ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997 TAG: 9704180027
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
``You know, the mines 'round here, from [the year] eighteen and ninety, was a way of life. That was it - that's all that was here. That's all the jobs that people had. The mines was it.''
Donald Minnick
Coal miner from Belspring
``I heard my daddy say, `Many times I walked in there in those mines that I thought I was going to have to be carried out.' And my one uncle that was killed, if he [had not have] gotten killed that night, my daddy would have got it that morning ... because he was going in the next morning with an open carbide light himself, and he would have had to go to his room where he explored that gas, you know, and he would have got it instead of him. He told me that. But he said I had a family to feed, and I was going to feed them.''
Samuel J. Huff
Son of a coal miner
``Back during my time ... a woman was never to go inside, to go into the slope at all to go in the mines. It was just not permissible because they always said it was a hex of some kind if a woman went in there. Everybody'd get killed or the mine would blow up or somethin', you know, just crazy thinkin' back then.''
Fred ``Cody'' Lawson
Coal miner in the Merrimac mines
``My daddy got burned three times in that mine down there. He got burned so bad you couldn't tell who he was when he came home, 'cause they couldn't wash that black off him. The skin was coming off him. His face, his hands and arms was burned all up [to] here. When Alex Linkous got killed, my daddy was working up above him, and when that gas [caught] fire that blowed that mine up, Daddy got burned by the gas.''
Viola Pickett Godbey Hall
Daughter of a miner
``We didn't call ours `coal camps' even though the houses were owned by the coal company. Nobody ever told us it was a coal camp, you know, we thought those were in West Virginia.''
Hazel Hodge
Daughter of a miner
``Now, we'd take the mules in there, and you would start a mule down the walkway, going down into the mines on that angle going down and ... it'd go down until it got to the bottom, you know, to the work area. ... Mules are pretty smart. ... You would work 'em all day and then head 'em back out of the evenin' and then usually the mule skinner would catch a mule by the tail and just come right on out of the mines that a way. ... But then that was dangerous. It happened to me once - the mule kicked me as it was coming out 'cause it didn't want to pull me outta there.''
Fred ``Cody'' Lawson
Miner
``The children and the mothers worked just as hard as the fathers did. They were in them old coal mines, black and cold. We were at home taking care of things, and the mothers were taking care of the children. ... It was hard work for all of us. And I wouldn't want to go back to some of the things, but that was some of my happiest days.''
Della ``Gertie'' Snider
Wife of a miner
LENGTH: Medium: 69 linesby CNB