My Family: Chapter 59

The mines shut down in 1957. We still lived in the Company house for free but as families moved out, the people who stayed behind would tear down the old houses to burn. We had no electric which meant there were no lights to see so no more partying at home. Mom and Dad began to go away to someone else’s house to party.  I remember one time they took Bonnie and Ronnie with them, usually they left them with Shirley or I (if I was home)to watch. So, we had to only Lucille to watch and we took her with us square dancing at the radio station. We stayed so late that Lucille climbed up on a table and went to sleep. Shirley and I told her we were never going to take her with us any more, I don’t think we ever did. 

Mom’s sister, Tince, came from Tennessee with her family to live with Grandma Francis. Her husband, Earl, was the one who showed Dad how to make moonshine with the cornmeal the Government was giving us for free. The Government began to give out free food to everyone since the mines shut down; cheese, dried eggs, dried milk, flour, and cornmeal. This was our basic diet. food. Once, I went with Dad up on the mountain to help him run off eight gallons of moonshine since he had no one else to go with him and help carry it.

We stayed up there all night and waited for the moonshine to drip one drip at a time into the glass gallon jugs. That was the first time I had ever climbed to the very top of the mountain and it took us all day. I carried three gallons down in a burlap sack over my shoulders while Dad carried five. When we got down off of the mountain, Mom told us Shirley had lost her baby, she had been six months pregnant. 

It wasn’t too long after Dad got caught; he was at the still when a guy he knew came up to the still and started a conversation with him about moonshining. Dad didn’t think anything about it because he had worked with this guy in the coal mines and considered him a friend. The man told Dad he was sorry but he had to arrest him then he called his buddies out of hiding. They tore down the still and the man told Dad he had become a revenuer since the mines had shut down. He had approached Dad by himself so there would be less trouble since he knew him. Dad asked if he could come home to let his family know what had happened before he went to jail. I still think it was a low down dirty trick and told him so with a few more things - I don’t remember what all I said. I must have been running my mouth because the revenuer told Dad if he didn’t shut me up he was going to have to take me to jail too. Dad got out of jail on a three hundred-dollar fine and three years probation. I paid the three hundred-dollar fine for him after I went to Ohio.