Lieber Cutlip's story

Hawk’s Nest Tunnel – was built to run water through Gauley Mountain to make power.  They made power for down there at Alloy.  Power plant.  They run people in there lots of them from North Carolina.  They came in by trainloads because there was no work anywhere.  It was the Depression..  A bunch of them came from North Carolina and Virginia.  Most of them colored people..  To work in the tunnel.
 Killed a whole lot of them with Silicosis..  They brought in colored people, mostly,  they came in trainloads, lived in shanny cars along the road.  They were laborers.  Silicosis is that dust that gets in your lungs, like Black Lung,  the way I figure, they used jackhammers in there and it was dusty and got in their lungs, it killed an awful lot of them. 

They buried them White had the contract of burying some of them and he brought some of them up here to Nicholas County and buried them.  There was some of them buried on his mother’s place at that time down in Summersville.   Some of them got to go back to their families to be buried but they buried some of them here in a graveyard right around here, mostly colored people.

I was up there one time  at Hawks' Nest with Mr. White’s boy that got killed in a car wreck and we went there to pick up a person or two from the Hawk’s Nest tunnel to bury. And they would bring them so far and then we would transfer them on up here and then Mr. White’s Dad would take care of them up here, burying them and so on.
Lieber's rememberance of WWI:

In 1918 when the war was over the 1^st WW I was up there on the Normal School building where I finally built out from it.  When those old big airplanes, The Martin Bombers came across the sky and they dived down at the town and then back up and then went on of course.  That was how we knew the war was over.  People was celebrating and carrying on quite a bit.  

I was 12 years old when the war started and 16 when it ended.  I remember that so well  when that big airplanes came over. The big Martin Bombers.  We didn’t get much news.  We didn’t even have radio. Most of the time we got the news by just someone coming through.  There was no newspapers.  I didn’t know much about WWI. 

My Dad was suppose to go with the next bunch that went out and the war was over. 

There were quite a few from this area that fought in WWI

My Dad lived on Main Street and I built by the Normal School building. I lived in a house built by the old Normal School building in Summersville, West Virginia.
Summersville was an old farming town, more or less.  My Dad worked around on sawmills, first one thing and then another, I don’t know what all he did do.

When asked about the Depression Era:
I still lived at home during the Depression Era.
What do you think brought on the Depression Era:
I don’t know what brought it on but I do know we were all poor together. Counting Mom and Dad, about 10 of us was living at home during this time.

I was working at Morris Chevrolet Garage at that time.  I was driving Morris. A.C. Morris was the owner.  I drove him quite a bit collecting and going after cars at different places where he would sell cars.  I would go after cars and at that time we drove cars in from Ohio and we go out there and get from 4 to 6 at a time.  We drove them back and sold them.  He sold a lot of cars and the other dealers couldn’t’ sell them.  He did a good business he would get them from Pennsylvania and Jim Kincaid at Richwood.  Chevrolet cars.
I worked there different times,  I didn’t stay there I drove truck and worked for different people, drove Doctors, drove Dr. Richard McQueen, a medical doctor.  Drove him to see patients, to make house calls.  There were two doctors here in town, Dr. Brown and Dr. McQueen and they would go and make house calls.  I would wait in the car while he went in and made house calls.  Sometimes I would have to wait nearly all night.
 I didn’t get married until 1935. My Mom and Dad and about ten of us all together living in that house and food was hard to get, plenty of beans and cheese.  Raised a big garden. We used regular money and awful little of it. 

The war was around 1940 along about that time.  It must have been ’40 I was working at Alloy and I went to Clarksburg to take the examination on account I had a truck wreck 1936 and broke my shoulder and got banged up some and I didn’t make the grade to get in the Army.  My brother Randall and Paul both served.  Brother Randall was in the Philippines when the Japs came in there on them.

Most of the people made their living by farming, raising cattle and hogs and raised corn to feed them. They come in here from bigger farms and they would come in here from Braxton County and drive the cattle and sheep out of here and take them to their farms.  And they used to drive cattle and sheep to Camden-On- Gauley to the railroad and send them to market , my Dad did a lot of that.  That was the nearest railroad, probably 22 – 23 miles on foot, one way. 
I have six sisters; 2 living now.  The women keep things going back then and they didn’t work away like they  do now.  There was a few  women school teachers, women school teachers but they raised the families back then while the men went out to work; farming, timberwork.

Deep coal mining started up…it was after that there was a little coal mines around for house coal, always has been but the regular mining, regular coal mining didn’t start until after the Depression era here. 
I hauled coal,  I started hauling coal in 1933 and  did that for about 10 years, I guess I hauled coal different places.  I drove truck for other people, I never had one of my own.  I hauled  coal from back of the Stonewall hauled up it up here to Muddlety and put it on the railroad and then I hauled from  near the twin churches and loaded it on the railroad..  The coal miners had a union back them.  I didn’t work for the coal people I worked for Glen Herold.    
The mines started down the river before it started here, this was a farming area.  People like my Dad would peddle stuff, they would go down there and peddle it.  My Dad peddled some and they aim to be down there early morning, about 35 or 40 miles one way and they were walking or riding  a horse, see, there was different ones and they would try to beat the other and sell out and get back home as soon as possible.  They would take a crate of chickens or two, apples, potatoes, beans, anything they could get their hands on and go to  the mines they would go along in front of the houses peddling their wares. They would spend the night underneath a rock cliff at Glen Ferris, they aimed to get there and hit Montgomery, Smithers, all through there where there was lots of miners and families.

When I lived at Smithers about four years; they were Italians, one had a son-in-law and they would tell me about coming in there from the Old Country.  They come in there and went to work in the coal mines.  They lived back in the hills where we done some rabbit hunting.  But this man, his mining days was over and he had made some money and he had a boy that was a Pontiac Dealer in Charleston and he had another boy that was schooling while I was there to be a lawyer. 

Even back in the 1920's they been hauling coal out of Cannelton holler for 120 years. 

 I remember when I was boy we went to Charleston. They were mining coal and had those coke ovens then. They made coke ovens, they made something out of coal,  I don’t know what they done with it.

Yea, that old Italian would tell me big tales.   They came to America to make more money.  A lot of them were stone masons,  A lot of Italians were stone masons. 

Two came from Italy in their 20’s they were stone masons.  They never did learn to talk plain.

I knew some of them that came over to work in the mines and they stayed here.

 I went to free school down there at Summersville and then I went to high school for two years, part of three years.  I never did graduate.  They built that school where the Board of Education used to be when it was first built.  They had a schoolhouse right across from that it was a two room school and then they built that one. They built that other one it went up to the 8^th grade.  They changed teachers around some but not too much at that time. 

When asked about illnesses:
The flue, the old-time flue.  I remember a fellow died down there in back of the jail and they said he had the flue.  I know that was when Vick’s salve first  came out and we used a lot of it.  Dr. Moore was a regular doctor and his brother went to doctoring without training.  I think maybe he was a vet or something but went to doctoring people because his brother was doctor but they got along alright.  They was glad to get him.  He some kind of big jar of red salve. 

 When asked about religion:

We went to church.  We went to the Baptist Church at that time.  There was a Southern Baptist  Church and Northern Methodist Church.  We went to the Southern Baptist when I was a kid but then when I was married I joined the Old Northern Methodist Church.  The preachers traveled on horseback, I cant think of what they called them except maybe “chicken eaters”.  Circuit preachers, yes, Circuit preachers.
When asked about entertainment: 

A lot of music, banjoes and fiddlers.  That was the entertainment. There was a lot of musicians and a lot of music. 
I got my first auto in 1940 after I went to work at Alloy., an old ’33 Plymouth.
When asked about changes that have taken place:
  No matter what changes have taken place, people are basically the same.

 When asked what advice he would give young people:

The biggest thing is to learn to live a good religious life.

Lieber showed me his talking watch (his sight is not as good as it used to be)

I gave him a hug and headed for home.