My Family: Chapter 68

The next day, we went for a coffee at the Bev and when the three of us walked in everybody just stared at us. After we were sat down in a booth, Joe got up to go to the men's room. The place was full with soldiers from the base. Some of them asked me what I was doing going out with Joe, and I think each one took a turn to ask me to leave with him while Joe was in the bathroom. Ed told me not to walk out with any of them, I just laughed. When Joe came out of the bathroom, Ed told him that he almost lost his date, but Joe didn’t make any comment. 

Joe has a sister who had met and married a man from Lorain, Ohio about a hundred miles from Columbus. She had moved to Lorain to live with her husband so they could be close to his family. They just had a baby boy and the her family had been invited to come in February for the baby’s Christening.  Joe talked Mick, Vickie, and me into going with him to the Christening and meet his family. When we got there, I felt very uncomfortable (like everybody was staring at me) and wished I had stayed home.  

Joe's mother was there, she sat down beside me and asked me a lot of questions like where I was from, how long have I known Joe. By this time, I had seen and talk to Joe almost every day for a year. I knew more about her son than she did. I explained her I knew him from coming in the place where I worked. That's when she told me not to think Joe was going to marry me. I told her not to   worry we weren't even serious about each other and had no plans to get married. I wasn’t even sure that I like him yet as a person.

Alma & Joe's wedding day

Joe and I officially dated from January 1^st to May 6^th,  when we got married.  Dad told me that if I married Joe, he would disown me, and wouldn’t come to the wedding. I didn’t believe him about disowning me, but I knew he wouldn’t come and see me get married. Mom, Shirley, Bonnie, and Ronnie were all there but I don’t know where Lucille was? I talked to Aunt Eloise, she is the one who arranged for the minister to come to her house and marry us.  I was one hour late but Joe was a half hour later than I was.  He had to pick up the license, and they weren’t ready so he had to wait for it. We had just applied for the license three days before. We got married five days after I said yes. 

My Family: Chapter 57

The second time I ever saw a policeman or a patrol car I was with my father and our neighbor who lived next door to us. I was driving because they were drunk and Dad had passed out in the front seat with the neighbor passed out in the back. I don’t even remember where we had been or why we were driving around in the car. I decided that since I had a car and Dad couldn't say ‘no’, I would drive to Charleston, a city about 90 miles from Logan. I had to drive over Blair Mountain to get to Charleston.  

Now, I didn't know anything about driving in the city, we only had one red light in the town of Logan and no policemen only a Deputy Sheriff. Logan did get a policeman after I left West Virginia and when I came back it was as if there was a policeman on every corner. 

Of course, I got lost once I was in the city and turned down a street to find my way back, it was 3:00 in the morning and I was the only car on the street. All of a sudden there was a car in front of me with flashing lights on top of it and then one behind me.  I didn’t know what they were doing, the one in front of me was in the same lane as I was and we were heading straight toward one another. He pulled to one side just as I passed but another two took his place because I was not stopping. Three cars more were across the road behind me and one on each side of me. I was scared and wasn't going to stop for nothing. I slowed down to a crawl, almost to a coast.

With all the flashing lights in his face, Dad woke up. He asked me where we were, when I told him and he saw the cars on each side of us; he told me not to stop (he didn't know what they were doing either). By the time they got me to stop the car there was eight patrol cars surrounding us. They had slowed my car down to a crawl and we came bumper to bumper so I had to stop. Dad and I locked the doors and talked to them with the windows up. Finally, they told us who they were and we rolled the window down on the driver’s side of the car. They laughed at us because they figured it out that we hadn’t been in a city before. I think Dad really should’ve known who they were but he had just woken up and was still half drunk. I don’t think he was thinking clearly.  

The police said I was going the wrong way on a one way street and I hadn’t stopped for any of the red lights. I explained I hadn't see any red lights and asked them to point out the lights to me.  The traffic lights were on the corners instead of overhead in the middle of the street. They shined a flashlight into the neighbor’s face and asked about him. I said he was drunk and the owner of the car. I was so nervous that I forgot to put the car in park and when I took my foot off the brake, the car began to coast into the cop car in front of us. They yelled at me to brake and they are lucky I didn’t faint. They showed us how to get out of the city and on our way back to Logan. The neighbor did’t wake up until we got back home, and my dad and I never did tell him what had happen or where we had been. 

My Family: Chapter 56

Sonny went into the Army but didn’t like very much and wanted to get out - he was 18 years old. While on leave he went to visit Uncle Vondon in North Carolina where my sister, Lucille, was living at the time. One day, they were outside talking while Sonny cleaned his gun when he got the idea that if Lucille shot him in the foot he would get discharged. Well, Lucille didn't want to shoot him, but he persisted by saying he was going to say that it was an accident and he shot himself while he was cleaning his gun. She kept telling him no, but he finally talked her into shooting him. Uncle Vondon heard the shot and ran out of the house. Sonny told him it was an accident but I don’t think Uncle Vondon believed their story. However it must have worked on the Army because they give him a discharge. I really think it was his heart which got him out of the service. By the time he was 21 he had a pacemaker put in, and he died at the age of 49.

This is one of my weekends at home and why I didn’t stay at home among other things. Dad and Mom had left me to take care of Bonnie and Ronnie on Friday while they went to spend the weekend with friends to drink and party. On Sunday night they came home drunk as usual and I had to helped get them to bed. I put them in the same bed in our old room because it had two double beds and the only fireplace which had bricks around the hearth to keep the fire from falling on the wood floors. I had to go outside and get more coal to put on the fire so I took Bonnie and Ronnie with me. While we were outside, I heard Mom screamed - I was already upset and jumpy from getting them to bed. So I ran into the house to see what is going on. Dad was in front of the fireplace calling Mom names and throwing bricks from the fireplace at her. Mom screamed and dodged the bricks. I yelled at him and asked him if he was crazy. He told me he was going to kill Mom because she wouldn’t let him touch her. I told them both I was leaving and they could kill each other for all I cared. Dad got in the other bed and I put all the bricks back around the fireplace. I took Bonnie and Ronnie over to stay with Grandma Francis while I went to stay with Aunt Wanda in Man.  I’m 17 years old, Mom is 37 years old while Dad is 39 years old - they acted younger than I did.

My Family: Chapter 52

I had a cousin would try to hang out with us but we threw rocks at her to make her go home because we didn’t want her dad to follow her and whip her with the razor strap. She asked me once, after we became adults, if I remember doing this to her. I said I did because every time she’d come up to the house, there came her dad with the razor strap to whip her every step of the way back down the road. Her mom and dad came up to our house all the time. Every day after supper, her dad would come up talk to Dad while we did the dinner dishes. If we dropped a knife onto the floor, we would say he was coming for a visit. That’s an old wives tale; if you drop a knife a male was coming for a visit. 

Dad’s niece met her second husband at our house at one of the house parties and I got my first speeding ticket driving his car. He had a wife and a house full of children which lived further up the hollow but, like all the rest of the men, once they started to come to the parties they just kept coming back. Some of the men’s wives would come with them but mostly the wives thought they were above messing with White Trash. These wives would sometimes stand at the fence and call us names. One time Mom took out after a lady who came to the house and called Mom names because her husband was at our house drinking on the weekends. Mom went after her and picking up a pipe as she went, the woman ran and got into her car real fast. 

My Family: Chapter 49

Later that day, I called Mom at the our neighbor’s house (remember we didn’t have a phone) and asked to pick me up at aunt Belva home in Logan so I could come home. She said Dad and her would come and get me , and I was to stay at Aunt Belva's house until they got there. I don’t remember exactly how they got to Logan, but I do remember after arriving Dad left again saying he would be back with a ride and we were to stay there.  Well, we waited all day for him to come back; even Mom got tired of waiting. I talked Mom into walking, she didn’t want too, but I told her that she wouldn’t have to walk long, someone would come along and pick us up to take us home.

I was half right, we did get picked up but we were dropped off at the mouth of Rum Creek Hollow. We still had about 2 ½ more miles to go. As we started up the hollow, someone came along and we hitched a ride the rest of the way home. Dad got home about midnight, he came through the door drunk and hollering for Mom and me.

I was laying  with Mom on their bed; we were reading by an oil lamp as we had no electric lights. Shirley was now married to David and they were in the other room sleeping. Dad hollered so loud he woke everyone up but no one dared answer him. Suddenly, Mom jumped off the bed and blew out the light so he couldn’t see us. Then she ran out the back door and left me to face Dad alone.

He yelled at me to strike a match and light the lamp so he could see to beat me, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to disobey him but I didn’t want to get beaten either. So I snicked into Shirley’s bedroom and asked her what she would do if she were me. Here is what she said, ”You’re a fool if you light the lamp and just let him beat you. Mom’s no fool, she ran. Do what you want but if it was me, I’d leave.”

That’s what I did, I went out the back door and down to my girl friend’s house to stay the rest of the night. The next day, I got a ride to my Aunt Wanda’s and then went on to Aunt Hannah’s to stayed. I only went home for visits after that night.

I don't remember ever having ask Mom or Dad if I could ever go and stay with one of my Aunt's or cousin I just walked away and come back when I got home sick, sometimes I would stay for a week or month depending on how things where at home, if things were bad I would leave and show up on someone's doorstep and they always let me stay, even Aunt Eloise and she lived in Ohio, Mom and Dad would fine out where I was at, because Dad would come and get me when they wanted me home, which wasn't often.

My Family: Chapter 42

There was a curb at the end of our row of houses and it was out of sight of our house and

The Dillo home in Hutchinson

that was as far as we would let any boy walk us home.  In the summer time, we would have a traveling caravel and a traveling roller rink come up the hollow - not at the same time. The roller rink would stay for at least two months, so we did a lot of skating. I would get away from Shirley while she was skating - I would do my thing. One day, I was not skating  while she was, three boys came by and asked me if I wanted to go for a ride, I agreed. I was sitting on one boy's lap with my back against the door and my legs on the other two. I always wore my hair in a ponytail.  We drove by the roller rink real fast. I don't know how fast we were going, but Shirley said we were doing at least 90 mph. We were laughing so hard I didn't notice Shirley standing on the side of road watching us. She turned to one of the other girls and asks who those fools were. One girl told her I was in the car. When we pulled in at the roller rink and stopped, Shirley grabbed the car door, jerks it open and got hold of my ponytail. She dragged me out of that car and we had a fight right there in front of everyone. Of course, the boys jumped in and told her to let me alone. They yelled to “give her nickel and send her home” but all she would say was she was going to tell on me this time for sure.  Shirley never did like anything me and my girlfriends thought was fun and the boys would always ask why she had to come along. They stopped asking this after awhile because Shirley got older, had more fun, and got to know all the young people in the hollow - she knew more teenagers than I did. I don’t know or remember any of them because I didn't spend my summers at home. Shirley told me the driver of that car was a boy that liked her and she didn’t like him.  He had been mad at her so that was why he asked me to get in the car. You know, I didn’t realize she had any boys that liked her but Dave and Chuck.

For all his faults, Dad would give you the shirt off his back and he always stood for the little guy. Once he was checking up on Shirley and I at the roller rink when I heard him say to some guy, “why don’t you pick on someone your own size.” There he stood having words with a guy who was picking on a smaller guy. When Dad interfered, the big guy walked away and the smaller guy thanked Dad and then he walked away. I went over and told Dad he embarrassed me fighting. He said that it was an unfair fight because one guy was bigger than the other; Dad had been drinking so I walked away. When I looked again, he was gone. Dad was always fighting. The guys would tell me that they seen my father throw some guy out of the Beer Garden window, they would be laughing while telling me but  I didn’t think it was funny. My dad was not all that large himself. He was about five feet eight inches tall and weighted one hundred and sixty pounds, but he acted like he was ten feet tall.

Once, I went to the Beer Garden with Dad and left him sitting at a table. He was slowly getting drunk and I went to get a pop. The person behind the bar was looking at me funny and I knew something was wrong. I turned around and saw Dad was having a fist fight with another customer. I got so upset I jumped in the middle of them, they stopped fighting, and we left. I never went in a public place with Dad again.

My Family: Chapter 41

You can imagine what sparse Christmases we had at my house, but the one which stands out is the one where I’m thirteen; I didn’t get any gifts that year.  Shirley was sixteen and she wanted a record player. Lucille was eleven and she wanted a set of telephone's which had a wire connected to them. You could go into another room and talk over them just like walkies talkies. Sonny  wanted a BB gun and I wanted a doll. Dad and Mom went in to Logan that year. They told Shirley to watch us and if we were good; they would bring us back something. I begged Mom to please bring me back a doll, I wanted nothing else. She said I was too old dolls but she would think about getting me one. I prayed all that day, December 24,1954. “Please God, let them bring me back a doll.”

When they returned, they gave Shirley a record player with a couple of records, they gave Sonny a BB gun, Ronnie got some toy cars and a red wagon, and Bonnie was given some baby toys.  Lucille and I are still waiting for our gifts.  There was a bath house connected to our house and Mom told Lucille to go out there and bring in this big box. She told Lucille everything in the box was for her - in the box is a doll, the toy telephone, a set of dishes, and a lot more that I don't remember now. It’s the only Christmas my sister, Lucille, remembers because she got a lot of toys. After awhile, I realized they got me nothing! I felt hurt and I screamed and cried as I watched as the rest played with their toys. Lucille and I talked about that Christmas after we grew up and had families of our own; we couldn't understand how our parents could forget me. I know they did truly forget me because when Mom realized they didn’t have a gift for me, you could see she felt sorry and bad about it. She said I was too big for a doll anyway, and it was too late to go to the store and get me something. Besides they didn’t have any money left, they spent it all on whiskey. She said I could share Shirley’s record player.  Yeah, right. Here’s a girl who wouldn’t let me touch anything that belong to her and she’s going to share - I don’t think so! 

The next morning, I went to see what my friends got for Christmas. Two of my friends got Christmas stockings with fruit and candy, and my second cousin got a Shirley Temple doll which her mother (my first cousin who is the same age as my parents) never let her play with it. I would go to her house when her parents were not home and we would go open the clothes press and take the doll out to look at it then we would put it back. I asked my cousin what happen to the doll years after we grew up and she said that she didn't know.

Mom, Grandma Hattie, Aunt Alice, Aunt Tince

Later, our next door neighbor went to Logan and brought me back a doll. I hung the doll on Grandma’s wall and forgot about it. By the time I thought about the doll it was gone.  

My Family: Chapter 37

My girlfriend had a male cousin who would visit them from the North. He’d go into Logan and pick up women then bring them back to her house where they would stay until the cousin got tired of them. This one night, my girlfriend and I were on her back porch and the window to one of the bedrooms was open. We could hear a woman in there with him, they were arguing. He tried to get her into bed with him but she didn’t want to go. I decided to take a peek through the curtains to see who the woman was when I saw that it was my mother! She was so drunk she could hardly stand up! I went through the window so fast they didn’t realize I was in the room until I had dragged Mom out of it.  I continued to drag her out of the house, scolding her all the way. The girlfriend’s cousin followed us, cussing and hollering at me all the way. He told me Mom owed him because she drank all his whiskey up. Finally, he grabbed a hold of one her arms and I had the other. We were fighting over her. I called him all the bad cuss words I knew while he called me bad cuss words. Then when he seen I wasn’t going to give her up, he hit me with his fist in the face. There we were on the side of the road with everyone in the hollow watching us fight over my mother when I spotted my cousin. I hollered for her to go and get her dad’s shot gun because I decided to kill him. She, however, was too afraid to get the gun. I would have shot him and she knew it. The man let mom go and ran back into the house as soon as I hollered for a gun. I yelled to him I would be back with my dad and he would kill him for me.  

My mom weight next to nothing as I dragged her home but she kept falling down so I had to pick her up and carry her - about ten houses above my girlfriend’s house. That was the first time I ever saw my mom visit my girlfriend’s house - she always could smell whiskey a mile away. Dad wasn’t home when we got there. We were sitting on the front porch when he finally came home with a bushel basket of corn - he had been out with friends stealing it. It took so long for him to come home I had calmed down and changed my mind about telling him about the man hitting me. But Mom didn’t know this and she knew if I told Dad where she had been then she would be in trouble. So as soon as Dad sat the basket down on the steps, she told him about the man hitting me. This pull the attention away from her and put it on me. Dad got real mad, he checked to make sure he had his knife on him and then we all went down to my friend’s house (my dad wasn’t drunk). 

My girlfriend’s mom grabbed me and held me back as soon as we barged through the door - Dad hadn’t knocked. She begged me to tell Dad I had lied and the cousin hadn’t hit me; she didn’t want anyone to get hurt in front of her small children. I ran outside to the back porch where the cousin had gone when he heard us come in the house. Dad had him by the front of his shirt and he was denying he hit me. I stepped in and told Dad I lied that he hadn’t hit me. My girlfriend’s mother was also pleading with Dad; saying she was had been there the whole time and hadn’t seen him hit me. Dad told the cousin he was lucky this time but if he ever found out that he really did hit me he would be back. No one ever hits his girls. The cousin was gone the next day.

My Family: Chapter 31

Alone the railroad tracks in back of house

Shirley thought that if Dad hadn’t stop to talk to her as he went through the house to the back porch that Mom and Dad would have come face to face. As it was we followed Dad around the house and to watched him shoot at Mom. She was heading up the railroad tracks. Mom had made it about four houses up the along the tracks when Dad took aim and fired the shotgun. He shot at her twice and missed both shots. Mom fell as she got off of the tracks. We were sure Dad thought he killed her. We stood on the back porch and watched as he went up to the tracks and looked for her in the tall grass. Mom said later that it was her falling that saved her life. She had lain there until he stopped shooting then she got up and ran again. She said she heard the bullet pass right over her head.

And Mom did come back about two weeks later and, boy, did she come back drunk and mad. Our bed was up against a window and, in the middle of the night, she woke all of us by breaking every windowpane in the house with her fist. As she did so, she yelled for Dad to open the door and give her the babies, Bonnie and Ronnie. Dad came into our room, took Bonnie and Ronnie out of bed. Mom then changed tactics and yelled for one of us to let her in the house. As Dad left the room he dared any of us let her in the house then ran out the front door while Mom broke the glass out of the back door. Later we found out that he took Bonnie and Ronnie four houses above ours to the neighbor's house.

She finally broke the window out of the back door,  unlock it, and came to our room after going into Dad’s first. We had glass all over our bed because she broke every pane of glass in the window beside our bed. My girlfriend was sleeping over at time, too. Mom asked all of us why we didn't unlock the door for her. We told her  Dad told us not to. She then asked where he went and we when told her we didn't know so she left and we went back to sleep.

We didn't see her again for a month. Dad had all the glass put back in the house, I really don't know what excuse he gave the Company for them being broken. Dad went and got Mom to come back home. She said he told her he was starving to death. She made him get rid of all his guns first, but nothing changed; they still got drunk and fought every weekend. And Mom was still seeing Bert.

Shirley and I worked at Bert’s hotdog stand during the summer and sold hotdogs and ice cream. I remember once a  guy stopped by and asked me to make him a milkshake. I told him I didn’t know how, I had never heard of a milkshake before. He told me how to make it.

Bert eventually ended up back in prison for killing a man at the hotdog stand. I believe it had something to do with Mom and Dad. I don’t know the whole story, I was very sick in bed. Mom told me the deputy’s had been to the house and had search it. They even looked under my bed while I was sleeping with my mouth open (now to a thirteen year old this is terrible news, especially since I also had the slop jar under my side of the bed). Mom said Bert had killed a man last night and they believe he was hiding in the mountains. But Bert gave himself up and went to prison. He got out of prison about ten years later, he died about a year after he was home.

My Family: Chapter 30

Dad found out about Bert. He came home one Sunday and Mom was at church. He asked us a lot of questions and we would never lie to him. He would kill us if we did. Lucille got very upset and afraid under his questioning. So, she told him she’d seen Bert and Mom hugging while she was suppose to be asleep in the back seat of the car when Bert was driving her and Mom home from church.
 
When Bert finally dropped Mom off at home after church, Dad was waiting on the front porch with a shotgun. Before she even got out of the car, he took aim and was going to shoot her. I was standing behind him and just as he raised the gun,I reached for his arm and pulled it down. All the kids were crying and upset. Mom had just gotten one leg out of the car when she looked up and had seen Dad with the gun. She slammed the car door quick, Bert and her took off. Dad left the house after that and we didn’t see him until the next day. 

Mom had no where to go. Her mother was in Kentucky, living with her brother and taking care of his wife who was dying. Grandma Francis told me much later that Mom had come to Kentucky to ask to stay with her, but Grandma Francis told Mom she could stay only one night then she would have to leave. My guess is she went to stay with her uncle, Bert’s parents, who also lived in Kentucky. 
 
Mom came home one day while Shirley was at the store and stole Bonnie Sue. Dad was mad at Shirley; as if she could have stopped Mom from taking her baby. Mom took Bonnie to Aunt Belvia’s and left her there. When Dad found out he went to Aunt Belva’s and got her back.

Mom sued Dad for a divorce and was at the house when they delivered the papers. Dad’s niece, Sue, was also at our house at the same time. She and Mom sat in the kitchen talking and joking about what Dad would do when he came home and saw the papers. They guessed Dad would just try and shoot Mom again. They both laughed at this and by the time Dad came home from work Sue had left.  

When Dad saw Mom at the table, he asked Mom where his shotgun was and to get it for him, so she went and got it for him. He then told Shirley and I to take the babies and leave the house. Shirley said no and picked up Bonnie. Mom took off running out the kitchen door and Dad told Shirley again to get the baby and go. Shirley still said no. She told him if he was going to kill her mother, she’s going to watch and be a witness. Dad realized that Shirley wasn’t going to leave so he took off out the kitchen door after Mom. 

Shirley and I followed right behind Dad. I had Ronnie by the hand and Lucille was beside me while Shirley still had Bonnie. We had just skidded out into the yard when we spotted her. Mom had gone around the backside of the house and was running up the railroad tracks. Dad lifted the gun to his shoulder and took aim.

My Family: Chapter 29

Mom never tried to hide her affairs from us. She had a boyfriend who lived in Dabney below us. He was a miner and drove the coal truck so he had to pass our house every day. He dumped the slate up on the mountain. He’d come and see her every morning between 7:00 and 7:30am after Dad went to work. He’d was there when we got up to go to school. Mom and him stayed out in the bathhouse because he never came into the house. 

One day he just stopped coming to the house. I guess his wife found out and put a stop to it. Mom started messing around with her first cousin, Bert. He and Mom met in church, of all places. Bert was just released from prison for murder and had come to live at Lyburn where his ex-wife and son lived. He just wanted to be close to his son. Bert opened a hot dog stand next to the Lyburn Church. Mom, Shirley, and I would catch the church bus which would pick us up in front of our house and go to church. After church, we would all go over to Bert’s hot dog stand, he would then drive us home. Shirley and I weren’t stupid, we knew Bert and Mom were messing around. 

Dad had his girlfriends, as well. One time, he and I were in Logan together and a woman came up to us and yelled at Dad. She look as if she was going to hit me. Dad stepped between us and told her I was his daughter. She couldn’t be nice enough to me than. Dad asked me not to say anything to Mom and I never did. I forgot about it. I never even told Shirley.

Mom and Dad had their “harmless” affairs, until one day when Dad found out about Bert.

My Family: Chapter 15

Dad had many work accidents at the coal mines and the Company would pay him monetary compensation for each accident or injury he suffered. Remember, my parents are very poor and most times didn't have the money to have the basic necessities of life, so when they got money they really enjoyed themselves. There was no thought to save any of it or to buy me a bicycle to ride to school so I wouldn’t have to walk.

One time they got a thousand dollars, I remember how excited they were when they opened the letter - it was compensation from when Dad got his neck broken.

Niece Mary Jo, Mom and Dad

This was a lot a money back then in West Virginia. You could buy a house for a couple of hundred dollars. Dad went on a fishing trip to North Carolina and Mom took us girls to Logan to stay with Grandma Dillow. While we were there Aunt Hannah and Mom took us to a Carnival.  We went to the movies with a stage show which featured a fortune teller. Out of all the people in the theater he chose Mom to tell her fortune - we were sitting in the middle, half way from the front of the stage. The fortune teller knew things about Mom which he couldn't have known unless he knew her well. He even knew Dad was away on a fishing trip in North Carolina.

I also remember going to the movies with Mom, Aunt Eloise, Aunt Hannah to see An Imitation of Life.  It was such a sad movie and I tired not to cry but the more I tired not to cry the harder I cried. I was afraid Mom wouldn’t take me with her any more if I embarrassed her by crying.

Aunt Wanda, Aunt Hannah, Niece Poodie and Aunt Eloise

The more my parents drank the worse things got, after awhile they spent all their money on beer and whiskey. All of Mom’s jewelry got sold or traded for drink and you might not believe it but she had some expensive things such as a diamond watch, a necklace set, and several rings.  Like once, after receiving a compensation check, my parents went to visit his niece who lived in Detroit and Mom bought a fur coat. The first time I ever saw her put on makeup was when Mom would wear her fur coat. I only saw her wear it a few times.  Just think what we could have had if they never drank. They could have bought a home, or a car, or we could have had plenty to eat, or clothes to wear, and they would have lived longer. My parents would have gotten my Dad's $60,000 compensation for Black Lung. When the law passed in 1970’s that all miners and widows received the money.  I lost my dad at the age of 49 to double pneumonia, and my Mom only one year later at the age of 48 to a heart attack.

Wilbur Dillo and Marie Francis,taken right after they said their vows

My Family: Chapter 6

I think Dad spent most of the weekends with his parents. I know Aunt Hannah worked in Black Bottom and he stopped in and see her. Black Bottom was where all the juke joints were. If we did see him, he was drunk and he only came home because he wanted to get something and then he would leave again. One time, as he got into a car with his friends, Mom threw rocks at him. His friends laughed at her as they drove away.

Dad and a drinking buddy

When Dad worked the night shift, Mom bribed one of us girls to sit up with her with a Pepsi at least that's what she gave me the times when I sat up with her. If I fell asleep, she would wake me up and remind me that I was to stay awake. We still had to go to school the next day, then Dad got a job on day shift and got it  better for all of us.

Dad had bought Mom a twenty-two hand gun to protect her self from the animals coming down from the mountain. All of his friends knew that she had a gun. Mom and Dad just had an animal come down off of the mountain the week before this, Dad had some hog meat, which he got for helping someone slaughter their pig, he had hung it outside (in the wash room) where it was cold and the meat was froze. One night he heard a noise out on the back porch and went to investigate, he said it was the biggest dog that he ever seen. It had tore the door to the wash room down and gotten into the meat. He tied the dog up and block the wash room door because he wanted to show it to us girls the next morning but the dog had chew through the rope and escaped  back thorough the door.

Yolyn Church

Mom joined the Church of God and she stopped drinking. She took Shirley and me to church with her. I loved Sunday School and church afterwards. I would never miss a Sunday or Wednesday when they held service. They had church every Wednesday and sometimes they had tent revivals that came up the hollow. I go there everyday for a couple of weeks and people would bring patients from the hospitals who wanted to be healed so that we could pray for and heal them. I got scared the first time Mom got the Holy Ghost and talked in tongues jumping up and down. Sometimes, Mom had the church ladies over to house to quilt. We only had a kitchen and two bedrooms, Mom had sewing ladies in one of the bedrooms. I liked Church life, while it lasted.

My Family: Chapter 1

Aunt Hannah and my mother, Ida Marie Francis (she hated the name Ida and would only answer to Marie) went to school together at Dehue. My father was seventeen years old when he fell in love with my mother after Aunt Hannah brought her home for lunch. Marie was fifteen years old, she lived in Yolyn behind Lowe's Beer Garden which is four miles above Dehue. The same place where my Aunt Belva was born, and my Grandma Francis had to stay in bed for two years after her birth - I don't really know why. Mom like to tease Belva about how she was force to take care of her, how she would feed her dishwater and give her a bath at the water pump that everybody got their water from. Mom was five years older than Belva.

Wilbur would walk all the way to Yolyn to see Marie. My Dad's brother, Bud (who all the miners nickname Dynamite because he blew the coal from inside the mines), own a modal “T” Ford and would sometimes give Dad a ride to Marie’s house. Mom said that Bud was always wrecking the car and the guys would have to pick it up and set it back on the road. Dad never own a car, if he wanted to go somewhere he always got someone to take him or he walked. All his friends had a car, and all his brothers, but he never wanted one. If he had a car, with the way that he drank, he would have drove it over the side of a mountain and kill himself.

At one of our family reunions, I was talking about how Dad couldn't drive and one of my cousins said once when his father was in the hospital and my dad was at their house, my dad told him that he would drive him to the hospital to see his dad. So Dad took their car and drove to the hospital. My cousin now understands why Dad scared him so badly with his driving, because he thought Dad was going to drive over the mountainside. My cousin said that Dad drove real slow.

Dad was eighteen when he married my sixteen year old mother. Grandma Francis didn’t want her and my father to get married - they were too young. However, Grandpa Francis had an idea, there was no waiting period in Kentucky (Logan had three day wait), so he planned a trip to Kentucky to visit his family and would take Mom with him - helping her and Dad get married once there. They picked up Dad on their way out of the hollow. So that's how they eloped to Beauty, Kentucky and got married. After they were married, Dad’s parents moved away from Dehue. Dad and Mom moved, too.

They went to Accoville up Buffalo Creek that's where my sister, Shirley, was born. My parents lived in a house that had a graveyard behind it. Dad work on the third shift (nickname hoot-owl shift). My mom was always afraid of the dark and she was scared to stay alone in a house, so she would stay up all night and do house work. Once she saw a black cat run across the floor in front of her and she chased it with a broom until it went under the bed.  One side of the bed was up against the wall, she got down on the floor and look under the bed but there was no cat. She searched for the cat but she couldn’t find it and she swore that there was no way for that cat to get out of her house. She thought that it was a ghost. We were all taught to believe in ghosts and witches.  When I was little, I would sit quietly and listen to the grown- ups tell stories. I'd love to hear their memories about things that went bump in the night.  When Dad came home from work, she told him that she didn’t like living in that house and ask him to move.

They next moved to Slagle where they had a house next to the mountain. My sister was still a baby.  Wild animals would come down off of the mountain very close to the house.  One day, Mom heard my sister talking on the porch calling, "here kitty, kitty." She went outside to see what she was calling and discovered it was a bobcat, they moved again.  In order for them to change houses, Dad had to get another job at a different mine, because all the homes were taken in that coal camp.

The mines always need men (they still do to this day) you don’t hear nothing about it in the news but if you read the newspaper in a mining town (such as Logan) a miner gets killed almost everyday in an accident.  On September 2, 1936, the Macbeth Mine blew killing ten men. Only six months after the first Macbeth explosion, on March 11, 1937, the Macbeth Mine blew again killing eighteen more men. Like the first explosion, the blast hit only one section of the mine about a mile from the bottom. Several men escaped without injury. Some by walking up the slope to the top of the cave that leads outside, and some by a screw-type escape ladder with 152 steps.  The reason I know that there's that many steps is because my sister counted them, she was the only one brave enough to go to the bottom and count them. It's pitch dark half way down and like a deep well with water at the bottom. Miners believed the explosion was caused by natural gas that was set off by a spark from one of the motor cars that takes coal to the top of the cave. The cause of the explosion was blamed on methane gas. Methane gas is colorless, odorless, and flammable. It is formed when plants decay in places where there is little air. It is the primary cause of mine explosions. The Macbeth Mine blew with such a force and intensity that it had to a large amount of gas to have caused so much damage.

Dad got a job working at Macbeth mines and that is where I was born, at home in a three-room house. Dr.Vaughn was the company doctor. My sister Shirley was two years eleven months old.  When I was two years old (I know this because I have a picture of Shirley and me standing in front of the porch and Mom standing in the doorway pregnant with my sister, Lucille), Dad went to work for Orville about one mile up the road from Macbeth, where his brother and all his drinking buddies worked. We moved into a two-room house with a wash room add-on. Our beds were made out of an iron head and foot-board while the springs were metal.

We had a high-tension box on the pole next to our porch; one night we had an electrical storm and lightening struck the box which bounced through a window and hit Dad and Mom’s bed. My mom jumps outs of bed and was going to go out the door when Dad stopped her. If she had open the door and stepped outside she would have been electrocuted. She was scare of storms after that for the rest of her life, when a storm came she always made sure we were all in the house.

My Dad, Mom, and sister, Shirley

                                                 

Marie & Wilbur Dillow (Mom & Dad)