December, 2002, to:  B. L.  Dotson-Lewis,      webmaster@www.appalachiacoal.com                                         

Coal Camp Memories
a narrative by Joan Savilla, growing up in Highcoal,  Boone County,  WV

I was born in a small coal-mining town called Highcoal, West Virginia. Mom said that the coal tipple was situated practically over the top of our little four-room house. On a couple of occasions I have gone back to try to find some evidence of my birthplace, however, time and the elements have removed it from the face of the earth.

When we were growing up, we moved from place to place following Daddy’s work. First, up one “holler” and then the next. We lived in lots of these little coal towns and shopped at the infamous “coal company store.”

I had a real penchant for bananas as a child. Of course, we never had enough money to buy them, and the only time I got one was at someone else’s house or at school. Once when I was out playing near the company store, I noticed that the banana crates were placed behind the store after the “Surface Banana” truck ran. I investigated the crates, secretly hoping that they had forgotten a banana or two in the crate. They were packed in a lightweight type of straw or packing material. I carefully slid my hands through all the straw in each of the banana boxes. Oh, it was my lucky day, I found two or three bananas. After that, I anxiously awaited the Surface Banana truck every week. I would wait around until I was sure that no one was watching, and then I would go on my treasure hunt looking for bananas. I don’t recall how long I continued this practice, but am reminded of it many times when I eat bananas.

I remember one little house we lived in was about ten feet from the railroad track. It was in a little town called “Keith” in Boone County. I think all the little houses had four rooms, a porch and an outhouse. Sometimes, in the dead of winter, in the house could almost be as cold as the outhouse. We always had our old faithful “slop jar” which was usually placed under a bed for those nighttime urges to go to the bathroom. It would get pretty full if someone didn’t remember to empty it. It was white enamel with a lid. We held our noses when we had to take the lid off to use it.

When Daddy came home from work, he was covered with coal dust from head to foot. Mom always had hot water ready on our big coal cookstove. We had a round galvanized tub that was used for bathing. Daddy was a fairly large man, and I think he pretty much filled that tub up before the water was poured in. Mom would help him bathe, washing his back and the places he couldn’t get to. When he emerged from the bedroom where the bath had taken place, he still had those tell-tale raccoon eyes that marked him as a coal miner. We girls would help him finish the job of cleaning his face. We would meticulously go over his face and neck to make sure that he was clean, keeping the coal dust out of the pores of his skin.

I always worried about Daddy when he went to work. I worried that the mine would fall in on him, and there were times that people in the community waited anxiously to hear about loved ones that were trapped in a mineshaft following an explosion. I also worried that a wild cat would get him. Sometimes, he would go to work and then come home shortly after and tell Mom that he had to leave work because of a “wild cat” strike.

The summertime in a coal camp was loads of fun for us kids. We played from sunup to sunset and never ran out of things to do. It was rare to find an overweight kid in camp. We either didn’t get enough to eat, or we played so hard that we ran it off before it could become fat. We had no shoes in the summer. It was hard enough for Mom and Dad to put shoes on our feet in the fall to start school. I would like to have a nickel for every time I stumped my toe, stepped on a rock, or cut my feet during the summertime. Although our feet toughened up considerably, they were still vulnerable to such things. I always envisioned having more than one pair of shoes and more than two or three dresses, three sets of underwear and socks. One time when I was about seven or eight, I found a pair of women’s sandals with about a two-inch wedge heel in the town garbage dump. They were white and looked pretty rough, but I was in heaven having a pair of shoes in the summer, even if they were five sizes too big. I put them on and clomped up and down the street until Mom spotted me. She immediately gave me a couple of smart swats to my posterior and sent me back to the dump with them. I never quite forgave her for that. I could have grown into those shoes.

When dusk fell in the coal camp, neighbors could be seen out in their yards or on the porch enjoying the summer evenings. The children were out in the street playing ball, having foot races, or the girls would be playing house on someone’s porch with their dolls and little brothers and sisters. We didn’t use insect spray in those days. Everyone had their own insect repellent in their yard. It was called a “gnat smoke.” It was an old can in which a rag soaked with some kind of solvent was lit with a match. It didn’t flame up and burn out quickly -- it smoked for hours. The smoke from this little invention kept the bugs away. Up and down the narrow street, smoke from the little cans permeated the hot, sultry, summer air in the coal camp.

Once there was a wedding and everyone was invited. Now, I had never been to a wedding before, so this was really exciting. After the wedding, the bride and groom handed out Clark bars to all the children. To this day, when I attend a wedding, I secretly hope that they will pass out Clark bars.

“The junk man is coming! The junk man is coming!” The word spread like wildfire from the entrance to the hollow to the end. The junk man was a kindly old gentleman who drove an old truck that looked as much like a piece of junk as the stuff he collected up and down the road. Us kids always collected junk. We each had our little stashes in secret places. These stashes were our “gold mines.” We collected copper, steel, aluminum and iron retrieved from the town dump or along the road each day. When the junk man arrived, about once every six weeks, we proudly piled our stashes up in neat little piles at the side of the road. We could hear the junk man’s truck slowly making its way up the road, clink, clank, clink, clank. He would stop at each location and with his trained eye, look at our piles of treasure and make us an offer. We knew we had a really good day when he gave out a quarter for our stash. With grubby little hands, we snatched the money and hid it in our hideouts until we could get to the candy counter at the company store.

Life was tough on Mom and Dad during those days, but we children didn’t know it. They always seemed to find time to laugh with us and spend time with us. Dad was always puttering around on the little house fixing this or that. Mom was always going to a bare cupboard and miraculously managing to put something on the table for us to eat. We ate beans and cornbread or biscuits most every day. We never asked for something different when we went to the table or refused to eat because we didn’t like it. We ate it and were glad to get it. It was rare that we had anything to drink other than water. Sometimes, we had Kool-Aid, but most of the time we drank water. We started drinking coffee at an early age, because Daddy loved it and thought nothing of giving us a cup of coffee when we were children. He also thought nothing of teaching us to smoke cigarettes. He had a cigarette roller with the little white cigarette papers and Prince Albert tobacco in a can. When he wanted a smoke, we would fight over who was going to roll it for him and light it. All seven of us children smoked cigarettes at one time or another.

We never had enough plates and silverware for all of us to eat at one time. Neither did we have enough chairs for everyone to sit at the table to eat. Whoever got there first got a chair, a plate and a fork. The slower ones had to stand up and eat with a spoon out of a bowl or wait for someone to finish with a plate. My dear little brother, Tommy, always had to stand up. He seemed to always lose the race to the table. He was always so skinny that his pants wouldn’t stay up. He would run around playing, holding his pants up with one hand, as he didn’t have a belt. When he got to the dinner table, he would pull his pants up as far as he could get them and brace his stomach against the table to hold them up while he ate. We made sport of him many times causing him to lose this stance at an inopportune time causing his pants to fall down.

Starting back to school in the fall was the social event for the coal camp. Mom would order our school clothes from the Aldens catalogue. It was always the same – for us girls, two dresses, two pair of socks, two slips, two pair of panties and a pair of shoes. For the boys, two shirts, two pairs of pants, shoes, socks and undershorts. When we came home from school, we had to take our school clothes off and hang them up to wear one more time before they were washed. We had old clothes to play in, and we were expected to take care of our new clothes. Mom washed clothes on a washing board and later on a wringer washer and hung them out on the clothesline to dry. In the winter, her hands bled from the cold, biting winds as she hung the wet clothes to dry. If they didn’t get dry during the day, she brought them in and hung them on the backs of chairs to dry so that we could wear them to school the next day. She had little to work with, but she sent us to school in clean clothes and made sure that our faces were washed and our hair combed before we left the house.

Daddy died in October, 1993. He had black lung and emphysema. The last fifteen years of his life was spent practically sitting in his rocking chair. He spent the day just trying to get one good breath of air. His heart finally could manage no longer and he died quietly in his sleep at 78 years of age. Mom died in July 2001, also at the age of 78. Two “beacons of light” from the great generation of hard working people passed from this life leaving seven children who became hard workers and caring people. People who lived through the tough times of being the children of a West Virginia coal miner and his wife carrying with them the memories of life in the coal camps.

By Joan Savilla
Nitro, WV