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 28

I’ll tell you something, if you listen to Shirley she’ll tell you she took a lot of beatings for me while we were growing up. However, I remember a few times we both got whipped and I never remember her getting a whipping by herself. I was the one who always got into trouble, which is why Dad wouldn’t let me go any place without Shirley. 

When we lived across from the railroad tracks, I got whipped almost every day because I didn’t want to stay in the yard. Mom would make Dad whip me when he came home from work. She would nag at him until he got mad and then he would tell me to go and get the switch. I would have to go cut three branches off a tree for Dad to braid them together to make a strong switch. Of course, you knew that branch had to be at least as long as his arm, any shorter and he would send you back to get a bigger one. They would leave marks, almost cut your skin open, wherever he hit you. The other kids would them and know you got whipped and make fun of you.  As i got older I got a lot smarter, I tire him out by chasing me; I would crawl under the table, behind a chair, a couch, or anywhere to hide myself. Sometimes I crawled under the bed, if we were close enough, he would then grab me by my feet and pulled me out. 

Mom would cry and plead with him to stop but nothing stopped him until he got tired. After Mom nagged Dad into beating me than she would come around me and tried be nice to me.  I would tell her to leave me alone, I blamed her for my beatings. I certainly didn’t need her to feel sorry for me afterwards.  

I only remember him hitting me once with his fist and that was for repeating a bad word he said. See, my girlfriend was at our house and Dad was gossiping with Mom about a woman they knew; she was “chuckling” her husband. My girlfriend asked me what Dad had said and when I repeated it to her Dad took me by surprise and hit me. He told me I better not repeat anything he said to anyone. He had me cornered between the coal stove in the kitchen and the wall. We used a kerosene stove for cooking; it look like a gas stove with a potbelly stove for heat in the winter. He hit me on one side of my face and the other side would hit the wall. I didn’t cry and he finally gave up. That was the last beating he ever gave me because I was only home after that if I had no place else to go.  

And when I was home I wasn’t good to my mother. I tormented her, do things to her just to make her angry. I remember this one joke I pulled on her; I got her a couple of times with this same joke. I did it to get her attention because I thought she loved the other girls more than me and I was jealous. I think all middle children feel left out in a family. I picked some wild roses, took them into the house, filled them with black pepper and then I took them to her. I gave them to her and asked her to smell them then I would run. She take a big sniff and then she would choke and cry. She’d throw rocks at my feet to knock them out from under me and believe me, her aim was good many a time I landed on my rear. And if she caught me, I was lucky she didn’t kill me. 

My Family: Chapter 26

Dad got Aunt Eloise a house up Macbeth hollow and moved her and her kids into a three-room house. Not too long after, I think he realized Mom and Eloise couldn’t live together. It wasn't too soon after Aunt Eloise moved out, Mom and Dad had parties on the weekends at our house. Now instead of my parents going away from Friday to Sunday, they stayed home and party. They’re parties were very popular with standing room only and sometimes you couldn't get in the house. Shirley and I didn't dare go to bed. I bet there was at least a hundred men and women coming and going all night long at our house.
Shirley had her hands full keeping the men out of the bedrooms. Everyone was welcome just bring a bottle of whiskey to get through the door and you could stay to drink and dance all night. Our neighbor would come up to our house to stand guard in our bedroom doorway (we had no door), so the men wouldn’t try and get in bed with us. Aunt Eloise would dance and show us how to do the old country dance steps. Dad tried to show us how to waltz but we kept stepping on his feet. Mostly Shirley and I danced together.

None of our friends came to our house on the weekends. There were usually five girls who were friends and did everything together; Shirley, myself, two other sisters and my one girlfriend. We went everywhere together, if you seen one, you seen all of us. The two sisters were our neighbors when we lived at Orville who had moved to Rum Creek. 

But no one came around on the weekends, because Mom and Dad’s parties gave us a bad name. We found out people thought we where whoring because of all the men my parents had at our house on the weekends.

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 23

By the time Shirley was 15 years old, Mom had joined Dad in drinking again. Now both of them would go away on the weekends and leave Shirley home to watch Lucille, Bonnie, Ronnie and me. Dad thought since Sonny was an older boy he didn't need watching. This meant we had no one to tell us what to do from Friday night to Sunday. Sometimes we would look up and there in the doorway was Dad. He’d slipped home to see if he could catch us and if we were staying home like he told us to. We couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, so we stayed home all weekend. Plus, there wasn’t anything for us to do on the weekends and no boys were ever allowed at our house - not even Sonny could bring friends home. 

Because we couldn’t go out on the weekends, we got in trouble during the week since that’s when everything happened anyway. This one time my girlfriend, Shirley, and I went to the caravel in Logan and saw belly dancers. My friend and I couldn’t wait to see them dance but we were too young to buy tickets, so we hatched a plan to crawl under the tent, however, we couldn’t talk Shirley into it. So as soon as Shirley turned her back, my friend and I lifted the tent and crawled underneath. We watched the whole show - it was great. That same night, I met a boy (I thought he told me his name was Dick) who lived in Logan over in Black Bottom. We tried to get rid of him but we couldn’t so we went with him to meet his mother. I think she was a “lady of the night” because she looked just like one of the belly dancers. She made a big fuss over me when he introduced me as his girlfriend. I told him (Shirley did as well) that I wasn’t allowed to have boyfriends and he couldn’t come to see me at my house ever! I was fourteen at the time. 

He didn’t listen because showed up at my house not too long after. We were all in the living room watching TV when all of a sudden Dad said, “Who are you?” everyone turned and look there was Dick sitting in a chair! He told Dad he was here to see me. I was sitting on the floor out of sight  next to the stove and when I saw who it was, I ducked under the stovepipe then disappeared into the kitchen real fast. Dad asked him who let him in, and Dick said some boy did. Dad told him to leave because his girls weren’t allow to bring boys in the house or to be dating them. When he came through the kitchen to leave, I yelled at him for getting me in trouble and not to come back. It didn’t dawn on me but he had a twenty-five mile walk to go home. Dad called Sonny and me back into the living room where I explained I didn’t know he was going to come to the house. I also explained how we met. Sonny said that he was on his way out the door when he met Dick at the door. He asked for me so Sonny let him in, got him a kitchen chair,and sat it in the living room for him. The whole family had a laugh because we didn’t notice him sitting in the chair. Dick had been there for some time before Dad noticed him. 

That boy always seemed to find me no matter where I was. He came up to Man to Aunt Hannah’s house where I was helping her with her boys - it had been more than a year since the incident at my house. I had forgotten all about him and then one day there he is on the doorstep. I asked him how he found me. After the incident at my house, I had lived in Logan with Aunt Wanda which was almost in his back yard and never once saw him. He said he gone up to Macbeth, asked about me, and someone told him where I was. He had only been waiting until I got old enough to date. I told him that I didn’t want to date him. That’s when he asked me why I called him Dick, I said it was because that’s his name, he said his name was Butch. I asked why he let me call him Dick, he said he didn’t know why. I had a glass of soda in my hand and I threw it in his face. God, did I feel sorry for him because I thought he was going to cry. I hugged him and told him how sorry I was but he should’ve told me I had his name wrong. I told him to go away and don’t ever come back. He was a good-looking boy, about eighteen at the time, and I never saw him again. Shirley said that’s why I didn’t have any boyfriends because of my mouth.

My Family: Chapter 20

When I was still young, I believed I was a very religious person. I loved to go to church and hear the word of God, it felt very good to be in church and it always felt like God was right there beside me. In my church when the service was over the preacher would call for all sinners to come to the altar and pray for their sins and join the church. I would fight an inner struggle with myself, saying I’m not ready yet, but I could feel God pulling me towards the altar. The reason I wasn’t ready yet was because my church had rules about TV, dancing, roller-skating, gambling, cruising in a car, cutting your hair short, makeup, pants, shorts, smoking, stealing, drinking, and going to the movies. They frown upon all these things and believed it was a sin. I was still young and wasn’t ready to give up some of these things yet. I told myself when I grew older and got married then I would be ready. I didn’t want to give up smoking, dancing, roller-skating, cutting and curling my hair, or wearing blue jeans just yet. 

As I wasn’t a model child at school neither was I all that good out of it. Every morning, my girlfriend and I would stop at the Company store on our way to school and I would steal a five-cent cupcake. When we’d get outside I would give her half of it. I was the one who would steal because I always got away with it even though Rita, the store clerk, would search me. She never found the cake cause I would put it up my coat sleeve. Rita would search my pockets and pat down my body; all the while telling me she knew I took a cake, that she saw me take it but since she couldn’t find it on my person she would have to let us go.  

This one time, our school had a religious revival for seven days and I went to church all seven of those days. On the last day, I went to the altar and got saved. The next morning, my girlfriend and I stopped in the store and as usual I stole a cupcake. When we got out of the store and I went to give her half, I suddenly remembered I was a Christian now. I should have never taken the cake. Filled with shame, I went to throw my half away when my girlfriend said it was no use, I had already sinned and was no longer a Christian so I might as well eat the cake. I told her I couldn’t eat the cake, she scoffed at me saying I should to give it to her since she would have no trouble eating it. It bothered me for the rest of the day how I had forgotten I had joined the church and out of habit had stole the cake. It had taken me at least two years to go to the altar in the first place and then, in less than 24 hours, I blew it. I hadn’t even lasted whole day. 

When I went to sleep that night I dreamt of Jesus. He was holding out both of his hands telling me it was okay, He understood, and I was to come back to church. In my dream, I ran away from him; crying “no” it wasn’t all right what I had done. I didn’t feel worthy of his forgiveness. I did go back to church as much as I did before but I never went up to the altar again.

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 18

I was the only person willing to do housework or run errors for Anne (the crazy lady). This is how I came to work for her. One day, I was by her fence and she came outside to say hello to me.   We began to talk and she invited me into her house. Anne and her husband lived in two rooms with kitchen (which served as a dining room and living room) and one bedroom.  After we talked for awhile, she asked if I  would do her dishes. That's how I earned the money so Shirley and I could go to the movies.  I always went with Shirley by Dad's orders.  She kept me out of trouble.  If I made more than fifty cent working at Anne's, I'd have to give it to Shirley because she started to charge to go to the movies with me.

I had been working over Anne's for some time when I  asked her husband what made her crazy.  He told me it happened because he was married at the time when he first met Anne. He said he fell in love with her at first sight. She was sixteen (at the time I was working for her she was only about twenty-three) and he was twenty years older than her.  At first, she didn't know he was married until she was pregnant. He didn't have any children by his wife. Well, he told his wife he wanted a divorce, but she said if he left her she would kill herself. He didn't believe her and left.  His wife hung herself. When Anne found out it caused her to miscarry the baby because just days previously his wife came to Anne and begged her not to take her husband.  

Her husband said one night after she had lost the baby, he woke up and she had an axe in her hand was standing over him.  He put her in the state hospital for about a year and since then, ever so often, she would get bad and he would have to put her back in the hospital. At the time he told me this story, she had been in the state hospital three times. Her husband told me to always be careful when I was at their house. He warned me that if Anne told me to leave I wasn't to stop and ask why, I was just to go. 

After school, I went down to her house, let myself in, and started to do the dishes.  I could hear Anne in the bedroom cussing and talking to herself. I became very nervous and tried to hurry up finish the dishes and leave. Anne suddenly appeared in the doorway of the bed room and told me to get out.  I stopped washing, thought about it for a moment, but  then I decided to run.  I almost never made it out of the yard before she came out of the bed room with a pick in her hand. behind me screaming with her pick saying I'm going to dig your grave. Her husband had to send her back to the hospital, and I since didn't go down to their house when she wasn't home, I lost my movie money.

My Family: Chapter 17

My parents had only girls which is why Dad took in both Sonny and Ronnie.  When my youngest sister, Bonnie Sue, was born in 1953; Shirley was fifteen, I was twelve, and Lucille had just turned ten. Bonnie was the most beautiful baby we every saw.  Mom said she always had beautiful babies, people came from miles to see them.  Well, I do know that Dad's niece, who was the same age as Mom, came every day to the house to see Bonnie.  She would make a fuss over the baby always telling us she hoped her baby (she was pregnant at the time) looked just like Bonnie. My cousin already had six children; five boys and one girl.  Two of the boys were older than us and the girl was in between Lucille and me, her last three babies had all been boys.  She got her wish and delivered a little girl who looked enough like Bonnie to be twins. My father always said he would rather have had ten boys then three girls - he didn't count the baby; he only counted the ones who were interested in boys. Shirley was the quiet one and didn't go out of the house much, so Dad trusted her not to mess around with boys. He also trusted her to watch me and make sure I didn’t get in trouble.

Everyone who saw Bonnie loved her.  I was doing some odd household jobs for a lady (I'll call her Anne) in the holler and wanted to show her how pretty Bonnie Sue was.  So one day, without Mom knowing it, I took Bonnie to her house. While Anne played with the baby on the porch, I did her dishes. Bonnie was about seven months old and can sit by herself.  Everything was fine until I tried to leave.  See, I stayed for a little while after I finished the dishes to give Anne more time to play with Bonnie, but when I told her to give me the baby we had to leave, Anne refused and told me I couldn’t have her baby. I told her it wasn't her baby and she had to give me the baby back. Of course, now I’m scared.  Mom was going to kill me if I came home without her baby.

I did the only thing I could, I grabbed Bonnie and ran as fast as I could for home. Anne was right behind me yelling for me to give back her baby. I skidded into our yard and slammed the fence gate closed. Anne stopped at the fence and never came into the yard. She just stood out there screaming and cussing.  Finally, Mom went outside and told her to go home. But Anne just stood outside the fence raving we had her baby and she wanted her back. Mom came back into the house and told me to go out there and tell that crazy woman to home before somebody got hurt. I liked Anne and this wasn't the first time I had problems with her.  So, I went outside and gently told her again that the baby wasn't hers and to go before her husband came home. She left but not without some cussing. Later the same day, Mom had to walk past Anne's house to go to the company store. Mom told me later Anne had followed her all way to the store cussing. Mom threatened me that if I ever take her baby down to Anne's house again, she would beat me.

We found out Anne's husband had to send her to the hospital. Apparently, he sent her away because she had become dangerous.

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 14

Poodie age 13

At school I wasn't always the model child, when I was in seventh grade and our class was filling a March of Dimes punch card with dimes, I stole it. Here's what happened: one boy was in charge of the money to make sure nothing happen to it. The whole class knew he left it in his school desk at night including my girlfriend and me. One day after school, we stayed behind and took the money. It added up to two dollars and fifty cents. When we left the school, I wouldn’t give my girlfriend her share of the money because I already regretted the theft. I figured if I gave her half, I couldn’t give it back. My girlfriend and I got into a big fight as we stood in the creek in front of my house. Shirley heard the argument and came to see what was the matter. All  my girlfriend would say was I owed her some money. I didn’t I told  Shirley,  I didn't owed her money, I just said I didn’t own her anything. Shirley took my side and my girlfriend left in a huff.

The next day we went to school and heard that the boy had reported the money missing. The teacher gave the class a big speech about stealing and gave whoever took the money the rest of the day to give it back. I waited until the class went to recess then I put it under his chair

Shirley age 16

 as if it had fallen out of his desk. The ploy worked and the class was happy to get the money back. My girlfriend never mentions the money again.

Another time I was a thorn in my teacher's side was at Christmas time when the school decided to take one child from each class and as a group they would sing on the radio in Logan. Our school had two rooms per class, and the school went to eighth grade, so it would be sixteen children in all. My teacher put each of our names in basket and drew out one. I never dreamed my name would be pulled but it was! However, the teacher tried to get me to let this other girl go in my place. It seems her mother was head of the PTA, always baked for our parties at school, and the local Girl Scout leader. That meant this girl got picked for everything. The teacher told me since I couldn’t carry a tune I wouldn’t miss singing on the radio and, of course, it would mean so much to this other girl who took tap dancing lessons. What a show-off, she was always dancing for the school on stage. In short, this girl cried when she wasn't picked to sing on the radio. Everyone knew I couldn’t sing, wasn’t everybody telling me so in church, but that didn’t stop me from singing in church and it wasn’t going to stop me from singing on the radio. Besides, this girl was snobby just because she was named after a movie star, and she never let me join any of the her games on the playground. You think I was going to give her my spot in the choir, I don’t think so. The day we went to Logan and sang on the radio, I was put in the back of everyone else but I still was there singing.

My Family Chapter 13

 Bootlegging for those of you who don't know what it is let me explain, WV is a dry state which means that you can't buy whiskey anyplace but the state store, you can go in any store or gas station and buy any alcohol beverage except for Whiskey, Dad would go to the state store and pay $1.50 a pint and sell it for  $ 3.00 a pint at home.  
 Bootlegging is a unlawful  but profitable business for a  coal miner. Since so many people were coming to the house and my parents could use the extra money, they decided to go into in the business. Remember the family who traded houses with us? They're an example of how bootlegging can mess with your mind. Remember the wife wanted to move real bad, well it wasn't because of the people - not directly. No, she wanted to get her two boys, four and six months old, away from all the people who the four-year-old could run to for help. I know this because our new next door neighbor told the story of what he saw. First, let me explain how I know what he said as he's an adult and I’m a child. He was also the biggest gossip in Macbeth and he hung out at the company store to gossip with everyone who came in. I, too, hang out there reading comic books and, as long as I was quiet, I could hear every word the adults said.

All of the mining houses sit about three feet off of the ground on cinder blocks, so a four-year-old could easily walk under them. One day, our neighbor said, he saw the wife out playing hide and seek with her oldest boy during the day. A little while later, our neighbor made the comment to the boy how well his mother and he played together. But the boy said they weren’t playing, his mother had tried to kill him. He had been hiding behind the concrete blocks under the house while she shot at him. Of course, our neighbor didn't believe him and later it was found out that the little boy had told the same story to his father. Nobody would believe him, how frighten that boy must have been. Tragedy struck one Saturday morning after we traded houses with them. The wife asked her husband to go to the store for her and while he was gone she asked the four year old to feed the baby a bottle in the front room - the baby was on a blanket on the floor. She shot both of them then herself in the doorway leading from the front room to the kitchen with a silencer on the gun. That's how her husband found them when he came home from the store, which was only about a five minute walk away from the house. The wife didn’t die right away, she lived for a little while. Everyone the little boy had told his story to wishes they had listened to him. After the tragedy, her husband left Macbeth. The wife's father (the bootlegger) had gone to live with his son when they traded homes with us. I found out many years later that her father hung himself some years after the tragedy.

My Family: Chapter 12

Two things happened once we moved out of Macbeth, Sonny got the mumps and Grandma Francis came to live with us again. Mom and Grandma Francis put Sonny in a room by himself and made it real dark. For two weeks they didn't let him come out of that room, they didn't want the mumps to fall on him, and they wanted him to be able to have children when he grew up. This meant the seven of us shared the same bedroom.

Bonnie age 3 Sonny 13 Ronnie age 5

I forgot to tell you the most important thing, I was forever getting into trouble and getting a beating. I always had to go and get three switches for Dad to braid together. He would leave cut marks on my legs and back. These rules saw to it that I got a beating everyday with a switch: cussing (which also got my mouth washed out with soap), don't play on railroad tracks, don't repeat what you hear adults say, come home when you hear your dad whistle, and mind your mother. I just couldn't help myself. And I never saw the two boys get a hit at all. The other kids could hear me scream all over the hollow because when I got whipped I didn't stand still. I crawled under anything and ran behind furniture - wore Dad out beating me. Mom always cried, first she would nag Dad to beat us then cry because he beat us too hard.

Dad's beating weren't the only reason I had bruises. When I was in third grade a bad storm blew up with a very strong wind. It was so bad that the side of the wall in our schoolroom caved-in on top us. My seat was next to the wall and there was a boy who sat in the next row of seats across from me who, when the wall began to cave-in, hollered he'd save me. He knocked me out of my chair, onto the floor, and was lying on top of me. I screamed for him to get off, but he kept saying he'd save me. The teacher finally had to pull him off, which was my most embarrassing moment. No one got hurt as the wall was only plasterboard.

Poodie age 13

Another time I was in the middle of a accident was when I was in the fifth grade. I was on the metal maypole on the playground and it was my turn to cross all the other kids’ chains. Let me discribe the maypole to you; it's an eight-foot iron pole with a wheel on top and eight chains hanging down with three rings on a chain. Each child would take a chain holding on to the ring at the end. On your turn, you'd cross all of the other chains while the other children ran and pulled you along which would make you go higher in the air. I was straight out even with the top of the maypole when my chain broke and threw me over the bank and into the ball field which was about twenty-five feet away.

Taken at a 1930 period costume celebration. The scene is reminiscent of the more permanent metal post maypole-type swing with swivel top and attached chains that stood in the playground another cited the little-known tragedy of a child who was killed in the 1930s, when a rusty metal `maypole' collapsed

I was knocked out for awhile and when I woke up a teacher was standing over me. At that moment the bell rang and I went back into class. The teacher must have been concerned about me for she got someone to take me to the Dehue doctor. His office was across from the school; we had to walked across the road and railroad tracks. He told me I had a dislocated shoulder and he can’t do anything for me. He advised me to go and see the Macbeth doctor which I never did. Of course, I didn't know that the same thing had killed my grandfather. I didn't even tell my parents about it.

My Family: Chapter 10

Shirley age 10

One day, Dad took Sonny, my girlfriend, and me to the movies at Dehue. I never will forget the movie, it was Comin' Around the Mountain and was about hillbillies. I know it was a Monday night because that's the only day of the week they showed movies. Most of the time Dad went by himself, but this one time he took us with him. Shirley couldn't go because she was sick and Dr. Vaughn said she had a stomach flu. She was real sick and couldn't keep anything in her stomach. Dad told Mom to call him out of the theater if she got any worse. Aunt Belvia came down to our house to see Shirley and after taking one look at her told Mom it was more than a stomach flu. Since Uncle Noah had a car they took Shirley to Orville's Company doctor as that's where Uncle Noah worked in the mines. The Orville doctor said they had better get Shirley to the hospital right away, she had appendices and it was about to bust. Mom stopped at the movie house and got Dad out of the movies on the way to the hospital. It was a twenty to twenty-five minutes ride to the hospital. Shirley was fine after having her appendix out. they had busted and she stayed in the hospital a long time.

Grandma Francis had been living with Aunt Belva but she couldn't get along with Uncle Noah, so she came to live with us. Grandma didn't live with us for very long. Shirley said it was because Grandma and her got into a fight and she told her to leave. She was mean to us girls and treated us awful. I'll tell you some stories later.

Our family had gotten bigger and we needed a bigger house. I was eight by this time that's how long it took to get a four-room house with our name on the list.  We moved to Hutchinson which also had a hollow. There were about thirty homes.  It had a row of two stories houses on one side that had two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs, and on the other side was a row of three-room homes which sat against the mountain. There was a creek and road for only one car which ran down the center between the row of homes. And just as you came out of the hollow there were some four-room houses. Grandma isn't with us when we moved to a four-room two-story house when it become available up Hutchinson hollow.

Sonny age 10

We now have four rooms but still only two bedrooms upstairs. Mom made a living room with furniture and a kitchen downstairs and since we only had two bedrooms and one bed in each, Sonny had to share a bed with Shirley, Lucille, and I. We slept at the top of the bed while Sonny slept at the foot.  It was really crowded.  Mom doesn't like living up this holler because she couldn't visit any friends or family. Dad was still leaving on Fridays after work and didn't come back till Sunday.  It came home to her just how isolated she was when one day Ronnie was sucking on a lollypop and it came off of the stick getting stuck in his throat! I remember Mom screaming and crying as she ran up and down in front of our house wailing that he was dying. Steve, who lived next door, came to her rescue. He had to fight Mom to take Ronnie from her and get the lollypop out of his throat. Ronnie had turned blue already; he turned him up side down and patted his back hard. When the lollypop came out he gave Ronnie back to her.

Poodie age 9

We didn't have any toys to play with so we would wait until Mom got a new catalog and cut out the ladies who had on just underwear. Then we would cut out dresses and have paper dolls to play with all day on the porch. We didn't have any friends up the hollow. This one night I had a bad dream and was screaming. Dad couldn't get me awake and when I did wake up Mom cried that she wanted Dad to take me to the hospital. Dad told her to hush and for everyone to go back to bed, I just had a bad dream and I would be alright now. I remember the next day our neighbor on one side of us asked me why I was screaming last night when I told him I had a bad dream, he said I woke every one up.

My Family: Chapter 8

 

 When I got older and we had moved above Cly about ten houses, he came home with a new wife, her name was Betty also.

        I would trade comic books with his second wife Betty. She would go through my stack of books and pick out the ones that she hadn’t read and I would do the same with her books, and each of us would keep the books that we traded fore. Cly would kid me in front of Betty and say that he changed my diapers when I was a baby.

        I ask my mom and she said that he probably did, because mom and dad would take Shirley and me down to Betty his first wife and his house and stay the night drinking,

       The house that I was born in was three houses above theirs. When he shot his wife and kills her, we lived across the railroad tracks behind their house.

        I was walking home from school… and Cly and Betty came up the road in their car and stopped, and ask me if I wanted a ride home. I said sure and climb in the back seat, when we passed some school kids I duck down in the back because I didn’t want them to see me in the car with a black couple.

       Mary at that time said something to me and she had to lean over the front seat to see me, she ignored that I was bent over on the back seat and kept talking to me like nothing was wrong.

 Remember Aunt Alice's husband ran off and she had him brought back?  Well, he took off for good and Aunt Alice went to Logan, got a job as a live-in-maid and forgot she had any children. So we took in Alton Lee, who we called Sonny, when he was about seven. Aunt Belva & Uncle Noah took the two girls. Sonny was the son Dad never had.

Sonny age 7

Aunt Belvia and Uncle Noah lived at Orville next to the hard road, the fourth house after you crossed the bridge.  I made friends with a girl that lived two houses away from Belvia and closer to the bridge. While I was visiting Belvia, I would go down to this girl’s house to play.  She had a older sister that was retarded and her parents kept the sister in a dark bedroom in a baby’s crib. They didn’t allow the door to be open or anyone to see their daughter. I knew about her because my friend told me about her older sister. She didn’t tell me her sister was retarded, she just said she wasn’t right in the head and she would never get any older in her mind than a baby. She wasn’t allowed to take any of her friends into her sister's room but I just had to get a peek at this sister and see for myself what was wrong. So I talked her into letting me take a peek through the door. When we open it, I was shocked to find this big girl, about the same size as I am, sitting in a baby’s crib! When she saw us she shook the crib bars and made loud noises. We shut the door and ran.  I didn’t get a real good look because it was dark in the room but I never tried to see the girl again after that one time.

We were only living at Macbeth for a little while when Mom got into a fight with one of our neighbors.  Shirley was up at her friend's house playing inside when Mom hollered for her to come home.  The neighbor lady came out of her house and told Mom Shirley couldn't come right now she was busy playing.  Mom told the neighbor lady not to tell her what her daughter can and cannot do, then she jumped off the porch, grabbed the clothesline pole, and bolted over a 5 foot fence (Dad always put a fence around our house). Mom would get into other fights with this neighbor lady, always chasing her into her house.  And as much as Mom was fighter, she was also good at everything -  all you had to do was ask.  Once we stayed all night with the another next door neighbor when she had her baby.  At other times, Mom helped the neighbor ladies paint and paper their houses.  You just couldn't get her mad.

Mom was going to have another baby but no one told us, and the first I knew was when we were sent next door to stay the night with a neighbor.  The next morning we went home and Dad told us the baby had died, he let us into the bedroom to see the baby.  They named him Ronald Lee.  I remember he was beautiful with a head full of black hair and Dad said he had two teeth already.  The baby was so big he had to be buried in a coffin would have fitted a one year old.

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. 

      

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)