Like I said in my previous post, life was sometimes tough by the standard in which I live today but to us then, it was just life. Nothing special about it, nothing hard about it, it was just everyday life. You get up, do what needs to be done, go to school, come home, do what needs to be done, no big deal.
So, my dad was a coal miner and he worked his ass off. As far back as I can remember he worked 6 or 7 days a week, the midnight shift. He would leave for work at around 10pm, and get home around 9 ish the next morning. He would go to bed and usually he was up around 3 pm if not sooner.
When we were in school dad was usually up just before we got home on the bus and shortly after we got home, chores needed to be done, right off the bus to chores. Our chores varied day to day. Everyone worked the garden, period, no questions asked, get to it, this or that needs to be done. The animals well, we all did them but mostly the boys were responsible for them and man the fun you can have with them.
No this is NOT me |
You’ve never lived until mid summer when your pigs are getting to be about 250 to 300 pounds and up and ready to ride. Yes you read that right, pig riding is so unbelievably dangerous now that I am older but funny as hell when you are a kid growing up. If you are an animal rights person and this is upsetting you, stfu and don’t read anything else, it is just life there and when I was growing up if you didn’t like it, move on.
So, one day while several of us were riding our pigs and laughing our asses off. I jumped on Bessie, yes that was her name and she did something they never do, she ran into the stall instead of running around the pen as usual trying to rake you off on the fence lol. Well, all I could do was hold the hell on and duck since the ceiling in the stall was low as hell. Bessie pretty much beat the hell out of me on the post walls inside the stall and then she hung me on a huge nail inside the pen and ran out without me leaving me hanging there on the nail.
Now my loving friends and brother and sisters were of course laughing so hard they wanted to bust a gut wondering where the hell I was since the pig ran back out without me, not knowing I was hanging by my hip on a hug nail inside. As I began screaming for help they came in and saw I was in trouble, pulled me off the nail and walked me back outside. All the while saying how that was the funniest thing they had seen in forever.
Now me on the other hand, I wasn’t having as much fun since I now had a huge hole in my hip, bleeding everywhere, blood on my shirt and pants which meant, mom was going to be hot for ruining good clothes but, we had to tell her. After all, who was going to drive my dumb ass to the doctors?
So I trudged in to inform my mother that while riding the pigs I had jammed a nail into my side and was bleeding. The first thing she said was serves you right for riding the damn pigs in the first place. So I ended up having to take a ride to the hospital where they flushed out the wound and gave me a tetanus shot which I swear hurt worse than the nail, then when I got home I got my ass beat, wounded and all for ruining my clothes!
So I trudged in to inform my mother that while riding the pigs I had jammed a nail into my side and was bleeding. The first thing she said was serves you right for riding the damn pigs in the first place. So I ended up having to take a ride to the hospital where they flushed out the wound and gave me a tetanus shot which I swear hurt worse than the nail, then when I got home I got my ass beat, wounded and all for ruining my clothes!
As nice as I could be about it |
Yes it sucked getting a beating for something that was supposed to be fun but such was life. On a good note when it came time that fall to slaughter the pigs, I got to shot them so in the end I guess I still won out and you know, that pig made some of the best sausage and bacon I have ever had, even to this day lol.
OK back to my dad and the mining. Coal mining is hard work and to this day I don’t know how he did it, he worked so much and still did everything around the house that needed to be done. I can honestly say I don’t really know my dad that well since he wasn’t long on words but he was a work horse. My dad never laid a hand on us as kids. Not that he was an angel he wasn’t because he never protected us from our mother either but hell, he never hit or spanked me he would have killed me because he was a tank.
I remember a time when my dad was in the hospital because of a rock fall in the mine he was working in, someone was killed and dad had hurt his shoulder and back. We weren’t allowed in the hospital because I guess we were too little but I remember standing outside his window, he was on the second floor and he was taking stuff and throwing it down to us like an apple, banana, the cookie from his food tray, things like that.
If I remember correctly that was a huge turning point in his life because while he couldn’t go back to work for several weeks, instead of laying around like a slug, my dad used the time to learn about a new mining system that was coming around called long wall mining. Later when Westmoreland got the new system in their mines my dad was put on as the foreman because he had already been trained on it and eventually became the boss running several mines for them.
My dad did what he needed to do when he needed to do it and if you have never been in or around a mine, it is a thankless job, dangerous as hell but a way of life for so many people in the world. Let me digress just a little and explain a little of what I know about mining. In most mines the ceilings by LAW are required to be at least 36 inches high. Yes, that is correct, 3 feet high and some of them went 2 miles and occasionally more down to reach the face (face: the end, where the work is currently being done to extract the coal)
The way to get to the face was on an electric car or locomotive. I am no expert on mining that’s for certain, it’s why I left home right out of high school, and I didn’t want to work in a mine. Now when my dad started long wall mining, life for him changed and it made his family’s life better as a whole. No I am not saying that any other type of mining isn’t good I am saying the ceilings in long wall mining tend to be 5 foot or higher and there are less cave-ins in long wall mining due to how it is done.
These men are lucky, they can sit up, many can't. |
Another example most will not understand. When my dad was a worker, and in the union and there was a strike which were way too often, We would visit our dad on the picket line and man the shit they did, by today’s standards, they should all be in jail. BUT, when he became a boss, company man and he was no longer in the union. These same people in which he was great friends with, turned on him during strikes and we would have to take turns taking our dad to and from work armed, yes armed with shotguns, kids, in the back of a truck armed to get our parents to and from work during strikes.
Now when the strikes were over they all wanted to pretend like nothing was wrong, they are all still your friends but to me and my friends that had to take our dads to and from work during the bad times, we never really trusted them again and I don’t think my dad really ever did again either. He was civil and so were we but in the hills it can be very unforgiving to turn on a neighbor, look at the Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s lol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield-McCoy_feud
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatfield-McCoy_feud
I never saw my dad take a drink until I was a teenager either. We were at a race, oval track, hillbillies love NASCAR you all know that haha. We ran around with our friends while our dads sat and drank and watched the race. I can honestly say before that I have no memory of my dad ever drinking. I know he probably did but we never saw it.
We had this great old TV, you know the kind in a box lol, and we had an antenna up the biggest tree in our yard and from time to time it would get out of position and me or my older brother had to climb and move it. Dad would open the window and when we got it in the right place to see the 3 channels we got, we would hammer the nails tighter to hold it in place. When he needed the channel changed he would simply say, change the channel and he who was closest changed the channel, turn the volume up or down, whatever he wanted, no questions asked.
One thing my dad could do was pick us up by the hair on our head. I know it sounds painful but really, it wasn’t after the first few times it didn’t hurt at all but let me tell you, if he picked you up, he was pissed and wanted your undivided attention and you know what, he got it lol.
To be continued:
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