Oral History Interview with William Pratt

WILLIAM PRATT: Tommy Pratt, Leburn, Kentucky.

NATHAN MULLINS: All right, and today is June twenty-six, nineteen ninety-eight. All right, are you ready?

PRATT: I’m ready. [Laughing] N.M.: When you attended Hindman High School and you went there in the eighth grade, also?

PRATT: Eighth grade and Hindman High School.

N.M.: You commuted, right? Is that correct?

PRATT: Right.

N.M.: How did you learn about the settlement school and Hindman High School?

PRATT: Well, it was just a local thing. Everybody knew about it, locally.

N.M.: Everybody knew about it. Did any other members of your family attend the settlement school or Hindman High School?

PRATT: Well, my brother, Grantham Pratt, and my sister, Geraldine 1:00and my sister, Christine all went there.

N.M.: So, everybody...

PRATT: Hmm?

N.M.: All your brothers and sisters did, also?

PRATT: Yeah, everybody in this school district went to Hindman High School. [Laughing] Of course, at that time they had Caney High School, and they still had Accordia and they had Carr Creek.

N.M.: And that was a big rivalry back then too, wasn’t it?

PRATT: [Laughing] Carr Creek and Hindman, basketball.

N.M.: What classes that you had, do any of them stand out in your mind?

PRATT: Well, I always thought more of Betty Combs, my English teacher and Coach Pearl Combs, my math teacher. [Laughing] N.M.: Can you tell me a little bit about them?

PRATT: Well, I don’t know, they, just, everybody 2:00liked them. I’ll take that back, seemed like the boys liked Betty better than the girls did. [Laughing] But I reckon, everybody liked Pearl, that was her husband. Pearl and Betty were husband and wife.

N.M.: And Pearl was also the basketball coach?

PRATT: He was the basketball coach.

N.M.: Did you, were you involved in any extra-curricular activities, while you were at school, like basketball or anything like that?

PRATT: No, but we did have different programs, in other words, I don’t remember now, just what they called them. Anyhow, 3:00the settlement school there on the hill, they had recreation there.

N.M.: Okay.

PRATT: And dancing, folk dancing some. And I was in a class of that at one time.

N.M.: Could you tell me a little bit about that, that sounds interesting.

PRATT: [Laughing] Well, it just so long, you know, you went over there for about thirty minutes or something. Everybody went in a group and went up on the hill there. And I don’t know....Is the building still there? It had big wagon wheels with electric lights, about six in that wheel, hanging from the ceiling.

N.M.: No, I think that one is not there anymore. And that’s where you all did folk dancing?

PRATT: Uh huh.

N.M.: This was a class?

PRATT: Well it was a...

N.M.: Or part of a class?

PRATT: It wasn’t a subject now.

N.M.: Yeah.

PRATT: It was just something like homeroom and so on, 4:00you know, where each one had certain things that they did for recreation. And I took that folk dancing that went on over the hill over there. And of course it didn’t last long.

N.M.: The actual class?

PRATT: Well, in hours, it wasn’t a full hour class.

N.M.: It was a pretty short class?

PRATT: Yeah.

N.M.: Did you ever do any work for the settlement, of any kind?

PRATT: Yes and no. I’ve done it at the settlement for the Board of Education.

N.M.: Okay, tell me about it though.

PRATT: Well, I helped paint that grade school there in Hindman and it was the settlement’s building. And my brother had a paint sprayer 5:00and they had one. And there were three of us, ( ) Waddell, and my brother, Grantham and myself. We spray painted the whole inside of that building, white.

N.M.: White.

PRATT: We were working for the Board of Education.

N.M.: But it was on the settlement.

PRATT: But it was the settlement’s building. And that was about forty-six, I guess, just after I came out of service. And my Dad did a lot of work for them. He helped build Hindman High School. He helped build, well it’s that, what’s that learning school they’ve got there now in the old library building?

N.M.: Well, it’s called the James Still Learning Center now.

PRATT: That’s what it is.

N.M.: It had a different name I’m sure, back then. 6:00PRATT: It was a library.

N.M.: Yeah.

PRATT: And my Dad helped, he helped do the carpentry work on it. Of course, he didn’t do any stone work, but he helped do the carpentry work. And he worked some, I reckon at the settlement school there. And I was telling you about painting this building ( ).

N.M.: Yeah, tell me about that.

PRATT: Okay, I dropped my spray gun and broke the handle. I went down to see Miss Watts, because I had been using her spray gun, asked to borrow it. I told her I dropped mine. And she said, you might drop mine. I said, that’s true I might, but I said I have used yours, I used it on that grade school building over there. And she let me borrow it. [Laughing] N.M.: So did you know Miss Watts a little?

PRATT: A little, yeah.

N.M.: Tell me about her, and your experiences with her.

PRATT: Well, I just knew her when I saw her and so on. And I had spoke to her, that’s about it.

N.M.: That’s about it? You never really....? 7:00PRATT: I wasn’t real personal acquainted with them, like a lot of the kids that stayed in the school or something like that.

N.M.: Yeah. Now your sister was telling me that she had known May Stone, or done some stuff with her. Did you ever meet Miss Stone?

PRATT: I had just seen her, is all.

N.M.: Just saw her?

PRATT: Uh hmm.

N.M.: I think you can provide a different aspect of this, then most people I’ve talked to so far have. Now when you were in high school, the war was going on, correct? Or it started?

PRATT: I was there when they talked about it the first day of school and they declared war and so on.

N.M.: On the first day?

PRATT: Well, it wasn’t the first day of school. It was on Monday...

N.M.: That’s the first thing...

PRATT: The school, well the bomb 8:00was on Sunday, you see.

N.M.: Oh, okay.

PRATT: And on Monday, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

N.M.: Do you remember that day?

PRATT: I remember the day. [Laughing] I guess anybody else that was in school there, remembered it, just like when Kennedy was shot.

N.M.: What was the atmosphere at school that day? What was it like?

PRATT: I don’t know how to explain it, in other words, Pearl Harbor was a long way off then. The world is getting smaller now. [Laughing] In other words, news didn’t travel like it does today. Of course, it was on the radio and we knew it.

N.M.: But you couldn’t see the pictures.

PRATT: We didn’t see the pictures. We didn’t have any T.V.s.

N.M.: Now, even though you couldn’t see the pictures, was there still a 9:00sense of almost vulnerability or something that the U. S. had been attacked?

PRATT: Well yeah, in other words, you just didn’t know what to think, or I didn’t. In other words, we were in war.

N.M.: Did you ever think that was possible though, that the U.S. would be attacked?

PRATT: No, at that time I never thought about war. That was one of the farthest things from my mind, was war. [Laughing] N.M.: Yeah. Could you tell me about, I know you entered the service, entered the service after a while, correct?

PRATT: Now what?

N.M.: You went into the service, the Army, or the Air Force.

PRATT: Yeah.

N.M.: Tell me about that, tell me about your experiences with that.

PRATT: Well, 10:00I went to two years of high school. I quit and went to Newport News Ship Building and Dry Dock Company in Newport News, Virginia, and worked in the shipyard. I helped build the Essex and the Yorktown, two big, large aircraft carriers of that day.

N.M.: That were also at the Battle of Midway, I believe, the Yorktown was.

PRATT: Well now, the Yorktown was sunk there. This was the second Yorktown.

N.M.: Oh, this is the second one.

PRATT: Yeah.

N.M.: Okay.

PRATT: And I built, helped build the Essex before that, and then the Yorktown. And I worked on two cruisers, two large cruisers, Birmingham and Mobile. I worked on a lot of conversion jobs, where they made the smaller aircraft carriers out of regular ships, and these LST’s, 11:00the landing crafts where they put the tanks in and drive up to the coast and let the front of the ship down and run the tanks out. And I helped build several of them. Then I came home and volunteered, well was drafted and went in the service. And I took basic training in Amarillo, Texas. I took Army Air Craft Mechanics in ( ), Mississippi. Took Douglas Aircraft Factory School at Long Beach, California and took Aero Engineer School at ( ), Missouri. And then I flew overseas. While I was in service though at one time, it was comical in a way. A bunch of us from ( ), Missouri went to Pope Field, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, picked up a bunch of airplanes. 12:00We had several crews went down there and each crew got an airplane and brought it back to ( ), Missouri. Well the crew I was with, the pilot was from Lexington, Kentucky. He had a girlfriend there. So we came back and we flew over here, and I asked the pilot if he would buzz it. And he said, where is it? And I said, straight below us. And he circled around here and I showed him the house I lived in and he went across down about the Pic Pac there on the other side over into Right Fork, crossed over the head of Mill Creek here, and came down Mill Creek, right over Leburn here. And one boy, he was over here, he ran and fell in a ditch.

N.M.: He saw you all coming. [Laughing] PRATT: Billy Van Der Poole was at Alonzo ( ) store there in Leeburn, he ran for the Possum Trot culvert. He thought it was going to crash on him or something. 13:00He told some of them, said, boy you would be surprised how fast one of them planes can overtake a man a running. [Laughter] There was one woman, who lived on Mill Creek. She had several kids, she grabbed one and ran out in the yard with it and left the others in the house. [Laughing] N.M.: They didn’t think they were being attacked, did they?

PRATT: They didn’t know what it was. Alvin Watts, he lived on Possum Trot at that time. He came down and got in his vehicle to come down and see where we crashed at. Next day, my sister was on the bus going to Hazard and some woman from Ogden down there, was talking, said there was an airplane that went over. Said, why it was so low, said it was just parting the timber. 14:00[Laughing] N.M.: She didn’t know at the time you were in it though, did she?

PRATT: No. And of course I went on to Lexington. We picked up an officer at Fort Bragg, hitching a ride to Louisville. When we buzzed this, he didn’t know it and that scared him, because he was back in the back. And we didn’t tell him we were going to buzz it. And then went to Lexington. This pilot flew over Lexington and worked the prop pitch back and forth. That changes the rpm of the engine, you see, and that’s just like racing a car engine. And all that noise, racing...his girl friend....He went to the airport landing and she was there waiting on him. That was his signal.

N.M.: So she knew when she heard that from the plane that, that was him. He had a system worked out.

PRATT: When we went in there, that pilot, he was a glider pick up instructor. 15:00That’s where they put these stakes in the ground, and fly with the hook on the airplane and hook that nylon rope and jerk a glider off the ground and go on with it. And that was his job, training pilots to do that. And he was a good pilot. And when he went into Lexington, he went down so fast, when he pulled out, that officer looked over at me and said, I like to blacked out, said, how about you? He got scared. He got off the plane, wasn’t going to go on to Louisville.

N.M.: At least not with you all.

PRATT: What?

N.M.: I said, at least not with you all?

PRATT: Well, he got out there in Lexington, but the pilot went on to Louisville and talked him into going. The co-pilot stayed there in Lexington. The pilot went home to Louisville, made, 16:00filled out papers where he stayed all night there, and we came back to Lexington and stayed all night. [Laughing] N.M.: Flew back down that night?

PRATT: What?

N.M.: You went to Louisville, filled out the papers and then flew back?

PRATT: Yeah. And when we went to Louisville, when we got the airplane, I checked all the tanks, there were three of them full, one of them was half full. And I told the pilot, and of course we all forgot about it. When we went into Louisville for a landing, he had the wheels down, flaps down and just a little, few feet off the runway and the right engine quit. And the left one pulled us over to the side of the runway. He grabbed a tank switch. I grabbed the wobble pump and started pumping it. We started up, circled around and came in again. [Laughing] N.M.: What happened, had it run out of gas on that side?

PRATT: Ran out of gas on that one tank. 17:00See there’s two hundred and two gallons in the front, two front tanks, two hundred and four and two hundred and two in the back tanks. We had three tanks full, but one of the front tanks was only half full when we got the plane. And that ran out of gas. All he did was switch the tanks and start the engine and we went on around. But I bet that pilot, that officer was scared to death. [Laughing] N.M.: That would have scared me to death. Planes. Planes can be frightening.

PRATT: What else you want to...

N.M.: All right. Before you went into the service, your two years while you were at Hindman High School. Those two years, was the war going on at that time?

PRATT: Now when? 18:00N.M.: When you were a Freshman and a Sophomore in high school.

PRATT: Sophomore it was.

N.M.: Sophomore it was?

PRATT: Yeah.

N.M.: Did anything kind of change between your Freshman and Sophomore year due to the war?

PRATT: I don’t know if there was much change. It was about the same.

N.M.: Did you see a lot of people though drop out, not really drop out, but leave high school to go to...

PRATT: No. Now there was probably more dropped out, when I did, you see. But the war was just first declared there.

N.M.: Okay.

PRATT: And see, that was forty-one when it was declared. Well forty-two was when I went to Newport News, Virginia. And there was a lot of people already going into the service and so on, that weren’t in school. That was before the war started, 19:00they started a draft and so on.

N.M.: Did you all ever have any special activities that you did at the settlement school? Now did they have May Day back then? They didn’t have the May Day Festival then?

PRATT: I don’t remember it.

N.M.: I think your sister was talking about....It might have started up a year or two after you were out.

PRATT: Well it might have been then. It might have been on the weekend or something, you see. I just don’t remember.

N.M.: What was town like at that time? Describe town for me.

PRATT: Hindman was booming.

N.M.: It was booming. What do you mean by that?

PRATT: Well there were people in Hindman, the streets always had people on them. Now, 20:00at five o’clock there is nobody on the streets. [Laughing] You had the hotels and you had the drugstores, which was patent medicine, it wasn’t prescription drugs, but it was a gathering place. They had a fountain, you know, and kids gathered there. You could get hot dogs and hamburgers. And then where the drugstore is in Hindman, you had Palace Lunch, and the kids danced in there, they had a Piccolo, and of course they had food. You had two poolrooms in Hindman with six tables, three in each one. And when I went to school, I took my money and went to the poolroom. 21:00If I won my games, I’d grab me something to eat and just went back to school. If I lost, I went back to school. [Laughing] N.M.: Would you just skip school and go play?

PRATT: No, we went to lunch at Hindman. In other words, you didn’t have lunch rooms then.

N.M.: You had to get your own lunch?

PRATT: Yeah. Some of them brought their lunches and some went to Hindman.

N.M.: And you’d go to Hindman and sometimes...

PRATT: I’d run for the poolroom. [Laughing] And then if I won my games, see I’d have my money left. If I lost, I didn’t have no money.

N.M.: Oh, would you play your buddies for money, or just for...?

PRATT: No, the loser had to pay the game.

N.M.: Oh, okay.

PRATT: In other words, if two were playing here, the loser had to pay for the game. 22:00The winner didn’t have to play nothing. And I said, if I won my games, it didn’t cost me anything.

N.M.: So if you won your games, you’d go get lunch.

PRATT: I’d grab a little something to eat on the way back to school.

N.M.: Was Knott county wet or dry at that time?

PRATT: It was wet.

N.M.: It was wet. Did that make it different? The town any different?

PRATT: Well, I guess that made it boom more, by being wet. People in Hindman, and they had beer and whiskey. And you probably heard about the big shoot out they had in Hindman.

N.M.: I’ve not heard this one.

PRATT: Well, there was a few of them killed. One fellow was killed walking along the street.

N.M.: How did it get started?

PRATT: I don’t know, but they were all boys from Caney. 23:00And I think, tried to arrest him or something and he ended up in a shooting match. Seem like there were about three killed.

N.M.: So could town be, at that time could town be a dangerous place to go sometimes?

PRATT: Well, I didn’t think about it as being dangerous, of course it might have been.

N.M.: Never really considered it dangerous.

PRATT: It wasn’t considered dangerous. [Laughing] N.M.: I thought so.

PRATT: Like that fellow was walking along the street and got killed, but that was the only time it happened.

N.M.: That wasn’t a common thing. 24:00Do you remember any good friends that stick out in your mind, while you were at Hindman?

PRATT: None in particular, of course I had several friends, I guess, everybody else did. [Laughing] N.M.: No best friend though, that...

PRATT: Not one in particular, I don’t guess.

N.M.: What were, what would be the things that you and your friends at that time would do, like together for fun?

PRATT: Well, you were just there during school and you caught the bus coming back home. And you just walked from class to class.

N.M.: Would you all ever get together after school though, and go do stuff?

PRATT: You didn’t have time, when school turned out, you caught the bus.

N.M.: I mean did you all ever get together on your own after school?

PRATT: Well, no, because I came home, they went 25:00to their home. We were all separated.

N.M.: You couldn’t really go to the other person’s house, could you, because then you’d have to...?

PRATT: No, I guess not. [Laughing] N.M.: It would have been difficult to get back home afterwards?

PRATT: You had Study Hall to get together, and then you were at classes together, but you didn’t have....You’d have one class with some of them and then another class with somebody else, so...

N.M.: Did they ever have any after school activities, I mean like big activities? Like where the people in the school would stay after and get together to do stuff.

PRATT: You had to catch a bus home.

N.M.: Like basketball games and stuff like that.

PRATT: You went home and then you went back to the basketball games. And then, where it was like Breathitt, they 26:00took a bus, but you had to, you didn’t go from school to the basketball game. You went home and then went.

N.M.: So if there was a game after school, you all wouldn’t just kind of hang around and wait until the game?

PRATT: No, you went home.

N.M.: You went home first.

PRATT: And back then, most people had a job to do at home.

N.M.: Did you have chores to do when you got home?

PRATT: In the winter, you had to get kindling and coal in. We had calves we fed. We had something to do. Everybody worked. [Laughing] And you were lucky to have any money to spend.

N.M.: That’s why I was asking about jobs earlier, I know sometimes, well I know all the kids who stayed at the settlement had to do a job.

PRATT: Right.

N.M.: But 27:00some people would stay, even though they didn’t stay at the settlement school, could sometimes get jobs at the settlement school working for...

PRATT: Well now, all kids were different, you see. If a man worked in the mines, his kid didn’t have to do much. If he was working on the farm, the kids had to work. In other words, you raised most of what you ate. I know we always raised a bunch of corn. He’d buy calves in the Fall and we’d winter them. And we’d have four to six, seven calves to winter. Then when Spring came, we’d sell them and make a profit on them.

N.M.: You said, now the coal miner’s kids, is that what you were saying, usually didn’t have to work? 28:00PRATT: There weren’t many of them. There weren’t but a few coal miner’s kids.

N.M.: Was that because the coal miners were making real good money at that time?

PRATT: Well, most kids didn’t work, unless they had a leader. And if the husband, their father was working in the mines, he wasn’t leading them.

N.M.: Oh, so they didn’t have to do as much.

PRATT: In other words, they didn’t raise corn. A lot of them didn’t raise a garden. In other words, he was working in the mines, and, not that wasn’t no easy job. I remember a fellow that came out of Mill Creek here, he’d catch the bus around two o’clock in the morning, going over into Floyd county to the mines.

N.M.: I don’t think I could handle that. So he’d catch the bus in the mornings at two? 29:00PRATT: Times have changed. [Laughing] N.M.: Yeah, just a bit, just a bit. Has the, has the Hindman Settlement School, and I’m using the Hindman Settlement School along with the Hindman High School, and just talking about that all together, since the settlement school provided so much, you know, for the high school. Did you think it had any impact on your life?

PRATT: Well, I guess in a way, because I had Manual Training and they furnished the machinery and the instructor for Manual Training. And of course, my Dad had just about any hand tool you wanted, but he didn’t have any power tools. 30:00We had no electricity. [Laughing] N.M.: How about the impact of the settlement on this area as a whole? Has it done anything for the area?

PRATT: I’d say quite a bit. Now a lot of these little country stores, in the winter, people didn’t have good hen houses, their chickens didn’t lay much. But in the summer when it warmed up, they started laying. It wasn’t nothing for eggs to be sixty cents a dozen in the wintertime and ten or fifteen cents a dozen in the summer. [Laughing] And a lot of people carried eggs and even garden stuff to the settlement school and sold it. 31:00N.M.: So people would get together at the settlement, to sell stuff?

PRATT: No, the settlement bought it.

N.M.: Oh, would buy it from them.

PRATT: In other words, they had their kitchen and their students they fed and so on.

N.M.: So, did they help out some of the farmers around here?

PRATT: I’d say they did. And I know in fact, I have carried eggs to the settlement school for a grocery store to sell. [Laughing] N.M.: Did the settlement, did they grow a lot of their own food?

PRATT: Well, they grew some, but....

N.M.: But they couldn’t do it all.

PRATT: No. And they had a gardener, Doc Pratt gardened for them in that bottom between that ball field you were talking about there, down toward the bridge going over to the settlement. 32:00And that was where Uncle Sol’s cabin was, right in the middle of that garden. And they tore it down and moved it over there, to where it is now, more or less on campus, I guess you’d say.

N.M.: On the main part of the campus, yeah. It was still on settlement school property, they just moved it.

PRATT: Right, it flooded. See all that property floods.

N.M.: Yeah, I was, let’s talk about that. How was that? How often would that bottom flood with those buildings?

PRATT: Well not bad, but it would flood pretty often.

N.M.: Can you ever remember not being able to go to school because it was flooded down there?

PRATT: No, not particular. But I know one of the biggest floods we had, was July the eighth, nineteen forty-two, right here. 33:00And then in fifty-seven, when they had such a big flood in Hazard, and Big Sandy. The Troublesome didn’t even get out of its banks.

N.M.: When you had the big flood in forty-two, what did it do in Hindman? Did it cover any of the stuff up down there?

PRATT: Why it was in those businesses there in Hindman on Main Street, and it’s been in those businesses more than once there in Hindman, where the t( ) bridge is there. It covered, it didn’t cover Main Street all the way down through there now, but I’d say down close to Gerald Alley there, it covered Main Street.

N.M.: So it can get up pretty high.

PRATT: In other words, up there at the bridge, it would probably be three feet over Main Street.

N.M.: Stop this first. 34:00END OF INTERVIEW