Oral History Interview with Harold Watts

CASSIE MULLINS: So if we need to change the microphones we can, but I think they are okay. Yeah. Today's date is August the third, nineteen ninety-eight. Just go ahead and state your name.

HAROLD WATTS: Harold Watts.

C.M.: Okay let's just start off, I like to start off getting kind of, so we can get to know each other, just tell me where you grew up and a little bit about your family.

WATTS: I grew up here in Knott County, in the general vicinity, of a mile or a mile and a half. What else?

C.M.: Do you have any brothers and sisters?

WATTS: I've got one brother, who's dead, two sisters who have died. 1:00C.M.: What did your parents do when you were growing up?

WATTS: Well, my Dad did several different things. He was supervisor for the WPA, which was the Public Works Administration started under President Roosevelt. And he built some roads and he built the Carr Creek High School.

C.M.: Oh, okay.

WATTS: Out of stone, out of native sandstone. And he did some carpentry work, and he ran a store probably the last fifteen years of his life. He died in nineteen sixty-seven at the age of sixty-two. And my mother, she was a housewife, and raised kids.

C.M.: Yeah, that's a big job.

WATTS: Typical 2:00Eastern Kentucky housewife.

C.M.: Yeah, well I guess let's talk a little bit about your school years. Where did you go to grade school? Did you always go up at Hindman?

WATTS: No, I went the first six years, I went to the one-room schoolhouse at the mouth of Owens Branch, it's a stone building. It is a residence now, I think. I went the first six years, of that first six, I think I went about a year and a half at Carr Creek while my Dad was building the high school over there.

C.M.: So then you came, I guess what year did you come up to Hindman then, seventh or eighth grade?

WATTS: I started seventh grade in nineteen and forty-two.

C.M.: Okay.

WATTS: And I had an appendectomy, a ruptured appendectomy that year, so I started seventh grade and I went a month, and we were playing some basketball on the 3:00old dirt court there and I accidentally got pushed off, over a stone wall, down to the next court below that. So I had to lay out of school that year. My appendix, where the surgery was, opened back up again.

C.M.: Yeah.

WATTS: And I started the eighth grade, started the seventh grade the following year, and I guess due to my grades, and maybe some sympathy they let me skip seventh grade after one month and I moved up to the eighth grade.

C.M.: Well that's good, back with your friends.

WATTS: Caught back up with my friends and so on.

C.M.: Well, I guess let's talk a little bit about going to school at Hindman. You didn't live on the settlement school campus did you?

WATTS: No, no.

C.M.: So, did you ride the bus or did you walk?

WATTS: I walked. I lived right across from here. There a little hollow over here called Short Branch.

C.M.: Yeah.

WATTS: And at that time, if you lived within a half a mile of the city limits, 4:00you had to walk. If you lived within a mile, you had to walk. If lived a mile or outside of a mile radius, why you rode the school bus.

C.M.: But you got to walk.

WATTS: Yeah, we got to walk and skate down the Troublesome Creek in the wintertime when it was frozen over. At that time, you could skate all the way to high school.

C.M.: Really? How long would it take you when you were walking?

WATTS: Oh, probably take about fifteen minutes.

C.M.: Hmm. That's not too bad, I guess.

WATTS: No, no.

C.M.: So, what did you all do when the water was up? Was school called off?

WATTS: Well the school might not be called off. I really don't remember missing over maybe two days of school, for snow, flooding or anything else in the four years that I went to Hindman High School.

C.M.: Now they miss for everything in the world. [Laughter] That's wild. Well talking, since you didn't 5:00live on the campus, I'm trying, I have different questions kind of, for different people. What was downtown like? Or what, I guess, what did you do in Hindman when you wanted to hang out with your buddies or something?

WATTS: The town itself?

C.M.: Yeah.

WATTS: Well we....The town really, Hindman really was pretty active at that time.

C.M.: Was it?

WATTS: Yeah. On Court Days...

C.M.: So this would have been in the forties?

WATTS: Yeah I started high school in forty-four.

C.M.: Okay.

WATTS: And graduated in eighty-eight. Forty-eight.

C.M.: Forty-eight, okay. What about Court Day?

WATTS: In Court Days everybody would ride their horses and mules or whatever they rode to town. There were cars then, but that was the day they did all the trading and everything, you know. They'd trade any kind of merchandise or trade their horses or whatever. So, the town was really jumping on Court Days. It was full. 6:00But basically what we did for entertainment, you know, there would be three or four restaurants maybe. Later on Joe Kilgore had a restaurant where the MightyMart is now.

C.M.: Oh, okay.

WATTS: And Josephine Cornett's mother, Sally Gayhart had a restaurant upstairs close to where Young's Department Store was. And then there was a little restaurant on the corner, right where Max Cody's store is now. There was a little restaurant there. And then there was one they called Palace Lunch, which was opposite the Courthouse.

C.M.: Wow, there was a bunch of places down there.

WATTS: Yeah. And then there was a drugstore, I don't know which building that was, what's in that building right now, 7:00but it was next door to the bank, bank building. And later on there was a little restaurant called, The Hole In The Wall, which was right close to where the store is, I think it used to be an IGA store. And then at the end of that period, there was one that Joe Kilgore and Sarah Kilgore ran, where the Mighty Mart is.

C.M.: Oh yeah, I think somebody else mentioned that one too.

WATTS: And that's where they would have juke boxes in, that's generally where boys and girls, kind of, what they called courted at that time. You know they would have booths and they would go in and play the juke box and drink coke and dance a little bit or whatever.

C.M.: So I mean, that's one thing I've been kind of asking people about, how 8:00did you date somebody then? Because I mean I don't guess you'd just take off to Hazard or anything, like people do now.

WATTS: No. Yeah a lot of people do now, but then practically no one had a car to drive at a young age.

C.M.: Yeah.

WATTS: Their parents might have a car, but you didn't drive it too much. Well, sometimes we'd kind of sneak over to the settlement school and get run off. We'd try to visit girls there.

C.M.: What so, you weren't supposed to, if you didn't live there, were you not supposed to be over there?

WATTS: No. Well and then girls....well you just were not allowed on campus, you know, after dark. But the girls would sneak out and the boys would maybe be across the bridge or something, until the security guard found you and ran you off.

C.M.: Well I guess from your perspective since you didn't live on campus. 9:00I guess kind of what was your all's feeling toward the kids that did live on campus? Or the rules? Because it was different.

WATTS: Well, you know, we all went to school together and we mixed together. But they were pretty well, they had only certain times that they could go off campus. I guess they got to leave on the weekends to go visit their parents or go visit relatives and so on. But generally you always found time to, if you wanted to talk during the school day on campus, you know, at the high school itself. To me, it seemed like everyone got along, communicated and got along real well, whether you were staying on campus or whether you were 10:00off campus students.

C.M.: Yeah, I hadn't heard anything like that, but I, just I know how people are, you know, you can perceive that as being a little bit different. Not a lot different, like you said, because you all still went to school together. I know that they probably had more rules to follow.

WATTS: Well you know everyone identified with them as settlement school students.

UNKNOWN: You made it back?

C.M.: Yeah, finally, finally did. [Laughing] Well another thing I was going to ask you about is, you said you graduated in forty-eight, right?

WATTS: Uh hmm.

C.M.: Because one thing we've been trying to kind of find out about is after or even during the war and after the war, 11:00how that affected this area. And that would have been when you were growing up, before you were in high school, or maybe just about around that time.

WATTS: Yeah, well World War Two started in December nineteen forty-one and was over in forty-five, so I was in high school two of the years, two ending years of the war.

C.M.: Yeah, I guess...

WATTS: And you had some veterans that came back really and started into school. You might be, see I graduated when I was sixteen.

C.M.: Wow.

WATTS: I was going to high school with veterans that were twenty-two, twenty-five years old, you know, there's, we probably had four or five veterans in our graduating class.

C.M.: You mean that had fought and then come back to go to school? Wow.

WATTS: Yeah. There was quite an age difference.

C.M.: Yeah, nobody had ever told me about that, about that happening. I guess kind of, what, 12:00I mean, I don't even know exactly what question to ask. What was it like during that time, when the war was starting, because this is such a small town and I mean people were going off, you know, to fight in this.

WATTS: You know, all through the war, it was a continuous thing, people becoming of age to be drafted or they would volunteer and they would leave. It was quite a, there was a lot of depressing times at that time. Everyone was very patriotic, they followed the war real closely. It seemed to me, of course I was relatively young then, but it seemed to me that it brought the community together. Because everyone had relatives and they had a common thing that they were concerned about.

C.M.: Right.

WATTS: Not just winning the war, but with their own relatives and citizens of the town. And a few of them were getting killed 13:00all the time, too.

C.M.: What was that like, having those guys come back and being in school with you? I can't imagine. It would be kind of like....

WATTS: Well, I can only speak for myself.

C.M.: Right.

WATTS: It seemed to me like, you know, that they were, a sixteen year old looking at a veteran, that was just almost like you were looking at your father. Really, it was more of a fatherhood figure, than it was a co-student.

C.M.: Yeah, I'd say that would be different, a lot different.

WATTS: And some of them played on the basketball team, you know. They would be playing before they entered the Army, then they would come back and finish out their high school career and graduate and play basketball at the same time. Of course basketball was about the only sport that was played school wide.

C.M.: Let’s talk about that a little bit, because I’ve heard some good stories about, I mean about how popular 14:00it was. Did you play on the team?

WATTS: No, I was too small. When I was a sophomore in high school, I was real young. I was only 5'2" and only weighed a hundred and two pounds.

C.M.: You were small. [Laughing] WATTS: So, I grew up in the last two years. We played basketball, but not on the organized team. Hindman had, they really excelled in basketball at that time. I know in my, in nineteen thirty-nine, they were runners up in the State Tournament. In forty-three, they won the State Tournament, and probably went to the Tournament at least one other time, while I was in high school. And Pearl Combs, you know, he was a young coach at that time. He started coaching in the, maybe, thirty-five to thirty-seven, nineteen thirty-five to thirty-seven. And I wrote an article 15:00on the basketball at Hindman High School in our school annual. And I can’t remember exactly, but it seemed to me like that time, just the time Pearl came we won thirty-five trophies, you know, either connected with the District, Regional or State Tournament.

C.M.: Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah, a lot of people have always, seems like in every interview people have mentioned about the basketball.

WATTS: Yeah, and you know we didn’t have a large gymnasium. I’d say it probably wouldn’t have held over a thousand people, if it held that many. But it was a high pitched event. 16:00There was always, if we lost, the referee, like it is today, the referee took the game from us. And sometimes that would get into fisticuffs at times, even among the fans, and sometimes you’d have to guard the referee when he came off the court.

C.M.: Well nothing’s changed then, has it? That’s funny. Let’s talk a little bit about, maybe some teachers you had when you were in, I guess mainly in high school, or even in eighth grade that you remember, who are some that stand out in your mind?

WATTS: Well, you know I started seventh and went a month. And Clarence Woods was the principal of the grade school, as I recall. And Bennie Dyer taught. Clarence was my teacher in the eighth grade, as I recall. And he was the one who moved me from the seventh on up to the eighth. We had some wonderful teachers 17:00at the high school. And some of the teachers that taught there even stayed at the settlement, you know. They weren’t even native Kentuckians. Two of the teachers, there was a Miss Jamison that taught English Literature, and she was a wonderful teacher. She was from Pennsylvania, but she stayed on campus at the settlement school. And then I think her first name was Clara, but Mrs. Standish ran the library. She also did some teaching. Each year we would have clubs that we could, it was electives, that we could enter. And there was a Mrs. Bradley that taught Art, and was a good Art teacher. And the Music Club. I can’t, 18:00I’ll think of her name maybe in a minute, that taught piano.

C.M..: Was it Mrs. White?

WATTS: Mrs. White. And we had Archery Club. Harriet Slone.

C.M.: Oh really?

WATTS: There was an English teacher, you know these were just kind of off the cuff organized clubs. They changed from year to year.

C.M.: That’s pretty neat though, I mean that you all had that.

WATTS: And Harriet Slone was the Archery teacher, she had probably taken an Archery Club or maybe an elective in college, when she was going to college. So she taught that. We had a Country Music Club, people would play the banjo, the guitar. And had a Home Ec Club with B. Smith. You know, Billy and I were, we were the only two boys that I think ever joined the Home Ec Club. [Laughing] C.M.: Oh, you all did join it?

WATTS: I think we joined 19:00it so we could be around some girls. [Laughing] I don’t remember either one of us learning how to do any cooking.

C.M.: Well, there’s nothing wrong with that. [Laughing] WATTS: And Mrs. Orric taught that. She taught Home Ec. And Mrs. Orric also was the chaperone of the cheerleading teams. And....I’m trying to think of some of the other clubs. We had a Photography Club. They gave us a little darkroom in the Chemistry Lab and develop, you know, curtain it off and develop pictures. But kind of an interesting story about myself, getting back to the Art Club where Mrs. Bradley taught Art. And you know Art is a free hand course. The first day of the Art class, 20:00I had a ruler and we were drawing, we were supposed to sketch Uncle Sol’s cabin. Well, I had a ruler, and I was making all straight lines for the eaves. And drawing a perfect picture, Miss Bradley came around and said, Harold, you’ve got to, in Art it’s all free hand. You can’t use a ruler. And I thought about that for a couple of three days, and I went to Miss Bradley and I said, I just don’t believe I have the gift of being an artist. [Laughing] And as it turns out, Mrs. Standish had organized and started a Latin class, so by doing that, I moved to Latin. And I had two years of Latin, which served me well in years to come. And she taught it in the library. We probably had six or eight students at the most.

C.M.: So did you do these clubs, was this after school or was it like during...?

WATTS: During school, uh huh.

C.M.: Oh that’s neat.

WATTS: But the Latin club was not a club. The 21:00Art was not a club either, it was a class that was taught. And the piano music was classes that were taught. I’ve always been glad, since I never would have been too good in art, that I did move over to the Latin class.

C.M.: Yeah, that is probably better.

WATTS: And really Hindman, well I might be jumping around too...

C.M.: No, that’s fine, go ahead.

WATTS: Hindman High School really had a good curriculum at that time. We had Chemistry, we had, I guess, Plane Geometry, and you know at that time, you had several courses in math that you took, Algebra and General Math, 22:00English Literature and English Composition, Science. So for Eastern Kentucky, and later on going to college, you talked to fellow students and about all you talked to had the Chemistry classes and so on, they could take in high school. But I think you asked me about the teachers, and I started telling you about some of them. We had an outstanding group of teachers. Ralph Carter taught Plane Geometry, and we all, you know we had Homeroom each day too. And he was a Homeroom teacher of mine, for, I think two years. And Claude Caylor that taught Science, Joe D. Adams 23:00who taught Chemistry. And Pearl Combs was in Algebra and Math. And Pearl had a unique way of teaching, you know he was a basketball coach. But he was a, he majored in Math in college.

C.M.: Oh, okay, I didn’t know that.

WATTS: And he was a great math teacher. But he would pick out one or two of the students in the class and they always graded his papers, which was unusual.

C.M.: Yeah, that is pretty unusual.

WATTS: And not only was he, giving some students some training. He was training them in responsibility too. We had Mrs. Grover, who, I’m not sure, but I think maybe she was interim Principal, between maybe 24:00Williams and Litton Singleton. And she was interim Principal at that time, for part of a school year. And I can’t remember, I think maybe she was from Pennsylvannia. But I do know, you know, that was at the end of World War II, shortly after they organized the United Nations. I can’t remember exactly what she taught, but she did have a, you couldn’t call it an elective for the students that were interested. She just volunteered to have how ever many students wanted to do it. And I think there was about five of us and we studied the organization of the United Nations.

C.M.: That’s pretty neat.

WATTS: As a high school student, tried to look through it 25:00with their eyes, what we thought the benefits would come from and so on. And we kept up with current events too. That wasn’t a credit course, but it was part of the teaching.

C.M.: Sounds like you all had a lot of different opportunities like you were saying.

WATTS: Oh yeah, yeah, it was a well rounded curriculum, and also, not just the curriculum but like the clubs, which probably those clubs would substitute for intermural sports today.

C.M.: Yeah, sounds like it.

WATTS: And then we’d have gymnastics and that type of elective course we’d take also. I was trying to think of some of the other teachers, but 26:00that pretty well covers most of them that were teaching at the time I was there.

C.M.: Okay. One thing I ask people, and this is kind of hard to answer too. About, I don’t know like, I know there are things that stand out in my mind, like stories that I have from high school. Like maybe things that happened when I was in school, that always stand out in my mind. I didn’t know if there was anything like that, that when you think back on your days going to Hindman, you know, even if it was just something that happened one day at school, things like that. Or things that you all did together.

WATTS: Well some of the things that maybe, for example, the Christmas season. We would, as I recall, I don’t know where the candy 27:00and different things were, but there would be a little play put on for the parents and the community, or town or whatever. And whoever was the drama teacher, or if there wasn’t a drama teacher, they would take some students for the cast of the play. Those were events that I really think the whole town remembered, at that time. And they would also, like I say, have candy. They’d come see the drama and then they could also give the children candy and different things. I think, one thing that I always go back to, and it is connected with the settlement, you know I told you, it was probably only two or three days at best. But we did have a, all the heat and 28:00everything froze up. We had steam furnaces, radiators in the rooms and that was, steam was made by the furnace in the basement of the high school. But it got so cold that the furnaces, the radiators themselves froze up. So we didn’t have school. It seemed that half of the high school, you know, we weren’t having school, the ones that lived, you know, within walking distance, we all headed to the settlement school. There was snow on the ground and we rode sleighs and sleds the day long. We got to co-mingle with the girls that were staying there and the boys too.

C.M.: That would be pretty fun.

WATTS: That was kind of a time, that was sort of a recreation day that you...That’s the only one I remember in all the time I was in high school, where anything like that happened.

C.M.: Now 29:00it snows and you don’t have school and things. Did you all, did that happen much? Even if it didn’t snow, did you all go over to the campus and play much?

WATTS: No, no.

C.M.: You didn’t? Okay.

WATTS: That was during the school days, we were going to school. And after school was out, that was kind of off hours for anyone.

C.M.: Yeah, that’s true. Well, after you finished high school, what did you do?

WATTS: Well, I got a scholarship, an Engineering scholarship at the University of...

END OF INTERVIEW