Oral History Interview with Charley Crawford

[Begin Interview]

Interviewer:Mr. Charley Crawford.

Interviewer: Well, when did you go into mining Mr. Crawford?

Crawford:1917.

Unknown: You’re going to have to speak up before he can hear you.

Interviewer: Why don’t you sit up next to Mr. Crawford?

Crawford:1917.

Interviewer: Was it a large mine, a small one, that you went into?

Crawford:It was a small mine.

Interviewer: How did you do your work there?

Crawford:Well, I was hired in as a chalk eye. If you know what a chalk eye is?

Interviewer: Heard of it, but would you explain it?

Crawford:Yeah, I can explain it. Maybe one man can get a whole entry of, in the mine, but he’s allowed a hired man to unload on his chit number, you don’t have a chit number, a chalk eye is a man that you hire into. You get paid through, you got paid through him, and not the company.

Interviewer: He sort of subcontracted from the company to hire people to work.

Crawford:That was it. I worked for, they loaded a ton, so much a ton of that coal shovel. Thirty-six-inch coal. And I got a dollar a day and board.

Female: Where did you stay? Where were you boarded?

Interviewer: Where did you live when you were there?

Crawford:I lived; I’ve worked at (I) Block Coal Company.

Interviewer: I’d like you to explain a little bit more about this chalk eye thing. You say the guy, he contracted with the mining company to produce the coal?

Crawford:The way it works out, you see, maybe one mine will get a whole entry, ten or fifteen or twenty working on it. Rooms, we call them. Places to load coal. Well, he could hire as many chalk eyes, extra men. But they all had to use his chit number. He paid us. The company didn’t pay us.

Interviewer: He got, he got what much coal was produced, he got part of that.

Crawford:All over the dollar that he paid us, why, he made that in profit.

Interviewer: Where did you go from there?

Crawford:I went from there to Bluegrass Coal Company.

Interviewer: Was Bluegrass a larger mine or a smaller mine?

Crawford:It was a larger mine, Bluegrass was. I worked there eight year[s].

Interviewer: How many men did Bluegrass have working?

Crawford:I can hardly say. I’d say a couple of hundred.

Interviewer: That’s a pretty large mine, then, for that day.

Crawford:Yeah.

Interviewer: Was it all pick and shovel?

Crawford:All the work I done during my mining days was pick and shovel. There was no mechanized mines at the time that I was coal mining. Those that I worked in.

Interviewer: Did you have, in those days, in the pick and shovel time, did you have any specialization? Did the people do different jobs? Or did you kind of do all the jobs? Kind of sometimes you’d shoot, sometimes you’d–

Crawford:Oh, yes. They had special jobs. Each man assigned to a certain job; you see. They could shift you from one job to another, if you happen to run out of work at one place, why they had to let you work at another.

Interviewer: What were you good at? What did you like doing best?

Crawford:I like using a pick and shovel.

Interviewer: You did.

Crawford:Better than any, after I got to where I’m making my own money. Made more money at that. It wasn’t because the work was easy, but there was more pay in it.

Interviewer: What was a normal day? What time did you start, generally?

Crawford:Well, we had different starting times. Back from the late ‘20s, up in the early ‘30s, it was just about day and night. I’d leave home at three o’clock, and come in nine, ten of a night. I’d leave at three o’clock in the morning, now, I mean. And walk twelve miles a day.

Interviewer: You never saw the sun.

Crawford:Huh?

Interviewer: Never saw the sun.

Crawford:Just on Sunday.

Interviewer: What was, how would you spend your Sundays?

Crawford:Well, go to church, usually. Or play around, try to rest up.

Interviewer: Was, did you take, did you get a vacation?

Crawford:No. There was no such thing as a vacation back then. Not until IFCMW come in here, in ’33.

Female: Did you like working in the mine, or would you rather have done something else?

Crawford:I’d rather done anything else. But that was the only industry there was in this part of the country.

Interviewer: Had your parents come here? Is that how you happened to be in Kentucky?

Crawford:They was born and raised here, and I was, too.

Interviewer: What kind of work did your father do, your daddy?

Crawford:He done some mining, not too much. He was kind of scared of them. He was, done more logging than anything else. Worked in log woods.

Interviewer: Do you remember anything about the logging business when you were a child?

Crawford:I done plenty of it when I was a kid. They used to run the river on rafts before the railroad come up in here. I believe it was ’11 and ’12 when they built this railroad track up the river here, from Jackson on through to the head of the river. And they would cut their timber into logs, whatever length they might want. And haul them to the river. And then they would raft them. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that or not. But anyway, they had, the way they got their logs together, they put them side by side. And they bore a hole through a pole, and down through a log, and drive a pin down through there to hold the logs together, the raft together. And they would run them down to Irvine and Ravenna and down through that country where they could get a sale.

Interviewer: Was that timber mainly used in logging? Or was it used, where did it end up being used?

Crawford: Well, the first timber I remember going out of this country was what you call square timber. This country used to be full of virgin timber. And it was awful large timber. And then they made square timber out of it. And they told me they used it for shipbuilding. I don’t know.

Interviewer: They actually cut it in squares, the log in squares.

Crawford:They used it, they scored, they notched it, they hewed it with a broad axe. And you couldn’t see an axe mark on it anywhere. It had to be perfectly square. And you take a say, a white oak or chestnut oak, forty or fifty inches thick. That had to be cut down perfectly square, and maybe be about three feet across, square.

Interviewer: And you did that with a broad axe?

Crawford:With a broad axe. My daddy worked out of, had a pair [of] mules a hauling that square timber out of this creek right across the mountain, near to the river, where they could raft it and run it down the river.

Interviewer: Team of mules? Or just one? It would have to be a team.

Crawford:Yeah, they had, it took four mules to handle them. And you might want to know how they loaded these big trees. I’ve seen them seventy-two feet long. Now that is the longest one, I ever seen as far as thick. It was seventy-two feet; I rode on the back end of it on a wagon. The way they loaded them and hauled them, they had a wagon, log wagon, they call them. These wagons would uncouple. And they’d put one set of wheels at the front end, and the other set at the back end. Then they had a block and line and three-legged thing. It went way up here, on a wheel in it. They’d hitch a pair of mules to the end of that, cable. And they’d left the ends of that square stick up so they could get a, their wagon wheels back under it. Then when they got that end loaded, why they moved to the other end and loaded it. And they chained them to the wheels, you know, to the logs, so they couldn’t float apart.

Female: How did they control something that long, and drive it? How did they control it?

Crawford:You mean the log?

Female Interviewer: Uh huh.

Crawford: They chain them on there solid, on the wagon wheels.

Interviewer: Do you remember as a child when the first train came in here?

Crawford:Yeah, I can remember years before the train ever come in this country.

Interviewer: Did you go out to meet the first train? You remember, or did you hear tell of the people that–

Crawford:I don’t know if I met the first one, but I’d go down, my dad would take me. And we’d watch them work the railroad. You know, building the railroad up the river. They didn’t have no boat loaders and steam shovels. It was all done with pick and shovel. And had dump carts, and donkeys to pull them dump carts. And they’d wheel this dirt, and these donkeys know where to turn to dump that dirt over the hill. And that’s the way they moved the dirt. They didn’t have any bulldozers or high lifts or things like that. It was all done by pick and shovel.

Interviewer: Did your father do that type [of] work?

Crawford: No. My father worked on log woods all during them years.

Interviewer: Who did that work? Did some farmers get a team together and go out and contract out to the railroads, and do all that work?

Crawford:No. Construction companies would take so many miles, you know, contract. And they would hire their own men to do this work.

Interviewer: [car noise] Wait until this car gets by.

Crawford:Mines built in 1911 and ’12, was ‘12 and ‘13–

Interviewer: And you said they brought men in from all over?

Crawford:Oh, they brought colored people and foreigners. And some American people worked. I don’t recall there was anybody around here, natives, that worked at it.

Interviewer: There were a lot of colored people that came to work.

Crawford:Yeah.

Interviewer: From the South, I guess.

Crawford:Mostly, yes.

Interviewer: Did they stay after the railroads were built?

Crawford:Some of them did. Most of them didn’t.

Interviewer: Did any of them, did those that stayed go to work in the mines, too? Or not?

Crawford:There was a lot of foreigners worked in the mines, a lot of colored people worked in the mines.

Interviewer: How far did you have to walk to get to your work every day?

Crawford:Well, at different times, it depended more on where I lived. I have walked ten and twelve miles a day, round trip now. Unloaded coal with a coal shovel all day. Leave home about three o’clock in the morning, get in at nine, ten o’clock at night.

Interviewer: The mines were, how did, did you have a rail and carts to get the coal out of the mine? How did that work?

Crawford:I had different methods of doing that. Some of them was pulled by mules and pulling it to a sidetrack. You know what a sidetrack is, of course. And then we’d would have motors to pull it from their own to the tipple, electric motors.

Interviewer: When did you stop working in the mines?

Crawford:’59.

Interviewer: And you joined the union when it came in.

Crawford:Yes. I walked, never walked, I rode a mule. Organizers come to Hazard in June 19 and 33. And I got the news that they were here. And I saddled my mule the next morning, early, and rode to Hazard to get to join.

Female: How much did you make a day? For a long day, like three in the morning until nine at night? In the beginning days?

Crawford:Two-sixty.

Interviewer: Two dollars and sixty cents. After you joined the union, how much did you make?

Crawford:Well, we started off very low wages. I think two-sixty for a start off for eight hours. And then every few months, why, we got a raise you know.

Interviewer: But you got your hours switched to eight hours from–

Crawford:It still stayed eight hours for a good long while. Eventually they got it down to seven hours and fifteen minutes.

Mrs. Crawford: Our son-in-law makes up to fifty dollars nowadays.

Interviewer: His son-in-law, or your son-in-law works in the mines.

Mrs. Crawford: Yeah, but he’s a younger man.

Interviewer: He makes what today? I’m sorry. I’ll turn my mic–

Mrs. Crawford: Fifty– What does, Charley, what does Maynard make a day? In the mines right now?

Crawford:I think he makes about sixty-five dollars a day.

Mrs. Crawford: I thought it was up to fifty or up to sixty-one, I didn’t know.

Female: Let’s ask Mrs. Crawford a couple of questions. You used to fix his lunch when he was working in the mines?

Mrs. Crawford: Yes.

Female: What did he take for lunch?

Mrs. Crawford: Now when me and Charley married, he had a family before me, and he had married, and his first wife died. But anyway, I fixed him a good lunch.

Female: What did he take?

Mrs. Crawford: Well, he’d take a sandwich, you know. Some kind of meat and fruit. And if he wanted to take something cold to drink, or some beverage or something like that. Well, when me and him right at the (time when they like they was before?)

Interviewer: Did you put it in that little dinner pail? Did he have a little–

Mrs. Crawford:Yeah, he had a dinner pail.

Interviewer: If you explain how you did that, how you packed it in there.

Other male interviewer: Let me impose on you to close the door. I’m aimed this direction now, and I pick up all that noise out there.

Mrs. Crawford:Well, he put a, he had a lunch kit we called it, you know. It was a long lunch kit like that. Then, he don’t drink coffee at all. But he put in some milk. And I’d put it in that little lunch kit, you know. And I’d make him sandwiches and fruit, stuff like that and candy, maybe, or something like that.

Female: How did you keep the milk cold?

Mrs. Crawford:Well, we had a little container that kept it cold.

Crawford:I was there at the time it got better. I liked it better…times…

[all talking]

Interviewer: You know those old dinner pails. Did you ever use those? Those little round things with the water in the bottom?

Crawford:What, now?

Interviewer: The dinner pails? Did you ever use one of those? Little round dinner pail?

Mrs. Crawford: Yeah, he used it.

Crawford:Oh, yeah, I used–

Interviewer: I want somebody to describe those because they were very peculiar. You had water in the bottom, didn’t you?

Crawford:Yeah, you carried your water in the bottom, and your lunch in the top. I’ve seen fellows, I’ve worked with fellows, of course, now I never got that bad, but it was too bad, I worked, and I’d make a good garden every year. I’d work till it’d gets so dark, you couldn’t see on off days, and any day I could get off, of course, there’s no mine that works all day. And my wife, she makes a good garden. So, I kept cows most of the time, made her milk, butter. And what was raised on the farm. But it’s funny in a way, it wasn’t funny then. But people that don’t believe it now, if you tell them, they really won’t believe it. It got so rough in the early ‘30s that I was working for two dollars a day. Laying track for Harvey Coal Company. And it was so far, I couldn’t walk back and forth, and I had to pay board. And my board cost me a dollar a day. I had to buy my carbide. I had to pay a doctor bill. I had to pay a hospital bill. I had to pay insurance. And my cost of living all come out of that other dollar. So, my third child was born in ’32. And I had a three-year-old boy. And my wife told me to bring the boy an overall jacket and the baby a soft soled pair of shoes. It cost a dollar and sixty-five cents, the two did. And I didn’t clear enough in a week to pay for those two items.

Crawford:After I paid my board and my cuts.

Interviewer: Did you have a, did you have to pay for sharpening your tools, too?

Crawford:Yeah. We had blacksmith shops.

Interviewer: That was a cut, too, right?

Crawford:Yeah. They had blacksmith shops.

Interviewer: Name all the things you can think of that were cut. The cuts that you took out of your pay. What all did you take out?

Crawford:Well, I just called them over now, you see. We was compelled, we was forced to. I was fired for refusing to do some of these things. There was a, we had to buy a carbide to make our lights. We had to pay a company doctor, whoever they wanted. We had to pay whatever insurance company they wanted us to pay. And we had to go to the hospitals they required. And it was rough.

Interviewer: Did, were you paid in scrip?

Crawford: Yes, I went five years, I never draw a dime of money.

Interviewer: Tell us about scrip. Because most people today–

Crawford: I hate the name of it. You’d go to the company office and ask them for a dollar, two dollars in scrip. They’d call the mines to see if you was working that day. If you was not working, you didn’t get any. But if you was working, they’d allow you a dollar. Some that had better-paying jobs, maybe get a couple dollars a day to feed your family. She went to the store and got five cents for a salt bacon at the time, many a time.

Mrs. Crawford: Oh, my goodness, you could get a feast. A feast. Big feast.

Female: For five cents?

Crawford: To cook with their beans. I want to tell you some things that I’ve seen brought in the mines to eat, the miners would bring them in there. Right up here in this hollow, while working for (?) Coal Company, a man would bring pure lard and a piece of cornbread for their lunch and eat. That’s all they had. They brought apple peelings, some of them would. Potato peelings. Let their family eat the apples and potatoes, and they’d take the peelings, and try to make a shift’s work.

Interviewer: And that was a shift working from three in the morning to nine at night.

Crawford: Plenty of times. Plenty of times.

Mrs. Crawford:(?)

Crawford:I remember one time I come in way in the night, and it had rained on me the whole way. And I didn’t have time to bath and go to bed, you know. I just sitting there in the chair. I was able to get me an old quilt and lay down by the fire two or three hours before I got started back. And I chewed tobacco back then. And I went to sleep with a big chew of tobacco in my mouth. I forgot about it when I woke up. But I got up to get me a quilt to take me a nap, but I’d vomited it up through there and get sick, when I raised up, you know. Swallowing that chew of tobacco.

Interviewer: Was there any, what was your entertainment besides going to church on Sunday?

Crawford:There wasn’t any. Not at all.

Interviewer: Was the mining camp that you worked at it, was it, would you say, one of the larger ones? Or a medium or a small mining camp?

Crawford: The last mine I worked at was the largest I worked at. They worked around a thousand men. I worked twenty-five years, the last twenty-five years I worked, I was (?) payroll for that one company.

Interviewer: Did you live in a company house?

Crawford: Part of the time I was fired for not living in it, I was fired for refusing to pay doctor bills when they wouldn’t come to see my children and they’d have pneumonia fever, something like that. They didn’t want to fire me, but that was their ruling, they said. I told them I had one of my own: I wouldn’t work for a company that wouldn’t have their doctor to visit my children. I carried one of mine from down here into Hazard on a horse with double pneumonia fever, and it was raining, snowing, both. Wasn’t able to pay a hospital bill. They wanted me to put it in the hospital, and I couldn’t, couldn’t pay it, so didn’t carry it down here where I was working. And I had to take that kid, and I went down on and decided not to cut me any more doctor bill. Then they told me they hadn’t, they would have to, that was their ruling. I told them I had one different from theirs: I wouldn’t pay it. So, they said, “Well, we can’t work you.” Okay.

Interviewer: What year was that?

Crawford:That was in the late ‘20s. I’d say about around ’28 or ’29.

Interviewer: They, did, were you still paid in scrip after the unions came in?

Crawford:Yeah, we was paid in scrip if we wanted. But they for a while they would manage to work fellows off, you know, before the union come in. Had a scrip or nothing.

Interviewer: Were there stores around that sold things cheaper than the company store?

Crawford:No, the company store was higher.

Interviewer: That’s what I mean.

Crawford:Yeah.

Interviewer: But you couldn’t buy from there because you didn’t have any money, any hard money, scrip.

Crawford:You had to have hard money or scrip before you could trade at the company store.

Interviewer: But the, I was asking, were there any private stores around?

Crawford:Yeah, there was some private stores around, but nobody could get credit, because nobody couldn’t pay except a pensioner or a veteran or something like that. It was all to get credit.

Interviewer: When were the first cars that you remember brought in to the area?

Crawford:I remember mighty well the first one I ever seen brought in here. It wrecked. I told the fellow it would wreck. I mean, the fellow was building a street up around Hazard, around the hill. Road, of course, dirt road. And was dirt streets, or it was mud. And they was a colored man brought a car in. I don’t know what model it was; it’s been many day[s] ago. And there was only one policeman in Hazard, and he always was into everything that come and went. “Red” Bob Coleman, Bob Coleman was his name, but we called him “Red Bob.” He was the only policeman they was. So, he had to try that car out, the car that colored fellow brought in. There was a curve there, where down below where we was working. We was working up on the hill. And back behind, you couldn’t see anything for the dust. You couldn’t walk, seen where you walked. And I said, “That thing is going to wreck.” That fellow said, “No,” said, “that nigger knows what he’s doing.” I said, “No, he don’t, either. That thing is going to wreck. He’s flying.” I hadn’t much more than said it, it’d wrapped around an electric light pole. And it tore it all to pieces. That old policeman, he come crawling out. I thought sure he was killed. [laughs] I want to say another joke. [laughing] Now you won’t believe it, but it’s the truth. Before the, I’ll tell you who’s governor, Ruby Laffoon. You may have heard tell of him. But he was the governor. And times are so hard, and my granddaddy, and I am, too, was Democrats. My granddaddy and my uncle. So, they would hire you to work two weeks if you was a Democrat, on the highways, state highway. Then they’d cut you off and they’d hire a new crew. So, I was kind of young, and I didn’t think too much about politics. But anyway, they got me a job for two weeks, it was in August, the hot part of the year. And they got me and one of, another fellow, Campbell fellow, George Campbell, and my granddaddy’s son-in-law, got all three of us a job.

[End Side A. Begin Side B.]

Crawford:–for two weeks, this is in August, the hot part of the year. And they got me and one of, another fellow, Campbell, George Campbell, and my granddaddy’s son-in-law, got all three of us a job. And we worked, was to work twelve days, you know. Three dollars a day, ten hours a day. Shoveling, loading, in a dump truck, on a dock. But anyway, I didn’t have nothing extra, you know, to take for my lunch. And in fact, about didn’t have no clothes fit to wear. [laughter] the way I started to say it… but anyway, we ground around, the seat of my pants fell out. But when working in the mines, we’d wear clothes that we worked in the mines with through the week. Why, we’d have them washed on Saturday night, and dried to wear to church or wherever we might want to go on Sunday. We usually wore overall jackets and (?) shirts. We’d wear overall jackets, and then we’d wear them for Sunday, and gum boots that come up about to here. You could hear a miner walking. It make a big something noise, you know, them [those] old gumboots does [do]. You could hear a miner walking through three hundred yards. I mean, we wore them for Sunday, too. But anyway, getting back to the highway, I’d ground the seat of my overalls out. That’s all I could get, was overalls. And I told my wife, I said, “Well, I’m going down few miles down the creek here and see if I can mortgage my cow for a little something to go in my lunch. Make me two weeks.” I went down, I offered a mortgage for two dollars and a half. Good milk cow. Couldn’t get a thing. I come back, I said, “Well, I can’t get nothing. I’ll just have to take what we raise here in the garden.” I said, “What am I going to wear? I’ve got nothing to wear.” And she went up to her daddy’s, they was [were] a little---better laborers than I was, and she went up there, and there’s a whole bunch of grown boys, men. And she got some overall legs. And she didn’t patch each side. She just sewed one big solid shield on the seat of my overalls. And I’d be working on the road, and somebody pass walking, I’d turn my back to the hill till after they passed. And when they passed, then I’d turn back around and go to work. Didn’t want them to see them big patches on the seat of my pants, overalls. It sounds funny, but that’s the truth.

Interviewer: That’s pretty tough times.

Crawford:Huh?

Interviewer: I said, that’s pretty tough times. Pretty hard times.

Female: Now, patches are in. Kids buy jeans with patches already on them.

Crawford:Didn’t like to wear them, you know. I wore patches about all my life. Up to where I got to where I could do better.

Mrs. Crawford: Charley has been a good livery. At that very time, he had stock, he held livestock. … and he sold it. And then he never was satisfied. The minute we got it back and paid three thousand dollars more back for it than what he got. And now he wants to sell it again.

Crawford:I bought all this land in here for four hundred and fifty dollars. That I own for a half a mile up and down the creek on both sides. From the top of one ridge to the other. I’ll tell you, I bought this whole boundary there’s around, between a quarter and a half a mile of it, from on top of one ridge to the other, for four hundred and fifty dollars. Then I built a house, I built this house, right here.

Female: What’s all this land worth today?

Crawford:Well, I divided it into five parts, and I’ve got two parts of it, and there’s a women [woman] over there right now begging me to take forty thousand dollars for my part.

Interviewer: Why is land so high today?

Crawford:The population, I imagine, is a growing so fast, is the only thing I can see. For one thing, you can’t buy house seat, you can’t buy trailers, set a trailer, hardly. If you find a house for sale, the foundation’s rotted from under it, or somebody’s got it mortgaged and can’t pay a mortgage off, or something like that. I finally got on top. I don’t owe a dime. There ain’t [is not] a man or a woman or a child in the United States nor nowhere else, I owe a dime. I pass due. I pay my bills at the first of each month. And if I have any left, I can do whatever I want to with it.

Interviewer: The union has pension plan and a hospital, don’t they?

Crawford:Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer: Why don’t you tell us about that?

Crawford:Well, we get our hospitalization free. Our doctor bills, doctors, we don’t have to pay them anything. UMW pays that. We have to pay for some medicines, some medication. Not all of it, but some of it. That’s---that’s any account, we have to pay for, and that ain’t [is] no[t] [any] account they give to us. Aspirins or something like that. Pain pills.

Interviewer: How many children did you have?

Crawford:I raised six.

Interviewer: Are any of those working in the coal business today?

Crawford:No, my children, I kept them out. They come back from Korean War; I had four [of] them. And they was three of them was boys, one girl. And them boys come back and wanted to go to, of course they wanted work. And at that time, they’d started scabbing around here, different places. Coal mines, they kept telling me that they had to have a job. They hinting [hinted] that they want to go to the mines. I told them, “No,” I said, “I can still feed you.” I said, “Hunt something else.” Finally, one day they told me, two or three of them said, “We’re going to Leslie County and get us a job in the mines.” I said, “When you go to a scab mine and start work,” I said, “take your clothes. Because you can’t eat a union man’s grub.” And I bluffed them. They didn’t do it. One boy, though, my oldest boy, during the hot part of the Korean War, he was working in Blue Diamond mine. And he come home one Sunday, and he said, “Dad,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about going to the Army.” He said, “What do you think about that?” Well, you know, the mine was as dangerous as fighting. And I just had to tell him that he’d have to use his own judgment. I said, “I can’t tell you.” I said, “If I tell you to stay, you may get killed. If I tell you to go, you might. I’d feel bad about it. And you use your own judgment.” He said, “I’d rather fight, than to loading coal.” And I said, “They’ve got plenty of it in Korea to do. Go ahead.” And he went. Went in the paratroopers. And got back, all my children got back safe.

Interviewer: What are they doing now?

Crawford:One of them lives in California. He works in a paper mill, paper company, at a paper mill. And I’ve got one that works different places. He got a lot of different trades, stays drunk most of the time. And I lost two of my children.

Interviewer: You’ve been telling us, giving us some nice stories. [glitch]

Female: –on what a miner’s wife’s life was like. What was your day like? What did you do?

Mrs. Crawford: It was miserable. Not knowing what would happen to him. I never wanted him to work in the mines, but he did. He had to. It was about the only thing he could do. And it’s miserable. Not knowing when they [are] coming in. When you see them leave, whether they’ll come back or not. He made good money. And we lived well. Ever since we’ve been married, we’ve had plenty of anything that we needed, you know. And some of his family was here, all was here but one. And then this one, he come along, when Betty came down and he’s on (?) Drive now. And then I worked hard, too. I worked in gardens and raised chickens. And then he had stock, I had to help him with them. Had just about all of it, I guess.

Female: What’s your social life like? What do you do when you’re not working?

Crawford:(?) for me and her, marriage (?)

Mrs. Crawford:I crochet some. I embroider some, I piece quilts, and I go to church. Things like that. Now they’re all gone, the this was just now left.

Female: Do you have a lot of friends?

Mrs. Crawford:Hmm?

Female: Do you have a lot of friends?

Mrs. Crawford:I think I do. Hope so.

Female: Do you have a lot of family in the area? Other than children?

Mrs. Crawford:Hmm?

Female: Do you have a lot of family in the area, other than children?

Mrs. Crawford:Mm hmm. Yeah. We give them showers you know, a lot, things like that. We go to church and give them at the churches. Then we give them at the homes, too. And we had, there’s one right over there for that trailer for this boy and his wife. She lived over there. We got a lot of nice things, hold showers, you know. Things like that. That’s the way we enjoy our lives.

Female: Have you ever wanted to live anywhere other than in eastern Kentucky? Have you ever wanted to live anywhere other than eastern Kentucky?

Mrs. Crawford:No, nowhere in Kentucky. But I never have liked right here exactly. But it’s good alright, I guess it’s all right. What few days, I guess would---could end them right here.

Interviewer: Did you and your wife both ever live in the coal fields?

Crawford:What?

Interviewer: Did you and your wife both ever live in the coal camps?

Crawford:Oh, yeah. Me and my first wife, and second wife, both.

Interviewer: Tell us a bit about if you don’t… what life was for her, your first wife, in the coal fields, in the coal camps.

Crawford:Well, me and her was the one that really had the hard time, you see. Me and her didn’t marry till ’48.

Interviewer: What was your house like that the company provided? Can you describe the house that the company provided?

Crawford:Well, you took whatever they give you. Some was two rooms. Our first I moved out into a two-room house. And the next one was a three-room, and the next one was three-room.

Interviewer: Well did they, you’ve got a very nice home here, with paneling and all. Did you have that kind of walls? And you’ve got wall to wall carpet and all that.

Crawford:No.

Interviewer: What was it like? Tom, let me to get you to sit over here, so I can borrow your ashtray.

Crawford:Well, I’ll tell you what one of them was like. They a family lived in it, it was a four-room house. And they had a [glitch]

Interviewer: Now you were telling us about this one house. Go ahead and tell us again.

Crawford:This house, a fellow by the name of Warner Hoss lived in it. And it was four-room house. And he had one room partitioned off so a hog couldn’t jump out of it. It was either four or five hogs. He’d fatten them in that one room in that camp house, and they lived in the other three rooms.

Interviewer: How many people were living in the other three rooms?

Crawford:He had a great big family.

Interviewer: What, six, seven, eight, nine?

Crawford:I don’t know how many. There were six or eight of them.

Interviewer: What, how, you may remember better on how the house–

Mrs. Crawford:I wasn’t with him.

Interviewer: Oh, right. How were the houses constructed? The insides? That the company provided. Did you have just your studs, no wall board? Did you have wall board?

Crawford:No. The houses was weather boarded with pine weather boarding, you know. And sealed with pine sealing. But there wasn’t, if you got them papered, they allow you to paper them if you wanted to. And then they sold stuff at the commissary. They called it calcimine, clay, I think. And we sometimes paint the walls with that. Weatherboard more than anything else. Make thick stuff, you know, beat it up in water. And it would turn blue. Grab and old big brush about that broad and start rubbing that mud over it.

Interviewer: I know you, what would your wife be doing this whole time when you in the mines? What would she be doing in the company town situation?

Mrs. Crawford:Taking care of young’uns.

Crawford:Do what now?

Interviewer: What would your wife be doing when you working these long hours in the mine, in the coal camp? What would she be doing?

Crawford:She was usually making a garden and working around one thing and another.

Interviewer: Did she buy the groceries at the company store?

Crawford:Yeah, had to. They wouldn’t let us buy them over... There’s one more thing I wanted to mention. I got plenty of proof on that. Especially one more. The Davis brothers, they had a mine over here, Butterfly. W. E. Davis owned the mine. And he had a fellow by the name of Bud Fields working for him in the mines. He went up the railroad track and they found a broke rail on the railroad track. And he reported it to the railroad company. And they gave him five dollars for reporting that broke rail. Well, he passed this company store and went a mile up the river over here, just across this mountain right here. He went a mile to the country store, and he brought his five dollars the railroad company give him in groceries. You can get a can of lard and a whole bunch of junk, you know, five dollars back then. You can get more than maybe you can carry. Anyway, he went up there, walked a mile and bought his load of groceries. And come back down and the man that owned that mine, W. E. Davis, asked him what he had, and he told him. He asked him where he got the money, and he told him. He said, “You take that load of groceries back up there and get your money. Bring it here and spend it, or you got no job.” And the man had to turn around and take his groceries back to where he got it from. Lyes Feltner was selling groceries. And he gave him his money back, and he had to come back and spend it at the company store.

Interviewer: What year was that?

Crawford:I would say that was in the early ‘30s. Maybe ’31 or ’32, somewhere along there.

Interviewer: Was part of the problem that the owners were making more off of their company stores than they were off mining coal, you think?

Crawford:Do what now?

Interviewer: Were the operators making more off running the company store than they were mining coal during that period?

Crawford:I didn’t, still didn’t get your–

Interviewer: What I was trying to say is, one reason they want you to trade in that store during that period is that they weren’t making anything on coal.

Crawford:Well, they didn’t want a man to have a decent living. They wanted it all back so they could get all the profits, you see. If you worked for them, loading their coal, they made a profit on that. Then if you had to trade at their store and give it back to them, they made a big profit on that, too.

Interviewer: Good.

Other interviewer: Very good.

Interviewer: That’s great.

Other Interviewer: We sure do appreciate you.

[End Interview.]