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Being just sixty one years old I should have a lot of years left to live according to the latest stats but along my roads of life I have hit a few bumps and went off a few curves which is going to shorten my stay somewhat. There are a few thoughts about some things I have experienced that I want to get in writing and one of those is the years I spent mining coal and my close relationships with the people who worked with me during those years.
Perhaps the best way to go about this is chronologically. Since I was born and raised with coal dust in my lungs I guess it would start in the fifties and go from there. There has always been two levels of coal mining in all the eastern coal fields, I can't speak for any place out west but Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia Pretty much had the same systems of mining. Most people don't know it but Henry Ford was a big coal man in Eastern Kentucky brought there by people like John CC Mayo and once there he bought up and mined coal in a big way for many years to supply his factories and steel mills. I worked in one of his older coal mines during the seventies and the original entrance to the mine was still in use at that time. There were and still are two levels of coal mining the larger coal companies such as Massey Coal and others will mine millions of tons of coal a year and there are the one horse operations that make it from month to month on a wing and a pray. The larger coal mines would not dare let a TV camera in to watch daily operations and I am sure the small operation they are using just did it for the money. Looking at the operation and the expense involves they will be looking for another mine to be filming in before long.
But back to me and my story. Union coal played a big part of my early childhood. My father spent many years working in a union coal mine called Russell Fork Coal Company. He started there after coming back from WW II where he had been stationed in Pearl Harbor on December seventh. I always regret not getting that story down on paper or tape before he died. Actually it was a very large mine close to a small coal mining community called Elkhorn City, Kentucky. The town even had a coal train rail going through it as it headed into Virginia to bring back the coal and logs from that part of Virginia.It was called the Clinchfield Railroad and then later had different names.
The coal history has cycles where it is feast or famine and the fifties where good, lots of mining especially large mines where the union was strong. I spent many a Saturday morning inside a union hall sitting in the back where I was not supposed to be but since my dad was usual some sort of local official I was overlooked I guess. There was not much in the way of secrets at union meetings but the members knew not to speak out of place once they left there. Of course it was a favorite watering hole for the local members. I remember the use of the flat half and one pint whiskey bottles was common at these meetings and also brought me a few extra nickels later in the week after they were emptied. Of course once the meetings where over I never knew exactly where I was going to end up perhaps that was the worst part of being with my dad on those weekends. He was a mean drunk for a small man. He had the name pee wee and was considered to be very strong for his size. Later in life I finally figured out why. Most large coal mines
especially drift mines have track or rails entering the mines so supplies, mantrips and even coal can be hauled in and out of the mines. There were usually special crews that did nothing but lay and remove that track. Once you got on the crew it didn't take you long to want off of it again. The work was back breaking and your back did not last long. The rail was the same length as the rail used on outside railroads, twenty foot in length, but there were different sizes or weights of rails used such as 20 lb, 40 lb and up to 80lb which was a back breaker. The weight destinations such as 20lb meant the rails weight 20 lb per foot. So a 20 foot 20 lb rail would weight 400 pound. Not a lot of weight distributed over 20 foot but moving this by hand and inside a coal mine sometimes no higher than 3 or 4 feet then it was a health problem.
Back to my father. The man was small and had been bald most of his life, ill tempered on his best day but he could pick up one end of a 80 lb rail and set it in place by hisself. I doubt if he did it a lot but the other miners would always brag about this feat. I had a lot of the same nonsense in me when I was young in the coal mines but not that much nonsense. Once we left the union meetings he would be usually lite up by then with some cheap bourbon, Old Taylor, Wild Turkey or something like that. Since the small town was wet, the only one in the county I figured we were headed for the pool hall/bar or to the local whorehouse some miles past the town near the Virginia state line.
Now at this time in my life I had figured out I was going to be a small person like my father, those attributes I could live with but I hoped the meanest and the drinking would not begun a major part of my life also. Even during high school I was small as small can be and still survive with the big boys. As we approached town I hoped we were headed for the whorehouse. The old bar was smelly and nasty and the whorehouse had pretty women, a jukebox and a pinball machine I could play for hours standing on a wooden coke box. At that time we lived in the small town in a former set of coal camp houses. Now there was a way to live. A four room wood house four feet from the next house with a roll of out houses behind the roll of houses. At the end of the street was the old company store still in business at the time. Not a lot but again I would give all to be back there. School was across the river and I guess around a mile or farther we had to walk everyday and if we did not take lunch come home and have a fried bologna sandwich and then hurry back to school. Since dad spent most of his union wages on wine women and song we were lucky to get the bologna.
The large mines didn't last long during the war the president placed soldiers at the mines to insure the union would not strike and cause a problem with the flow of coal supplying the steel mills and and the war effort. We finally moved from the small town and bought a house in the same hollow as the mine where dad worked. It was several mills from the small town but I made new friends and started with new and more exciting country activities, trying to get back to town go figure. During those years I made a few very good friends one of the few times I did that. I guess people are born to be with friends I was born for I don't know what think it might be my writing?
The mining operation was so large that there was a full scale railroad going to the coal temple where the company washed and cleaned their own coal. As the larger mines closed the coal would be trucked or railed to another facility to be cleaned or to go straight to the power plants during the fifties and early sixties a lot of the coal was sized for coke coal for the steel mills. Perhaps one of the best things about living in that hollow was the railroad that went behind our house. I learned at an early age age of around 10 or 11 how to jump trains. The train would make a couple of runs each day up the hollow to the mine temple with empty cars and head back out of the hollow with loaded cars. Now some times the train would be pulling a long load and would move fairly slow. Then again he may be moving just a few cars, maybe fifty or less and then the engineer would let it rock and roll. Catching a train is not an easy thing to do. You do not stand in one place and just grab a rail as it goes by, believe me even at 10 years old I knew better than that. What I did not know was how stupid the whole thing was taking such a change rolling a train. My friends and I would wait until the engine went around a curve and then start running beside of the train grabbing hold of a rail used to climb over into the coal car. Once we had a firm gripe on the the car we would jumb for the bottom rail.
That was the hard part the fun part was getting off the car. If the train was going slow enough you could just drop your feet down and start running with the train letting go once you were moving at the same speed as the train. Spend the day in the small town and then head back home riding the train. Most adults back then were more interested in doing things that were even more self centered than today so we were pretty much on our own. Well enough about the good life and the way things were. back to coal mining.
Once the fifties were over the sixties went to hell on a hat band as they say. Mines shut down due to no coal orders or cost got to high to mine the coal. The things got hard. Before we finally sold out and left my dad tried his hand at going into the mining business. Now once the big mines shut down there was still plenty of coal to mine, but the union was gone no one could afford to pay the wages except for the coal temple that was still buying the coal now being mined by individual one or two men owners with just a few workers. I always wondered at the way things regressed during that time. The same coal seams my dad and other men had worked so many years in had been closed down with all the big fancy continuous miners, coal loaders, cutting machines and drill machines. There were still a lot of the high seams of coal being mined around the area but the owners of the now closed big mine made sure they gave the best coal to their former supervisors.
Well dad and a couple more men decided they were going to start their own coal mine.
They did not get the big seams nor did they get to use the modern equipment
that had been pulled from the mines. Now comes the interesting part about that
period of my life. Coal is mined in many different ways, with modern miners,
loading machines with load the coal after it has been shot with dynamite and
loosened up and of course with augering and mountain top removal. Most of these
were available during that time but coal mining had revered back to a real early
type of mining.
Coal mining started out using a pick axe to break the coal loose and this was
just for home use in the mountains once the people figured out it was there and
the use for it. Of course the scots and the Irish already had that figured out
from the bogs of the old country. after this stage of development a drill could
be used to drill a series of holes in the face of the coal and filled with black
powder which was the same as was used in their guns. Later of course came
dynamite and other explosives. What I am getting at here was during the time my
father mined coal as a operator he had a very basic coal mine. The men used a
hand drill with a 6 to 8 foot auger bit to drill the holes in a set pattern and
then filled the holes with powder.During my time in the mining industry I have mined into old mines from a hundred years before that were time capsules. With pick axes
and other equpiment still stacked against the ribs and the chestnut rails still laying on the mine floor. ROck that was sometimes present in the coal would have been
stacked along each side of the mine and in some cases would be used for roof support.
This was the brutal part and one most men in those years had to endure to feed their families, most small mines and there were hundreds of them back then had no real equipment. What they did have was battery operated motors as they were called with most being built in Floyd County Ky and a few mine cars. The mine cars had sides up to a foot or two depending on the thickness of the seam. Most of the cars would hold from one to two tons of coal. Remember the old song of Tennessee Ernie Ford I loaded sixteen tons. Well A good coal loader with the coal shot down small enough could load sixteen tons which was sixteen of the one ton cars. One man was hired to run the motor, keep fresh empty cars ready as a car was loaded. He would then take a train of them outside pick a train of empties and head back inside. Oh and the men who loaded this coal were paid one dollar per car if that much and some times they had to supply their own shoves and black powder.
Now child labor had been outlawed for years but without my mothers knowledge
on some Saturdays I would have to go to the mine with dad and go inside the mine
and shoot the coal down so the men could load the coal out on Monday morning.
The powder was loose in large containers and it was my job to use newspaper and
make sticks of powder out of them so they would fit the holes dad and the other
men were drilling. Ventilation was a joke in those days meaning there was very
little air that would circulate through the mine. The fans set up out side the
mine were usually less affective that a house fan. That was the main reason for
going out on Saturday once all the places were drilled and the holes filled with
powder then they would be should with caps and fuse that you lit with a carbide
light. Then run. Once all of the places were shot and the place was so smokey
you could not see you left the mine and it had the weekend to clear out.
Now this was in the early sixties and it did not take long for that endeavor to
come to a screeching halt and off we went with the rest of the masses to the
northlands, Chicago was our chosen place to reside and we did so for a few years
but as with all good southern hillbillys you got to come home. Now I was old
enough by a few days to head to the mines for my lifetime of labor. Married with
at least one child or maybe two I don't rightly remember I tried a few other
jobs before giving up and just taking a mining job. MORE TO COME HOPEFULLY!!!!!
Well back again for a few more lines that might get us out of the sixties. Coal mining does take a special type of person who has very little phobies as just geting into
a mantrip car to go underground can stop even the strongest man if he or she has phobie about confined places. Loud noises such as dynamite going off in a confined place can
send grown men heading for cover. Yet it takes very little education to be a good caol miner as a matter of fact it takes no education. I don't think I would work a
educated man today in the coal mines. I will touch on this later as I relate to some of the people I have worked with, but the smartest men I have ever worked with I
had to sign their paychecks on Friday as I handed them out. They could not read or write but I would trust my life to them in everyway underground or in society.
My first experience in the mining history came before actual roof control was used in the smaller mines. Federal law did not mandate the use of a support ssystem called
roof bolting. Drilling a hole into the roof up to 6 feet and then inserting a steel bolt with a chuck on the end that expanded as the bolt was turned by the machine. something
like a concrete bolt and chuck you would use in a concrete or block wall. Now there are different types of roof bolts including one that uses a glue that is inserted
into the drilled hole first and then a bolt with a diameter of around three-quarter inches with notches on the sides is inserted. As the bolt is pushed up into the hole
the tubes of glue are busted, once the bolt is completely inserted it is turned at a fast speed by the machine causing the glue mixture to harden. I never liked that system
but it has been used for a few years now. The earth is not a constant and in mining there are always changes occurring. One day the mine may be dry and the next day it may
have a steady stream of water running from somewhere in the mine. Most often this comes from the top or roof of the mine and with the glue bolts one water hits the glue on the
sides of the hole they are useless. Of course the manufacturers and the federal government will tell you different but again I will talk more on those two later but
They have not seen what I have seen time and again.
The mine I started in was about forty inches high and the mine was doing retreat mining, meaning they had mined as far as they could go and were mining out the support pillars
as they retreated from the mine. This required the use of a lot more timbers and crib blocks and it was my job to set the timbers and build the cribs where the boss
wanted them. Now again here I was a small person to start with spent most of my life working a easy factory job and now I was inside a coal mine. Not real bright was it.
The first day there were numerous rock falls due to the mountain falling after the coal had been removed. Now I had no idea about roof support but I was surrounded by many experienced
mined so I assumed it was safe. I lived to this day so I guess it was. By midday I was completely worn out, scared to death from all the rock that was falling around me
and of course all the older miners having a lot of laughs at my expense.
But I hung tough and worked the mine until a rock fall closed it down