on my 17th year. But I've been with them ever since '51 on the payroll.
PN: You work there in the early mornings usually?
DW: I go to work at 8:30 and stay there till 12:00. Then I leave there in time to get down here at 1:00. I’ve been doing that 17 years since I got this job down here. Well, I worked for them [Ballengee Furniture] when I worked in the mines. I worked on the evening shift. I'd work them in the mornings till the time to go to work, and I'd go home, put my bank clothes on and go to the mines.
PN: At Kaymoor, or Cranberry, or Sprague?
DW: No, just Sprague, for Ballengee Furniture. But down at Kaymoor, I didn't do nothing just go to work in the evening time, and get up in the morning. Get up in the morning, and I would leave Kaymoor and go to Browns. I was courting a girl over in Nut tall. I’d walk to Browns every day and stay to three o'clock. The whistle'd blow, and I 'd hurry back home and change clothes, take off for the mines.
PN: There was no bathhouse or anything like that at the mine?
DW: No sir, there wasn't no bathhouse then. You bathed at home. You bathed and changed clothes; there wasn't such a thing as a bathroom. See, that, that's just started here in late years the bathroom. You done everything at home. You carried all your bank clothes, and your wife would wash them on the weekend for you. And you'd get up Monday, and start off, see, right at the house. They'd have your water hot and the fire made. And when you get home, you'd just bathe and jump in bed. There wasn't such a thing as a bathhouse. You see, that just started here late years the bathhouse. Since they got this here contracts coming in there, that's when the bathroom started, bathhouse started. When I worked at the, they didn't have a bathhouse at any of the places I worked in '57.
PN: So you had to go home, you went to and from work in your work—clothes?
DW: That's right — two or three in the car with dirty, with bank clothes on.
PN: You were saying before about your memories of the, you know, the Depression when Hoover.
DW: Yea, I know something about Hoover, sure. I got up many a morning and went in the woods and picked blackberries and come back home. And Ma’d cook them, and we'd have them for breakfast. One time we had nothing to eat at all. Poppa was working every day too; just couldn't get nothing. I went down there [to the company store]; they had busted a sack of beans. Picked up beans and carried them home. She washed them and cooked them, and we had beans in the evening. Yea, I know quite a bit about Hoover. Your dad would go to work in the morning before day, and come back at dark. Go to the store, ask for a dollar scrip — “Sorry, can't let you have it." Wasn't no money to be made.
PN: You stayed there that whole time in the mine, in the mining town?
DW: Yea, they had a system then — clean up or bring your tools [meaning take your tools out of the mine, which meant that you were fired]. You had to clean up everything; then you couldn't no coal. That was before my time; I wasn't in the mines then. But I was, I believe, ten or 12 years old when Hoover, the last part of Hoover's. I know, I know I picked many blackberries to eat. And in Kaymoor, it got so bad, they started eating locust blooms.
PN: Locust blooms?
DW: That's right. When locust bloom, they would go get 'em and batter 'em in flour and fry ‘em. They taste like oysters.
PN: They taste like oysters?
DW: Yea, they used to eat oysters, used to eat them locust blooms like nobody's business.
PN: What else did they do during that time when it was very hard to get food?
DW: You just got what you could get and eat and fish, catch fish, and hunt and get something like that what you could. Because the company wouldn't give you very much scrip, because you didn't have the money in there. And you had to pay rent for the house; you had to pay for the coal; and you had to pay your doctor bill — if you had enough to pay. If you didn't, you'd carry it over to the next half, and see what you do next half. You see a man draw five or six dollars, that was a big pay day then. Of course, if you didn't make no money, there wasn't none to draw. You had to pay doctor, hospital, pay so much for lights, and so much for water, wasn't no gas back in them times since you burnt coal for everything.
PN: What did you generally do for entertainment? Maybe you discussed that a little bit already.
DW: Well, you'd get out there in the evening, five or six would get on a fence post somewhere, and get something started up. Shoot marbles, or fish, swim in the summertime. Folks get out there and move rocks and stuff and make them a garden and works the garden. Everyone down there had a little garden spot around.
PN: What types of things did people grow in the garden usually?
DW: Well, they would grow anything — potatoes, corn, beans, ordinary stuff. They would have places around. Onions, stuff like that, they would have ordinary gardens. But they wouldn't be, if you found out a place as big as this room [about 30 by 40 feet], he was extra good, he had a good little garden. But they would dig a little spot out over there, and go over in these rocks here and dig out a little spot. And he'd have two or three spots around, with stuff planted In it. A whole lot of poke salad down there, folks had a whole lot of poke salad during them times too.
PN:What?
DW: Poke salad.
PN: That they ate?
DW: Yea, during the summertime. And they had places down there where water cresses grow; they would be getting a lot of cresses and stuff like that. A lot of fishing, eat fish, had a lot of fish; fish was pretty, could catch pretty good fish down at Kaymoor. Because it was down there, wasn't everybody fishing down there because they wouldn't walk up in there. Just the folks around there would fish.
PN: So there was more fish?
DW: Yea.
PN: What kind of fish did you usually catch?
DW: Most things you caught was catfish and channel cats. But you caught bass and bluegills, crappies, fish most anything out of New River, carp, turtles.
PN: Yea, you were saying that. How did you cook the turtles that you caught?
DW: Well, you'd kill him and you cut the shell off of him. And then the turtle's got seven kind of meat in him. And 1 have a friend used to take the shell, and scrape it, and make turtle soup. And lots of game went down in there. You'd kill quails, rabbits, squirrels, lot of coons down in there coon hunt. And the last part of it down in there, there's some deers would come across the mountain, down across the river, and go up on the other side. We killed us a few deers down in there.
PN: How did they get across the river?
DW: Swim. They had a few bear down in there one time. Plenty of fox.
PN: Red foxes?
DW: Yea, you can 't eat them though, you know.
PN: You can't?
DW: No. You can eat a coon, but you can't eat a red fox.
PN: Why, too little meat?
DW: He ain't nothing but just a wild dog. Look just like a wild dog.
PN: Did people keep hogs or chickens or cows or anything?
DW: They didn't keep no cows, but they kept hogs and chickens. Thanksgiving — they'd make a big fire and they'd have a hog killing.
PN: They did?
DW: Yea. Yea, folks would have two and three hogs in a pm at a time.
PN: Would people get together on Thanksgiving and kill a hog?
DW: Yea, and sometimes as high as 12 or 14 hogs would be killed. Each one just getting together, and they'd build a fire, and put a barrel in it. In scalding water, and kill him, and scrape him, and hang him up.
PN: You were saying before that you thought that relations between Black and white people were, you know, friendly in Kaymoor generally compared to, say, some other situations.
DW: That's right.
PN: How would you explain that? What do you think were some of the reasons for that?
DW: well, they were just down there, and there wasn't nothing else to do [except] for the coloreds and Blacks [meaning Blacks and whites] to get together, and play and carry on together. That's all there was. You're down in that hole; you couldn't get out. You got certain hours you had to get out on the train; you got certain hours you had to go up on the haulage. So we just stayed down in there and played and carried on together.
PN: Do you think that, you know, just the nature too of working in the mine helped make people friendly to each other?
DW: Yea, because both of you down in that hole, in the low coal trying to make a living. Sure, we helped each other out, sure, that's what it is. You seen boys and girls playing together just like anywhere, like the whole world around. Down there then, it was the same way down in Kaymoor then. They used to have a foreigner, Cozinas used to live right above us. Shit, I used to go up there at night and eat, just like I did at home. They'd come down to my house, he had two boys — Charlie and Eddie Cozina. We used to fight today, and tomorrow we was all right; we'd go back playing again. Next week, there'd be a fight; and then after it, you play again. Charlie and Eddie lives in Oak Hill now; they stays down, they works down below Montgomery now, still in the coal mine.
PN: Did you have radios, say in ‘36 when you began working, did your family have a radio?
DW: Yea, I can remember the first radio we bought. We bought it from, Poppa bought it from a man up Browns. And then in late years before they left from out of there, they had TV, but you couldn't get but one or two stations, something like that, unless you run an antenna plumb up on the side of the mountain. Yea, I can remember the first radio the old man bought. I thought that was something.
PN: What types of programs could you hear?
DW: Well, you could get, your biggest station then was Cincinnati, WLW, Cincinnati. Then some of these other stations opened up, and then you could get some. But you couldn't get too many down in that bottom. I've been down there one year when a cyclone come up through there.
PN: A cyclone?
DW: Yea, mowing down trees, blow them across the railroad track. My brother runned about three miles, and flagged down, flagged a train down, keep it from running into a slide.
PN: Because of this?
DW: You could look down the road and you could see trees was rooting up. Right on the road by the railroad track. It didn't get back on the hill, just come up right up through by the road bed.
PN: What year was that, do you remember?
DW: No, I don't know what year that was. My brother, they had a train come through there a fast train named Number Six. And they had a slide on the track, and he run down the road about two miles and flagged it down to keep the train from hitting that slide. the train stopped, when he got it stopped, the wind had b lowed the bell off the engine. They hadn't missed the bell off the engine. It come up through there one time in my lifetime being down there. They called it a twister. Wasn't just nothing but a cyclone like you hear out here in the West and other places now, because it was moving trees, covered up the railroad tracks, took them about a week to get the tracks straightened back out.
PN: You were saying before, were there any Masonic lodges or fraternal orders of any kind in Kaymoor?
DW: No, wasn't none in Browns, none at Elverton. I think one boy down there — John S. Whistler — I think he went to Montgomery, and he belongs to Masonic.
PN: And was there a lodge of some kind at Thurmond, you said?
DW: Yea, they used to have a Masonic and everything at Thurmond. 1 think the thing's still in the wall down there now. See Thurmond used to be a big—timing little place, a little railroad town, they called it. That's where all the railroad men would stop and hang around. And trains would hang, lay—over there at nights. There and Hinton, see, they were the two stations where trains get their orders and stuff. The section crews would live in there, live in around them railroads up in there.
PN: Did you associate often, or have a chance to associate with people who worked on the railroad?
DW: Yea, while I was a kid coming up, I used to, they used to bring extra crews up to Kaymoor and park them down there on the side track. I used to go up there and sell whiskey to them.
PN: You did?
DW: Yea, One man used to cook on the railroad down there when I was a kid; he lives out, live up here in East Beckley now. Yea, they used to be, that's where you'd make a lot of monty. When a section crew, when an extra—force crew, would move in there, them folks would buy whiskey like mad. Especially on pay days! The ones that stayed there, and then most of them, a gang of them would catch the train in the evening and go to Thurmond and come back the next day .
PN: Was that whiskey? Was that moonshine that you made yourself usually?
DW: Yessir! Well, there wasn't no, it wasn't no whiskey stores in ‘36.
PN: No state stores or anything?
DW: No, that's all you had was moonshine and home brew — stuff like that.
PN: Could you sell in places like the Dunglen Hotel? No, that was burned down.
DW: Wasn't no hotel nowhere [thought I was referring to Kaymoor] there; they had a hotel in Thurmond.
PN: Thurmond, yea.
DW: On down the railroad, there wasn't no more till you got to Montgomery.
Was a hotel in Montgomery.
PN: But at the Lafayette in Thurmond, could you go and sell stuff there?
DW: Well, they'd have it there for to sell you. They'd have it in there to sell theirselves. And then you see some bootleggers go up there, and they put four or five pints of whiskey around their waist, and put on a coat. They'd go; they'd sell it.
PN: At Thurmond or at the hotel?
DW: In Thurmond anywhere. Just like you was a moonshiner, and folks out there know, they would come to you to get it. Or else you would go out in there where they were at, and they would buy it from you. You knowed all the bootleggers now. They knowed where the bootleggers was at to buy it.
PN: Could you make a living that way?
DW: Yea, yea, you could make a good living moonshining. You might have to take scrip sometime for it, or something like that, but you could sell it.
PN: If I was selling moonshine, and you gave me scrip, could I go and cash that in at a company store?
DW: Well, there was always somebody around, man, that had a little money would cash your scrip — give you 75 cents for a dollar. You give him a dollar scrip, and he give you 75 cents money. And then lots of them, they done all their dealing at the store, they would just do their dealing with the scrip, see, and keep their cash. When they had cash to keep; back in '36, there wasn't much circulating.
PN: If you were gambling in a card game, would you bet scrip or money?
DW: Sometimes you bet scrip, if you got it; and if you got money, if you had money, they used to play it both ways. Now I used to stay away from school, I used to, my mother used to keep me from school there for the wash, a washing board. When I went to work, I bought my Mama her first washing machine. And my brother bought her first Frigidaire. That t s right. That was…
PN: What year was that?
DW: In Kaymoor, ' 36.
PN: That's when you bought the machine?
DW: Yea. All the other time, you had a washboard. On the washboard up and down [motioning]. Go out in the yard and make a fire, and put your tub on it, and boil your clothes out there. Sometimes you put It on the cooking stove, and boiled it on the cooking stove.
PN: You were saying too that there were some one—family and some two— family houses in Raymoor?
DW: Yea, and then they had, they had a big, they had a colored and a Black [meaning Black and white] boarding house there.
PN: Oh they did?
DW: Yea, when men didn't have no wives and they come and got a job, they'd go ahead and board, see, so much a month. And right there, they had rooms and everything for them.
PN: These were single men who stayed at the boarding house?
DW: Yea. And then some folks would go there with their wife and get a room, and stay there with their wife too.
PN: Could you get food there too?
DW: Yea, you'd pay so much a month. Yea, you'd just come in and eat, and sleep, and go on to work. And they had a big club house, you know, right up on Kaymoor top, right from the haulage there, they had an awful big colored boarding house up there.
PN: On Kaymoor top?
DW: Yea. Oh it stayed full all the time. You couldn't hardly get, find a room there. Folks come in from different places and work, and then on the weekend, would go home. Stay there during the week, go home on the weekend, come back first of the week, and go to work again.
PN: What did the women usually have for recreation?
DW: Just go around from house to house like the mens do, that's all. Wasn't no recreation down in there.
PN: And the women would do most of the shopping, I guess, right, at the company store?
DW: Yea, and then they had a clothes, some company in Oak, in Mt. Hope used to have a big place, and they used to go over there and get their dresses and shoes and stuff. And the company ore carried some clothes and stuff too. And they would have a tailor come in about once every two months, and you would get your clothes. Or the tailor made you up for your clothes, and you'd charge them through the company. Pay the company so much a month.
PN: So I guess now that it right this time, we have time for one more question. So let me ask the question to you again. Are you basically happy that you were a coal miner most of your life?
DW: Well yea, I liked the coal mining I was in, because that's all I know. I didn't know, I come out of school to go, went to work. I didn't you any farther than the fifth grade in school. I rather would be working, then I would have had money, than to have went to school then. But now, I feel the mistake now, you see. It's too late. Yea, I liked the mines. There wasn't to the mines. You make yourself safe, you keep yourself safe in the mines ain't nothing wrong with the mines. And there wasn't as much gas and stuff like it is now. Mining is getting complicated now, they tell me. I haven't been in them, with all this equipment and stuff.
PN: If you had your choice, you'd rather work then, than say today, in the mine?
DW: Well, I couldn't say, because I haven't been in this mines with this here mechanic stuff. I don't know. But they tell me mining is easy now, but I went in the mines in 36, and mines was hard. Of course, you had to hustle. If you didn't, you didn't have nothing. Cause I, when I went to company work, I was making eight dollar, seven dollars and twenty—five cents for eight hours.
PN: I guess it's a little bit better now. [laughs]
DW: Oh yes, better now. But with these Republicans who got in, it's liable to be back again [referring to the November 4, 1980 elections].
