Coal Heritage - The Oral History of Terry Steele
Standing at the edge of his yard, Terry Steele points into an area of small stumps and grass descending to the lower valley. “I wanted to have a small apple orchard so I cut out a little bit of the woods here. It’s probably third growth forest.” Terry and his wife Wilma have spent the last four years building a home and working on their new property in Nettie, West Virginia, just north of the Gauley River. “Matewan is my home, it’s where I grew up” Terry says, “But it’s beautiful up here.” He takes in a deep breath and stares out over the rolling hills towards Beech Mountain.
Terry spent his life working in the underground coal mines of Southern West Virginia. After 27 years he retired, but the impacts of such a rigorous job are still evident in his breathing and stiffening joints. “Come on, let’s head down this way. I want to show you all the cliffs.” Despite the wear and tear on his body, Terry moves with purpose, enjoying the woodlands and fresh air. “We own about 20 acres altogether. I got a real good deal on it.” The trail opens up to a large field, reminiscent of a pasture. “I don’t own this, but our neighbors who do are good people. He told me they used to plant this entire area in corn.” At the lower edge of the field another trail begins, descending to a rocky bluff within a grove of hemlocks, then to a creek flowing clear beneath the darkness of the hemlocks. “This is what all the streams in Appalachia once looked like. The rocks. The clear water.” Terry’s admiration of nature is seen in the way he looks at the forest and the plants beneath.
Two weeks later Terry sits inside of an old storefront in his hometown of Matewan, West Virginia watching a commotion of people. The noon sun bleaches the floor at his feet where recently removed floor tiles reveal patterns of grooved adhesive stretching the length of the narrow store space of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. A variety of folding tables hold jars of money seeking donations that will select the main photo to display at the front of the completed museum. Volunteers rush in and out the door with food and other miscellaneous items. It is the first open house, a chance for the public to comment on the progress of the museum and to vote on potential display layouts, carpet colors, and photo displays.
“We’ve been working on this for a while,” Terry says, taking it all in with a degree of satisfaction, but his thoughts seem nevertheless distant. He stands up, a bit anxious, “Let’s me show you the union hall.”
Matewan has seemed to change little in the past 90 years, the many new vehicles parked in spaces along the way could have just as easily been lined with Model A and Model T Fords with the infamous coal company hired Baldwin-Felts Agents strolling around in suits, toting guns. The history of the town is still pervasive, the marks of the Matewan Massacre held within the bricks of the storefronts. It is alive, even more so in Terry’s sense of coal mining heritage that contrasts with the blue metal roof and landscaping of the new union hall.
“This is it, Local 1410, once the largest union local in the United Mine Workers.” The words Terry speaks are filled with a pride few could understand, a heritage passed down to him through the United Mine Workers and a century of struggle against exploitative industries. It’s a heritage that is rapidly fading as local schools mention little of local history, often having been persuaded to teach a watered down version of the mine wars through programs such as the Coal Education Development and Resources. Terry and his wife Wilma, a retired school teacher, know all too well the influence coal corporations have had in local schools and the people of the Central Appalachian Coalfields.
Terry Speaks:
I’m from a little old town by the name of Matewan. It’s in the southern part of West Virginia on the Kentucky border. It’s the town in which the Matewan Massacre[i] took place. It’s also the land where the Hatfield-McCoy feud took place, along the Tug River. The coal mining wars to establish the union took place along a lot of the places I grew up. It was a lot of neglected history, not taught to the people of the area. I didn’t learn a lot of it until I had already graduated school.
I graduated from Matewan High School. I went away for a little while in Columbus and eventually ended up back home and went to work in a furniture factory for about a year. At that time there was actually a furniture factory, believe it or not, in Mingo County. Course we made it and it was shipped out to North Carolina. I think it was about $1.60 an hour is what I made. By this time I was married. I married my high school sweetheart and, like any young people, you struggle with when you’re making a dollar sixty an hour back in the late 60s and early 70s.
My dad was a coal miner for Island Creek Coal Company, a local coal company. At that time it was probably the most dominant coal company in Mingo and Logan counties. I got a job with Island Creek Coal Company which started my mining career that lasted for almost 27 year. I guess you would say it was good in ways. In other ways, the toll it takes on your health when it’s happening is the same thing that has happened to thousands of miners. If you don’t get killed outright a lot of times, for the rest of the life you bare a burden of something you bring out of the mines with you that you didn’t even know you’d brought out[ii].
During that 27 year period, or almost 27 year period, I worked for Island Creek Coal Company. For almost six or seven year I was with Island Creek at mine 14 that was located at Delbarten. From there I went to a company at Glen Allen by the name of Energy Development. Now Glen Allen is another little town that if you do any research on you’ll find hit’s got a little history with it to. Had its own schools and theatres and everything, and now I think they’s about three houses in the community. If there is a future with coal, someone needs to see if Glen Allen had a future with it.
I worked at this place for three or four year and it eventually shut down. This was in the late 70s. I went to Kentucky in Pike County at V&M Coal Company. These are all union mines[iii], that I’m naming right now. The last mine that I worked for was Old Ben Coal Company. I was almost 26, 27 year in the mines when we’d worked the mine out[iv]. From there I never worked in the mine anymore. I couldn’t get a job at anymore union mines after that neither. The union in Mingo County and Logan County, and all around these areas were nonexistent anymore. I didn’t want to work in non-union mines anymore. I didn’t see any point. I was getting up later years in life so I worked painting some again and doing some carpenter work and things until I come eligible for my miner’s pension. Course now I draw social security also. But, that pretty well sums up my mining history, my work history I guess you would say.
There’s certain mines you enjoyed working at more than others, just like there certain people you enjoy working with more than others. In the mines a lot of my time was spent on a move crew. If anybody’s ever had anything to deal with mining, move crew is basically a lot of physical labor, a lot of back breaking labor. Moving belts[v], moving power[vi] at times, and then running coal also if the shift was broke down and you come on you had to run coal. You basically had to do everything. Most of my time was spent on what we call the Hoot owl shift. We went to work at some places at 11 o’clock at night and worked till 8 in the morning, or 12 at night till 9. Basically 9, 10 hours a day. I got used to sleeping during the day and I still yet have problems now. I wanna stay up late at night and sleep during the day, which is not, especially in the winter time, is not a good habit. It’s one that’s hard to break.
I liked the men that I worked with. Some of them I’ll never forget. Some of em you do forget as time goes on, but the ones you spend a lot of time with you… uh…..you….you know you’ll never forget em….some of em’s been killed in the industry. I worked with one boy who was one of the twenty-nine miners that got killed at Upper Big Branch[vii]. Joe Marcum. Me and him worked together at Energy Development. He was a good guy. I didn’t stay in touch with him much after that, but when he got killed, it hurt…. They’s people that you will never forget because you spent probably more time with them than you did with your own family. So yea they was a closeness with the workers.
Back when the union was strong, we knew who the enemy was. The enemy was not so called “tree huggers” or people who’ve talked about coal companies polluting something. That wasn’t the enemy. We knew that the enemy, if there was an enemy, was the coal company in itself. Although we worked for them, we knew it was just a job. We didn’t worship em, which is what we are doing now. Now, the people who used to be good union people and understood that this was just a place to work, and knew when the company got the chance would kick you in the ass, now they have Friends of Coal signs instead of union signs in their yards.
A friend of a coal. Who is a friend of coal? Coal’s a rock. That’s the first damn thing we need to understand. But a Friend of Coal, if you look who these people really are, they’re people who are willing to bust all of your things your union has fit for—like your safety rights—the things that keep you alive underground. These are people that’s trying to destroy that—the very people that tries to destroy that. The people that shit in your water and tell you it’s alright. These are the same people who are willing to cut your rates, take your healthcare, take your grandparents or your parents or dad’s or mine, take your social security away from ya, your pension away from ya. They’re [Friends of Coal] damn sure not on our side, and I’m talking about the side of the working poor or the working people. They’re not for those. Friends of coal, yea they’re friend of the coal. They’re friend of the rock. They damn sure ain’t friend of the people who mine the rock. But we don’t understand that. We vote for those who will take what we have to live on when we get done working, if we can survive to get outside the job to start with.
We may call ourselves more educated now, but at least the older people understand who in the hell was the enemy. Those people understood that. We have forgot. We…we, think we don’t need unions anymore. “Unions are something the past” yea “There was at time.” Then you keep hearing something else, “Well the unions are good but they brought it on theirself,” you know “They wouldn’t work and do this and that.” Well they were cases of that, but they were more rare than what people thought. During the 80s and the 90s they wouldn’t unions like that. We worked our damned ass off, and all we had got in return was more of this talk, more of the propaganda “You brought it on yourself.” No we didn’t bring it on ourselves. They [coal companies] seen an opening and they took advantage of it. As long as human beings are alive, they will always be need for the union. The only thing that brings greed into check for the poor man is the union. Education would certainly come in in that. Everybody will not always work at a job where you use your brain and your head. I mean, we always should, but they’s always gonna be jobs where you use your back and you use your hands and you should have rights. That doesn’t mean you’re stupid, because you use your hands and your back to make a living. And sometimes the only time that rights can be protected is by unions. Or we can do what we are doing now in this country—we send those jobs overseas and have slave labor do it, and we act like it don’t exist.
We act like we’re good Christian people now, “We don’t treat people like that.” We just buy those products from people that are treated like that. And they’re overseas so we can’t see em. And they’re not union so we don’t need no union over here, ya know. Which is another form [of slavery]….it’s bull****. If we’d just look at it a little deeper and let the water clear a little so we could see, we can see this s**t. It’s wrong. And what makes it wrong is you’re still kicking the people over here in the ass…. The weaker the union gets the weaker your standard of living gets, and they’s reason for that. That’s cause we think we can get along with big people who have greed on their mind telling us, “Well it’s my plant. Why should you have a voice?” Well as long as I’m sticking my damned head under that rock[viii] for you, I should have a voice. As long as my hand goes under that lathe, I should have a voice. The working man ought to always have a voice and the union was the voice at that time, because it lets us come together. Sometimes the only time that we’re heard is when we come together--and the union lets us come together.
You can see some of this started even back during the 80s and 90s when they used to bring you in for conferences. They’d tell you “Now boys, this is who we’re competing against. We’re competing against coal from out west that they’re scooping up seams that are 60 foot high and they’re just dumping it in railroad cars, and most of that is done by non-union labor and this how much they’ve got in a ton of coal and this is what we’re competing against.” Or “We’re competing against the mine down the road here who is non-union and they’re working for this and this, and we gotta compete against them, now how do we do this?” This is where some of this started, and this brings me back to one other thing I’d like to say about it, it gets us back again to the Department of Mines and Minerals who came and give us our training at Old Ben Coal Company in, I think the year was about 96, I believe.
We had to take our annual training[ix], and course we had about 200 men working there so they had six or seven instructors and we were rotating from haulage[x], and electrical, and ventilation, going through different departments and then, we came into that class and of course, they was about 20 of us and the instructor was going over what causes accidents in the mines. Not only what causes em, but what time of day they happen, what shift they were happening on, and all kinds of statistics, I mean you would not believe. So I just raised my hand and said, “What’s the difference between the accident rates at union and non-union mines?”
Good question, which anyone in their right mind shoulda had that one down. They didn’t. He said, “We don’t deal with that, we don’t keep a statistic on that.” I said, "Well to me you might as well wiped your ass on all these other statistics you just read me, because that shoulda been the first one that you’d ever looked at." These are the guys we are competing against [non-union], why are they outdoing us? How can they load more coal than we’re doing, and we’ve got as good of equipment as they’ve got—as gooda men? Why are they doing it? They’re breaking the God Damn law, that’s how! That’s why they’re doing it. But we don’t keep statistics on them breaking the law ya know.
The whole point on all of this as far as union and non-union is, someone asked me one time, “What the greatest thing about being in the union? Is it the wages you get? Is it your healthcare?...Is it that?” And that’s good but I don’t think that’s the greatest thing about being in the union. The greatest thing about being in the union is having the damn right to say, “I’m not going under that damn rock that’s ready to fall” or “I’m not going up in that dust until it’s cleared out.” It’s being able to speak your mind without the threat of being fired for doing it. That’s the greatest thing for a union. And someone would say “Well you could do that at a non-union mine,” that “The federal law gives you a right not to go into unsafe working conditions.” Do it, go ahead and do it a time or two and see if they ain’t somebody replace you here[xi]. They’ll come up with something or another on you in a day or two that you’ll not have your job. Or if they shut that mine down and go to another place they’ll look back and say, “Yeaaa. He run his lip a little bit hear back six months ago. Let’s not take him. We can get somebody else that’s a little bit more loyal.” So that’s a little bit of common sense we seem to forget. If you don’t understand that, you need to work in a damn mine and try it.
Some of the older miners, they lived within their means. They realized that if you didn’t live within your means, that you’d be out on the street. Some of our younger miners do not seem to have grasped this. They go in debt. They buy new trucks, big motorcycles, four wheelers, houses. They’re always out eating at fast food restaurants. And then you wonder what kind of savings do they have? Well they not only don’t have any savings, they live from payday to payday and they can’t hardly make it. I know some that’s working in the mines now that can’t make it payday to payday without bumming off their parents. Now when it becomes that bad, we either didn’t teach this generation something another they need to learn, or they have bought into so much propaganda that they’re so blind they don’t even know tomorrow exists. So maybe that’s why their following this Friends of Coal stuff. I mean, how many bankruptcies did you see back in the 50’s and 60’s? I didn’t hardly hear tell of bankruptcies until later on in life, you know, people filing for bankruptcy and stuff. Now days you can pick up the Charleston Gazette and it’s full, a whole line of em, and chances are you’ll know some of em as you pick it up and look. But if you’re gonna keep a living, you need to see what the future really does hold—if that black rock really does hold a future for ya.
We got some pretty good examples around us what kinda future it holds. If you live in Mingo and Logan county. You can just look at yourselves really. But if you wanna get a better picture you can drive up in McDowell County and get a real good view of what that black rock future is. We don’t realize what’s really important in life. What is important to us in life? Is it having a motorcycle? Big fancy four wheel drive? Eating out all the time? Is that what you want outta life? Kinda like you’re missing something. You’re definitely missing something.
My dad never encouraged me to go in a coal mine. Although he got me a job in the mine, he left it entirely up to me. He wanted me to go on to college when I graduated, but going on to college woulda been a far fetch to. Some people were prepared for nothing but coal mining and I was one of em. I amounted to what they thought I was gonna amount to…a coal miner.
Education is probably one of the things that hinders people in the coalfields. The guidance counselor at Matewan High School, which was Arnold Mallet, a preacher at Red Jacket Community Church and a good guy, never consulted or called in or talked about my future in any way afar as going on to school—and I made the honor roll most of the time. I wouldn’t the brightest person in the school, but I certainly wasn’t one that couldn’t have been taught. It’s not only me, it’s thousands of people like me that grew up in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. So we ended up being something else that somebody else thought we shoulda been. You know the lack of education I think has led to a lot of this, and I cannot really see that much change, even now in these communities.
We have a program in Matewan now that’s the CEDAR[xii] program. It’s a coal program where we take the kids in and we actually give them money. Hell we actually pay these kids to enter in these projects—coal projects—showing you how great coal is and what coal does and all this. It’s not unlike the science fair and geography fairs where kids come in and people compete and go on, but with those no money’s involved. Coal companies all sponsor em. The people who sell things to coal companies sponsor em. I think some of the banks maybe even actually sponsor em, and the chamber of commerce. All these people who have always had the “miners heart” at hand, sponsors these things. That’s sarcasm there if anybody don’t know… But this is the education that we are putting on, and I’d guarantee if you’d ask most the kids who are graduating schools in these counties if they believe in climate change, I bet most of em don’t even believe in climate change. And if they do they think it’s not man made. I’d bet you some money that our kids are along with the flat earthers[xiii] that we believe that climate change is something that really don’t involve us. And it’s from the lack of education and some more of the propaganda of the people. Why are we this way in the coal fields? And I think it’s going on yet. But it’s coming to halt, whether we like it or not.
I’ve probably said this stuff a thousand times to people who would listen, and I’ve said it a thousand times to people who don’t want to hear it. I went to permit hearings[xiv] where there’s been 500 coal miners who didn’t want to hear anything I wanna say. Some of em even threatened to whoop my ass for what I said. I said it any how cause I think it’s the truth. One thing I always get is, “Why do you take the stand you take? You’re a damn retired coal miner. You draw your pension from the coal mines. Why are you fighting us?” I’m not fighting them. I’m fighting for my own health and I’m fighting or a better future. They may not understand that but that’s what I’m fighting for and hell maybe my pension will get took[xv]. I hope not, I mean I’m hoping that the federal program that pensions are guaranteed under at least 75 percent of em will pick us up and take care of us. But if it’s up to taking my damn pension or giving me a pension while you destroy the earth, I think the earth’s a little more important than my pension.
I love the mountains. I’ve been digging ginseng[xvi] and been in the mountains for over fifty year, just digging ginseng and things when I can. So anyone who knows what grows in the mountains don’t want to see the mountains destroyed, and I’m talking about mountain top removal[xvii]. Where I live in Mingo in Southern West Virginia an Eastern Kentucky it is the dominant form of mining that’s taking place right now. I think it’s what someone once described as scrapping the sides out of the peanut butter jar to get the last bit of peanut butter. I think that’s a pretty good definition of what it is.
In early 2000 we had some problems with some coal companies where I lived on May Creek that made environmentalists out of us. I became involved with fighting coal companies because they had locked us out of a track of land we owned in the head of a holler and destroyed our property and wells. We eventually sold the land to the coal companies.
We had never had any dealings with any kind of regulation or the people who regulate coal companies, like the DEP, Department of Environmental Protection. I always thought that these people were for the citizens and would protect you when you had a complaint. Course we found out very quickly these people were basically another mouthpiece for coal companies that the tax payers provided a job for, that kicks you in the ass again after the coal company gets done kicking you in the ass. That’s my definition of what they are. And I came to that simply because of what we went through by dealing with these people when we were locked out of our land and we eventually had to sell our land. They made environmentalists out of us I guess you could say or, not environmentalists, they made activists out of us.
I like to tell everybody when I’m talking to them that I’m something a lot of coal miners are not right now. I consider myself an environmentalist in the sense that I’ve got enough sense to know that although my pension and my healthcare comes from coal, that coal as we know it is not what it was at once, and it will never be what it was at once. As soon as we realize that coal is not the future for Appalachia, or any part of the world as far as I’m concerned, the better off we will be. I think I’ve always been an environmentalists, but as far as an activist, the only activism I ever done was sit on my ass and talk about it on the porch. But after that, it kinda made us realize that we was gonna have to get off the porch and do some other things to stop some of this stuff that was going on. We have been involved in doing that, me and my wife, and my grandson for the last, at least ten year, maybe a little longer. It is longer, we’ve been fighting probably 15 year now. That’s, as far as all this dealing with coal, how I think about coal.
Footnotes
[i] The Matewan Massacre, a gun fight between coal company hire mercenaries, local authorities, and union coal miners occurred on May 19, 1920 and resulted in the death of 10 men.
[ii] Coal miners often suffer from Coal Workers Pneumoconiosis, also known as Black Lung, a degenerative disease caused by inhaling coal dust. Coal miners are also more susceptible to long term joint and back injuries.
[iii] United Mine Workers of America
[iv] Working a mine out means all the coal was retrieved and the mine was closed permanently.
[v] Conveyor belts that hauled coal to the outside of the mine.
[vi] Underground mobile electrical substations also known as power centers that receive high voltage input stepping it down to lower voltages usable for underground electrically powered mining machinery.
[vii] The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster occurred on April 5, 2010, an explosion that killed 28 coal miners. Various mine officials have since been indicted and prosecuted for harboring unsafe working conditions and failures to maintain safety protocols that ultimately led to the disaster.
[viii] “Sticking your head under a rock” is local slang for working in an underground coal mine.
[ix] As part of the 1977 Federal Mine Safety & Health Act, mandatory training of coal miners was included and required coal miners to undergo a minimum of 8 hours of annual training, often referred to locally as “re-training.”
[x] Haulage refers to the movement of coal and supplies using various equipment including underground railway systems, rubber tired vehicles, and conveyor belts.
[xi] Right to work laws, or “At Will” work laws give employers the right to terminate an employee for any reason or no reason at all.
[xii] Coal Education Development and Resources (CEDAR) – according to their website www.cedarswv.com, “CEDAR (Coal Education Development and Resource of Southern West Virginia, Inc.) is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit corporation which began as a partnership between the coal industry, business community and educators. This partnership was formed through the joint efforts of the Eastern Kentucky CEDAR program, the Pocahontas Coal Association and the West Virginia Coal Association. CEDAR's mission is to facilitate the increase of knowledge and understanding of the many benefits the coal industry provides in daily lives by providing financial resources and coal education materials to implement its study in the school curriculum. CEDAR'starget group is grades K-12 in Mingo, Logan, Boone, McDowell, Wyoming and Wayne counties in southern West Virginia.”
[xiii] Flat Earthers is a slang term for proponents of mountain top removal coal mining.
[xiv] Permit hearings refers to public hearings requesting public comment by government agencies who oversee the permitting of surface mines.
[xv] Coal miner’s pensions receive money from current coal mining. If coal mining is reduced, it will decrease the amount of money being invested into retiree’s pensions.
[xvi] Ginseng refers to the root of a ginseng plant native to Appalachian forests and has medicinal properties. Ginseng is often sold by the dry pound and has been worth up to $1000 per pound in recent years.
[xvii] Mountain Top Removal is the process of mining whereby massive amounts of Ammonium Nitrate based explosives are loaded into the mountain and detonated to loosen the material that is then removed by heavy machinery to access the horizontal seams of coal. Much of the material is then dumped into adjacent valleys covering natural streams.
See the original transcription
Standing at the edge of his yard, Terry Steele points into an area of small stumps and grass descending to the lower valley. “I wanted to have a small apple orchard so I cut out a little bit of the woods here. It’s probably third growth forest.” Terry and his wife Wilma have spent the last four years building a home and working on their new property in Nettie, West Virginia, just north of the Gauley River. “Matewan is my home, it’s where I grew up” Terry says, “But it’s beautiful up here.” He takes in a deep breath and stares out over the rolling hills towards Beech Mountain.
Terry spent his life working in the underground coal mines of Southern West Virginia. After 27 years he retired, but the impacts of such a rigorous job are still evident in his breathing and stiffening joints. “Come on, let’s head down this way. I want to show you all the cliffs.” Despite the wear and tear on his body, Terry moves with purpose, enjoying the woodlands and fresh air. “We own about 20 acres altogether. I got a real good deal on it.” The trail opens up to a large field, reminiscent of a pasture. “I don’t own this, but our neighbors who do are good people. He told me they used to plant this entire area in corn.” At the lower edge of the field another trail begins, descending to a rocky bluff within a grove of hemlocks, then to a creek flowing clear beneath the darkness of the hemlocks. “This is what all the streams in Appalachia once looked like. The rocks. The clear water.” Terry’s admiration of nature is seen in the way he looks at the forest and the plants beneath.
Two weeks later Terry sits inside of an old storefront in his hometown of Matewan, West Virginia watching a commotion of people. The noon sun bleaches the floor at his feet where recently removed floor tiles reveal patterns of grooved adhesive stretching the length of the narrow store space of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. A variety of folding tables hold jars of money seeking donations that will select the main photo to display at the front of the completed museum. Volunteers rush in and out the door with food and other miscellaneous items. It is the first open house, a chance for the public to comment on the progress of the museum and to vote on potential display layouts, carpet colors, and photo displays.
“We’ve been working on this for a while,” Terry says, taking it all in with a degree of satisfaction, but his thoughts seem nevertheless distant. He stands up, a bit anxious, “Let’s me show you the union hall.”
Matewan has seemed to change little in the past 90 years, the many new vehicles parked in spaces along the way could have just as easily been lined with Model A and Model T Fords with the infamous coal company hired Baldwin-Felts Agents strolling around in suits, toting guns. The history of the town is still pervasive, the marks of the Matewan Massacre held within the bricks of the storefronts. It is alive, even more so in Terry’s sense of coal mining heritage that contrasts with the blue metal roof and landscaping of the new union hall.
“This is it, Local 1410, once the largest union local in the United Mine Workers.” The words Terry speaks are filled with a pride few could understand, a heritage passed down to him through the United Mine Workers and a century of struggle against exploitative industries. It’s a heritage that is rapidly fading as local schools mention little of local history, often having been persuaded to teach a watered down version of the mine wars through programs such as the Coal Education Development and Resources. Terry and his wife Wilma, a retired school teacher, know all too well the influence coal corporations have had in local schools and the people of the Central Appalachian Coalfields.
Terry Speaks:
I’m from a little old town by the name of Matewan. It’s in the southern part of West Virginia on the Kentucky border. It’s the town in which the Matewan Massacre[i] took place. It’s also the land where the Hatfield-McCoy feud took place, along the Tug River. The coal mining wars to establish the union took place along a lot of the places I grew up. It was a lot of neglected history, not taught to the people of the area. I didn’t learn a lot of it until I had already graduated school.
I graduated from Matewan High School. I went away for a little while in Columbus and eventually ended up back home and went to work in a furniture factory for about a year. At that time there was actually a furniture factory, believe it or not, in Mingo County. Course we made it and it was shipped out to North Carolina. I think it was about $1.60 an hour is what I made. By this time I was married. I married my high school sweetheart and, like any young people, you struggle with when you’re making a dollar sixty an hour back in the late 60s and early 70s.
My dad was a coal miner for Island Creek Coal Company, a local coal company. At that time it was probably the most dominant coal company in Mingo and Logan counties. I got a job with Island Creek Coal Company which started my mining career that lasted for almost 27 year. I guess you would say it was good in ways. In other ways, the toll it takes on your health when it’s happening is the same thing that has happened to thousands of miners. If you don’t get killed outright a lot of times, for the rest of the life you bare a burden of something you bring out of the mines with you that you didn’t even know you’d brought out[ii].
During that 27 year period, or almost 27 year period, I worked for Island Creek Coal Company. For almost six or seven year I was with Island Creek at mine 14 that was located at Delbarten. From there I went to a company at Glen Allen by the name of Energy Development. Now Glen Allen is another little town that if you do any research on you’ll find hit’s got a little history with it to. Had its own schools and theatres and everything, and now I think they’s about three houses in the community. If there is a future with coal, someone needs to see if Glen Allen had a future with it.
I worked at this place for three or four year and it eventually shut down. This was in the late 70s. I went to Kentucky in Pike County at V&M Coal Company. These are all union mines[iii], that I’m naming right now. The last mine that I worked for was Old Ben Coal Company. I was almost 26, 27 year in the mines when we’d worked the mine out[iv]. From there I never worked in the mine anymore. I couldn’t get a job at anymore union mines after that neither. The union in Mingo County and Logan County, and all around these areas were nonexistent anymore. I didn’t want to work in non-union mines anymore. I didn’t see any point. I was getting up later years in life so I worked painting some again and doing some carpenter work and things until I come eligible for my miner’s pension. Course now I draw social security also. But, that pretty well sums up my mining history, my work history I guess you would say.
There’s certain mines you enjoyed working at more than others, just like there certain people you enjoy working with more than others. In the mines a lot of my time was spent on a move crew. If anybody’s ever had anything to deal with mining, move crew is basically a lot of physical labor, a lot of back breaking labor. Moving belts[v], moving power[vi] at times, and then running coal also if the shift was broke down and you come on you had to run coal. You basically had to do everything. Most of my time was spent on what we call the Hoot owl shift. We went to work at some places at 11 o’clock at night and worked till 8 in the morning, or 12 at night till 9. Basically 9, 10 hours a day. I got used to sleeping during the day and I still yet have problems now. I wanna stay up late at night and sleep during the day, which is not, especially in the winter time, is not a good habit. It’s one that’s hard to break.
I liked the men that I worked with. Some of them I’ll never forget. Some of em you do forget as time goes on, but the ones you spend a lot of time with you… uh…..you….you know you’ll never forget em….some of em’s been killed in the industry. I worked with one boy who was one of the twenty-nine miners that got killed at Upper Big Branch[vii]. Joe Marcum. Me and him worked together at Energy Development. He was a good guy. I didn’t stay in touch with him much after that, but when he got killed, it hurt…. They’s people that you will never forget because you spent probably more time with them than you did with your own family. So yea they was a closeness with the workers.
Back when the union was strong, we knew who the enemy was. The enemy was not so called “tree huggers” or people who’ve talked about coal companies polluting something. That wasn’t the enemy. We knew that the enemy, if there was an enemy, was the coal company in itself. Although we worked for them, we knew it was just a job. We didn’t worship em, which is what we are doing now. Now, the people who used to be good union people and understood that this was just a place to work, and knew when the company got the chance would kick you in the ass, now they have Friends of Coal signs instead of union signs in their yards.
A friend of a coal. Who is a friend of coal? Coal’s a rock. That’s the first damn thing we need to understand. But a Friend of Coal, if you look who these people really are, they’re people who are willing to bust all of your things your union has fit for—like your safety rights—the things that keep you alive underground. These are people that’s trying to destroy that—the very people that tries to destroy that. The people that shit in your water and tell you it’s alright. These are the same people who are willing to cut your rates, take your healthcare, take your grandparents or your parents or dad’s or mine, take your social security away from ya, your pension away from ya. They’re [Friends of Coal] damn sure not on our side, and I’m talking about the side of the working poor or the working people. They’re not for those. Friends of coal, yea they’re friend of the coal. They’re friend of the rock. They damn sure ain’t friend of the people who mine the rock. But we don’t understand that. We vote for those who will take what we have to live on when we get done working, if we can survive to get outside the job to start with.
We may call ourselves more educated now, but at least the older people understand who in the hell was the enemy. Those people understood that. We have forgot. We…we, think we don’t need unions anymore. “Unions are something the past” yea “There was at time.” Then you keep hearing something else, “Well the unions are good but they brought it on theirself,” you know “They wouldn’t work and do this and that.” Well they were cases of that, but they were more rare than what people thought. During the 80s and the 90s they wouldn’t unions like that. We worked our damned ass off, and all we had got in return was more of this talk, more of the propaganda “You brought it on yourself.” No we didn’t bring it on ourselves. They [coal companies] seen an opening and they took advantage of it. As long as human beings are alive, they will always be need for the union. The only thing that brings greed into check for the poor man is the union. Education would certainly come in in that. Everybody will not always work at a job where you use your brain and your head. I mean, we always should, but they’s always gonna be jobs where you use your back and you use your hands and you should have rights. That doesn’t mean you’re stupid, because you use your hands and your back to make a living. And sometimes the only time that rights can be protected is by unions. Or we can do what we are doing now in this country—we send those jobs overseas and have slave labor do it, and we act like it don’t exist.
We act like we’re good Christian people now, “We don’t treat people like that.” We just buy those products from people that are treated like that. And they’re overseas so we can’t see em. And they’re not union so we don’t need no union over here, ya know. Which is another form [of slavery]….it’s bull****. If we’d just look at it a little deeper and let the water clear a little so we could see, we can see this s**t. It’s wrong. And what makes it wrong is you’re still kicking the people over here in the ass…. The weaker the union gets the weaker your standard of living gets, and they’s reason for that. That’s cause we think we can get along with big people who have greed on their mind telling us, “Well it’s my plant. Why should you have a voice?” Well as long as I’m sticking my damned head under that rock[viii] for you, I should have a voice. As long as my hand goes under that lathe, I should have a voice. The working man ought to always have a voice and the union was the voice at that time, because it lets us come together. Sometimes the only time that we’re heard is when we come together--and the union lets us come together.
You can see some of this started even back during the 80s and 90s when they used to bring you in for conferences. They’d tell you “Now boys, this is who we’re competing against. We’re competing against coal from out west that they’re scooping up seams that are 60 foot high and they’re just dumping it in railroad cars, and most of that is done by non-union labor and this how much they’ve got in a ton of coal and this is what we’re competing against.” Or “We’re competing against the mine down the road here who is non-union and they’re working for this and this, and we gotta compete against them, now how do we do this?” This is where some of this started, and this brings me back to one other thing I’d like to say about it, it gets us back again to the Department of Mines and Minerals who came and give us our training at Old Ben Coal Company in, I think the year was about 96, I believe.
We had to take our annual training[ix], and course we had about 200 men working there so they had six or seven instructors and we were rotating from haulage[x], and electrical, and ventilation, going through different departments and then, we came into that class and of course, they was about 20 of us and the instructor was going over what causes accidents in the mines. Not only what causes em, but what time of day they happen, what shift they were happening on, and all kinds of statistics, I mean you would not believe. So I just raised my hand and said, “What’s the difference between the accident rates at union and non-union mines?”
Good question, which anyone in their right mind shoulda had that one down. They didn’t. He said, “We don’t deal with that, we don’t keep a statistic on that.” I said, "Well to me you might as well wiped your ass on all these other statistics you just read me, because that shoulda been the first one that you’d ever looked at." These are the guys we are competing against [non-union], why are they outdoing us? How can they load more coal than we’re doing, and we’ve got as good of equipment as they’ve got—as gooda men? Why are they doing it? They’re breaking the God Damn law, that’s how! That’s why they’re doing it. But we don’t keep statistics on them breaking the law ya know.
The whole point on all of this as far as union and non-union is, someone asked me one time, “What the greatest thing about being in the union? Is it the wages you get? Is it your healthcare?...Is it that?” And that’s good but I don’t think that’s the greatest thing about being in the union. The greatest thing about being in the union is having the damn right to say, “I’m not going under that damn rock that’s ready to fall” or “I’m not going up in that dust until it’s cleared out.” It’s being able to speak your mind without the threat of being fired for doing it. That’s the greatest thing for a union. And someone would say “Well you could do that at a non-union mine,” that “The federal law gives you a right not to go into unsafe working conditions.” Do it, go ahead and do it a time or two and see if they ain’t somebody replace you here[xi]. They’ll come up with something or another on you in a day or two that you’ll not have your job. Or if they shut that mine down and go to another place they’ll look back and say, “Yeaaa. He run his lip a little bit hear back six months ago. Let’s not take him. We can get somebody else that’s a little bit more loyal.” So that’s a little bit of common sense we seem to forget. If you don’t understand that, you need to work in a damn mine and try it.
Some of the older miners, they lived within their means. They realized that if you didn’t live within your means, that you’d be out on the street. Some of our younger miners do not seem to have grasped this. They go in debt. They buy new trucks, big motorcycles, four wheelers, houses. They’re always out eating at fast food restaurants. And then you wonder what kind of savings do they have? Well they not only don’t have any savings, they live from payday to payday and they can’t hardly make it. I know some that’s working in the mines now that can’t make it payday to payday without bumming off their parents. Now when it becomes that bad, we either didn’t teach this generation something another they need to learn, or they have bought into so much propaganda that they’re so blind they don’t even know tomorrow exists. So maybe that’s why their following this Friends of Coal stuff. I mean, how many bankruptcies did you see back in the 50’s and 60’s? I didn’t hardly hear tell of bankruptcies until later on in life, you know, people filing for bankruptcy and stuff. Now days you can pick up the Charleston Gazette and it’s full, a whole line of em, and chances are you’ll know some of em as you pick it up and look. But if you’re gonna keep a living, you need to see what the future really does hold—if that black rock really does hold a future for ya.
We got some pretty good examples around us what kinda future it holds. If you live in Mingo and Logan county. You can just look at yourselves really. But if you wanna get a better picture you can drive up in McDowell County and get a real good view of what that black rock future is. We don’t realize what’s really important in life. What is important to us in life? Is it having a motorcycle? Big fancy four wheel drive? Eating out all the time? Is that what you want outta life? Kinda like you’re missing something. You’re definitely missing something.
My dad never encouraged me to go in a coal mine. Although he got me a job in the mine, he left it entirely up to me. He wanted me to go on to college when I graduated, but going on to college woulda been a far fetch to. Some people were prepared for nothing but coal mining and I was one of em. I amounted to what they thought I was gonna amount to…a coal miner.
Education is probably one of the things that hinders people in the coalfields. The guidance counselor at Matewan High School, which was Arnold Mallet, a preacher at Red Jacket Community Church and a good guy, never consulted or called in or talked about my future in any way afar as going on to school—and I made the honor roll most of the time. I wouldn’t the brightest person in the school, but I certainly wasn’t one that couldn’t have been taught. It’s not only me, it’s thousands of people like me that grew up in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. So we ended up being something else that somebody else thought we shoulda been. You know the lack of education I think has led to a lot of this, and I cannot really see that much change, even now in these communities.
We have a program in Matewan now that’s the CEDAR[xii] program. It’s a coal program where we take the kids in and we actually give them money. Hell we actually pay these kids to enter in these projects—coal projects—showing you how great coal is and what coal does and all this. It’s not unlike the science fair and geography fairs where kids come in and people compete and go on, but with those no money’s involved. Coal companies all sponsor em. The people who sell things to coal companies sponsor em. I think some of the banks maybe even actually sponsor em, and the chamber of commerce. All these people who have always had the “miners heart” at hand, sponsors these things. That’s sarcasm there if anybody don’t know… But this is the education that we are putting on, and I’d guarantee if you’d ask most the kids who are graduating schools in these counties if they believe in climate change, I bet most of em don’t even believe in climate change. And if they do they think it’s not man made. I’d bet you some money that our kids are along with the flat earthers[xiii] that we believe that climate change is something that really don’t involve us. And it’s from the lack of education and some more of the propaganda of the people. Why are we this way in the coal fields? And I think it’s going on yet. But it’s coming to halt, whether we like it or not.
I’ve probably said this stuff a thousand times to people who would listen, and I’ve said it a thousand times to people who don’t want to hear it. I went to permit hearings[xiv] where there’s been 500 coal miners who didn’t want to hear anything I wanna say. Some of em even threatened to whoop my ass for what I said. I said it any how cause I think it’s the truth. One thing I always get is, “Why do you take the stand you take? You’re a damn retired coal miner. You draw your pension from the coal mines. Why are you fighting us?” I’m not fighting them. I’m fighting for my own health and I’m fighting or a better future. They may not understand that but that’s what I’m fighting for and hell maybe my pension will get took[xv]. I hope not, I mean I’m hoping that the federal program that pensions are guaranteed under at least 75 percent of em will pick us up and take care of us. But if it’s up to taking my damn pension or giving me a pension while you destroy the earth, I think the earth’s a little more important than my pension.
I love the mountains. I’ve been digging ginseng[xvi] and been in the mountains for over fifty year, just digging ginseng and things when I can. So anyone who knows what grows in the mountains don’t want to see the mountains destroyed, and I’m talking about mountain top removal[xvii]. Where I live in Mingo in Southern West Virginia an Eastern Kentucky it is the dominant form of mining that’s taking place right now. I think it’s what someone once described as scrapping the sides out of the peanut butter jar to get the last bit of peanut butter. I think that’s a pretty good definition of what it is.
In early 2000 we had some problems with some coal companies where I lived on May Creek that made environmentalists out of us. I became involved with fighting coal companies because they had locked us out of a track of land we owned in the head of a holler and destroyed our property and wells. We eventually sold the land to the coal companies.
We had never had any dealings with any kind of regulation or the people who regulate coal companies, like the DEP, Department of Environmental Protection. I always thought that these people were for the citizens and would protect you when you had a complaint. Course we found out very quickly these people were basically another mouthpiece for coal companies that the tax payers provided a job for, that kicks you in the ass again after the coal company gets done kicking you in the ass. That’s my definition of what they are. And I came to that simply because of what we went through by dealing with these people when we were locked out of our land and we eventually had to sell our land. They made environmentalists out of us I guess you could say or, not environmentalists, they made activists out of us.
I like to tell everybody when I’m talking to them that I’m something a lot of coal miners are not right now. I consider myself an environmentalist in the sense that I’ve got enough sense to know that although my pension and my healthcare comes from coal, that coal as we know it is not what it was at once, and it will never be what it was at once. As soon as we realize that coal is not the future for Appalachia, or any part of the world as far as I’m concerned, the better off we will be. I think I’ve always been an environmentalists, but as far as an activist, the only activism I ever done was sit on my ass and talk about it on the porch. But after that, it kinda made us realize that we was gonna have to get off the porch and do some other things to stop some of this stuff that was going on. We have been involved in doing that, me and my wife, and my grandson for the last, at least ten year, maybe a little longer. It is longer, we’ve been fighting probably 15 year now. That’s, as far as all this dealing with coal, how I think about coal.
Footnotes
[i] The Matewan Massacre, a gun fight between coal company hire mercenaries, local authorities, and union coal miners occurred on May 19, 1920 and resulted in the death of 10 men.
[ii] Coal miners often suffer from Coal Workers Pneumoconiosis, also known as Black Lung, a degenerative disease caused by inhaling coal dust. Coal miners are also more susceptible to long term joint and back injuries.
[iii] United Mine Workers of America
[iv] Working a mine out means all the coal was retrieved and the mine was closed permanently.
[v] Conveyor belts that hauled coal to the outside of the mine.
[vi] Underground mobile electrical substations also known as power centers that receive high voltage input stepping it down to lower voltages usable for underground electrically powered mining machinery.
[vii] The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster occurred on April 5, 2010, an explosion that killed 28 coal miners. Various mine officials have since been indicted and prosecuted for harboring unsafe working conditions and failures to maintain safety protocols that ultimately led to the disaster.
[viii] “Sticking your head under a rock” is local slang for working in an underground coal mine.
[ix] As part of the 1977 Federal Mine Safety & Health Act, mandatory training of coal miners was included and required coal miners to undergo a minimum of 8 hours of annual training, often referred to locally as “re-training.”
[x] Haulage refers to the movement of coal and supplies using various equipment including underground railway systems, rubber tired vehicles, and conveyor belts.
[xi] Right to work laws, or “At Will” work laws give employers the right to terminate an employee for any reason or no reason at all.
[xii] Coal Education Development and Resources (CEDAR) – according to their website www.cedarswv.com, “CEDAR (Coal Education Development and Resource of Southern West Virginia, Inc.) is an all-volunteer, not-for-profit corporation which began as a partnership between the coal industry, business community and educators. This partnership was formed through the joint efforts of the Eastern Kentucky CEDAR program, the Pocahontas Coal Association and the West Virginia Coal Association. CEDAR's mission is to facilitate the increase of knowledge and understanding of the many benefits the coal industry provides in daily lives by providing financial resources and coal education materials to implement its study in the school curriculum. CEDAR'starget group is grades K-12 in Mingo, Logan, Boone, McDowell, Wyoming and Wayne counties in southern West Virginia.”
[xiii] Flat Earthers is a slang term for proponents of mountain top removal coal mining.
[xiv] Permit hearings refers to public hearings requesting public comment by government agencies who oversee the permitting of surface mines.
[xv] Coal miner’s pensions receive money from current coal mining. If coal mining is reduced, it will decrease the amount of money being invested into retiree’s pensions.
[xvi] Ginseng refers to the root of a ginseng plant native to Appalachian forests and has medicinal properties. Ginseng is often sold by the dry pound and has been worth up to $1000 per pound in recent years.
[xvii] Mountain Top Removal is the process of mining whereby massive amounts of Ammonium Nitrate based explosives are loaded into the mountain and detonated to loosen the material that is then removed by heavy machinery to access the horizontal seams of coal. Much of the material is then dumped into adjacent valleys covering natural streams.
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