Seated on stool at Bill’s feet, I began my interview. Elsie, Bill’s wife, was  seated near Bill.

What about your childhood and growing up, have you always lived and worked around here?

Yes, I was born and raised in this part of the country. This is my home.

We lived in Cross Lanes in 1948, so I went to work for Houston in April (Houston Hinkle) in 1951 driving a coal truck. I drove for four or five years. The trucks didn’t have any power steering or air conditioners or radios, just heater and a manual transmission. They were about 28 or 29 tons.

They had to weigh, state law. They have a computer now, you just stick a little card in there and go on, back then you had to actually put it on a scale.

When I worked for Hinkle we hauled the coal to Swiss, over there and dumped it right in the railroad cars. You would go up on a ramp and back up and dump the coal right in the cars. After working for him for about four or five years, I worked for Harold Summers around two years.

They bought a new truck, 57 Ford, 750 and I put 38,800 and some miles on it in less than three years in a distance less than three miles. Then I worked for Hodge and then I went to work for Bill Adkins. I worked for him for about two and a half years, that would be in 1959 in November, I remember because there was a big snow on. I went to the tipple in 1962 and worked for them for 22 years and 8 months.

What type work did you do at the coal tipple?

I dropped railroad cars for about three years. After the cars were loaded, we dropped them on down the line in the yard and made a train.

Then after about two or three years I went up in the tipple. The tipple was dirty, nasty I would get up between the cars and set the brakes on when you couldnot even see the brakes it was so dusty. You would hold your breath until you got up there and hold your breath until you got out of there.

I got hurt twice; once when a big lump of coal fell off and hit me in the head and once when I set the brake on the car and jumped off of it and caught my ring, right there, on the outside (and he showed me where the ring had been caught) and pulled the ring right into the bone. Then, we couldn’t get it off. I pushed it back down out of there and it kinda humped up a little. Jim Javins, the Boss, was going to cut it off with a side cutter but there was not enough room to cut it to cut. So, I just put it back up in that groove to the bone so he could cut. It stuck up about that high, so he cut it off.

Was the mine union or non-union?

The mine was non-union. We went along with them (the union) on everything they did. If they came out on strike, we came out on strike. At that time there was probably between 400 or 500 men working there for the whole company.

Did you see many accidents?

One time an end loader, they claimed, I wasn’t over there, it was on the day shift but it turned over on one of the men’s legs. He is still crippled today. One time, John, I remember, was the one who dumped a load of coal in the bin and C.Y. Brown and Mr. Inslow was down in the bin working. They didn’t have no barrier or anything set up. He dumped a load of coal down there on them and they went out on the belt and up on the elevator where they pass the coal up and then down in the coal pile. They got hurt, it was not life threatening but they got hurt. They got all bruised up.

Did Peerless Eagle Coal Company practice good safety habits, in your opinion.

Peerless Eagle Coal Company was one of the safest mines around. The federal mine inspector was there and checked the groundings and everything and he said that was one of the best grounded tipples he was ever at.

Peerless Eagle Coal Company was owned by Mr. Jim Ireland from Cleveland, Ohio. Well, New York Central owned the coal but he had a contract to take it out. His wife’s people was Link Belt Company. Mr. Ireland’s family was in the banking business. There was John Wright, Bob Kamm and Jim Ireland. Those were the three main ones. They were good men too. We had the best insurance there is. It paid everything, 100 %. Another thing they did which I don’t think any other coal company did for miners’ vacation they gave every miner a $1500.00 vacation bonus.

Do you think the coal company was supportive of the communities the workers were from and vice versa?

One year the local town merchants had been complaining that Peerless Eagle was not contributing anything to the local town so they paid the men, everyone of them, their $1500. each in $2.00 bills and they asked everybody to spend it in the local town. They had such a big payroll they had to hire security guards to go to the tipple that is where everybody got their checks. We got paid twice a month, on the 15th and 30th. I got some nephews that work in the mines but all of my people but me are farmers.

What about the union and union leaders, what do you think?

John L. Lewis was a great man, he was the man who got the miners everything, pay raises and stuff and another thing about it they yak about the union and non-union mines and they have got the two factions that is what has kept the coal prices up, working against each other. If they just had one they could set a price on it and take it or leave it.

The union was the only thing that ever got the men the benefits. The union is the best thing that ever happened. John L. Lewis, he is the one who got the men the benefits. The benefits and hourly wages amounted to $26.38.

Peerless Eagle was non-union but supported the union effort, is that true?

Then when the mines sold out and Mr. Ireland retired and let Massey take it over they said we still get our retirement and everything. It was non-union but if they came out on strike, (union mines), we came out too.

The mines was union from about 1948 to about 1958 or 59 and operated under the name of Peter's Creek Coal Company. It was union for a long time but it got so some of miners would pour their water out, been drunk over the weekend or something, about five of them, they would be on a big drunk, that way when they started to go in the mines they poured their water out everybody went home. It was a requirement you had to have water back in the mines.

The operators told them they couldn’t keep their orders up but they would pour their drinking water out. They were too durn lazy to work but they had to work three days a week anyway to make a living and they poured their water out, everybody went home. It was costing the company a lot of money. They told them if you couldn’t keep their orders up, they could see the handwriting on the wall.

They said, “You fellers, we can’t keep it up, we are going to have to shut it down.” He said, “I am not worried about me, I don’t know what you fellers are going to do.” He said, “I can sell a piece of machinery every month for six months, but I don’t know about you fellers.” He said, “If you will let me get rid of these five men, then you will be working five or six days a week.” But they couldn’t get shed of them, so we had to close. The union would not let them get rid of them. So they shut the mines down and opened under a different name. We was off a year and a day.

Is that common practice for a coal company to shut down operations under one name and reopen under a different name?

Yes, it was common. The name was thought up, up in Pine Run, Peerless Eagle. I don’t know what year it was but I know the tipple started operating in 1948, March 8 and they shut it down a little over three year ago for the first time since 1948 except when they shut down a year and a day.

Have you been tested for black lung?

Bill said, ‘I do not have black lung. I didn’t wear a respirator. I went to Gazanta, the one of the best black lung doctors in the state and he told him me I had less than 3%. They don’t pay you anything under 5%.”

Elsie said, “Bill, tell her about driving those long hours and falling asleep at the wheel.”


"Well, when I was working for Houston Hinkle his only living uncle was in the hospital and one week I would go to work at 7 am and work until 2 or 3 in the morning. I would work day, Monday, Wednesday and Friday and alternate Tuesday and Thursday, day and evening. Then after about three or four weeks when Mr. Hinkle’s uncle got real bad, Mr. Hinkle was driving too every other night, when his real bad, I drove every day and every night and I would go in on Saturday and change tires and oil and stuff that needed done on the trucks.”

Elsie said, “He would drive 16 or 18 hours a day over Little Elk Mountain and when he went to sleep the tires would hit the berm of the road that would wake him up.” Elsie said, “He never told me that until the other day.”

I had one coal truck run off with me one time up on Laurel Creek. The air line broke on the brakes, durn steep mountain. The brake line broke and I had to set my knee against the gear and hold it like that (he showed me how he propped his knee up against the gear shift) and steer with one hand. If I had gone down over the mountain this way, I would have gone straight down. If I had gone over that way, I would hit a big rock, bigger than the truck. Right down at the bottom of the hill you turn left and there is a big fish pond.
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On down below, across and down there, I throwed off about two or three tons of coal by the pond. I went on down and turned right. I throwed a couple of tons off on that side. I went on out by the pop, Coke Cola, place. I went by Jacobson's place out through there and down the hill. If you went right, that went out on the main road, I couldn’t go there. I saw the drift that went up to the top of the hill. I hit that drift and started up that hill. I throwed the gears in reverse. That finally stopped the truck. If the gears had of broke over, the truck would have gone right on out on the main road.

The force of the jolt vibrated the air compressor off of it, vibrated the counter balance off the top of the motor and broke it into little bitty pieces . When they changed the oil they got out four hands full of bronze shavings.

When I got it stopped, I got out and climbed up on top of the hood of that truck. I laid back against the windshield. One of the drivers came by and asked, “What is wrong? Are you alright?”

I told him about the truck running off with me loaded down the mountain.

I knew they had another truck up on the hill and they had two drivers and three trucks.

He said, "You are not going back on that hill are you?" I said, “Yeah, I’m going back on the hill and get that other truck.”

He said, “No, you are not.”

I said, “Yes, I am too, if I don’t right now, I will never drive again.” So, I went up and got the third truck. I drove the other truck off that mountain loaded with 21 or 22 tons of coal

In about two or three days the insurance man came up there and was asking me a bunch of questions. He asked me, "About how fast was you going?"

I looked at him and I said, “That is about the most damn, stupid question I have ever heard anybody ask.”

He said, “Why?” I said, “For one thing I had this hand down there holding the gear shift and I was steering with other and as far as I was concerned there wasn’t no damn speedometer on it.”

He agreed that was just about the stupidest question anybody had ever asked.

What about strip mining, what is your opinion on that coal mining method?

That was where I was hauling from, strip mine down one of those narrow, steep, winding gravel roads.

What about mountaintop removal, are you in favor of that?

Well, by golly I’ll tell you, those people have got to make a living same as those people along the road. Ones of them raisin’ the dickens’ never worked around the mines. They just look at it and they don’t like it but I can take you up here on the hill and show you what it looks like after it is stripped.

Do you have property that has been stripped?

Well, Mr. Conley stripped that up there, John Adkins (a neighbor and friend) and I talked to him about it when they started backfill up there and we told them, "We don’t want no floral rose, no pine trees or locust." We told them that we would spray it and kill it if they put it up there.

Mr. Conley said, "Well, they would have to talk to them in Charleston and see what he said."

We told him that we want something on there for future years. They came back and said they told them to plant it in whatever we wanted. So, they put hard and soft maple and they put a little bit of poplar, very little, but you can’t hardly tell where the strip mines was on our property except for the height of the timber but around the hill there is nothing but multi floral rose, nothing but trash. On ours, it don’t even look like a strip mines. You will have to come down sometime and let me take you up there. Elsie told me that Bill and his neighbor, John Adkins, had built a cabin on the property. “Yeah,” Bill said, “we built a cabin up there 10’ x 26’ nothing really fancy. I want to take you up there and show you that too.”

How do you feel about working as a coal miner, did you like the work?

I feel like I made the best living you could make around here. There was nothing else around here. I worked on the tipple almost 23 years

When did coal companies put bathhouses around the mines?

The bathhouses came in the late 60’s or early 70’s. This allowed the coal miners to wash coal dust off them before they went home after their shift. In earlier days, miners would take baths in the large washtubs. After bathing miners were easy to identify because of the black rings left around their eyes, similar to a raccoon’s eyes.

Then Bill told me this story. “One time around the bathhouse, one of the men had to use the bathroom, so he did right outside the building. He didn’t know it at the time he was in poison ivy or poison Oak, I don’t know which it was. It got it on his private parts and it started bothering him, so he asked what to do.

I told him, “Put a little alcohol on it.” He said, “Won’t that burn me up?” I told him to dilute it a whole lot. Well, he got a hold of some aftershave lotion that had a lot of alcohol in it and generously stroked it on him. In a few minutes he darted out the back door stark naked yelling and screaming and running around that bathhouse. There was a heavy frost on and he was bare foot. Now, that was something to see.

Did you have women working around the mines where you worked?

Just that one who worked in the sample room. She was working there along about ’81 or ’82. No problem with her working there. She was over in the sample room away from where I worked. Janet was her name. I think her name was Janice Rigors. Her daddy was from up on Little Birch. They had one or two work up at Island Creek right underground with the men.

Do you think it is o.k. for women to work underground in the coal mines?

Well, I don’t think much of it for the simple reason that a woman don’t have any business working there to start with and if they wouldn’t working there some man could be working at the job and making a good livin’ for his family.

Did you work with men of other racial groups?

There was one German I worked with down at Lockwood (full blooded) he would come out there in the morning just as clean as he could be and he would work all day in the mines and would come out just as clean as when he went in.

End of interview


Bill, now in his 80s is a WWII Veteran he was awarded his high school diploma on Feb. 26, 2001 as a result of landmark legislation by the West Virginia Legislature granting high school diplomas to Veterans of Foreign Wars. The ship he was on in Japan was docked beside the USS Missouri at the time the peace agreement was signed with Japan. He received the following medals (1) Asiatic Pacific Theater Service Medal, (2) Philippine Liberation Service Medal, (3) Good Conduct Medal, (4) WWII Victory Medal and (5) Occupation Medal Japan.

Bill and Elsie McCutcheon are also featured in the oral history interview, “Coal Miners’ Supper”