Posted on 05/18/2013 8:13:07 AM PDT by virgil283
"In a coal camp, the company owned all the properties, the houses and everything associated with the camp. Miners who worked there, just worked for wages and the pay they received was not enough to provide decent living for their families. The houses were mostly four rooms without indoor plumbing, there were no streets, just dirt lanes filled with coal ashes from the "warm morning' stoves that were used to heat the home. Some houses only had a single fireplace for heat in the cold winters....." ...Dozens of color photos....
"A general store owned by the company, allowed the miners to trade for necessities. The miners used company monies called script which could only be redeemed, at the company store. Tennessee Ernie Ford had it right with the song lyrics "I owe my soul to the company store".
(Excerpt) Read more at coal-miners-in-kentucky.com ...
: Except in the "urban hellholes" one could make money and thereby create wealth to better one's position. In the mine towns, there was no MONEY to be made, only script that was useless elsewhere. Once there, these people were wage slaves.
why would you want to get out of the hollow?
Your question confuses me. It reads as if you are asking ME that question about the here and now. Well, I made my money in THE urban hellhole NYC, and moved here after I retired. Now if you mean the collective "you" meaning miners, that's a different story. When one has a family and is caught in the cycle of dependence purposely engineered by the mine companies,(kinda like the RATS do with welfare,etc) breaking free of those bonds, at least for your children, is paramount.
We lived with parents and grandparents. My noni (some spell it nonni) was the old fashioned sicilian housewife. She cooked our meals, put it on our plates and you ate what was on your plate. We didn’t have pizza. We had bread and she would put various things on it. Even sugar for dessert.
One of the joys of my life was a trip back when our kids were small. Noni made homemade spaghetti and meatballs. When we left she gave us some meatballs. We had an ice chest in the car and ate those meatballs for two days. Never have had any meatballs like that, since.
A slice of Americana right here on this FR thread! Informative and quite riveting.
Leni
Exactly....IF there even WAS a bus. How many of these company towns didn't even have paved roads leading to them until the second half of the 20th century? Often the only way in or out was on the company owned RR spur that brought supplies in and coal out.
>>One of the joys of my life was a trip back when our kids were small. Noni made homemade spaghetti and meatballs.
People today don’t have any idea how wonderful memories of simple times like that are. All they have today is technology and programmed activities. Today, a “good meal” worth remembering is usually described by how many hundreds of dollars it cost.
What are you referring to here:
“There was no barbed-wire fence around West Virginia, to the best of my knowledge. Anyone who stayed, stayed voluntarily. Anyone who wanted to go and seek something “better” was perfectly free to do so.”
I think paved roads were common in most of southern WV, like Hwy 10 through Logan Co into Wyoming Co. The story I was told the coal companies got the state to pave those roads. They were and are mostly two coal trucks wide including mirrors.
I remember the Gov in the early 90s taking a rip from Charleston to Logan to Man. There is a curve in 10 (described as the most dangerous Hwy in WV on a billboard in Man) between Logan and Man where it seems impossble for two vehicles to pas in opposite directions. The governor supposedly told one of his staff to get the curve taken care of. Last I was there it was still the same.
For a couple of decades up until the early 90s there was no four lane hwy in logan county. The four-lane came to Logan County and stopped leaving the old 2-lane road. Some trucks would not deliver into Logan County because of the lack of good enough roads. The city was always on the wrong side in the election and couldn’t get tax funds for roads.
In the late 80s or 90s, the county built Corridor G and sent a four lane right past downtown Logan, except there was a small mountain between the two.
Wal-Mart came into Corridor G and built a shopping center. Many locals spend half a day or more at Wal-Mart and in the parking lot greeting others. Downtown Logan is dead unless you have to go to the court house of high school.
Indeed. Also, the other night I called out two of our children (ages 34 and 32) for texting at the table in a restaurant at a dinner for 6 people.
I’ve seen you on here and thought you might enjoy this thread.
PS. I think it was the late 20s before you could drive into Logan WV from the north. You took the train or boat down the Guyandotte if the water level was up.
There was an old chant by the train conductors when calling the stops from Logan to Chapmanville.
Pecks Mill
Henlawsen,
Peach Creek (where I was taken home from the hospital in 1946)
and
Godby’s Crossing!
...and Logan was a fairly large town for the area then. I'm in Upshur and friends and neighbors in their 50s and older tell me that most (not all) of the roads here were sand/gravel and oil well into the '50s and beyond.
Speaking of bad turns, there's one on 33 going East into the South Branch valley that is a real doozie. Wish I had the concession to replace the inside guard rail there. PS...I'm just a mile off Corridor H
I am referring to West Virginia. Good grief.
I think the paved roads were for coal trucks convenience, thus a main rd like Hwy 10. Don’t know 33.
Born at Logan General in 1946 and lived in Peach Creek until the place burned down.
Cal in 59
Our trip to boarding school in Paintsville was 66 miles thru Holden, Kermit, Inez (I get sentimental watching Justified). Took 2 hours. I remember looking out the bus window at the snow and no guard rails.
Good grief? About what? I asked you an honest question becuz I was trying to understand more about what you were talking about.
I did some work in Indonesia. My helpers loved working with me as they got paid triple time. (2x for long hours, 3x for working away from the mine site)
They were making $1.50 an hour instead of their normal $0.50 cents an hour. I couldn’t believe it, and asked one how he managed.
“Best pay in all of Indonesia. Our room and board is covered [4 guys/room + mess hall], and no where else to spend money. In 6 years I will have enough saved up to build my family a house. [with no mortgage].”
Obviously his house was not going to be like mine - but 6 years to have a home free and clear is pretty good!
Well, let's take a look, shall we uncitizen?
Here's what I said:
“There was no barbed-wire fence around West Virginia, to the best of my knowledge. Anyone who stayed, stayed voluntarily. Anyone who wanted to go and seek something “better” was perfectly free to do so.”You then asked "What are you referring to here?" and specifically referenced this paragraph.
Now, if you look closely at the very first sentence of the three you quoted, you'll see the words "West Virginia." That's what I was referring to. That's the answer to your question. As Ed Koch once said "I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."
Who brought up the idea that your question was anything other than an honest one? Other than yourself, that is.
My Great Grandpa, Lars Gustav (known as LG)Johnson worked in a Penna. coal mine. He came from Sweden about 1880 and did lumber for a while. My Grandpa Albert was born in PA but they were able to move to Schenectady NY where GE was hiring. Three generations worked for GE there and lived in the same house from which they walked to work.
My $00.02!
My Maternal Great GrandFather and Kin worked the mines in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. As did my Paternal Great Grandfather and his Kin in Alabama(Jefferson and Walker Counties).
Link to Alabama mines
http://www.miningartifacts.org/AlabamaMines.html
At this late hour, I say, Thank you. I did enjoy this thread. Could have added a bit to it, but it’s too late now. The pictures of the houses remind me of the houses I lived in as a child in Tenn. Depression was Depression everywhere, but especially in the South. I was one of those urchins sitting on a dilapidated porch. We subsisted on what we could grow in a garden and $300 a year my Dad made teaching school. We never thought about being poor.
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