Oral History Interview with Richard Estep

Interviewer: Well, got it all on there now. [pause] Ok, we’re down in Lynch, Kentucky. And today is October the 7th and were talking with, and it’s Estep, right? Estep family. You were telling me earlier about the seams of coal, why don’t you, different sizes, the heights of coal and how, and the type of equipment that’s used to mine different kinds. Why don’t you tell a little bit more about that.

Richard Estep: Okay. Starting out when I first went in the mines, I started at Benham, Kentucky. And started out in low coal which varied anywhere from thirty-six inches to forty-eight inches. Noticed working in the mine for six years, I have worked in higher seams of up to seven foot high. And I’ve always noticed that in your lower coal seams, with your big equipment as continuous miners and various things like that, you will have better safety conditions, and your roof conditions are always better at, in your low coal seams, because you have higher risk of accidents with your higher coal seams that’s seven feet or even higher because of the pressure sitting down on the coal seams themselves.

Interviewer: What can happen in the higher seams?

Richard Estep: Oh, you can always have, usually you’ll have more roof falls in higher coal seams. With your coal running higher, you’ll have more pressure setting down on your pillars. And there’s more coal that’s been extracted in higher seams of coal than in your lower seam of coal.

Interviewer: Was mining a tradition in your family? How did you get, happen to get into mining in the first place?

Richard Estep: Well, my father worked in the mines for thirty-three years. He was the mine foreman at International Harvester, Benham, Kentucky. And I’ve got a twin brother that is a coal miner. And after coming out of the service, I figured since my dad had raised me on being a coal miner, I thought that I could probably do the same.

Interviewer: Did, tell us, you know, earlier today you were telling me that you started as a coal miner and within a year, at, well, you’d spent several years in the mines. But finally, you made very rapid advancement to become a, is there a future? What I’m trying to do is to get some comments about the, is there a future in coal for youth, for young people today? And what’s it like, and what can someone expect, and what happened to you, and so forth? So, things like that.

Richard Estep: Well, I had four and a half years at Benham as, I was a miner operator, shuttle car operator, a roof bolter operator. I was classified on any job in the mines. And I spent four and a half years there, and decided to go to U.S. Steel at Lynch, Kentucky. And I took my mine foreman examination in October of ’75 and passed. And I’d been at the company for about nine months. And then, after I passed my mining foreman test, I went on to be a mine foreman, which is my present job. And in less than a year, and if a man, the field is wide open because of the ex-, the expansion of coal companies and the, the need for coal. And today there’s more young people leaving the cities coming back to the coal field because, for the demand for coal and the high wages that are being paid by coal companies.

Interviewer: What are the typical wages that one, that a young person could expect starting out as, as, as you did, in the mine, in mining today?

Richard Estep: Well, I started out, when I started to work at, in, in 1971, I was making thirty-four dollars and something a shift. And before I went on salary in October of ’75, I think I was making fifty-eight dollars and seventy-five cents a shift.

[pause]

Interviewer: Has, has mining, mining today, a miner, person might go into mining as a regular miner today. But he, he wouldn’t feel that he could, would have to stay in that job forever. If he has any interest in it, he, he’s got room to advance. And tell us why he’s got, you know, that, that that is possible, and why he’s got room to advance. Or why things can happen. Okay. You can go ahead.

Richard Estep: Okay. Cut it off a second. [laughing]

[pause]

Richard Estep: Now since the coal field is really expanding, a young man can get him a job. If he’s got any desire at all, as, which I feel like I’ve put a little bit of desire into advancing pretty rapidly, a man can start out with a general inside labor job. And if he’s got any determination at all, after three years underground or in or around the mines, he can take his mine foreman test and if he does pass it he can have what they call assistant mine foreman papers and boss under that until he gets his five years underground. Then he automatically comes and holds the title as a mine foreman. And as I’m doing right now, going to Southeast Community College, trying to get a, a two-year degree in mining. I feel that this will help me a great deal. And someday hope to advance on up to be a superintendent. With the coal fields, as I said, expanding rapidly, there’s going to be a lot of opening because coal is going to be the nation’s desire for the next hundred years.

Interviewer: Very good. When you were talking about–

[pause]

Richard Estep: Going back to the old-time mining, which my father, as I stated worked thirty-three years in the mines, he started with what they call a hand loading with a pick and shovel. Nowadays they’ve got this modern type [of] equipment which you have a continuous miner, shuttle cars, roof bolters, which do the work for the men. All they do is operate it. When an old-time miner went in, he would put in maybe twelve to fourteen hours a day. Now the average work hour a day for a miner is eight hours. With all the travel time, he is actually working around six hours a day, at the most. The work is not hard and.

[pause]

Richard Estep: Okay. I feel like now since this is a true fact, this is what I–

Unidentified Female Speaker: Wait, wait, wait.

Interviewer: Once more, going back.

Richard Estep: Okay. Going back to the old-time miner and the modern-day miner today, I feel that there’s no comparison the way old time miner and a modern time miner had to work. The modern time miner today could not do the work that the old-time miner did. I feel like hearing other old-time miners talk and my father talk about how they had to work, I would, I would truly say that a modern-day miner couldn’t stand the work or the pressure. And doubt seriously if a modern-day miner could, could even attempt to do the work.

Interviewer: Okay.

Richard Estep: Going back to the old-time miner and the modern-day miner, the company, I feel like the companies that were over the old type miners could force the men to do really manual, hard work. But nowadays, with the unions like U.N.W.A. supporting the men, they can just, the men are just going to do so much. The company cannot really force the men to do something that is unsafe as the old-time miner, when he went in, they told him to do something, he didn’t care. He had to do it because he had a family to raise. Nowadays, if a miner goes in and he sees an unsafe condition or anything that he feels like it’s unsafe, he doesn’t have to do it, because the union is there to back him. But I, I really feel that the modern-day miner has really took advantage of companies and the union because–

[pause]

Richard Estep: Dating back years ago to the old-time miner, their safety conditions were, I would say, unbelievable. They would go into a working area with bad wrist support, and it, there are just various type of safety hazards that the old-time miner had to deal with. But he knew he had to do it because there was no union to back him, or government laws or any day, anything. But the modern-day miner today has unions, the Bureau of Mines, which is, mess of which enforces the miner laws, which.

[pause]

Richard Estep: Dating back to the old-type miner, under their safety conditions, they really had to work hard, and work under bad conditions. But under the modern-day miner, you have state and federal laws which protect a man. Plus, the company rules and regulations, and the union, which sets up a lot of safety regulations. A modern-day miner doesn’t have to work under any bad conditions.

Interviewer: Beautiful.

[pause]

Richard Estep: I feel like safety lies first with the individual. It takes both parts. I feel like it takes the company and the union and the man himself to make sure that the done, the job is done correctly, and done in the safest and proper way.

Interviewer: Very good.

[pause]

Richard Estep: A little about coal production. Going back to the old-type miner, he was assigned to one working place where he was gave [given] a pick and a shovel, and hand loaded for hours and hours a day and may, I’d say at the most, load maybe twenty to thirty tons a shift. Nowadays you have the modern-day type [of] equipment is a, which loads the coal, which is the continuous miner, which will actually load, I would say, eight to ten ton in thirty or forty seconds. There’s no comparison the way production was in the old-type miner did than the modern-day miner does today, because of the equipment.

[pause]

Interviewer: Something like that.

Richard Estep: Okay. You have the continuous miner, which is a big piece of machinery which is all electrical. It, it is trim to the face of the coal, and it cuts the coal with what is considered to be called pick breakers. It’s like clawing out the coal, and it goes onto the pan, which has digging arms which are moving constantly. Which loaded onto the conveyor chain, it loads into the shuttle cars, which transfer it to the unloading platforms.

Interviewer: Okay.

[pause]

Richard Estep: Going back to the old type of miner, they were assigned a certain working place. Nowaday[s], a modern-day miner which operates a miner, a continuous miner, he trims his continuous miner into the working place and he loads this coal out with the continuous miner, which is a one-man operation. He can load so much coal more these days with the modern-day type equipment than the old type miner did years back. The continuous miner operator, he sits in the deck and, with the levers right at his hands and operates this big piece of machinery which claws the coal down, which is, which cut down and loaded by arms swinging in and out onto a conveyor chain, which loads into a shuttle car. Then it is transferred to the unloading area.

Interviewer: Okay. Now the only thing I would say is how the, the miner works outside of clawing it out.

Richard Estep: In the old days, there’s the old-time miners were assigned to a working place. You may have three or four men assigned to a place. Nowaday[s], a modern-day miner can take a continuous miner into a working area and cut coal, which can replace an old time miner, I’d say ten to one compared to what he loaded. The continuous miner can cut down the coal, transfer it back on a conveyor chain to a shuttle car operator, which is, has a shuttle car which transfers it down to a conveyor belt, which transfers the coal onto the outsides. But I can still do better than that.

Interviewer: Yeah. I understand your hobby is, is, is golf. Tell, you’ve even, you won some awards doing that. What do you like to do, let’s...

[pause]

Richard Estep: My recreation that I do on weekends or maybe in the, late in the evenings after I get out from working is golfing. You may think that there’s no golf courses or things around here in this type [of] area, but we have a couple of nice courses in the tri-city area, which is Sleepy Hollow Country Club, and the Lynch Country Club. But I have played golf for the last ten years, which luckily the last two year I have won, the two tournaments which one was the Sleepy Hollow Club Tournament, and this year I won the Lynch Invitation Tournament, which I beat out ninety golfers.

Interviewer: I wish I had a visual.

[pause]

Elizabeth Estep: Questions on it and in first aid and everything, it’s really, there’s a lot to it more than just, you know, how to run the machinery and everything. They have to know the first aid if something happened. What, you know, what he as a responsible foreman would do. But like I said, until we married, I lived here all my life. And until we married, I didn’t I figured when he went to work, they were going to give him his personal pick and shovel. Till we met, I didn’t know they had inside machinery to do it that way. It really, it surprised me. And even since then, and now, this, the more and more advancements that have come up, it, it’s really surprising when you think of how many tons and tons and tons of coal is pulled out of the mountains daily, it, it’s really, it’s something. It’s unbelievable sometimes.

Interviewer: What do you enjoy doing as a family? Living here in eastern Kentucky?

Elizabeth Estep: [laughs] Dickie’s on third shift, and he has to sleep all day. So, our, usually the only time we get to spend any time together is in the evenings or on the weekends. And I think just lately we’ve got to where we don’t make him so nervous if we go and watch him play in a golf tournament. That doesn’t bother him. We go to the lakes sometimes. But mostly, he golfs on the weekends. I have my own hobbies. I sew and crochet, and then I do ceramic work. And as far as the family as a whole, I guess our biggest thing is getting together at my mom’s or his mom’s and eating.

Interviewer: You also have some children.

Elizabeth Estep: Yes. I have two boys. Scotty’s six, and Robbie’s ten months.

Interviewer: Would you mind seeing them go into the coal business?

Elizabeth Estep: I, I really and truly, I, I’d like to see them further and, and go on. I think coal business, though, you can advance so far. You, know you, don’t have to stay right here in this coal hole all your life. There’s, there’s other, just like Dickie wanted to, at one time, had checked into going into the Federal Bureau, you know, investigating mines. And I think, I think that’s good. I think every man should work to make it safer. Because, to, to better it. At all times, they should think about that. What can I do to do it better? To make it better, make it safer? It should be safer. And I, I guess Dickie and I both like sports pretty well. We always taught our boys to be big and tall and pro athletes. [laughs] I think everybody would like that. But we’ve had a lot of good athletes in our area, but we would, I would like to see them do something besides mine coal. But by the time Scotty gets to, you know, out of high school, you may not have to even go inside to mine. I mean, as far as being associated with the mines, I know there’s a lot of kids in the mining engineering classes at college, and I don’t think they go in that much. They’re mostly checking out the mountains and taking core drillings and things to find out how far to go and where to go for the coal.

Interviewer: There’s also, I understand, they’re even talking about remote controlled equipment using television cameras to where the amount that a person is in the mine, physical presence, is only to check on the equipment and maintain it, to keep it running. That’s, that should be a development of the future. You might want to say something about that.

Richard Estep: On the remote mining?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Richard Estep: I feel like, that even though with the experiment of the remote mining, I don’t think that the coal miners today will ever see that. Because of the, if they would set up a remote mining program or change to the remote mining methods, there would be so many people unemployment. And I don’t feel like the federal government would let the employment rate go that way.

Interviewer: Well, what, would you comment on that?

Richard Estep: Well, I’d say myself personally, I wouldn’t want my kids to go into mining. If they went into mining, I would like for them to go in as engineers such as electrical engineers or just anything in the engineering department. Because the money involved in advancements in engineering. I feel like, oh, God–

Interviewer: That’s all right.

Richard Estep: I feel like there’s been a big gap in the way that the coal miners their self [themselves] have been put down to the public. I feel that a lot of people think that a coal miner is dumb and doesn’t have no kind of common knowledge or any education at all. But if you would really talk to a coal miner, or look into a lot of coal miners’ background, they are truly some of the smartest people in the world. You take back into olden days. A, a coal miner isn’t dumb. But he worked because that was where he was raised, and where he wanted to stay. And I feel like a coal miner is a certain breed of people. A lot of people can’t be coal miners. They’re just a certain breed theirselves [themselves]. And I feel like coal miners, if you’re a coal miner and you know a coal miner, you’re a lot closer than if you worked at a factory with steel workers. I think there’s just, coal miners their self is just a different breed of people.

Interviewer: That’s beautiful. That really is.

Elizabeth Estep: Really, as far as there’s been a lot of women to go in the coal mines. And you have to think, for a woman to go in the coal mines, you have to realize it has to be, as far as, there has to be a lot of advantages from back then until now, for a woman to go in the mines. Used to, it was made like if a woman even came around the mines, they wouldn’t let them come around. It was bad luck, you know. Things happened. And now, you have women that work right with men. And I think sometimes, if something happened to where, if something happened to Dickie, I couldn’t get a job to where we could live. I would go in the mines. I don’t think it would bother me to be underground like that. And when you think about it, you have your, your union benefits, you get a pension, you get black lung, twenty-five, thirty years in there, you’ll be making good money. I mean, you know, it’s really, the job is worth the money. It’s worth what you get out of it now, and in time to come. It’s, it’s good pay.

Interviewer: Your wife said it there very well.

Elizabeth Estep: To be denied a job just because you’re a woman, I think I could do it. I, being a coal miner’s wife, sometimes I have a, a yearn, I’d like to, I’d like to work in it. I’d like to feel the ground. I’d like to the run machinery. And I think I would enjoy it. And more than anything, I would like just to go inside and see what’s going on. Because I, I’m not aware of that much of it other than what Dickie tells me, and you know, what you see in pictures and everything. But I would like to go in there and see it for myself. I would like, I think people in this area should be taken in. They should have, you know, tours, like, where they take them in and, and show them what’s happening, what’s going on. I think it would be good for the, for the school kids. They don’t realize how hard their daddies work, or what their daddy really does. And I think it would help the kids, too, you know, to learn more about coal mining.

[End Side A. Begin Side B.]

Elizabeth Estep: She just, she was in a car wreck the Fourth of July. But she just, she’s always sold eggs and killed chickens and, and things of this sort. Most of the older people around here, they’re workers, you know. And they’ve been brought up in hard times, and work’s all they know. And there’s just work. People around here just aren’t too much to lay around. You, you have some everywhere you go. But I think people, mountain people, are workers. Just like being today over at the swap meeting, there was an old lady doing her spinning over there and showing, and all the quilts and things that were, are on exhibit. And the younger people around here are picking up the arts and crafts. If you don’t pick it up, it’s going to die off. And people are picking it up more. They’re starting to, for a while, it was, you know, things were getting extinct. But it’s coming back. And even though you have your modern-day sewing machine and things, it’s nice to know how to spin and do quilting. You can always buy a blanket, but there’s nothing like a quilt that you made with your own hands. And there’s a difference in saying, “Here’s your wedding gift,” and it being a blanket, instead of saying, “Here’s a quilt I made for you.” You know. There, there’s a difference. I’ve always heard that when you, when you have to buy gifts, it’s just an excuse because you can’t do anything.

Interviewer: You were, you were saying earlier that, and I was very impressed, driving up through Lynch, that a lot of people were, that all the homes in here, this was originally both towns, a coal camp. And then the people who had rented from the coal companies were allowed to buy the property. And finally, what’s happened–

[pause]

Interviewer: And you might take it from the standpoint that it’s, that it’s–

Richard Estep: I feel like the biggest problem on a lot of young people not coming back to the coal fields, which there are quite a few coming back, but there could be a great deal more if there were housing avail-, available. Back in the early ‘20s when coal started to boom in this area, the company built all of these company homes. After a while, they sold these homes to their employees for a small price. Nowadays, the miners, which are getting at retirement age, are etcetera, are already fixed their homes up real nice and selling them, going elsewhere. Because to make room for the modern-day miners, which are coming in. The housing is a big problem because of the, because of the areas, which is, the land which is not available. And the land at which is available, the company owns and will not sell to individuals or housing firms because of the property rights that they need to have to transfer the coal and put-up coal operations.

Interviewer: You might want to make some comment.

Elizabeth Estep: [laughs] I can’t think of anything.

[pause]

Richard Estep: About the housing.

Interviewer: Well, just general pride in the area. You’ve talked about it some already.

Richard Estep: Well, I [am] going places, and, on vacations, and etcetera, you may meet people and they ask you what your occupation is and everything. And I notice I tell people that I’m a coal miner. And a lot of people look up to a coal miner and say, “Well, we’re for you. I think you really should be making a hundred dollars a day.” And then some people look at you like you’re, like you’re dirt, or just, you know, like you, like you’ve not got any common sense or knowledge or that part. But I really feel that a coal miner today is just as important an---a doctor or anybody else because his skills are just as more in demand than a doctor is today. Ok.

[End Interview.]