"Endless Nights"
We began:

I asked, "Do you have black lung?"
He told me:

     They have denied me black lung benefits and I worked in the coal mines for 25 years.   I have always tried to take good care of myself but I have worked there for 25 years.  I have been tested more than once and got test results after breathing into a machine that gave an indication of black lung but the people in charge said that I do not have black lung.

I asked, "Have you been tested more than once?"
He told me:

     After conferring with a doctor, I went to the New River Breathing Center in Beckley, West Virginia.  They performed all the tests for a second time and they said top quality film results indicated I had black lung, but again I was denied.  My nephew, who is a lawyer, took it to court.  They said the film was of too poor quality to determine if I had black lung.
 
     It is a strange thing, some people who have not worked in areas where you get black lung, have gotten benefits and that should make it possible for those of us who have worked in the mines for 25 years to get black lung benefits.

I asked, "Did you going to appeal the decision?"
He told me:

     My nephew has appealed my case to the Supreme Court.  Nobody wants black lung, but there is no doubt I have the percentage of black lung according to doctors to qualify for benefits.

     A funny thing, my uncle applied for his and they said, "You will have to get a lawyer."   He said, "I am not getting a lawyer and I am not going to die before I get it."  He didn't get a lawyer and he got his black lung benefits before he died and spent it all.

I asked, "How old were you when you began working in the coal mines?"
He told me:
 
     I started working in the coal mines when I was 18 years old.   I was hand loading with a shovel when I was 17 years old.  I was working for a man I knew in a small mine.  All you did for eight hours was shovel coal and haul it out.  We had a drop-bottom buggy. It was an old coal buggy where the bottom dropped out and you shoveled the coal out by hand and then hauled it out.

     I worked that summer shoveling coal and went to college that winter.

     The next summer I got out of school on Tuesday or Wednesday and I had decided I wasn't going to hand load coal again if I could find something else.  I  was going to find something else to work at.

     I got home on Wednesday and looked around Thursday and Friday and early on Monday morning somebody knocked on the door and said, "Did you find a job yet?"  I said, "No."  He said, "You got one now."

     During the summers I worked as a laborer until 1972.  There are bits of time I worked for a core drilling company.

     In 1969 I taught school and 1968, 70 and 72 summers I thought I would start to work again in the coal mines, but no work.  Things were not going good in the coal mines and school teachers didn't have any money.

     I heard about this coal company hiring on the engineering crew, so I went down there every day at lunch and the head of the engineering crew asked me if I was going to come up every day.  I said, "Yes."  So, he gave me a job. 

I asked, "Where did you teach school and what was the salary in comparison to a coalminer's wages?"
He told me:
 
     Kanawha County Schools were the 2nd highest paying county in West Virginia.  I started teaching for them.  I started out at $6,900.00 per contract year in 1969.

     I could come back up to Summersville, West Virginia and work all the hours I could get in the summer and make about 1/2 of what I made as a  teacher for all year.  I quit teaching and went back to the mines to make a living.  Teaching is the most important job you can do and the guy working at a service station earned 1/3 more money than I did as a teacher.

    There is something wrong with the system.  I have never been able to figure out why a teacher does not make as much as an engineer, because a teacher teaches an engineer.
 
     In 1972 when I was 25 years old I was working in the mines. I remember the benefits were so good, everything was 100%.  I can't remember my starting pay but I made about three times more than a teacher.

I asked, "Where did you live?"
He told me:

     We lived with my mother.  I was working 3rd shift.  We wanted to find a place to live of our own.  One day my wife bought a house trailer.  She found a trailer and an acre of land.   She signed her name inside and went outside and signed my name and closed the deal.  We lived there from 1972 to 1980.  We sold it for a nice profit, so it was a good deal. 

I asked, "What was you job in the mines?"
He told me:

     I started out as rodman on the engineering crew (surveying).  We worked in a three-man crew; one was called a backsight, one was the transit man and the other was the foresight.  Actually, the other two were considered a rodman.  I was rodman for awhile but it wasn't too long until I was the transit man and I guess you would call me the party chief.  The mine foreman left you information and you completed the job.

I asked, "What shift did you work?"
He told me:
 
     I worked Hoo-Dow shift.   I worked alone on maps.  I drew mine maps based on the surveys you run in the mines giving your coordinates and distances and locations.  The surveys will tell you where the coal seams are in the mines.  I was always meticulous and careful because of the responsibility this job carried.
 
     We had a huge area into the Eagle coal seam that was already worked out and they would always ask me, "Do you have everything right?"

      I would say, "If I did it, I did every thing as right as possible."

     It concerned me.  If you make a mistake in solid coal and there is nothing around, you will find it.  I would balance and someone else would check it again in our crew.
 
     I remember one time the regular miner was going to Canada and they got another older fellow retired to fill in and I was told to drill one 20' test hold because there was a section full of water.  It was on Friday and this old fellow asked me, "What are you doing?"

     I drilled and shot even though I didn't have papers and he told me not to drill a test hole, so I didn't.

    When the cutting machine cut it, water started pouring in.  I was almost outside when the water started coming in. It didn't amount to anything much.   I pumped the water out, but one of the dangers is the water washing big pieces of mining machinery out on top of you. 

     I remember one time, two miners were in a section and water broke through on them and they both ran and it washed a cutting machine 50' long out.  They finally quit running.  The water was right behind them but had finally leveled out.

    You can make speed running in water after you get used to working underground on your knees.

I asked, "Did you witness many accidents in the mines?"
He told me:
 
     I didn't see many accidents and no fatalities.  I was the closest thing to a fatality that I saw, my accident.

I asked him, "Do you remember the Hominy Falls mine disaster in 1968 where the miners were trapped underground for ten days?"
He told me:
  
     Hominy Falls - "Black Monday", yes, I remember.  I was working for a core drilling company during my college years when the Hominy Falls Mining Disaster, "Black Monday" happened.  I drilled the first hole down to them.  We got there at 4 in the morning and we drilled all day.  Later that night we left.  They brought in bigger pieces of equipment so they could drill bigger holes.  They dropped some soup and coffee down to them in torpedo cups they made. 

I asked him, "Do you remember Widen Coal Camp near Dille, Clay County, West Virginia?" 
He told me:

     Widen Coal Camp.  I never did live right in Widen.  The rest of the family did but after I was born we moved outside Widen.  My dad worked on the railroad for 29 years.  He was on a track crew and for several years he worked by himself out there.  That was in the Widen area.

     The men kept the track up so they could haul the coal from Widen, West Virginia to Clay, West Virginia.  He worked where they hauled the refuse. He  tracks and assisted in deciding where to dump cars.

     What really stands out to me at Widen Coal Camp is the strike of 1952.  Miners trying to organize a union, some were; some weren't.  Several continued to work.
 
     My dad was in the hospital for quite awhile and when he went back to work they (the union organizers) never bothered him because they knew  he had been sick and off from work.
 
    They told me there were as many as 5 generations of one family working there.

     I remember the pickets.  I could see them from the school bus.   I was in the 1st grade.  The miners had a meeting place in the cook shack at Dille, West Virginia,  a town near Widen.  There were always a lot of pickets when you turned into the Town of Widen.

I asked, "Was there violence?"
He told me:

      Dad never talked much about it. I heard a man was shot. Nothing happened to the guy that shot him.  I asked about that a couple of weeks ago and he told me that nothing happened to the shooter.  One of the company men got shot.
 
     Beside our house a road went through to Strickland, a much used road by the union organizers and that was scary; one night they (the union organizers) blew up a power substation.  It shook the windows in our house.  It was like a bomb.  The miners trying to organize blew it up because the mines got power from there and they wanted to stop them from getting power.

     There was a bridge going across the track and a big substation was over there where the mines got their power, closed to our house.  Later, I went there with some cousins to look around.

     Unless they tore it down, the union organizers had put enough explosives in power station to blow it off the foundation.  A cinder block building was blown to bits.  Everything was gone. I lived there until 1958, until I was almost 12 years old.
  
     Everybody in that area worked for Widen Coal.  They did something for Widen Coal.  Everybody you came in contact with worked for Widen.

     (John Doe asked his wife, "Do you remember that big horse dad won?"  She answered, "Yes, I still have his picture over there on the wall."

     And then "John Doe" told me the story about his Dad:

    He had one piece of scrip left.  He bought a chance on that horse at the company store and won it.
 
     Widen Coal company scrip was worth a lot.  I think someone told when they quit using scrip, they dumped it down a well.  Widen scrip is sought after by collectors.
 
     The horse my Dad won was a 5-gaited horse.  (He had his wife take a picture from the wall to show me a horse with his dad sitting on it).
 
     My family had a little bit of advantage when we lived at Widen because we owned a little bit of land.  Most people in coal camps didn't own land.  We raised a big garden and had cows, chickens and hogs.  That was a big advantage.

     The July 4th Celebration at Widen coal camp every year was big, people came from all around.  That was when my Dad won the 5-gaited saddle horse with his last dollar of scrip.  He bought a chance on it at the 4th of July Celebration.

     When the Union failed to organize at Widen, most of those miners who went on strike were forced to move to Ohio or go to work for Farmington Consolidation Coal Company.  They could not get hired back.  They were blackballed. They could not get a job.
 
     J. D. Bradley, the owner of the mines at Widen, was not without influence and his railroad was called the Buffalo Creek and Gauley Railroad.  Bradley also owned a sawmill.  He owned the biggest bandmill in the world at one time.  It was located in Widen, West Virginia.   He also owned a dairy farm.    The railroad followed Buffalo Creek.  That was where the name came from.

I asked, "What other jobs did you do in the mines?"
He told me: 
 
     I worked at surveying until 1979 or 1980.   I did the safety training that was required after 1969 when the Miners Health and Safety Law was passed.  I did training pertaining to noise control and whatever else was required by law.
 
     Then, a large coal operation took over the company I worked for them in  full strength in 1982.  I remember because I didn't take the three days off allowed when my wife's mom died.  They told me to take the three days off to be with my wife.
 
     Down through the years, I had other jobs but was still involved in safety training.  When the large corporation took over they brought a guy in from the corporate end of the Company to put in charge of the safety program; however, I still did small things pertaining to safety training.

     I was section foreman when they shut the mine down.  They moved me to  the plant after they closed the mine down, because I could drop cars.

I asked, "When and how did you get hurt in the mines?"
He told me:

       It was one of those days when it rained, sleeted and snowed.  Everything weather-wise that can make it dangerous.  They pushed the cars toward us and I was moving four cars when the brakes failed. I fell off the car when it hit.  I fell off, I hit halfway between my shoulders and my waist.  I fell 10'.  I remember trying to flip over.  I flipped to my back.  One of the wheels caught my right leg and ran over my leg.  The front 2 wheels, 30 tons of steel, ran over my leg diagonally but did not break the bone, (He showed me the angle where the wheels from the cars hit high on the thigh, right leg in a diagonal line) my light got hung up, I think it supported some of the weight of the car until my belt broke.  The front two wheels ran over me. Luckily it stopped before any more of the wheels ran over me.

     The way my light was caught it was twisted.  My belt was around me tight.  I felt like my insides were going to come out through my mouth and then the strap of the light broke and relieved that pressure. I thought I should stand up and see what would fall off and I stood up.  Then I looked across the tracks and I could see my good friend.   I saw him and I thought to myself, "I have got to cross another line of coal cars to get some help."   I thought I had lost my radio.  I didn't go across the tracks because when I stood up, I thought, "What good luck, there is my friend."

      When I came back to life about a week or so later when he came to see me, (I didn't remember anything for one week from one Thursday to the next Thursday - I was unconscious) I told him, "When I stood up and saw him I was thinking how lucky and then I saw him turn and go back across the tracks."

       He told me he was going for more help.  I didn't know that.

     I was conscious all the time until Dr. Bailes knocked me out at Summersville Memorial Hospital.  I have been an EMT since the 70s.  The only EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) at the scene of my accident had just been certified.  I gave him instructions.  I told the guys working on me to cut my boots and cut everything off.  Cut my bibs off. 

     My friend, J... was trying to cut my bibs off with his knife, which was always dull.  I said. Go get S......'s knife. and I told them when you get everything cut off, get the big first aid box and get the tourniquet out, put it on my leg and blow it tight.

     I reached in there and you don't have to tell anyone who knows, when 30 tons of steel runs over you, you have got a problem.  It was an empty coal car, thank goodness.  I reached in, down in my bibs, to see if I could tell what was wrong because the thought crossed my mind it will be after vacation before I recover from this and I can come back to work.

     When I reached down to my injured leg, it felt like when you kill a deer; warm, moist and blood everywhere.  I knew I was in trouble.

     I was afraid the ambulance would not get there quick enough, so I asked one of the guys if the back seat of his vehicle laid down and I asked him to take me to the hospital, if the ambulance did not get there in time.  Just as they finished up with the tourniquet,  I could see the lights of the ambulance and hear the siren as it was coming across the hill.  They put mast trousers on me.  It keeps your blood to the core more and they loaded me into the ambulance.
 
    They thought I was unconscious and I either dreamed or heard  one of the guys in the ambulance talking on the radio, "We have a man here with pencil size stream of blood coming out of him."  (I am sure they would not say that, if they thought I heard them).

     The pain was so intense I thought, "I will die".

     My leg was  like a 3 pound of raw slice of meat cut off of it from the knee to the hip.
 
      I remember when I got to the hospital Mrs. W......., a real nice lady working in the ER, I said to her, (I am sure it was the stress of the situation that caused her to respond in the manner in which she did), "I don't want any blood from anybody but my wife."  "My wife will be here and I want her blood."

      I had a limited view where I was lying in the emergency room, but she was bent down and she was looking at me and she said, "Honey, your wife will not have enough blood for you."
 
     But that whole room, the ER, they had sheets and towels everywhere covered in blood.  Health Net Helicopter got me to Charleston, West Virginia in 12 minutes and they gave me 2 units of blood on the way down.
 
     Twelve minutes, the air flow was behind them so they got me there in 12 minutes.  They said that was one of the fastest trips they ever made from Summersville to Charleston but a lot of people were praying about it and I am sure that was it.   They were praying all over Nicholas County for me.

     The last thing I remember, before leaving the Summersville Memorial Hospital, was telling Dr. Bailes I didn't mean to complain but the pain was so severe, could he do something to ease it a little and he gave me a spinal.  I guess I was in shock by then.
 
     I was fortunate that the men I worked with were calm and the ambulance crew was good. They told me at the Charleston Area Medical Center, that the people who received me at Summersville Memorial Hospital were really good.

     The people in Charleston who took care of me, my main doctor teaches for West Virginia University.  He is one of the top surgeons in the state.  He and  a 4th year resident did most of the work on me.  Dr. Yancy Short from Summersville was a 5th year resident there and he worked on me.  He was good to me.  I always gave him my hunting and fishing magazines that people brought to me, after I read them.  We talked a lot about hunting and fishing.

    They took a skin graft off my left leg from above the knee to the thigh (he showed me) and put it on my right leg which was injured.
 
     The coal company I worked for paid for my family's room for 21 days.

     I went in the hospital in Charleston on March 9 and got out the 30th.  If the bone had been broken, the leg would have been amputated.
 
     The femoral artery, the biggest artery and the biggest vein in my leg, was smashed.  Everything in my leg was smashed.  It was what they called a crushing injury.  They put a graft to the artery and vein to get it to heal and it lasted 6 months to the day before it went bad from the day it happened.

     One bill for the hospital room was $54,000 and $5,400 worth of blood.  I know that was a lot of blood.
 
(John Doe's wife turned to me and she said,, " When people came to the hospital and said what can I do, I would say go downstairs and give blood.")
 
     Almost exactly two years later, I had another problem.   When I fell and the coal car ran over me, I had a 6 " crescent wrench in my pocket.  When I fell, it mashed the wrench into the bone so I had a big wound there.  Months and months later, I couldn't stand anything to touch that part of my body.  The hurt was in my hip that stayed so tender.  When I went to the doctor they drew off about an inch of blood.

     They asked me, "Did you you know you have a pocket of blood in your hip?"
 
     They drew off a large of syringe of blood.  I wanted to watch them take it off.  it looked like iron water.  Two years later the clavicle artery got infected .  It had so much dirt and debris it is no wonder it got infected.  I had to be on an antibiotic IV for 6 weeks.  Home Health nurses showed my wife how to administer the IV.

     I have to wear a Jobst stocking on my leg all the time.  That is what they use for burn victims to keep the blood circulating. They did surgery again and this time they replaced the artery and removed the vein that had stopped working.  That was the last week of February two years later.

     They cut me open from my navel to my hip and at the bottom of my pelvis through a hole they pushed everything over and put an artery down through and connected it to the artery just above my knee.  The surgery took ten hours.  The surgery was done in Charleston, West Virginia. Same doctors, plastic surgeon finished up on it.  One doctor told me I made him late for dinner and I said, "That is alright, I missed my too."

     My leg stays swollen, always.  It will not bend.
 
     They did thirteen debrying.  During a two year period,   they put me to sleep twelve times.  For two or 3 months I couldn't read, my vision was blurry.
 
      When they took the skin off my left leg to graft to the right leg, they put netting on the area where the skin was removed. When they started to remove the netting the attending doctor ordered me a shot of morphine to keep the pain down, so they could remove the netting but before the morphine got there, the doctor's assistant grabbed the netting and jerked it off. The attending nurse cried and said, "Are you o.k.?"

     It felt just like someone ripping your skin off.

     My pain never stops.  It varies from moderate to very intense pain. Since this past December I have had a lot of trouble with my back and my other leg.  I have lost my balance a few times.  I have slept sitting up for the last couple of months because of the pain in my back and my other leg is so bad.  If I lie down and try to turn my bad leg, I have excoriating pain.  It is just less painful, if I sleep sitting up.

     I spend a large portion of the day applying ice, heat, anything to keep the pain down and I go to pain management.  I have an implant in my abdomen to give me shocks to block the pain.  This is based on the theory that your brain releases endomorphines to block the pain.  My theory is you just turn it up until your mind is somewhere else.  I turned whiteheaded in the hospital.

     The most important thing is having a wife who is caring. I would have rolled over and died without her and my son, who was in school, did not go anywhere for about a year.  He would Just go to school and come straight back home.  Every night at about 9 or 10 he would come and sit here beside me, hold my hand and talk to me.

I asked, "Have other members in your family suffered injuries in the coalmines?"
He told me:
 
     My second cousin lacked 5 months retiring and he was working in the mines at Farmington when it blew up.  He worked at Widen and left and went to Farmington.  I don't know whether they got him out or not.  He left behind a family. He and his brother-in-law both went there to work.  They were both killed in the mine explosion.  They never got his brother-in-law out, but they got my second cousin out to bury. 

End of interview.