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My
Dad said in Welch there was nothing there.
They
walked up Tug River to get coffee and salt.
When the N & W Railroad went in, Dad and his brothers made a raft
and hauled the engineers on the raft to survey the right-of-way.
They said there was eel fish in Tug River at that time.
We lived off the fat of the land during the Depression. My mom
sewed.
She also made her own soap. She would take old strong meat skins
and get lye and cook it outside. After she had cooked it until it
was thick she would pour it on a board in the smokehouse to dry.
I will never forget there was a store, the owners of the store had three
boys.
They would wet the beds at night.
This lady didn't boil her clothes the way my Mom did.
My Mom's sheets didn't have circles on them the way the other lady's
sheet did.
I went to school at Davy, Asco and Welch.
Immigrants, I remember one in particular. He was from Ireland.
Immigrants came here to work in the coal mines. There were quite a
few.
More Italians and Hungarians than anything.
The coal operators or their representatives would go to Ellis Island in
New York and meet the boats and tell the immigrants they had jobs for
them and money and houses for them.
So the immigrants came to McDowell County, West Virginia to work in the
coal mines.
Clarence
Billips, a customer of Rush's came in for a haircut.
Clarence volunteered the following comments:
I
started logging and timbering in February of '41. No, I guess I
cut more timber than logging. I cut all that timber for Pocahontas
Coal, I had to buy the land before I could get the timber.
Rush
became busy giving Clarence a haircut, so I wrapped everything up,
thanked Rush for a wonderful interview, told him I would stop in when I
came back, packed up the laptop and started on a driving tour of War,
West Virginia and surrounding communities.
End of interview |