My Family: Chapter 45

We had a real live Santa Clause as our next door neighbor. He lived with his mother and brother and was the about same age as Dad and Mom. I call him Santa Claus because if we were hungry, he would feed us something to eat. Plus he bought all four of us girls camera and a roll of film. After we use up all the film he would then give us another roll to use. He would take what pictures he wanted and give the picture taker the rest.   

I would also slip over to his house and “borrow” his car, truck, or whatever vehicle he had at the time. One time, everyone wanted to go swimming up on Blair  Mountain and Santa Claus had a truck. I knew the brakes got stuck sometimes but I would just pull them out with my foot. He had forewarned me about the brakes. Most cars at that time were stick shift. But Santa Claus made sure he got an automatic, because that is all that any of us girls could drive. He said he got the car for us to drive and asked us if we wanted a convertible. When he got tired of making the payments on a car. He’d wreck them by driving the car over the embankment into the creek in front of his house. He had so far bought two used cars and a truck (I could drive a stick shift by the time he had gotten the truck). I still had no license. 

Anyway, we all went to swim up on Blair mountain. I should tell you, Blair has a very narrow road and high cliff with at least 3500 foot drop. We were on our way home, I don’t remember how many kids were in the back of the truck and a friend and I were up front. The brakes suddenly got stuck, we were going around those curves almost on two wheels. The kids in the back were hanging on for dear life and screamed for me to slow down. My friend was on the floor in front, she cried and yelled at me (she always ended up on the floor of whatever I was driving because I would take the mountains too fast - I did it some times just to scare her). I yelled back to her the brakes were stuck and I was too busy keeping the truck under control to get them unstuck. Then I had a plan, I yelled for her to put her hand under the brakes and pick it up. She scooted over, put her hand under the brakes and pulled it up. I pumped the brakes and with a jerk the truck came to a stop.

Everyone in the back jumped out to scream at me for nearly killing them. After I told them what happen, we all got back in the truck and went home. Don’t think to bad of me for “borrowing” the truck. Santa Claus always left the gas tank full and the keys in it for us. I remember we use to fight over who was going to drive before any of us had a license.  You might wonder why then did we feel the need to “borrow” the car, why not just take it? Because Santa Claus’ brother wouldn’t let us take the car and would stop us if he seen us. 

My Family: Chapter 24

I came out of Macbeth hollow one morning on my way to school and met two girlfriends of mine. We were all thirteen years old and never been to a big city. They said they were running away from home and asked me if I wanted to go with them. I asked them which big city they were going to and they said to Huntington, the biggest city we knew. [Here’s a quick fact: in 2010, Logan had a population of 1,779 and Huntington had 49,138. In the 1950’s, Logan’s population was 2,029 and Huntington was at its highest at 86,000.] Now I had heard my parents say many times how the streets in a city were made out of gold. All the people we knew who grew up and move away, came back to Rum Creek saying how much money you could make in a big city. Dad said it must be because the streets were made out of gold. I’ve always wanted to go and get some for my family. But I knew if I went with my friends now, Dad would kill me. So I came up with this plan where they would tie my hands behind my back with a scarf that way I could say they forced me to go with them. But we had to pass by the school to get out of the hollow and a teacher saw us. It was real hard running with my hands tied behind my back. After we passed the school, they untied me.

I had three dollars in scrip on me which Mom had given to me for school pictures so I was the only one who had any money. We had walk about twenty miles to get to Logan which was on our way to Huntington. When we got there, my friend knew of a store that bought scrip so we could have money to spend.

Meanwhile, the teacher reported us to the principal (who thought he was God himself) this man always showed up at your house if you didn’t go school and made you get ready while he waited for you and then he would take you to school in his car. He went to Mom and told her we were seen running past the school and thought we were running away. Mom panicked and called Dad out of the mines. They could’ve caught us easily if they had a car as we were walking.

We walked out of Rum Creek and got onto the main road to Huntington when a car slowed and a man asked us if we wanted a ride, we said no. He followed us all day and when we were about ten miles from Huntington, he stopped again and ask us if we needed a ride. We still said no, but he said we must be tired as we had been walking all day. We had walked about fifty miles. Huntington was sixty miles from Logan. So we agreed to get in the car as we were hungry, tired, and I had to go to the bathroom real bad. One friend and I got in the back seat and the other girl was in the front seat, and we could see the city from the car windows.

But then sense hit us and we began to get worry, so we told him to let us out, we had changed our minds, and wanted to go home. He said saw a police car up ahead and if one of us would agreed to stay and go to Ohio with him then he would stop and give the other two to the policeman. But we had to choose which one was going to stay with him or he wouldn’t let any of us go. My friend and I chose the girl in front to stay behind. He explained when he stopped he was going to say she was his sister and we weren’t to say she wasn’t. He told the policeman his sister and him had picked up two runaway girls and was handing them over to him. My friend and I got out of his car, leaving our friend in the front seat as he drove away.

We got in the back seat of the police car while and the policeman spoke to us. He got on his car radio and asked if they had a missing report on two runaway girls, they come back on and said they had a report on three missing girls from Logan. Boy, did he shout at us then! He asked if our friend was the other girl in the car, we broke down and told him everything. He said we might have just cost her life, then he kept mumbling that he should have checked before he let the man drive away. The policeman took us to a detention home for teenagers, a place where you were held while waiting to go to reform school. My friend and I were there about four hours. There were two other girls in with us, they were older than we were, and from the way they talked they were bad.

The policeman called our parents at the neighbor’s house, they were the only one who had a phone, and said they should come and get us right away. Because if they leave us overnight, we would go to trial. The next day was a court day and the Judge would send us to reform school. This Judge sent everybody to reform school who came before him. At least that’s what Mom told me later. While on the phone with my parents, the policeman was informed the other the missing girl was on her way home. The policeman came back to the Detention Center and explained our parents were on their way, our friend had been found, and was now on her way home. My parents had gotten our neighbor to bring them to pick us up. Dad was sober when got me, and when we got home Eloise was there so she talked Dad out of beating me.
The next day my friend and I went down to our other friend's house to ask her how she got home so fast and how she got away from the guy, she told us that since he had been following us all day, he followed us from 9:0 in the morning until 5:0 that evening that is how long we had been walking, he didn't stop for gas so before he cross  the bridge into Ohio he had to stop for gas, when he pull into a gas station she jumps out of his car and runs into the gas station tells the owner that she is being kidnapped  as soon as she left the car the driver pulls away, and the owner and his wife takes her home. I am thinking boy is she smart I doubt if I would have been brave enough to do that, I think she knew that she was going to get away from him her first chance that she got, that is why she agree to stay behind to save two stupid girls life.

My Family: Chapter 21

The Company store in Macbeth was laid out as follows: from the entrance to your right is the candy corner and beside the candy corner was the pay clerk office where you went to turn in your father scrip card and got money for food and the miners got their pay checks  Also along this wall was the furniture and toys this is where they put the toys at Christmas-time the coal company office which sat on a platform to overlook the whole store.which had a shoulder-high wall that ran a length of the store, As you came in the front door Straight-ahead was a counter where you could buy ice cream and pop, and to the left was the clothing department with the entrance to the food department. There was one way in the food area you went through a turn stall and to get out you had to go past Rita.

The store had only one clerk per department. Rita was the check out and took the money  for the food area and since the food area had books, I spent a lot of time with her. Everyone in the store knew that I used the store as a library, never buying only reading. Once when I came into the Company store with Mom, the clerk in the clothes area asked her why she didn’t take me to the library in Logan, since I like to read so much. We didn’t have a way there, much less bus fare just so I could read a few books.

The shoulder-high wall ran right pass Rita’s department, so she watched out for wayward children and keep them out of the area; away from the toys. At Christmas-time when the store would display their toys, all the kids would go in the store look and touch the toys. Rita would grab a broom and chase after us until we left the store. This one Christmas when Rita took a swipe at us with the broom she knock three dolls off of the shelf and broke them. Back then the dolls were made out of a material that if dropped they broke like glass and you could never put the doll in water, all the paint would come off their faces.  When we first moved to Macbeth, Rita’s sister Mary lived next door to us, she had two children; a boy and girl. Mom and she were talking over the fence once when she gave Lucille and me an ice cream bar. She told Mom she was sick and she died not too long after that day. Rita took in her two children, I pitied those kids (who were not much older than I was) because I knew their aunt. Just the thought of Rita taking care of me sent shivers down my spine.

There was an old man who worked the vegetable counter, who we called a hunkie (a foreigner), and his family lived across the creek from our house an area nicknamed “Hunkie Bottom”. In the summer when the fresh vegetable would come in, we would all stop by to watch him stack the corn on a cob. He would eat the silk worms to entertain us which discussed and thrilled us at the same time.

My Family: Chapter 19

While living in Rum Creek Hollow, I saw lot a  of trouble.  Some of it was my doing and some of it was by others. I told you before I wasn’t a model child, and I disobeyed my parents many times. I remember one time my disobedience nearly caused me my life.

I would play “house” underneath our house right by my parent’s bedroom window. I used the window to climb in and out of the house instead of going around to the front door. One time, Dad caught me as I climbed in the window. He told me to stop as I could get hurt. He also said the next time he caught me he would give me a whipping. Of course, I didn’t listen because it seemed an awful long way round to the front door. You may recall that our house was on stilts and, in order to reach the window, I had to drag some old rusted pieces of tin to step up on which enabled me to climb through. The next time i was playing “house”, i didn't hesitate to go through the window. I had one leg in and one leg out when Dad caught me for the second time. He hollered at me which scared me so bad that I fell out of the window and cut my leg on one piece of rusted tin.  The wound bled terribly (I really needed stitches) and I went into the house where Mom put some “cure all” black salve on it and then wrapped my leg in a cloth. Dad didn’t whip me but I had to sit and listen to him lecture and ’I-told-you-so’ me to death. Weeks later, I could barely walk and developed such a high fever Dad got scared. I heard him tell Mom he was afraid that I was seriously sick and he should take me to the hospital. Dad went and got our neighbor to drive us to Logan General Hospital where the doctor explained that if Dad had waited another day, I would have been dead from blood poison.

I wasn’t the only troublemaker in Rum Creek, the neighbors caused enough trouble for everybody.  For example, every weekend (like clockwork) everyone would have to get their little kids in the house because my girlfriend’s father would come home drunk. He had been in World War II and had taken a gun from a German soldier which he had killed, and buy shells for it. The neighbor’s tip off would be when he threw all the furniture out of the house and his wife and children would run out. That’s when he would get the gun and walk up and down the alley shooting in the air until he ran out of bullets. When he did run out, he would go back into the house and passed out. His family would then pick up all the furniture and put it back in the house again. That was signal for all the kids to come out of their homes and play again. He eventfully did kill his wife and baby before she could make it to a neighbor’s house.

Every Friday, my other friend’s mother would wait until their father would leave and go to Logan, she would then call a cab go right behind him and swear out a warrant for his arrest. When he came home late, the deputy would be there to arrest him and take him back to Logan where he spent the weekend in jail. This happen every weekend.

Sometimes it wasn’t only the people who caused trouble instead it was the livestock. My parents raised chickens and every Sunday for dinner we would have one for dinner. It was the only meat we ever ate. My parents kept the chickens over at my grandmother’s house because she had a chicken coop and Mom would go over there to butcher one. She would wring the chicken’s neck until she felt it break then she would drop it on the ground and let it flop around until it stopped. One time, she did this to a chicken and when she dropped the chicken on the ground it flopped for awhile then got up and ran under the house where we couldn't get to it. Mom said to leave it alone  she was sure it would die under the house because she felt the neck break. About three or four weeks later, or at least long enough for us all to forget about it,  the chicken came out from under the house with its neck all crooked and hanging to one side! Mom never bothered to try to kill it again. The same thing almost happened to my Grandma Francis. I was helping her hoe her garden which was by the chicken coop and when Grandma straighten up a chicken flew out the window (it looked like it was going to attack Grandma's head.) She told that chicken if it jumped on her head, she was going to have him for supper. As the chicken came flying at her, she took her hoe and hit it. She knocked it clear across the yard. We thought for sure she had killed it so I went into the house to boil some water. After the water was boiled, I went back out to get the chicken. There it was lying on the ground still, so I picked it up by its feet and dropped it in the boiled water. Amazingly enough the water must have revived the chicken because it flew out of the pot squawking. Grandma told it she get him next time.

My Family: Chapter 16

Since most of the children on Rum Creek were in similar circumstances, we had to be imaginative when it came to finding things to do up the holler. We had to play with what we had already like the creeks. During the summer we would dam up the spring in Slab Fork hollow which is at the end of Orville and make a swimming pool. Only three families lived up there. The water would run off of the mountain and make a stream - it would be so clean you could drink it. Someone tied a swing made with a rubber tire to one of the trees so it would swing out over the creek. In the spring the tree was a nest for snakes and there would be hundreds of baby green snakes hanging from the limbs of this tree. We would take the babies and throw them on each other. I‘m surprised my sisters or myself never learned how to swim seeing how we were around water all of our lives. Along the main road going up Rum Creek ran another creek but it was dirty water because all the mines would wash their coal in it. We could've never played in that creek.

We'd played with the trains, too. There was a curve above our house and the train would have to slow down as it came around it. When it did we would hop on and ride it until the train would pick up speed, or when the train was leaving the coal temple; we would hop on and take a little ride - again only until it pick up speed. Sometimes we would chase the train, grab hold, and pull ourselves up on the ladder to ride for awhile. The train always would go slow when going through the camp. We would have to watch out for the man in the red caboose car. We had to hop on the train so he didn’t see us. We always made sure to jump off before the train got to the houses in the coal camp - we couldn’t let any of the families see us.

We also invented games to play on the mountain side. I remember there were vines growing around the trunk of some of the trees. I don’t know what kind of vine but we called them grape vines. We would unwind them and swing from vine to vine. These weren't skinny vines they could be as thick as a Child's arm. Sometimes as you swing out the vine would break and you'd tumbled down the mountainside. We would play in the mountains most of the day, eating berries and pawpaw which tasted like bananas.

Once we got older, we'd play tag with the cars at night. There were no street lights only the moon and stars. We would put the boys in one car and the girls in another; both cars were usually borrowed from the neighbors. This one night, my girlfriend was driving

Ronnie and Bonnie

and we had the car lights off while we hid behind a building. We watched as the boys' car go pass us. We drove around without the car lights on. Shirley and I were babysitting my baby sister and Ronnie so they were in the car with us. Bonnie, my baby sister, was yelling to my girlfriend to go faster. She was only three and Ronnie about five years old. We were speeding around a three mile curve when Shirley hollered for my girlfriend to stop, she could hear a thump-thumping from somewhere. When we stopped and inspected the car, we found a big bubble on the tire. The boys came back to look for us so they changed the tire for us. If we had a blow out, my girlfriend could've lost control of the car and we might have went in the river and drown. We're all just fourteen years old while Shirley was seventeen.

My Family: Chapter 7

Once in a while, Mom would give us sweet milk and cornbread as a treat for supper,it was the milk that was the treat. We would have nothing else and there were never forks on the table, we ate with a spoon. Dad might have eaten with a fork on a Sunday but I only ever remember seeing him eat with a spoon. Mom was forever telling me to stop raking my teeth across the spoon. Every day, on a weekday, for breakfast we would have: gravy, eggs, biscuits, jelly, Karo syrup, and apple butter. For supper we had: soup beans, fried potatoes, and cornbread. On Sundays we might have fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread (during the summer she would add corn, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, and noodles). Sometimes we have canned tomatoes with noodles which had sugar in them. In the summer, we go with Mom (taking a knife and a poke) to the mountain to hunt for poke greens for our supper. Our diet never varied, this was all the food we ever ate. This one time mom had choose which chicken she wanted for dinner, she caught it by the neck and was ringing its neck when she felt it break she let go so it would flop around, instead the chicken got up and run under the house, mom was surprise  she said that she could have swore that she felt its neck break she said that she wasn't going after it because it was meant to live so she picked another chicken
 we told her that she was wasting her time that we wouldn't eat any of it after watching her kill it, she got mad and said it was all in our head. About two weeks later the chicken came out from under the house and it walk with a crooked head and die of old age.
 We ate and spoke differently then the North does, here are some words that we used: A butter knife was called a case knife, a bag was called a poke, and soda is called pop.

Poodie (me) age 8

Here I am at about eight years old and things haven’t change much at home, Dad still drank and worked the Hoot Owl shift. Mom joined the church so she doesn't drink anymore, but they still fight. I heard Mom tell Dad as soon as her girls were old enough to take care of themselves, she was going to pay him back for every wrong he was doing her.  I tell you it was wonderful not to have her drinking, but I heard her cry a lot when Dad would leave on Friday after work and we wouldn't see him again until Sunday night.
 
Dad's niece and her family lived in front of us on the other side of the railroad tracks next to the main road.  They lived next door to a lady that every one knew was crazy.  She would come out of her house cussing and saying she was going to dig a grave.  One time while I had been over at my cousin's house playing, she and I met on the railroad tracks (I just happened to leave my cousin’s house at the same time as she left her house) she had a garden pick in her hands and this time it was her husband’s grave she was going to dig.  I got scared and ran home screaming, I made it to the front door and fell in.  Dad picked me up and asked what was wrong,  I told him the crazy lady was going to get me. He said to stay out of her way and we watched her go up the railroad tracks, all the while hitting the ground with the pick and cussing. There was a salesman at our house that day, he was trying to sell mom a sewing machine.  He asked Dad if someone was going to do anything. Dad said no and said her husband would take care of her as soon as he came home.

Mom bought the sewing machine but as soon as she put the needle through her finger, she got rid of it. Dad's niece took the sewing machine and finish paying for it. Mom sew by hand, making us dresses out of the flour and corn meal bags.

It was about this time that the neighbor, next door to my cousin's, shot and killed his wife. They were a black couple who had been drinking and got in a fight. He chased her around the outside of the house with a gun and shot her. He was gone about five years and after he came home, he never drank another drop of whiskey. His house and job were still waiting for him when he came home.

My Family: Chapter 5

On the weekends we used the coal mine as a playground. Kids my age would play in the sand house. We were ignorant about the danger, but we could have been killed. It was a small room made out of cinders blocks. A coal car would empty sand through a chute in a window at the top of the sand  house and it filled up. We couldn't play in the house when it was full of  sand there was no room to crawl in. There was a window at the bottom of the sand house about two feet off the ground. A miner shoveled the sand out of the window into a chute which lead to the coal temple to wash the coal before it went into the coal cars. We climbed through the bottom window and play in the sand. Sometimes there was just enough room to get in the house where the miner had shovel the sand out, and other times the sand house would be half full. We are so lucky the sand didn't cave in on top of us and bury us alive or block the window so we couldn't get out.
The twelve-year old boys and girls played in the lumberyard and once built a tower out 2x4s that had three floors; we were lucky that this didn’t fall down on top of us. The lumberyard men tore it down on Monday when they started work. We only played around the mines on the weekends when the mine was not working. One time they left the fort standing for awhile, I don’t remember how long though.
Across the road from the lumber yard was circular steps that the men used as a exscape  in case of an accident.   We went over and looked down the circular steps with water at the bottom. Shirley went down and touched the water before climbing back up. I was too scare to go down the first step because the steps were only wide enough for one man at a time. There was also a big fan, as big as a house, which pumped air out of the cave so the men could breath. We would stand in front of it and let it blow on us. Sometimes it would lift us up off the ground and push us a little.
Another time, the older teenagers built a merry-go-round out of two railroad ties. They put one in the ground and the other on top with a railroad spike. One child got on each end and the others pushed them around. Everyone, who could hang on, got a turn. That merry-go-round gave us a lot of fun and lasted until we got tired of playing on it

Ronnie age 5 Bonnie age 3

Different salesman would come up the hollow to sell people stuff like ice cream - not one bar or cone but five gallons in a tub. People didn’t have refrigerators they had Iceboxes. When my parents brought ice cream it was usually on the 4th of July, we would have to hurry up and eat it before it melted all away.We ate ice cream cones all day long.
The iceman would come up the hollow once a week and all of us kids would follow behind his truck and grab the loose ice; sometimes he would chip us off a piece with his ice pick. I remember this one time a salesman came to the house and to sell Mom a set of dishes that wouldn’t break; they were called Malta Mack. He was throwing dishes across the room as proof that they would not break.

Poodie age 12  Lucille age  9

        There was a man who would bring his pony to every house, and parents would pay to get their children’s pictures taken on the pony. This one time my cousin, who was six years old, was at our house and she would put her big toe out in front of the pony’s hoof daring it step on it. She wouldn’t let up, and every time she did this the pony looked at her, it's owner finally told her to stop as she was upsetting the pony. But she went ahead and did it anyway. Well you can guess, the pony did step on her toe and the owner had a hard time getting that pony off her. It was bleeding pretty bad when he got the pony away from her. She was screaming. I know that incident made a lasting impression on her because now we've reached an older age, she asked me if I remembered the time when the pony stepped on her toe. The picture to the left was taken about three years later. 

      

Rum Creek Hollow

Rum Creek Hollow is about 15 miles long, it's off of Rt. 10 and as you travel up the holler the coal camps are as follows: Dabney, Dehue, Hutchinson, Orville, Chambers, Argyle, Yolyn, and Slagle. I was born in Macbeth where the owner of the mines was named Macbeth, and then my father changed jobs after I was born. We moved to Orville and lived there until I was five years old but then my father change jobs again and we moved back to Macbeth but by this time a man with the last name Hutchinson had brought the mines, so that's why the place is known by both names, Macbeth-Hutchinson, however, Macbeth just seems to stick with the old timers. It's on the West Virginia map as Hutchinson.

The Dehue school went from first to eighth grade; after eighth grade everyone had to catch the school bus and go to Logan for high school. First time I ever used a inside bathroom toilet was when I was six years old and at the Dehue school which boasted a boy's bathroom and a girl's bathroom. I don't know if the other schools had inside bathrooms, however, the school at Cham had an outhouse. There were six commodes in a line and one for the teachers with a wall around it for private use. The older girls would slip in and use the private one.  There was no sewage system so the pipes from the bathrooms emptied out into a creek which ran along the school.  If you stood on the creek bed, you could see where it was draining out into the creek.  Dehue school also had drinking fountains>which was new to me, so I was always making an excuse to get a drink.  This one time, I was getting a drink and the principle came down the stairs which was beside the fountain.
                   "Girl! What are you doing out here in the hallway?" He scared me so bad that I stood there and wet on myself.  I don't remember what happen much after that.

The black children that lived up Rum Creek Hollow had to catch a school bus where they had to cross a bridge and go out of the city - we called this section of Logan Black Bottom but its real name was Guyana Dot.  As far as I know all the black children in Logan County went to this school and it's now a collage.

Dehue has nothing on the land now - the approximate one hundred homes, school, soda fountain, cemetery, post office, church, doctor's office, movie house, and club house where they held meetings for the girl and boy scouts - are all gone.

There were also about fifteen homes in Chambers. They had a two-room schoolhouse that went to fourth grade and no indoor plumbing, if you had to go to the bathroom you used an outhouse in all weather. To get a drink of water you had to go outside where there was a pump.  You had to pump up and down before the water would come out, this usually it took two children to get a drink of water, one to pump and one to catch the water with the cup that hung from the pump. Everyone shared the same cup and the same germs. 

Argyle had about seventy-five homes, Hall’s Beer Garden, Lowe’s grocery store/beer garden, a movie house, an ice cream soda fountain, a Company Store with post office - all of which are gone. However a few years ago, a few homes and the church that we went to were still standing.

Yolyn had over a hundred homes, a Company Store with post office, a schoolhouse that went to fifth grade, and movie house all of which is no longer there.

Slagle had a schoolhouse which went to sixth grade, it set up on left hand side at bottom of Lowe's Mountain. There was also a Company Store with post office, a church, and about one hundred homes.

Past Slagle was what we, up Rum Creek hollow, called Lowe’s Mountain. It was called l Lowe’s because the Lowe family is the only ones that lived upon the mountain. The mountain's official name is Kelly Mountain. The coal mines kept the road in good condition for it was a short cut for their coal trucks to get across the mountain leading to the coal mines on Buffalo Creek. You can by-pass a lot of bad mountain roads if you were going to Charleston or Man but most everyone was going into Logan. And hardly anyone ever used Lowe’s Mountain as it was a dirt road and only two cars could pass one another, there were some places you couldn't pass another car. It had a 3,500-foot drop or more over the side if you should go off of the road. After you got to the top of the mountain, you came to Lowe’s cemetery, then as you are going down you come to a fork in the road where left goes to Blair and right goes to Buffalo Creek. This is the mountain that the West Virginia coal mines wars were fought on in 1920-1921. My Grandma Francis told me that the non-union men tried to come over Lowe’s Mountain to get up Rum Creek to the coal mine. She said there were some men killed and the government had to call in the West Virginia National Guards.

There are very few homes up Rum Creek now and only one Huge - a coal washing mine in Hutchinson where all the other mines send their coal to get it washed. It is called Alma Coal Mines, so now I guess the place would be called Alma's.

Bridge to get to Dehue School from Hutchinson.The school bus 
dropped children off here
that they pick up at Argyle past Macbeth-Hutchinson.

                                       

This is the water pump that my cousin saved when 
 they tore down the two room school house.

Growing Up in a Coal Mining Camp

coal camp

   Dehue coal mines    

Dehue Hollow after you go under the coal mines

               

  Dehue Grade school

The house where my sisters and I grew up in Hutchinson (1951--1959)

I was born April 18, 1941 in Logan, West Virginia in Hutchinson up Rum Creek Hollow just before World War II. I decided to write a blog and tell others a little about my home town, and what it was like to be a coal miner's daughter growing up in a coal camp. My family got tired of me telling them about my life so one day my husband said since we are all tired of listening to you talk about your life why don't you write it down, and I thought why not...so here is my life as a coal miner's daughter:


Logan, Logan, Co., West Virginia


Logan County was created from Cabell, Giles, Kanawha and Tazewell counties by the Virginia Assembly on January 12, 1824. Logan is a small town but today there is not much there, the buildings are still standing but most are empty. Someone came in bought up the town and moved all the stores to a Shopping Center on Corr-G, which is Rt. 119 between Charleston, WV and Williamson, WV. My mother's parents moved to Rum Creek Hollow from Beauty, KY in 1925 where Mom went to eighth grade at Dehue school. My father's parents moved from Ashland, KY to Buffalo Creek in 1919 then moved around to different parts of Logan, Co. They moved to Dehue in 1929 and Dad went to work for Dehue Mines at the age of 12 yrs.old. My father went to Dehue school for only two years, he was in fourth grade when he stopped and went to work for the coal mines.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, Logan was a booming coal town. The population in 1940’s was 67,768 and at its highest in 1950’s was 77,391 persons. After the coal mines shut down in 1957 the population was less than 37,710. People started to move to bigger cities to find jobs and feed their families.

The streets of the town always had a crowd of people going to and from the stores and theaters. Today the population in the town of Logan is 2,206. I never went into Logan by myself until I got in high school, I remember when i was 7 yrs old i got to ride in my cousin's, Buster, new first car - a 1940's Chevy Coupe.

My mother's mother lived across the creek from our house up against the mountain and her house was the only one over there so my mom would make my sister or me spend the night with her. Grandmaw would always talk to me and tell me stories; so this one night she told me about a woman who donated the land that our courthouse sets on. She made one condition to the donation in the 1800's, that there is to be no more men hung from the tree that sets on the front lawn of the courthouse. My Grandmaw said there was a lot of men hung from that tree. (The new courthouse doesn’t have any lawn).

When there was an affair, like judging a contest going on… people would gather in front of the Courthouse. I can recall a particular Halloween night when my sister, Shirley, and I was out with a group of other kids to see what trouble we could get into because it was all mischief for us, no one gave out candy...anyway mom had come looking for Shirley and me (I was 13 and Shirley was 16.) up the hollow. When she found us; Earl, who was a friend of both my parents, stopped his car (only because mom was with us) and was telling us about this contest that they were having in Logan at the Courthouse for best costume and he ask if we would like to go and watch. We all got in his car and went to Logan to watch the contest, we didn't have a costume on ourselves.

The public buses run regular up every hollow so it was no trouble to get to Logan to do your shopping and home again. It cost a nickle to ride the bus to Logan, but you had to have cash which most people didn't have. I remember this one time when I took the bus when I was about 11 years old and my mom was taking me to Logan to visit her sister, there was this lady breastfeeding her baby, she was sitting there with her boob uncover in the baby's mouth. This was not a shock for me, I had seen many women breastfeeding the same way, it was just that she was sitting behind the driver and it was the first thing I saw as I was getting on. In those days, all the colored people had to go to the back of the bus and on this particular crowded bus there was a fat colored lady, she had a bunch of chickens with her that she was taking somewhere. The other passengers where getting upset with her because the chickens were making a lot of noise so they were hollering back and forth at one another, however, most of the people on the bus were ignoring them.

It will be a shame to let the city of Logan fall into ‘ruins.' So many memories will be gone for those of us that were born and raised there. Already most of the coal camps and small towns have disappeared. But there is a lot of others things that we didn’t have in the 50’s that are there now… like fast foods and Laundromats. And a great many thanks should go out to the group of people that are trying to make Logan into a tourist town, and I know that everyone past and present is hoping that they succeed.

I also went to Logan high school the first year that it opened in 1957 on the Island. It is called the Island because that is where the Indians first settle when they first came to Logan and water runs all around the land. The school was bigger than our other high school it had to be because it was the first high school in Logan in which black and white children went to the same school from grades 9-12. Because I didn't have no money of my own or food that I could take for lunch, I would leave school at lunchtime and walk around the streets in Logan. I always stopped at the fence of Courthouse to look at the two Indian graves that were buried in the yard. I like to go and look at their headstones and wonder what kind of life they had and if there was really Indians buried there - one of the graves stone had name Aracoma she was an Indian Princess and the daughter of Chief Cornstalk, her life is similar to Pocahontas.

Speaking of graveyards, Logan County is the burial site for Devil Anse Hatfield, one of the family leaders in the famous feud between the Hatfield s and the McCoy. Devil Anse Hatfield and my uncle were good friends, I will talk more about them later on.

Logan has a new (to me) state park, that they call Chief Logan State Park, that wasn’t there in the 50’s and I ask my Aunt Belvia, what used to be there and she told me it use to be Henlawson Hollow. The Park took up most of what used to be the hollow. A lot of kids that I went to school with in Logan came from Henlawson, that was a big hollow but now a lot of the homes were gone. But it is one of the most beautiful Parks that you will find in any state.

There is a statue of Chief Logan in the Logan Park and at the bottom of the status is written a letter that he wrote after his family was murder.
"I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed at me as they passed and said, "Logan is the friend of white men." I had even thought to have live with you, but for the injuries of one man, who the last spring in cold blood and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it, I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one."

He was later believed to have been killed by another Indian over a disagreement.