Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Venchie Morrell Interview

BECKY BAILEY: This is Becky Bailey for the Matewan Development Center. Tuesday, July 17, 1990 and I'm doing, this summer's interview with Mr. Venchie Morrell. Mr. Morrell, for the record would you spell your first name for me?

VENCHIE MORRELL: V,E,N,C,H,I,E.

B: Okay. And, when were you born?

VM: Red Jacket, 1912.

B: Okay. Some of the questions that we didn't get to ask you last summer were about important people visiting Matewan. You mentioned off tape that Mother Jones had...had come here?

VM: Mother Jones, yeah, she spoke here during the miner's strike in the '20's.

B: Do you remember seeing her?

VM: Oh, yes. Yes.

B: What do you remember about that?

VM: She was a fiery little thing, other than that, very little I can remember about her.

B: Okay. You also told me off tape that uh...your family lived in a...in a tent uh...would you tell me about that?

VM: We lived in three tents. Over here where the Matewan Methodist Church is now.

B: Un-hun. Why was that?

VM: Well, my dad was a miner. A union miner and naturally, he was put out of the house cause of his union activity. In fact, uh... Becky, he could speak and understand several different languages and he'd meet the train over here where they pull in, see, coal companies would bring these uh...people in to work in the mine and he'd meet the train over here and as these people'd get off, he'd start talking to them and tell them what the conditions was here and what they can expect and maybe something about them. And some, a lot of them would not go to the mines. They just go back where they came from and they blackballed him. Never did go in the mines anymore after that. In fact, he couldn't get a job in the mines anymore.

B: Uh-huh. Is that when he went to plumbing? Is it...

VM: That's right. Uh-huh.

B: Could you describe the train station for me? About that time?

VM: Well, it's a wooden building and I imagine it was around about a hundred foot long and possibly forty foot wide, now, and the lower end of it, that is the west end of the building is where the waiting room was for passengers to wait for the train to come and the ticket window was there, too, you buy your ticket. The other part of it was the freight and uh...baggage and stuff like that. They's all heated by coal.

B: Was there indoor plumbing in it? Do you know? Was there a, say a bathroom for people...

VM: Oh, yes, yes, There was one.

B: Okay. Was...was there any ticket window on the outside or did you have to walk into the building?

VM: You had to go inside to get to the...

B: Well, one of the things that we did a couple weeks ago was we walked through town and you described the buildings here in town for me and I'd like to try to go back through the list and...and...and talk to you about some of these buildings.

VM: Okay.

B: Okay. We're in the Hatfield building and uh...on this side of the street, at one time the street began with the icehouse, is that right? Could you tell me about that?

VM: Right at the end of the building. It was just like that. Well, the only thing, actually it was a basement, I understand. A hotel at one time and that was the only thing that was left of it and they called it the icehouse 'cause they, people, a man who run it there kept produce in there and three hundred pound blocks of ice and sold ice in the summer time. That's where it got it's name, icehouse.

B: How far back do you remember it being, the icehouse?

VM: Well, when I first came to Matewan, about nineteen and uh...nineteen.

B: Okay. Where did...where did he get his ice?

VM: I didn't understand?

B: Where did he get his ice?

VM: Oh, it came in here from Williamson on the train. The passenger trains in those days.

B: So he didn't use river ice?

VM: No. No. It was bought. It came in three hundred pound blocks.

B: Okay. And, what was the uh...what was in the building next to the icehouse.

VM: Well, this side of it, starting with uh...that was old Testerman building there and that, if I remember right, it was a pool room and a restaurant after and that's all. The rest of it comin' down this way was, then, that one and Maggie Keatley had a restaurant right there and then start in Schaffer Brother's building and then this building right here, Hatfield building.

B: You said that um...during the Depression was when the Schaffer brother's went out of business?

VM: Right.

B: Could you tell me what you know about that?

VM: Well, they was...came to Matewan and opened a store in nineteen and twelve and they stayed here, they left sometimes in about nineteen and thirty-three or four, when they was right in the middle of the depression and everything was going bad and they couldn't make it so they were out of Cincinnati by the way (originally) and then they just closed the store and left it there.

B: And, just...just to back track for a minute, you say Maggie Keatley had a restaurant. Is that where Lively's restaurant had been. C.E. Lively's restaurant?

VM: No. No. Uh...he had, his restaurant it was in the building here.

B: Okay.

VM: In this Hatfield building.

B: When did um...Maggie Keatley have her restaurant? Do you know?

VM: It...well, she had it up until uh...I believe uh...John Nenni bought the building for taxes back in the late '30's. He remodeled it and made a store out of it and this and that. But she lost the building on account of not paying the taxes.

B: Okay. After the Schaffer brothers, um...moved out, who went into their building? Their area?

VM: Well, now, John Nenni bought it and he put a shoe store in there. He done good at it. But they was another uh...in this area right here, another uh...I can't think of a department store the people was in here, but they came in, but they didn't stay long because, wudn't enough business here at that time. Everything was so...

B: Un-hun. Okay. Past this building. Past the Hatfield building, what was on this part of the street that you remember from here down?

VM: Well, now, next to the Hatfield building right here was what was call the old Dew Drop Inn. Then Chamber's Hardware was the next one to it. Then there was a vacant lot between Chamber's Hardware and where the original bank was. It was it on those photographs.

B: Okay. John Brown ran the Dew Drop Inn. Right?

VM: He had a restaurant in there.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Well, he's one of the most accommodating men we ever knew as kids. He was good to all the kids. But what we liked about him most, I reckon, is we'd go down there to the drug store, with our nickles [sic] to get ice cream anyway, and he'd take that dipper you know, they'd rake it all off and back in the container except what that dipper would hold and we'd come up to John's right here and he'd fill that dipper full and you'd get, oh, you'd get it hanging over the side of the cone so we come up and get our ice cream from John Brown. (laughing) And we didn't get a nickel everyday either, we'd get it once in a while.(laughing).

B: Did that ice cream come in on the train from Williamson, too?

VM: Everything come from Williamson at that time. It came in metal containers put into a wooden uh...uh...container and ice all around it to keep it from melting 'til it got here.

B: So, probably a lot of stuff come in on a refrigerated car, I would assume or did they pack it all on ice or on a regular train car?

VM: Um-hum. And brought it up on the baggage...in the baggage car down in Williamson.

B: Okay. Just to uh...go to the other side of the street, where was the B & C Oil business?

VM; Right down in the Buskirk building.

B: Okay. How far back do you remember it?

VM: Well, if we're back into the '20's, I believe it would have been the early '30's, let's put it like that.

B: Okay. Who started that business? Do you know?

VM: Emmitt Brown and N. L. Chancey. E. Brown and N. L. Chancey. That's where it's got Brown and Chancey. B & C. That's it.

B: And what was it, was it a gas station?

VM: Gas station. They sold gas retail and wholesale.

B: Who bought gas from them wholesale, do you know?

VM: We had several dealers up and down in Kentucky and up by Peter Creek and then Red Jacket area, up through, not in Red Jacket, North Matewan. But they...they had the Texaco products at that time.

B: Alright. Okay. Um...what happened to it because it's not there now and there's no building there.

VM: Well, the flood really is what...what got it. The 1977 flood. See, he died and uh...they sold the building, or they put the business to Les Coontz and the '77 flood really tore up everything and then Les sort of go, the gas tanks on the other side of the underpass there, they floated off of uh...piers they were on. Lodged against the underpass there. If they could have got out of there, they would have went down the river, but see they couldn't go across the go in...in the underpass and the water wasn't high enough for them to go over the railroad so they's all piled up right there at the underpass. And I got to tell you this I...had a brother that lived right down here and those tanks turned over, the gas started spewing out over through here. We was standing up on the tracks up here. Him and his wife was standing there and she said," Oh, Lord, nobody better not strike a match around here cause that gas is goin' right down the street and it will get down there." And, my brother said, "Well, better to let the house burn down to the water line than not have any house at all." He said," I hope somebody does strike a match and throw it in...in the water there that gas would ignite, but you can hear the gas spewing out of the tanks." But it never happened.

B: Where was the Curtis Club?

VM: Right on the end of the Buskirk Building here, over close to the river uh...creek, Mate Creek.

B: Who ran that?

VM: John and Mary Brown.

B: Who...who went to that club?

VM: Well, just about anybody'd go, it was run by colored people but, they didn't uh...bar anybody from coming in there. As long as you behaved yourself. They run a nice place and I imagine, by the number of white people went there, there was colored people.

B: Okay. Was it a...a bar or a restaurant?

VM: Well, they...it was similar to that but it, you could get white lightening if you wanted or something like that.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What kind of um...what kind of reputation did these clubs in town have, I mean, were they places where married people went to meet other married people or?

VM: No. No. No they was just places where somebody'd want to get a drink and have a, just kill a little time, but they's nothing else goin' on except for there was no uh...women meetin' men or men meetin' women. Mary, John...(unintelligible)

B: Okay. What about um...houses of prostitution. Were there any prostitutes in town?

VM: Well, they were but they, no really no houses. You had to go to Williamson.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Alright. And, could you, um...what did the Curtis Club building look like?

VM: Well, it was a two story wooden building. It was a huge building. And it took up, I reckon, oh, it must have been around about eighty feet by a hundred.

B: Un-hun. Was there a dance floor in it?

VM: They had a dance floor and I've got to tell you this too. That brother of mine and a McCoy, Jim McCoy, dead now, well, my brother is to. But they used to go there and on Saturday night, they'd do the John Brown's stomp and elephant walk and Susie Q and they'd roll their pants legs up to their knees and they...they put on a show of their own.

B: Was the John Brown stomp...was that named after John Brown?

VM: I reckon, that's what they called it. (laughing) That's something they invented themself. (laughing) But it was nothing rowdy about it. They just got on the floor there and started dancing.

B: Un-hun. Where did the music come from? Was there a jute box or a band or...

VM: Jute box. No band.

B: Um-hum. Okay. What kind of music did they play at that time?

VM: Well, mostly rock and roll.

B: Um-hum. Okay. Alright, let's see. What do you remember about John McCoy's bus business?

VM: Well, now John's bus business was way over this way. Right next to the Curtis club down there and uh...it was a bus station. A bus terminal and John run that business in there but now, he did not own the bus line. The bus line was owned by N & W. The bus company. And the bus, if the people pull, uh...uh...caught the buses there and John just had the business in there.

B: What kind of building was that?

VM: It was a con...not a con...it was a tile building.

B: How far back do you remember it being there?

VM: Well, now, it was built sometimes, it had to be built in the late '30's because uh...before that, that was a vacant lot there and uh...uh...Magnolia Motors is that lot there to store lumber on then whenever they built the bus terminal, it was in the late thirties.

B: Um...what kind of business did he have inside? Did he sell concessions or?

VM: That's all he sold.

B: Where did he get his supplies for that? Do you know?

VM: I didn't understand.

B: Where did he get his supplies?

VM: They come from Williamson.

B: Okay. Let's see. How about um...Magnolia Ford Sales?

VM: That's, part of the building's still standing down there. Now, that, at one time, was a thriving business. Even before John got a hold of it, but it eventually went under when John had it.

B: Okay. And, that was right behind the Buskirk building?

VM: Right by that, yes. Right in back of it.

B: Okay. Was it the first um...car business in town?

VM: It's the first one that had a building like that, on the other side of the underpass, there, John Patrick had a garage over there and he sold cars. But that was really, you might say, the first Ford uh...Ford uh...car sale building in Matewan was Magnolia Ford sales.

B: Did they have a...a showroom where they put cars or?

VM: Oh, yes. They had it all.

B: How did um...most people buy cars back them. Did they go in in special order or did they buy off the lot?

VM: No, it goes back, like what Henry Ford used to tell people, you know, that uh...if you want a special color uh...color on a car, he'd sell, sell them anything just so it's black, at that time. That's the only thing you could get with a black Ford. Never saw any color though. But you could order special uh...cars if you wanted but most of them were just a run of the line. They came in here, a boxcar from Cincinnati and unloaded them here next to the railroad station and then, we used to go there and watch them. We loved to see them unload them cars out of them box cars, then every once in a while, they would get several of the boys around here to go to Cincinnati, John would, and they'd go down there and they'd drive cars back. But normally, they'd come in here by boxcars.

B: Did they drive them over to the...to the dealership or how...

VM: Well, they take them right out of the boxcar and take them right over there to the, but now, when Magnolia Motors had it here, they were brought in by uh...car transport.

B: Okay. When was it in business?

VM: Magnolia? I drove a uh...well back in, when I got out of high school, they would have been I think somewhere in '30.

B: Okay. Was the V.F.W. Club right next to the...to the Magnolia Ford business?

VM: Well, it's pretty close to it but it's a little bit farther down from it and over on the river bank. Actually, back here, where we're sitting right here, it's probably just straight as you could get it so it wasn't exactly back of Ford Garage. It was down the river from it just a little bit.

B: Okay. What do you remember about that building?

VM: Well, it was a brick building. It was a nice building when it was built but the Flood (1977 Flood) got it too.

B: How big was it?

VM: It (unintelligible) hit was, had a uh...nice uh...dance floor and uh...they held dancing every once in awhile, now they had live bands come there and play and they had the juke boxes too. You couldn't get a uh...live band to come in and play, they had uh...dances on a Saturday night and weekend.

B: Do you remember any of the...the bands that would come?

VM: No.

B: Okay. When was this building built?

VM: Uh...you now, uh...it had to be right after, right after World War II because uh...if I'd uh...paid more attention to that bronze plaque that I took off the building right before they tore it down. The bulldozer dozed it down, I could remember the date but I...it was built right after World War II. See, now, it was named Dallas Cook Post 5103. And that Dallas Cook was a son of Fred Cook who was superintendent of the coal company at Red Jacket. Now, see, he had two sons, Dallas and Fred Cook Jr. were both killed in the Pacific. Both of them were in the Marines.

B: Do you know why it was just named after the one?

VM: Well, normally, if you..look around, they're trying to keep the names of enlisted men rather than officers on those posts.

B: Okay.

VM: They don't, I don't know why that is but mostly posted, enlisted post, they're all named after enlisted men.

B: And the older son was an officer?

VM: No, neither one of them were officers. Oh, yeah. Fred...Fred uh...Jr. was an officer.

B: Okay. Did the older Fred Cook did he pay for the building?

VM: No. That was uh...bought by...by what the V.F.W. raised or sell.

B: Was it your brother Mack that served in the war? Did he serve in World War II? Your brother Mack. Did he serve...

VM: No, now Mack did not. He had a perforated ear. They wouldn't accept him. But, and the oldest brother, he had a busted ear drum but he served his time in the Navy. But he wudn't...he couldn't get back in after War was declared he was discharged out of the navy in thirty...'35 I believe.

B: Did you serve?

VM: In the army.

B: Would you tell me about some of your experiences?

VM: Uh...what I went through and seen and I wouldn't take anything for it but I wouldn't go through it again for a million dollars. Now at times, I'm like everybody else, by the way I was in the infantry. I was in the Pacific theater operation and I wouldn't give you a plug nickel whether I'd be livin' in the next five minutes at the time I thought about it but I made it through. I got wounded on Okinawa. And if anybody tells you that they're not afraid when they're in combat, they're telling you a lie. I don't care who you are. You are scared. But you'd been trained and trained for the same thing over and over. You automatically do things, you never think about it. You just go...it just comes to you automatic. But you are scared, now, I don't want nobody to tell you different.

B: What was the worst fighting that you were involved in?

VM: Okinawa.

B: Why was it the worst that you saw?

VM: Well, uh...they was one hundred thousand Japanese troops on that...troops on that island. There was only three hundred and twenty-five miles away from the mainland of Japan. See, we'd already taken Philippines. (tape cuts off)

B: We were talking on the other side you said you fought in the Philippines?

VM: I went through the Philippine campaign without a scratch then we left the Philippines and went to, hit Okinawa and that's where...that's where you had those Kamkazi planes hittin' those ships. Now, the Navy lost more men and more wounded than the army did but, the battle there but, at the same time, there was hundred of civilians killed but not intentionally, they just got in the line of fire.

B; Un-hun. Um. How many American's were there?

VM: Well, they was uh...three Army divisions and two uh...marine divisions but they was folding reserves out there. Well, the H- division had somewheres in the neighborhood of about sixteen thousand men.

B: Un-hun. How badly did you get wounded?

VM: (unintelligible) left shoulder. Really not a...a, you might say a bad wound but it...

B: Could you tell me about what happened after you got wounded cause I know, during Vietnam, they could put men on helicopters and fly them right away to a hospital, how did...

VM: Well, the day that I was wounded uh...the medics was about a half mile back from where I got wounded, well they, at the aid station and they saw me so they come up there where I was and they wanted to put me on a stretcher and carry me back and I told them no way, I'm gonna walk back. I can walk, but I'm not gonna let you put me on a stretcher start back through there and give somebody a target again. So I started a walkin' and I walked back to the aid station and they fixed me up there and sent be down to a head holding hospital there. I stayed there that night and then the next day, they flew me to Guam, at the, at a naval hospital cause no army hospitals was available at that time so I flew to the state hospital there on Guam, the naval hospital.

B: Did you get discharged because of your injury?

VM: No, I got discharged over what they call a point system, Becky. You had to have, you had eighty five points or more and you had to have for each month of service, you got one point, each month over seas, you got two points, each battle participation, you got five points. The purple heart, you got five points. Any other uh...metals you got, you five points. And if you were married and had children or wudn't married and had children you could claim at least three of them, you'd get twelve more points for that but all of my was time in the army, time overseas and battle participation and that and you had to have eighty-five points or better, well, I had eighty-five and I was discharged on August 2, and 1945, just a little over a month before the war was over on September the fifteenth.

B: Un-hun. How long did it take you to get home? I know it took my uncles a long time to get home from the war.

VM: Well, uh...they sent me, they discharged me from the hospital. They sent me to Sappan and Holy Company and we thought that there, it wouldn't be just a short time that we was set back to the states and discharged. Well, we stayed there two months waiting for a ship to take us back to the state and we...they were filled up so, it must have been, I'd say from the time, well, I was wounded in April, May, June, July and August (counting the months). Four months before I got home.

B: All the time that you were waitin' to get home, were you paid?

VM: Oh, yes. Un-hun.

B: Okay. You did get paid.

VM: Yeah.

B: Okay. What's your first memory of...of coming back to Matewan? What...what do you remember?

VM: I got lost after I left Cincinnati, before I got to Williamson on the train. I couldn't...I didn't know where I was. I tried to figure out, you know, uh...lookin' out a train, now it was after dark that (unintelligible) we came into Williamson about four o'clock in the morning on the train and I couldn't figure out where I was and looked outside and I couldn't recognize any landmarks. But it didn't take me long to figure out where I was after I got, started pick'n up landmarks but I knew I catered to the right direction when I left Cincinnati.

B: Un-hun. So, when did you actually pull into Matewan?

VM: I came into Matewan, I discharge on the second of August. I came home, I believe it was the third cause I didn't stop anywhere's, I just went on to Indianapolis and uh...caught a train, went to Cincinnati, and then, Cincinnati on home. I was anxious to get home. I didn't want to stay any longer cause I'd been in there almost four and a half years as it was. See, I went into the Army in April in 1941 and I was over seas whenever war was declared in December that year.

B: Where were you?

VM: In Alaska.

B: In Alaska? Was family waitin' for you when you pulled into the train station or was...

VM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. They come down to meet me.

B: Un-hun. Who came to meet you? Do you remember?

VM: Youngest brother and uh...his wife and uh...their uh...son, he was the only child they had at that time and couple of the friends that I grew up with. Boys I grew up...didn't get in the Army and was still (unintelligible) they all come down.

B: Do you remember, did you do anything special to celebrate being home over the next couple days after that? Okay. Well. Well. If you don't mind. We'll go back to uh...talkin' about the buildings here in town. Um...they're houses next to the B.F.W. building?

VM: No. No. Now there was houses in front of it.

B: Okay. In front of it.

VM: But not on either side of it cause...

B: What did they look like, do you know?

VM: It was concrete block, buildings.

B: Who built them? Do you know?

VM: I don't remember who built them but they was, now by the way, Mingo Lime was in business at that time right out there too.

B: Okay.

VM: See, they had a uh...outlet up here. They were in Williamson and that was their main office down there in the yard but they had one out here too.

B: Where was that?

VM: Right on the corner right there.

B: Un-hun.

VM: When you go down there and you see that little, you can see part of the uh...foundation there that uh...concrete foundation there, now that was their office. In back of that, then, close to the and over towards the building, that was where their yard was that the lumber, cement, and nails and everything stored back there but where that concrete foundation was, that's where their office was.

B: Okay. What used to stand where the R house building is now, before that?

VM: A water tank for the water, but at the time, now it had been used for a long time. They used it for a storage tank on the hill over here and the tank there, metal tank had the, but before they built the houses out there, before I was telling you about where it previously is, they pulled that tank down, used a winch and pulled the thing over, get it out of the way so they could build that, it was s how house really what they built there and then uh...they uh...they converted it into R-House.

B: We've talked before about the theaters in town Um...what...what was the first movie theater that you remember?

VM: Uh...The one at Red Jacket. And by the way, it was outdoor, open theater. Now, if it rained, you didn't have any show, but, if it snowed, it didn't snow too heavy they had a show, if you wanted to come sit through that snow and watch it.

B: How much did it cost to go to the...the movies then?

VM: Well, you could take uh...it costed ten cents to get in and you could take uh...well we had ten cents to get in, a nickel for a bag of popcorn, and a nickel for a pop. So twenty five cents would cover what you wanted.

B: Where was this theater up at Red Jacket? Where was it situated up there?

VM: Uh...you know where the store is now, it's not in operation any more.

B: The Red Jacket market?

VM: Yeah. Alright now, where the Masonic uh...Hall is down there, alright, now, that's where the old theater was that Red Jacket Coal Company had built and...and it was just opened air, like I tell you. All it had is just a big fence, wooden fence all the way around it and when it rained or snowed, wudn't no show.

B: Who ran that? Do you know?

VM: The company.

B: The company ran it

VM: It was a company operation.

B: Was Frank Allara's theater the first theater down here in town?

VM: No. Down here where the underpass is now, a theater used to be where the underpass is right there. When they started building that underpass, they had to move the theater and the theater was, oh, it was a wooden building and it...it covered a half acre of ground I reckon, so they moved it further over in the lot there where uh...John had his place of business and uh...nothing there now, and then, moved that over there and that was the theater building at that time, and by the way, or Tom Caroll was the man that run it then. Now, Tom Caroll run this one right here before Frank Allara and Terry Hope got a hold of it.

B: Oh. Was Tom Caroll the one that started it?

VM: Tom Caroll was, yes.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Well, he was chief police here at one time too. And, Becky, down here on the each end of the underpass there, down the road a ways, didn't have stop signs like they got now. RIght in the middle of the road they had a...a rubber pad. It said " stop" on it. And people just ignore it. They see it there. It said " stop." It was right in the middle of the road. You had to run over it and they wouldn't stop and Tom would stay back at the filling station there and watch and if he seen somebody run that stop sign, he'd take after them, and by the way, his car, he had a Page. That's the only thing he would own. And he'd take after them and catch them on the other side of the underpass and they were fined for running the stop sign. So, it was speed trap in a way and... but, it was just a piece of rubber and if you run over all it done is flop back and forth but uh...it was a thick piece of rubber. It was rubber that would last for years. It caught a lot of people though.

B: So, is he chief of police. Is that how he fined them or how did he get away with...with?

VM: He was chief.

B: Chief. Okay.

VM: He was chief.

B: Who was chief of police after Sid died? Do you remember?

VM: After who?

B: After Sid Hatfield died?

VM: No. I don't. Uh...at that time, they, the Bogg's come in there somewhere but I couldn't tell you who was chief of police.

B: Okay. When was Mr. Caroll the...the chief police?

VM: In the early '30's.

B: Okay. What do you remember about the uh...the theater right here. By the time it was built was it, were there talkies?

VM: Talkies didn't come in until '28, I believe. But they did have talkies. But the first talkie I ever went to was to Williamson in the old Cinderella Theater down there and if I'm not mistaken, it was Al Jolsen, the picture was.

B: What movies from back then do you remember going to see?

VM: Well, most of them was uh...what we like was uh...on Friday nights, we'd save our money all week long and go on Friday and that's when the westerns was on, Friday and Saturday was western and they had a serial running, it was called "Perils of Pauline Williams" and they would stop thing whenever that young lady got in the predicament where you think she sure will, she'll never get out of it and they said, be next week you see what happens so you had to save your money up next week to see whether she got out of it or not, knowing well she was gonna get out of it.

B: Okay.

VM: And we earned us some money by pickin' up scrap iron around town here on the river bank and sellin' it to the dealers that come out of Williamson and Kermit and down that area down there. They'd buy scrap iron from us. And we would save that way. How we got our money to go to show on the weekend.

B: Where did that iron come from?

VM: Well, it was just people throwin' away stuff. And uh...we just pick it up.

B: It sounds like there was a pretty good size pack of young boys in this town when you were growing up. Was there?

VM: Oh, they were. And you know, Becky, nobody was really mean, oh we might say we're go into a lot of mischief, but nobody was actually mean, hurting somebody, or intentionally hurting somebody. They might pull a joke on somebody every once in a while but actually, nothing to amount to anything. But now a days, you don't know what to expect.

B: What kind of jokes did you all pull on people?

VM: Well, normally what we'd do is, well, let's take down there at the boat landing, now during the summer months we boys would sit down there and...and by the way, that's how we got money to and uh...and the men comin' from Red Jacket didn't want to go up the swingin' bridge to cross. They'd come down there to that boat landing and we'd send them across the river. We'd charge them a nickel over, and a nickel back and if they wanted to give us a nickel when they got on the other side, and went (unintelligible), we could come. We knew if we come back, if they had any money left, we could get at least fifty cents our of them but if they didn't have any money at all, we lost. But we never lost in the long run. We always got it back. And uh...in the winter time when the river froze over, we would tell them, now, there's only one way you can get across there, you got to let us lead you across. If you try to cross this yourself, you will fall through the ice and uh...tell them the same thing, nickel over and a nickel back, and...and back then, they could have just walked anywhere's they want to on that ice, but they didn't know that. So they would, we'd lead them over, lead them back and that's how...and we made it up in the summer time for them. When we didn't want to stand down here at the boat land, we went up the river here, the railroad at that time, didn't cut up their ties, and replaced them like they do now, they pull them all out in one piece. Put them on the river bank. We go up there and take some nails and uh...hammer and a few boards and we'd just get us a whole bunch of them cross ties and right down here where Bob McCoy lives now, that's called the old Ford. The water's low there in the summer time and we take them there cross ties and we put a walk way across that right there and if them people come down there and they didn't see anybody down at the boat landing, they could walk up there and cross that foot log.

B: Un-hun. OH.

VM: And we didn't charge them anything for that. We just made it up for what we got.

B: Where was the old boat landing?

VM: Right straight down from where Aunt Carries' place was. Actually, it's farther down uh...just about where Aunt Fonnie Whitt's house is now. Just part, almost directly straight down from her on...

B: Okay. Before um...before we get down to where Aunt Carrie's was, you said there was a corn field where the town building is now?

VM: Right. No, not where the town, uh...where there parking lot there is and the fire station.

B: Whose corn field was that?

VM: I don't remember but somebody raised corn every summer, they was corn raised there.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What do you think that made out of that corn? Do you think it was...

VM: I hope not corn whiskey. (laughing) I don't know who really who even owned it, but whoever it is, because, it all, I imagine, a lot of it they uh...shuck it in the fall and probably feed it to cattle.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Where was Aunt Carries?

VM: Right next, just where that, you know where the telephone pole is there at the city hall? Alright, now Aunt Carrie's place of business is right there.

B: Okay.

VM: Steeple headed knockers.

B: Can you repeat that?

VM: Steeple headed knockers. That was her favorite expression.

B: And who did she call that?

VM: Just about everybody. Especially somebody that made her mad. (laughing).

B: What did somebody have to do to make here mad?

VM: Well, I try to, uh...one occasion, it's on a Monday morning and Howard Chambers and Butch Chambers had been on a drunk on the weekends and they went down there at Aunt Carries'. They didn't have any money but they wanted drinks in order to try settle their nerves. And she's settin' out there in the yard, had a hoe, and she was pickin' it up about couple three inches and let it fall on the ground like that, you know, and Howard and Butch down there and start, and told Aunt Carrie, said," We're sick and we need a drink." She said, " Now, this is not a hospital. If you're sick, you go down there to Doc Hodge. He's the man that takes care of sick people and by the way," said "quit botherin' a poor old colored woman in here tryin' to work." And she started to call them names, now, and...and finally, she just said, "Well, come on in." They knew they was gonna get to drink. But she had to have a little something to say to them before she gave them their whiskey.

B; Un-hun. Um...what was the little thing that she would play with quarters with people. Would you tell me that?

VM: She would match quarters with you.

B: Okay.

VM: And, if you, if she matched you, she would jump up and down and have the biggest time in the world, but if she lost, look out, your, your on...your on ends...you're a steeple headed knocker and she'd give you the evil eye and you got her, you took her quarter. But that's just her way of doin' it. She didn't mind it but she just wanted the people to know that she's there, I reckon.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What did she look like? We've heard, we've heard she had a bad hip or something and that...

VM: Yeah. SHe was crippled, you know, and she was just short. She's about..about oh, not more than about five two or three and she did have a bad hip. She rode a (unintelligible) you know (unintelligible) and uh...but, and by the way, she used to own the drug store here. And she would always bake the ham that the drug store used to make sandwiches with and those days, it took her one whole day to make that ham. They would buy the ham. Send it down to Carrie there, she would bake that ham, send it back to the drug store and I imagine a lot of people sent ham down there and have it baked to, you know, for their own use.

B: Okay.

VM: SHe was good cook now.

B: What did her place look like?

VM: Well, it was a big two story wooden building and it had the old time porch that almost went around two sides of the house. That was in the front and the lower side. Went clear the length of the lower side of the house and left front of the house and you don't see, houses anymore like that.

B: What color was it?

VM: Green, if I remember right.

B: What did it look like on the inside? Like a house on the inside?

VM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Now, she kept everything clean. Oh, now Becky, she was a stikler [sic] for being neat and clean. If you come in her place there, you set down to eggs or stuff, she treated you nice but if you start getting rowdy and things, she showed you the door right quick.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And you had better get out.

B: Where they...I'm sorry, go ahead.

VM: But everything was clean and neat and in its place.

B: Un-hun. Were there tables inside for people to set at or...

VM: Oh, yeah. Un-hun. Now, she had a dining room there, if there was quite a number of them right there, set around a table there, but if there was just a couple of them, she stayed in the kitchen with you. And we set, we had time to set there at the kitchen at the table there and talk to her and, but that is, you know, just when two a couple uh...there, be just fine, but several of them, why, you'd go to the dining room.

B: Now, we've...we've had some people say at certain times that she did have girls there, so to speak that...that they were...not exactly prostitutes but she had girls there. Did you ever hear anything?

VM: Now, that's possible but uh...I...I don't know for sure, now about that, I couldn't tell you. But now...

B: Growin' up, she was awful fond of one of your brothers.

VM: Frank. Frank was her boy.

B: Why was that do you think?

VM: Well, Frank was all the time kidding with her. And he could make Carrie laugh when nobody else could. And uh...when Frank went into service, if Aunt Carrie did not see,- at that time, I had both sisters and a youngest brother was the only ones at home,- and if she didn't see any of them comin' up the alley ask about her boy that day, she would send somebody down that evening, down there and ask my mother, or one of them now, she wanted to know how her boy is today. Is he alright. And if they tell her they've heard from him or hadn't heard from, that he's alright, she'd say "That's fine as long as he's alright". But, Frankie was her boy.

B: Okay. Let's see. Um...where was the medical clinic?

VM: Where the parking lot is now. Right where uh...Louise Darwin's trailer is now. Now, it wudn't down that far, it was a little bit back up this way a little bit. Just about where that parking lot they've got there now and not...not close to where the city hall is now, but it was right in that area right there.

B: Okay. Let's see.

VM: Right where Louise Darwin's trailer is now, they was uh...uh...a church and a house in that area there.

B: Do you remember which church it was? Which denomination?

VM: No. I don't.

B: Was the church there where um...I know you say it was kind of behind the back, where the Baptist church is now. Was that the church?

VM: No.

B: Okay.

VM: No uh...where the Baptist church is now, there was uh...private homes in that area there.

B: Okay. Do you remember any of the people that lived there?

VM: Oh, yes. That Martha Hoskins, taught school for about sixty-five years. Lou and uh...Bockie, they lived there and uh....uh...Chafins, uh...oh, what was her name, she was married, Mae Chafins. (tape cuts off)

B: This is the second tape of July 17, 1990, Venchie Morrell interview, you were talking about the homes there, where the Baptist Church were and the last person you mentioned was Mae CHafins. Do you remember?

VM: No.

B: Okay. Speaking of Chafins, I have a lady tell me that Murry Chafins wife was murdered down town here, kind of a crime of passion. Do you remember hearin' about that?

VM: Murry Chafins?

B: I think it was Murry Chafins, I think was his name. He lives here in the...he lived in the apartments up here in town.

VM: I don't remember any Chafins.

B: Okay. Alright. Let's see. Okay. YOu say there was an um...there where the...the speed limit sign is back over there, um...was, just past uh...was it Mack Goodsons house? Do you remember?

VM: Yeah. That's where uh...Louise Darwin's trailer is now, that's Mack Goodsons live in that house there.

B: Okay. Who was he?

VM: He was a painter, a paper hanger.

B: How far back was his house there?

VM: Oh, when we first came to Matewan, it was there.

B: Is that what he did for a living? Back then?

VM: Un-hun.

B: Okay. Let's see. What about um...let's see the, was there a Patterson family that lived down there?

VM: Yeah.

B: Okay.

VM: Mammie Patterson. Right where, well, right back of oh....uh...oh, the Phillips home down there.

B: Un-hun.

VM: Now she was a school teacher.

B: Was it um...Mrs. Hoskins that...that used to tutor um...people of the evenings?

VM: That's right. Martha Hoskins.

B: Would you tell me that story?

VM: She, back in those days, Becky, before you'd go to high school, you had to go through what is called Jr. High. She taught the seventh and eighth grade and you had to pass that high school entrance examination before you get into high school. And she taught those two grades and if you were backward or could not grasp a subject clear enough, she would invite you down to her house during the week, where she lived down there and you could go down there and she would tutor you. Wouldn't cost you a cent. And she. She stayed with you. She would stay there until midnight. She stayed right with you and talked to you and teach you and coach you. And there wudn't. I don't reckon there was a night went by during the school term that there wasn't some boys and girls there being tutored extra so they could get through high school. Get into that high school. Pass that high school entrance examination.

B: What did she look like?

VM: Well, everybody said that, now she had a thumb, somewhere along the way, she lost part of her thumb and they used to tell her, that when she got mad, that she'd take that thumb and peck him on the head and hurt and she never did do that to me and I don't think she ever did because I believe it would hurt her. But, I do know this much, I heard so much about her before I got up to seventh grade that I made up my mind when I got out of sixth grade, I was not going to seventh grade. I'd quit school first. Well, naturally, Dad and Mom had something to say about that and I went to the seventh grade and when I found out what kind of woman she was, she was big tall angular women, oh, she was just...jut outgoing, I don't reckon she ever met an enemy, somebody that wudn't her friend. And when I found out what kind of woman she was and what she was tryin' to do, then I changed my opinion of her and in two years I was in there, I reckon, it was probably one of the two of the best years I ever had comin' up through the grades. But I'll tell you this much, if it hadn't of been for her, I don't reckon that I would have got into high school. Now, at that time, Mingo County, every school in Mingo County comes here to Magnolia High School, take that high school examination with the exception of Williamson. Williamson, at that time, was an independent district.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And they gave it to you twiced and let me tell you, one time, and...and I believe in May, and then a little bit later on, before the school term is out, if you didn't pass the first time, you get to take it one more time, if you failed then you had to take, come back next year. And she'd start teaching you or coaching you rather, two months or more before that test come up and Becky, she had those test papers that went back for years. I reckon, she had a stack of them uh...huge stack and she'd go back through them things and she would from year to year and she'd say, well this year, they had this and last year they had that one and this year won't have this, but next year, they'll have that and she picked out what she thought they would have on the test. She wudn't cheatin'. SHe was just being uh...thorough in what she was tryin' to do. And she would pick them out and she coached you on that. Now, she said, more than likely, this is what you will have. If you, now we'll start coaching on this, just pay attention. Well, to top it all off, the year that I took it, everything went along according to what she told us except for one thing. All that time we drew a free hand map of West Virginia, we put our counties and the county seats and the state capitol, the principal river uh...principal interests an stuff like that and that's what we was gonna have. We'd have been ready,and you know what happened, test come up, we drew a free hand map of the United States. (laughing) Anyway, and that uh...they was three of us passed it the first time in uh...grade that I came, the eighth grade that I was in. And I was the lowest one in the three that had the lowest grade. Uh...two of them went on to be teachers uh..uh...Hazel Pitcock and Herbert Hoskins. Hazel Pitcock had already, had ninety-eight points, it was almost a hundred. Herman had I think, about eighty-eight something, you know, I was made down just under an eighty. I think I got a seventy-nine or something, but anyway I passed. But only three of us passed it. And that, you know, where they were just a coaching again. Now, we didn't have to do a thing. All we had to do was come to school. Answer to your name and you could go to study hall cause you already passed the test but you had to be school, you couldn't get out of that one. But it went all over again and all them other boys and girls had to take the test again.

B: Um.

VM: But I'm certainly glad (unintelligible)

B: Do any other teachers stand out in your mind that you remember that you had?

VM: Well, naturally, every boy growin' up had one of there favorite teachers, if it one of these days he tries to find here I reckon.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And uh...Been several of them. Lydia Belle Downs is one of them and Mammie Paterson was one, both of them taught us in school. And we had uh...one uh...I can't think of her first name but her last name is Methe she's from New York, and she taught English. She came her one year, I think, but over the years, you now, you got certain teachers you, others, just let them slip out of your mind.

B: Un-hun. Um.

VM: But those three right there stuck with me because they really, they wanted you to learn and they were uh...the type, they took interest in boys and girls. If you wanted to learn, now, take Joe Hoffstader, one of the best mathematicians you could ever run into. Becky, he tried his best to be a teacher and he loved children, but if a boy or girl didn't want to learn and start acting up, he wouldn't whip them, he'd grab them by the nape of the neck and shake the devil out of them and they, the boy or girl would go home and tell their parents. The parents, then, would take a warrant out for him. Joe would have to go in front of his J. P. He worked on the summer months up there at the mines with us, you now, and Joe said, we was settin' there eatin' dinner one day, and Joe told me and the other two fellows we was workin' with, that uh...never again would he do anything, "I'll teach them kids if they want to learn, but I'm not gonna touch them anymore cause I'm gettin' tired of being jerked up in J P court. Those kids go home and tell their parents. There parents take a warrant out for me and I have to go down there. If I'd spank them and slap them, that'd be different, but I didn't do a thing wrong, said, I just give them a good shakin'." And he quit that and I imagine, a whole lot of those kids was sorry of it after that because I know some of them didn't pass.

B: Um. Okay. Let's see. Where was the um...your family's homeplace back down there?

VM: Uh...where Martha's house is. Not Aunt Martha, where Aunt Fonnie Whitt's house is now. Right directly in back of it.

B: Okay. Did the flood take it?

VM: Yes. The Flood got it.

B: How many homes would you estimate were back down in that area before...?

VM: Let's start, right here. The homes now, Lou and Buster Darwin was the first and then uh...next one right down there was Dennis and Mammie Patterson. The next one is my brother Frank and his wife and then the old homeplace of the Harpers. Next to this was Walter Inges'. Next to Walter Inges was uh...Robinettes and then across on down there, you had uh...uh...George Tanner's home. Uh...Ira Coopers home. The church over here had a home down there for the preacher. And uh...Logan Comptons place and Hoskins' home. Now all of them are on the river bank right down through there. All of those are gone.

B: Okay. Were they all two story or...

VM: No uh...now the, uh...Logan Comptons and his church property were two stories. The rest of them are one story.

B: Where did um...Landon Kesee stand?

VM: Well, now, Landon Kesee's house was concrete block. Now, where the bridge is now, but now Landon Kesee's house uh...uh...the state bought that land in there when they put the bridge across there but this uh...and close to the bridge down there...

B: Un-hun.

VM: And uh...it was like the rest of them. It went down the river too.

B: Um. Okay. Where was Broggs Chamber's house? Was his on the other side?

VM: Now, that's a funny thing, now Broggs Chambers house uh, Ira Cooper's house there, uh...Broggs CHambers house was there sideways. That house did not get, that house wasn't even damaged by the flood. I mean, it wasn't warshed away. But the rest of them were. They had to tear uh...that's real estate that bought that and..and had to do away with it. Did not damage that house.

B: Um. Okay. In here in order, you have um..Brogg's Chambers house, Ira Cooper's house um...Parson's was that the?

VM: Yeah. That's there church over here with this preacher.

B: Okay. Logan Comptons, the Hoskin's house and then on the right hand side was the Nenni's?

VM: Big, that was a big, that was a three story brick.

B: Okay. And it was the one that was nearest the railroad?

VM: Right.

B: Okay. Do you know who built that house? Was there?

VM: John and his son, Tilio. They were both brickmason. They built it I think. And I got to tell you this. Nel Nenni told us that they had some people comin' up there to stay with them one night, you know, and (unintelligible) just the railroad and uh...they went to bed hadn't no trains hadn't been a runnin' and they already, everybody went to sleep and sometimes, durin' the night, one of those freight trains comes through and makes so much noise. Those people thought that freight train was comin' through that house. They jumped up screamin' and runnin' through that house a hollerin' at Nell. And Nell told them to just quiten down. That train was not off'n the track there. They said, well, they didn't know that. I imagine it would scare you if you didn't.

B: So they built it right close to the track?

VM: Yeah.

B: How far away from the track do you think it was?

VM: Not farther than twenty feet. In fact, there was, the house and that little gulley right there and then the railroad bank and then the tracks. I...all together I, not more than thirty, thirty-five feet away from the rail.

B: Hum. Was Howard Chamber's house...

VM: Howard CHamber's house was up on this side on John Nenni's.

B: Okay. Who was he? What did he do?

VM: Uh...he was Brogg's Chambers son and he...his house now, was uh...one story and it had uh...oh, it was built in that area there and it was warshed away but it wudn't really a, it was a fine home but, let's put it like that.

B: There was an O'Connor that lived next door?

VM: Yeah. Helen O'Connor lived above that. Now, that....that house had been gone long before the flood though.

B: Un-hun. What happened to it?

VM: It, it was torn down a long time.

B: Okay. The next to the was Joe Baldwins?

VM: No, now next to...Next to Helen O'Connor was the Pitcock's home.

B: Okay. Okay.

VM: And then Brother Pitcock's place of business was the next house.

B: And what was that?

VM: He had an uh...furniture outlet. And then come Joe Baldwins' in there. And above Joe Baldwin's right there comes Joe Schaffer's old home. And next to that was Lidia Bilby. And by the way, Becky, in those days, you didn't have the telephone exchange like they've got now, you had to go through like that on "Hee Haw" you know, that girl plugs them phones in on it, well, Lidia Bilby run that down there. She had that, but she stayed at that telephone extention [sic] all day long and somebody wanted to call, you call and it went through there and she would plug you in wherever you want to call.

B: Un-hun. Good grief. Did anybody work it at night? I mean, could you make phone calls at night?

VM: Not to my knowledge. What time you could get a call through the day, up, possibly up 'til about ten o'clock at night then it was out until next morning.

B: Let's see. Okay. I think we're comin' back on...on this side where some of the businesses were um...was it H.S. White, where was...

VM: Right next to Fonnie Whitt's.

B: Okay.

VM: That was a two story building.

B: Un-hun. Who was H. S. White?

VM: Well, he at one time, was just about uh...in public service for a long time with a U.S. Marshall in Southern District of West Virginia and uh...he uh... from one thing to another, he dabbled in different things but uh...he was a tough one. Next to H. S. White right there was Dr. Roy's house.

B: What was his last name?

VM: Uh...Dr. Roy.

B: Who was he?

VM: He had a, a practice right in that professional building there straight across the street. It used to be the old hospital and that's where he, now, he's gone from here, now, but that brick house is settin' down there straight across from Joe's place there. Now, that's his home.

B: When was he livin' here?

VM: Oh, he uh...he left here about a little over a year ago. He's been here for a long...long time.

B: Alright. Okay.

VM: Now, next to uh...Dr. Roy's house was the uh...the Masonic Temple. And just on the other side of the Masonic temple was uh...Grant Hatfield's home. Anita Hatfield, that lives down Hatfield Bottom now.

B: Un-hun.

VM: I remember the Flood got that house there but didn't take it down the river. It just picked it up and turned it completely around and set it right out in the middle of the road, Becky.

B: Okay. Well, what was next to that?

VM: That was all and then all, that's, this one, on the other side, that's where you come into Roy Chambers, Thurman Chamber's home.

B: Okay.

VM: And those houses down through there.

B: Okay, who'd home was next to Thurman Chambers? Was there a home next to his? Next to Thurman Chambers?

VM: Well, now, you already got all of that.

B: Okay. Already?

VM: Yeah, we got that already.

B: Okay. Where was the um...the Odd Fellows Hall. WAs that upstairs at Hiram Phillips' store?

VM: That's right.

B: Okay. What was in that building before he owned it?

VM: Well, the bottom part of it was a funeral parlor at one time. Chamber's Funeral Parlor. The top part of it was Odd Fellows Hall and Jean Melanic heard her uh...meetings there too, that was another organization.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

VM: They used the bottom part there as sort of recreation center. They had pool tables in there and uh...reading material and fellows could just set in there and talk and listen to the radio. Wudn't no television in those days. This was in the olden times and talk and just uh...listen to the radio.

B: Okay, what do you remember about uh...there were the Mason's and Odd Fellows, who else, what other kind of organizations like that were there in town?

VM: Well, in...right here in Matewan, the only people they had was the Sigalogues and the Odd Fellows and Jean Metanics. It wudn't any other organizations here in town. That was the only three in town.

B: Okay.

VM: But you had other's scattered around the county. You had your Redmen. They were over at Taylorville.

B: What kind of group of men were they?

VM: Well, there uh...a lodge. The Redmen were workers like any other lodge (unintelligible) but I got to tell you this too, when I was a kid, this brother in Red Jacket, on fourth of July, the Redman would put on a show and they, up where they uh...cross from Junior high...junior grade school, they would chase a pale face, these Indians would, oh, they would chase this pale face up and down and in and through them brush and out of them field and down through that bottom and everything. And had a tepee right out in the middle of that ballpark there, you know, and they would take that man, take him in that tepee there and then they'd all come out and they'd set that tepee a fire. Well, Becky, I couldn't understand how in the world all them people settin' right in front of people would let them kill a man like that. Burn a man like that. It took me a long time to figure out what happened. If I'd have counted how many went in and how many come out I'd have found out there's one extra one come out. But they were just uh...like any other organization, you know, they had their fun parts and they had also, their serious, their work that they done.

B: Un-hun.

VM: Now, Matewan, at one time, did have a...a Klu Klux Klan based here.

B: Un-hun. What were they like?

VM: Well, (unintelligible) to be honest with you and march through town here and they all had them white sheets over them. The only thing you could see was the holes where their eyes was but us...us kids, we knew uh...we'd seen them walk so much around here, we knew which ones had different walks than anybody else. And we had one fellow, especially, we knew his walk, and it's where's we seen him. And whenever they's march through town like this, we would wait 'til we see him and we'd holler at him. But he wouldn't answer us.

B: Why did they march?

VM: Well, it's just uh...they want uh...to intimidate somebody, you know, something goin' on that they didn't like. And uh...now they burnt crosses every once in a while. They burnt crosses over on the field over there.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And uh...but, as far as I know, they never bothered anybody here, you know tar and feather them or done something like that. But they did let you know that they were here and if somebody stepped out of line a little bit, when you saw them burnin' them crosses and seen them marching through town, you know that they knowed something and...and...

B: Un-hun. OKay. Did they ever direct it at John and Mary Brown? Do you know? Did they ever try to intimidate John and Mary Brown?

VM: No. And that's the funniest thing in the world, Becky, and...and kids a growin' up, now Mom always kept a pot of beans on the stove, keepin' warm and uh...corn bread and that heatin'(?) oven, above it in the old cook stove and I don't know how many kids, we didn't make a difference with our colors, cause we, to us, there ere no colored people. And they'd come down to the house there and everybody called her Sophie. That's my mother's name and uh...they'd come in there and they'd say," Aunt Sophie, got an beans and cornbread?" And she'd say, "Get you a plate and go over there on the stove." They'll be a pot over there full and they'd go over there and get it. Sit down and eat. WE didn't mind it. We didn't mind it. And as far as (unintelligible) we didn't know what colored people was other than they was just a different color than we were.

B: Un-hun. Um. We've heard reports that the Klu Klux Klan around here were uh...they would um...they were more, they directed more their activity towards men, that were say, cheatin' on their wives or...

VM: Yeah.

B: Or things like that...that it was...

VM: That's...that's...that's what, when you seen them march and burn a cross, you knew they knew something and normally, the person knew that they were gonna get caught. They're gonna get them so they would straighten up or leave.

B: Un-hun. Um. Do you...do you remember any of the men that were in that? Were they older men when you were young?

VM: They were all older than...we never knew who they were.

B: Un-hun.

VM: Those hoods protected their identity except like I told you, that one fellow, we knew his walk and we could tell who he was.

B: Who was it, do you know?

VM: He's dead now. I can't think of his name but uh...he died shortly after World War II. It'll come to me when I'm away from you or something.

B: Okay. Let's see. Okay. Right after um...we were discussing the Odd Fellows Hall you um...you mentioned the Chafin home. Well, we've talked about that. That was on the backside. Right?

VM: On this side of Hiram's (Phillips') place.

B: Okay, let's see. Okay. Um...over here on the far side of the tracks um...there was, was it property or building that Nenni owned and that John Brown owned property next to it?

VM: Yes. John Brown had a dry cleaning plant over there, right next to where John Nenni's property is.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What did John Nenni have over on that side?

VM: Well, he had a transfer. One...(tape cuts off)

VM: At one time. Then he had a bakery.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And, we just loved to go look at them pies and we'd go (silence)

B: On the other side we were talking about the pies from John Nenni's bakery.

VM: Yeah, we eat more than they sold, I think. (laughing)

B: Okay. And then there was the block houses or there was a block building on the other side of John Brown's place?

VM: No, now that's where something with the jail, the old jail house.

B: Okay.

VM: See, that is... And next to the old jail house there was Reece Chamber's old home. It was a two story wooden building. And then next to that uh, Mae Keatley owns a home in there. A rental home there and then right where the head start is now, is where she lived. That was her home.

B: Okay.

VM: You got the old B & C Warehouse in there, at that time, though, that was uh...Milt Williamson's feed store before B & C made a warehouse out of it.

B: Okay.

VM: Now, the old Methodist church right there now, was a wooden building. I mean, it was torn down and uh...the uh...church at Newtown and Williamson and North Matewan took the lumber and made their churches out of it and then they built this one out of stone that's over there now. And all that stone was hand carved.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And the man that cut that stone and put it together like that was a fellow by the name of Joe Borelli, an Italian fellow. Him and his schoolmates.

B: Was he living here in Matewan or up at...

VM: No, he lived at Thacker.

B: Okay.

VM: And you've heard of Rudolph Valentino haven't you? Italian fellow. Well, now, he was another Rudolph Valentino). He was a handsome man if you ever saw one back then.

B: Did the ladies like him as much as Valentino?

VM: Oh, I imagine they did. Now he eventually married one of the uh...Vinciguerra girls and he was electrocuted at uh...in a mine accident up at Northfork. He was working as an electrician when he got killed. Electrocuted.

B: Um. Did most of the Italian families around here intermarry? Did the Italian families kind of marry their own?

VM: Back in the early years, this, it was just like everything else, first thing you know, they, the girls would marry out of the families and the boys would do the same, and anymore, it's just, you know, you very, a few places you'll find really Italian boy and girl, but generally a mixture.

B: Your parents, your mother was Austrian?

VM: Yeah, she was from, un-hun.

B: Did your parents tell you all much about growing up in Europe?

VM: Never would talk.

B: Why was that? Do you know?

VM: I don't know. Dad wouldn't either. Only thing he told us, he came over here with five of his brothers and other than that, he said they split up and said he hadn't seen or heard of them since and he would not tell us any more than that.

B: What about your mother? Did she talk about how she came to the country...this country and all?

VM: No. Now, see, her first husband was killed in the mines up here at Pocohontas [sic], Virginia. And the oldest brother that we had was a half brother. That was the only son, only child they had by that...by that marriage.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And uh, now he died several years ago too.

B: Was he young enough to be raised with you all or...or was he older?

VM: Oh, yeah. Well, he's two years older than I was at the time, but, we all, as far as we was concerned he was just one of the family and we never thought anything about him being a half brother.

B: What was his last name? What was your mother's first husband's name? Do you remember?

VM: I...I, it's a funny name and I can't pronounce it but uh...his name was Bernard Modesto, and everybody called him Hunky.

B: Why was that?

VM: Well, you've got to know when we grew up in Red Jacket there, there was Hendricks, Talberts and a whole lot of other people there on and JIm Hendricks, he's two years older than the rest of us and he gave that name to Manesto when he was just a young fellow and it stuck with him all his life.

B: Um. Did...you say back there, there was a two story house that Flunky Jim Chambers...

VM: Yeah, now, that's on the only side of uh...Nenni's property, or John Nenni's property, goin' up Warm Holler there.

B: Okay.

VM: And that was a two story wooden building.

B: Now, we've heard some people say that when um...when the Baldwin-Felts agents were puttin' people out of their houses the day of the massacre, was there two Stoney Mountain Camps? Was there...

VM: Yeah. There's three actually. Three Stoney Mountain Camps. Now, up there at North Matewan where that grave yard is, the camp over to the left uh...right going up there, down in there, now that's Stoney Mountain Camp.

B: Okay.

VM: Alright, over here, across the railroad, they had a Stoney Mountain Camp and the lower end down here, that's Stoney Mountain Camp down there, too. Now we lived in this end down here.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

VM: All of them are old Stoney Mountain Camps. All of them are coal company houses.

B: Do you remember hearing about that day or...or do you remember? Were you all living here at that time?

VM: Yeah. See, we lived down at the lower end of town here in a company house. I was playin' out on the tracks there down there when all that happened. Now, Hunky, the oldest one of us, he was up town here and naturally, he was curious and ran around and he was just looking around and when the shooting started, he...he made tracks. But uh...I was down at the house there. I didn't know anything about it until a little later on.

B: Where were they puttin' people out of...out of the house?

VM: Well, the man they put out was Stoney Mountain Camp up here.

B: Across the tracks.

VM: Un-hun.

B: Okay.

VM: I think what they were trying to do, they come down here with the intention puttin' out maybe several, but they had it in mind to put out one and let them know that there gonna put out somebody else and everybody and that brought the whole thing to a head and when it was all over with, they was a, quite a bunch of them killed.

B: We've heard people say that um...they were goin', the Baldwin-Felts were headed back out of town so they had packed away their guns. Did...did you hear that?

VM: No. Un-hun. When the shooting started right out here, everybody had their guns.

B: Okay.

VM: Becky, from the time they come in, got off the train, they turned school out up here. Told everybody to go home. There's gonna be trouble. Serious trouble. They turned school out cause it was a known fact that something's gonna happen. And it finally broke right here.

B: Who did you hear? Did you ever hear about who fired first, whoever shot first?

VM: Well, that's debatable. Some of them uh...said that Sid fired the first shot but, I heard a tape recording by a fellow who uh...I reckon he knows what he's talkin' about cause when he died, he was eighty-eight years old. And uh...in that tape there, he said that uh...uh...Sid did not fire the first shot. It was fired by somebody else.

B: Un-hun.

VM: But now, when he knew what he was talkin' about, that was something else.

B: So, you heard the shots when you were playing?

VM: Oh, yeah. Down there. But, naturally, an eight year old kid don't pay too much attention to it and wudn't, to me, it was just a lot of noise, I reckon.

B: Un-hun. We were wondering, it didn't seem as the people talk about how many men were...were wounded, we know that seven Baldwin-Felts agents died and two miners and Mayor Testerman died, but were there more wounded people than that?

VM: To my knowledge, I don't believe anybody, all of them were killed.

B: Okay.

VM: I don't remember anybody being wounded. Now Cabell Testerman was wounded but he died a couple days later, in Welch Hospital.

B: We just heard one person say that Flunky Jones had been shot, he was shot through the leg.

VM: Well, now,if he had been I don't know.

B: Okay. Alright. Let's see. Once we got under the underpass, we've already talked about the gas tanks and the filling station. Where was the lumber company? The Matewan Lumber Company?

VM: Oh, just above where the gas tanks were.

B: And did Tom Varney own that?

VM: Tom Varney and uh...Russell.

B: What do you remember about them?

VM: Well, Tom was one of the nicest, well, so was Russell. They were all good people and uh...other than when the lumber company went up in smoke, that's when they moved up North Matewan.

B: Who set the...who set the fire? What happened?

VM: They don't know. Nobody ever did find out, as far as I know, no one ever pin-pointed what caused the fire but, Becky, that's not surprising cause it used to be a garage at one time, part of that building where they had their lumber yard and uh...they had high kitchen blinds coming in there, you know, different things, could have been electrical, so...

B: Hum. Okay.

VM: Anyway, as far as I know, there was never any fuss about settlin', the insurance company settled or anything, they just wrote it off as a loss. Uh...a legally fire and let it go at that.

B: Okay. Okay. Down that, you said there were four one story building that belonged to McKenzie?

VM: Dan McKenzie.

B: And that was where the cement wall is?

VM: Right. Right.

B: Who lived there? Do you know? Where they company houses?

VM: No, they were privately owned by Dan. But now Dan had a two story house that he lived in there and then he had...he had two, two story houses. He lived in one and the other one was rented.

B: Okay. Okay. Alright and then um...next to that, I think I have written down that there was a coal company house. There was a two story wood house?

VM: Um-hum.

B: And next to that was a Billy Accica (sounds like Ackie).

VM: Benny Accica.

B: Benny Accica.

VM: Benny Accica's store.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Now, he was not a, Becky, I wish you could have known the man. He was one of the finest fellows that anybody could ever know and, I reckon, when all the time he had that store up there, practically everybody went to school up there come to his store to get their lunch, he'd fix sandwiches for them. He remembered just about every kid that practically graduated up there by the time, and whenever they'd hold reunions, class reunions, they'd invite Benny down to it. And Benny would stand there at the door and he could practically call every child's name that come in that place by their first name.

B: Okay. What did he look like?

VM: Well, he was a heavy set gentleman, uh...about, oh about five eight or nine, and uh...sort of fleshy in the face, but he was a and he was an Italian now, a real Italian.

B: Un-hun. Did you say real Italian?

VM: Yeah, he was.

B: How...how do you know that. Did he...did he have an accent?

VM: He could talk Italian like I talk English...

B: Did you ever hear...did he and your father talk in Italian or did anybody...?

VM: No.

B: Okay. How old would he have been? I mean, how long did he have the store do you think?

VM: Well, him and a fellow by the name of Atilio. Accica and Atilio was the first two people to come in here. Now they had went in to business up there at the other end of town and uh...uh...Atilio didn't like it here so they went up to Sophia, West Virginia and went into business up there. But Benny stayed here. But they're both from Italy.

B: Un-hun. Okay. And then next, who's place, I guess it says we have your opposite the route 49 sign, there were three one story houses.

VM: Right.

B: Okay. And then next to that was the high school?

VM: Right.

B Okay. And how many graduates did they have the year you graduated from high school?

VM: Well, only thirty-two of us and that's 1932, by the way. Same year and twenty-four of us were boys and eight girls. That's unusual, uh...proportion like that but that's the way it worked out and naturally, we could never have dances all the four years we was in school. Try to hold parties, the girls didn't want to invite outside girls and it was just one hassle after another so finally just well, we just stick it out somewheres with what we had.

B: Cause there were so many boys and only so few girls?

VM: Un-hun.

B: I know I ask you as we were walking out that day, was, there was a sidewalk that connected that part of town, too, wasn't there?

VM: Un-hun.(yes)

B: When was the road paved through here, through town?

VM: In uh...twenty, '27 or eight.

B: Okay. Okay. See, we have down that when they put in the gymnasium, that there were houses that they had to move?

VM: They was four houses there. They'd moved in from there. Across the highway over there where W & E's place is now.

B: How did they move those houses back then?

VM: Well, they just uh...jacked them up and put them on rollers and just pull them straight across the road. Now a days, they've got big heavy equipment for you to take a house and put it on a low boy and can move it clear across the United States as far as that goes.

B: Un-hun. Um. There was uh...a tan, I guess and brick building. Was that Clare Overstreet's house? Did he live out there?

VM: No, now Clare's house was not a, Clare lived farther up than the gymnasium.

B: Okay.

VM: Well, see, you come, above the gymnasium was Spriggels old home.

B: Okay.

VM: Then come the two story houses still there now, but we called it the Down's home at that time. That's where the Down's lived. And the next place was Clare Overstreet's home. It was a one story. And next to Clare Overstreet's home was a little store building where uh..Virginia uh...Vinciguerra's got her home now. That was Clare's store at that time.

B: Okay. And that was during the 1940's? Okay. Okay, let's see, and uh...there was white house across from the church there that was, a PJ Smith owned it?

VM: Now, PJ's above Clare's place.

B: Okay.

VM: Now, above Clare there was uh...uh...um...let me think of who, I can't think of her name right now. I went to school with here to. She taught school after she got out. Lois Sizemore. Sizemore's home.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And above Sizemore home there was a little concrete block building and it's still standing. I don't know who owned that and above that one was PJ Smith's home.

B: Okay. Who was PJ Smith?

VM: He was superintendent of the old Stoney Mountain Coal Company right here in town.

B: What kind of man was he? Do you remember?

VM: Well, he was easy going, but he was a...at the same time, now him and Sid had a few words at times. Sid tried his best to get him into an argument to where he could kill him but uh...PJ was just one of them quiet, easy going guys and he would not do anything to cause Sid to do it, to pull his gun but uh...he was, oh, just a, one of the nicest guys you could run into, but you had to know him. He didn't make friends easy. Once you got to know him he was, he had two children born. And uh...the girl he had, Mary, she taught me in school.

B: Let's see. What did she teach?

VM: I don't remember the grade she taught but she taught right up here at Magnolia High School.

B: Okay. Where was the um...C.C. Miller's house?

VM: Well, now you crossin' back over the street there, you know where uh, the old Milt Williamson home is, that brick two story or that brick house is now, alright now, C. C. Miller's was the next one on this side of it.

B: And who...who was um...C.C. Miller?

VM: Well, he was a traveling salesman for Forrester Thornsbury Hardware Company out of Huntington.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

VM: Now, his widow still lives in Huntington.

B: Un-hun. And what was her name?

VM: Uh....I can't think of it right now. I can't...

B: Okay.

VM: First name won't come to me right now.

B: Was she a Chamber's.

VM: Oh, yeah. She was Reece Chamber's daughter.

B: Was it Sally or something like that.

VM: No, it wasn't Sally. I didn't... Yeah, she's Reece Chamber's daughter.

B: Okay.

VM: One of the men that fight at that Matewan massacre.

B: Okay. What do you remember about Reece?

VM: Now, that was a character. Now that one man you better not stir up. If you did, you got trouble on your hands. Now, he was easy going but uh...Becky, at the same time, if you got him mad, you had a wild cat on your hands and people that knew him, now he didn't go looking for trouble but he wouldn't run away from it.

B: We had somebody say that he was the...the he, during the Massacre that he had the nerve, he stood right out in the open and shot. That he didn't care if anybody saw him or not.

VM: That's probably true, none of them did, as far as I know. Now, there's a....there's another fellow there, in that right there, they tell me he was kneeling and he was firing fast as he could and uh...see, Reece and Ed, now Ed Chambers is Reece's son.

B: Okay. I knew that. Was...was Ed here that day? Was he involved in the massacre?

VM: Yeah. Ed was in that good. See, you had three children. You had Reece, Ed, and Hallie. Hallie was uh...Robert McCoy's granddaddy.

B: How was Hallie related to them?

VM: Uh...I think uh...somewhere's along, they was cousins I believe.

B: Let's see. (tape cuts off)

B: This is Becky Bailey for the Matewan Development Center, Wednesday, June 18, 1990. This is tape three of Venchie Morrell interview, summer, 1990 um...Mr. Morrell, we only have a couple more of our pages of going through town left and I see I'm on the page that um...we were discussing, out past the underpass, coming back into town, I believe, you said at one time, there were three two story houses next to where the Collin's Carry out is? Near that area?

VM: Well, yes. It was Hope's, McCoy's and Rock Nunnerie's old home and store.

B: Rock Nunnerie, he was an Italian too.

VM: Right.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Well, when we moved form Red Jacket to Matewan, we'd have to go up Red Jacket to get our bread. That would be, they had a bakery up there. An Italian bakery and I'd ride up Red Jacket with Rock, he was delivering his customers up there's groceries and we'd pick up bread and come back that evening and just him and his wife was all.

B: What, I've heard some people say that they thought at one time maybe, he had been involved in the Glen Allum robbery. Did he ever talk about it?

VM: No, not to my knowledge. But I heard him say he...the same thing with other people talk about it but as far as I know, he never mentioned it.

B: Un-hun. OKay. How did he die? He was killed by somebody wusn't he?

VM: By the chief police here in Matewan.

B: What happened? Do you know?

VM: Really, nobody knows because just the chief police and the deputy went over there at Rock's place and the next thing you knew, Rock was shot to death.

B: Un-hun.

VM: Nothing was ever done about it.

B: About what year was that?

VM: Uh...it had to been about thirty-in the mid thirties if I remember right.

B: Okay.

VM: Now, by the way, you notice that little mausoleum built up there at the number six, uh...North Matewan graveyard? That's where Rock and his wife was buried.

B: Okay.

VM: It's not a mausoleum, I believe it was a cript.

B: No one's ever talked much about his wife. What do you remember about her?

VM: Well, she, as far as I know, Becky, she never mingled with anybody. She stayed in the store, but now, she was good to everybody, and us kids growing up, we'd go in there and naturally, we would get a little piece of candy or something and she'd give it to us and I thought a whole lot of her well, I did of Rock too as far as that goes. They were fine people.

B: Did many of the um....the Italian folks here in town talk about where in Italy they had come from?

VM: No, not as I know of.

B: Okay. Do you remember her name?

VM: It'll come to me but right now I can't recall.

B: Okay. Okay. Um...I see one of the next houses that um...I see here is, belongs to a man called Knothead Williams.

VM: Yeah.

B: Would you tell me about him?

VM: Well, now he was one of the finest fellows you ever run into, too. And uh...that was his nickname and for the life of me, his given name, I can't...I don't know. They were Williams'.

B: What did he do for a living? Do you know?

VM: He was a miner at one time. Later in years, he didn't, didn't, he was like everybody else was, retired and.

B: And his house was a two story house?

VM: Just a wooden house.

B: Okay. Okay. And then next to his house was a...was another corn...corn field, okay, and then that's where they put the houses when they moved the gym.

VM: That's where they moved them where the gymnasium is now, they run houses across the street in that area there.

B: Okay. What do you remember about Pearlie Epling?

VM: Pearlie, at one time, worked in the mines at Red Jacket. Then he went into business with Milt Williamson in W & E Chevrolet. That's where it got it's name. WIlliamson and Epling and then finally, Pearlie ended up owning the thing and Milt died and Pearlie had the whole thing.

B: And did um...did he live there on the other side of the field from Knothead? Pearlie?

VM: Uh...brick above Knothead Williams' place up there. Still standing. The only brick house up in that area now. The big house up there.

B: Okay. Oh, boy. What do you remember about going to the grade school up there. Can you tell me about the grade school?

VM: Well, really Becky, it's just like, uh....every kid growing up. You didn't want to go to school but you had to go. And you had good teachers and bad teachers but in the long, by large, it was an experience that helped you through life, and other than that why, it was just like the other school I reckon.

B: Can you describe it physically for me. What it looked like?

VM: It was a big two story large building and had the classrooms downstairs and upstairs and after they done away with that grade school there, it was converted into an apartment building.

B: Who were some of the bad teachers that you had?

VM: Well, I can't remember.

B: Do you remember any of the things that they did that made them stick out in your mind as being bad?

VM: Well, they weren't bad, Becky, they just weren't the type, you know that...that uh...would be, were interested in teaching like they should be.

B: Okay. The next entry I have down is uh...Dennis Queen, with the Mingo Tire or is that where the Mingo Tire place is now?

VM: Yeah. That's where his garage was.

B: Okay. Do you know how long that he had that garage there? Do you know when he got started?

VM: Becky, now he was in business when I come out of the army but how long he'd been there, I don't know.

B: Okay.

VM: I got out of the army in '45. In August of '45.

B: Un-hun. Was he from this area?

VM: From over on Pigeon Creek.

B: Okay. How did men learn how to be mechanics back then? Did they go to school like they do now?

VM: No, it's just, you picked it up by doing the work. If you had somebody that had been doing it for years who taught you and helped you. And you just hit and miss proposition until you got where you could...In those days, all you needed was a hammer and chisel to work on a car. Now and days, you got sitters and everything else to work on them. And none of them done as good a job as the old type mechanic twenty years ago and brains.

B: Un-hun. Back then, say in the forties, did, were there still cars around, say, from the '20's and '30's? You know how, today, we have cars that are ten, twenty, thirty years old. Were any of the real old cars still runbling around back then?

VM: They were, if they were I don't remember. Oh, you had maybe, if they were, they would put up, because I do know this now, uh... some and usually in October or November, the cars were put in a garage or something, and jacked up off the ground so the tires wouldn't uh...decay. Water drained out of them and they wudn't used no more until the spring. In those days, you could buy your license for your car for a half a year or three months a year, out of the year. Now a days, you buy them for the full year whether you use the car for a full year or not.

B: Why did people do that?

VM: Wudn't any road to drive on and the cars didn't have heaters in them. They're touring cars. They only thing they had uh...uh...in size were just, oh, I can't think of what they call that uh...and they take them, you put, take them down during the summer months and put them up during the winter but, when the weather comes up cold.

B: A convertible?

VM: It's not a convertible it 's just a, really, it's something like uh...I'd...oh, some kind of glass but it's pliable, but it wudn't, it was no heater's in those days.

B: Um. So it wouldn't have been a comfortable ride in the winter, anyway.

VM: No, Lord, no.

B: Here I have uh...is it, a feed store?

VM: That's old Milt Williamson's right across the street over there, railroad tracks rather.

B: Okay. And that, well, this says out past the, the underpass was Johnny Anderson, was it?

VM: He had a feed store up there too, where Johnny Anderson sold uh...feed and groceries. Milt Williamson only had a feed over there at his place.

B: Were there enough people farmin' to keep two feed stores in business?

VM: OH, yeah. At that time, that's all you had around here and those people from up Blackberry Creek, Pigeon Creek, Pond Creek, and all of them, Peter Creek. They would come in here and get what they needed.

B: Were these people farmin' for their own needs or did they sell?

VM: They would raise what they needed then they come in the following year, you had uh...farmers come into Matewan all the time sellin' their produce.

B: Did they, oh, I'm sorry.

VM: People looked forward to it because it's fresh produce.

B: Un-hun. Did they peddle it or did they bring it to the merchants in town?

VM: No, they peddled it. They didn't have any special stand or place to settle. Not like they got here. The markets today.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

VM: They peddled it from door to door.

B: Okay. I have down here, a name, it says Deaton. Deaton?

VM: Mrs. Deaton.

B: Un-hun. Did she live out near the Andersons?

VM: No, she lived right out here. Milt...this first house there, after you, next to the Methodist Church there goin' up. Now, she died when she was ninety, ninety-eight years old I believe. And she taught school for oh, I reckon, seventy years.

B: What do you remember about her?

VM: Well, she was one of the finest old ladies that you would ever want to meet and she loved to teach. Now, little Danny Jr. Deaton, over here, that was his grandmother.

B: Okay.

VM: At the bank.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And I got to tell you this one on her. Her car stalled one time just right after school was out. Right where the Solo station is now, but at that time, Hope's home was in there. There was no Solo station and, she couldn't get it started. Several people tried to help her get it started, they couldn't do it. Well, there's a bus driver, one school bus driver. Roscoe Artis pulled up behind her and he started blowing that horn of his. He was blowin' his horn for everything it's worth and them people trying to get her car started. And Mrs. Deaton got out of her car and come back there cause she knew Roscoe right well. And Roscoe had that little sliding window open and she looked up there and told him, said, "Mr. Artis, if you'll get out of the bus and go up there and see what you can do to help those guys get my car started, I'll set in the bus and blow the horn for you." (laughing) And he stopped blowing the horn.

B: Okay. The last page I have written down has, starts with Nick Blankenship. What was his name? Nicholas Blankenship.

VM: Oh, Nicodemis Blankenship?

B: Okay, Nicodemis Blankenship. Okay.

VM: Right straight across from where uh...Benny Accica's store was uh...He was a station agent for the Norfolk and Western Railroad, I reckon, for fifty years. And by the way, Becky, he was station agent up here at Vulcan. It was a Coaling Station. That's where the trains pulled in and got your coal and water and see, he had a station and they blowed the whistle, there's all steam going and everything like that and see, when I first got married, which we lived up there, boarding from him for about a month before we got a place to live and, he wouldn't talk normal. He had to holler. But that's where he'd been up there before anybody could hear you, and he never got out of that habit. Talked to the top of his voice. (laughing)

B: Did people ever try to tell him he didn't have to holler or...or...

VM: Well, it wouldn't even do any good. I imagine he's hard of hearing, too, you know, after listening to all that noise for as long as he's been there.

B: Un-hun. Well, what did a staging agent do?

VM: Well, up there, it was like any other, they sold tickets and the trains would come in there. Now, that was where they stop and got their coal and water before, then he'd have to call into Williamson and let them know that the train is there ready to, gettin' ready to pull out going towards Williamson. It's the same way as if they were goin' east. They'd have to call up above Ieagar [sic]and let them, let them know that the train was leavin' there. If they, there was various duties they all had to do.

B: Un-hun.

VM: Take care of the luggage and the baggage and the packages of the company and the freight and stuff like that.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What do you remember about the Hope house?

VM: Well, now hit was a two story wooden house. It was a nice house but hit was like the rest of them. When the Flood got it, it got everything.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What do you remember about the Hope family?

VM: Well, Mr. and Mrs. Harley Hope, they were all, both of them are nice people but, now they had some sons that uh...give them a lot of trouble. But, by large, the family was a nice family.

B: And you say they gave them trouble. Were they um...well, I interviewed Josephine Allara Hope and she...she was married to one.

VM: Yeah. Terry Hope.

B: And she said that the others were, well drinkers, basically.

VM: Well, three of them that I know of in the family were.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

VM: And to top it all off, Becky, uh...the youngest one was one of the finest business uh...agents or teachers that you would learn, he could teach you business, typewriting, business of any kind that you want to know about. Smart as a whip, but the bottle got him and the next one above him, he uh...he never went to college as far a I know, he was smart, but the bottle got him. But then they had one that worked for a bank over at Charleston there for years. And the bottle got him. Other than that, the rest of them, Josephine was right if she said the bottle, now Terry, as far as I know, I never seen him take a drink.

B: Well, if he did, I think she broke him of it. (laughing). Um...I have a, there was a brick, one story, oh, excuse me, no, there was Anse Hatfield's brick home. It was where the C & P Telephone um...little thing is by the Solo station.

VM: Now well that's N. L. Chancey.

B: Okay. Chancey.

VM: Yeah. That was a one story brick.

B: Okay.

VM: Now, N. L. at one time was Mayor in Matewan. He had that Ford sales out here at one time. He taught school at one time. He was principal at one time and he was another one of the finest teachers you could ever go to, but the bottle got him.

B: When was he mayor?

VM: Oh, it was in the late '30's and I got to tell you this one. The youngest brother I got, Mack, right where the bank is now, B & C had a tank right there and a filling station right there too, and was the side, I guess, we had down here, well, Mack went to work after school hours, you know, and on the weekends, and Chancey had to fill out an application for his social security number, and he comes down there and says uh...first name, middle name and last name or last name, first name and middle name, anyway, you had that. And Mack told Chancey, he said, "Last names Morrell, of course. And said," Your middle name right here. And Mack says he didn't have any middle name to write. Chancey said, "Mack, you know better than that. This form right here. The government knows what they're doing. You've got to have a middle name." And Mack said, "Mr. Chancey, I don't have one. All I've got is Mack Morrell." That which is true. Well Chancey said, "We're gonna have to give you a middle name." And Mack says, "I don't want one." But he says, "Well, we've got to follow regulation right here on this form." So he set there and he put Mack Maurice Morrell and that's the way his social security card come (laughing).

B: Mack Maurice.

VM: And by the way, Chancey was about three sheets to the wind the day he filled that out for him. (laughing)

B: Why do you think it...it seems like there were a lot of men that had problems with alcoholism or at least problems with drinking? Do you think it was the time period or was it this area?

VM: Well, uh....Becky, look at Bill,the Allias house down here, there's a fellow by the name of Hazelrig, come from Georgia, big, six foot four or six strappin' man, healthy as a horse, never drank, I don't reckon until he got up in this area here. He started a sellin' produce and ice and stuff out of there, down there. Well, he got in with the wrong bunch around here. We had some pretty characters right here you'd love to watch. Hazelrig got to drinkin'. First thing you know, Hazelrig lost his business and it's just, well, and, it...it might have been the times and then it could have whole lot of been dependent on the person. We could get into. They's a lot of thing you didn't want to get into if you get with the wrong crowd.

B: uh-huh.

VM: And we had quite a few of them around here that, that Bridge Sighs helped them out.

B: What...what do you mean by that when you said the Bridges of Sighs?

VM: That old swinging bridge up there.

B: Un-hun.

VM: You saw that picture of that, down on the bottom there, that notation on it said, The Bridge of Sighs, and only thing we could figure out about that is, when they went over there, they had money and was doing pretty good, well, when they got over there and come back on this side of the river, they didn't have any money and they had an awful headache, I suppose and they just come on this side and they'd go (sighed). (tape cuts off)

B: Okay. Did Anse Hatfield have a house down there anywhere?

VM: I didn't understand?

B: Did Anse Hatfield have a house down in that area anywhere near Chancey's?

VM: No.

B: Okay. What about Sailor McCoy.

VM: That...that was a big two story brick.

B: Now, was this the Sailor McCoy that was Matt Allara's father?

VM: Right.

B: Okay.

VM: Same man.

B: So how old was his house? Do you know?

VM: It was built in the late 20's or early 30's. See, they lived up there where uh...across from Benny Accica's store, then that house burnt, it was a wooden house and then that's when Sailor built it, a brick down there where they lived later on. It was built in the late 20's.

B: Un-hun.

VM: Or early 30's, in that area.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Now, he was really one of the finest old gentleman you ever could run into. As far as I know, Becky, I don't think he ever drank. But he run the Blue Goose across the river there for a long time. And, at one time, now, his wife, we'd call her "M". She was a nice old lady too, and us kids used to go up there and sit on the porch there. Had a big porch. And uh...she'd come out and just cut up with us like she was a teenager.

B: Un-hun. Was he a, a spirited person, because, Mattie Allara seems, now, she seems like pretty much of a tough old lady. Did she, which parent did she get that from?

VM: She had to get it from her daddy and not from "M". "M" was easy going.

B: Un-hun.

VM: And Sailor was easy going to but now, at times, he could be awful stubborn.

B: Un-hun. Okay. One of his children, his, I think one of his daughters died in the flue epidemic of 1919. Do you remember that? You would have been about seven years old when that happened.

VM: No, we moved here, in 1919, about that time, but I don't remember.

B: Cause, people would have been gettin' sick about that winter, 1919, 1920. Okay. Alright. And then um...the Chevrolet place. Was that W & E Chevrolet?

VM: Yeah. W & E.

B: Okay. Could you describe that building for me?

VM: It was a two story wooden building with tin sidings on it.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

VM: And it was a garage and salvage in support of W & E.

B: Okay. And then I have down Rock uh...Nunnerie's General Store. Did all these little stores and supermarkets, did they compete very much with their prices or..?

VM: No. In those days, Becky, everything was just about the same. You don't have what you've got today, you know, this market right here, they've got a bargain on this right here but they raise the price on something else to take care of what they're cuttin' on this right here. And in those days, everything was just about the same regardless of what store you went to because, well, let's go back to something now, now Bob Brewer used to have a store right here. Not in this one, next door here and uh...I've heard him say a many a time that sell, on a loaf of bread, the only thing he made was a nickel, now bread sells for a dollar a loaf or more. You think of that now.

B: Was it being the small town, how did people decide who they did their, who's store they did their shopping at?

VM: Usually, you went to all of them. Now, Mom, my mother went to Henrietta McCoy, that's Robert McCoy's mother. She had a store right down here on the other side of the Chatterbox there. Well, Mom would trade with her. She would trade with Brewer. We'd have to take her up to uh...Williamson to do a little bit of trading down there. Everybody else that were, they didn't traded in one place, one store. They just went to different stores and bought...

B: Different things?

VM: Just different things, maybe sometimes, they'd buy all of what they wanted in one store and next time, they'd go to a different store and buy everything. It just uh...

B: Okay. (tape cuts off)

B: Okay. And then on the other side of Rock Nunnerie's general store, I have down that um...was it Mr. Brown that had the B & C place there?

VM: E. E. Brown. And it was a one story frame.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: He was, well, now, he was the type of a guy, he was all business in that place down there. And he run a wholesale and retail gasoline, but he was a fine gentleman. Other than that, he loved his bottle too. He didn't let it get the best of him.

B: Un-hun.

VM: He was like a lot of people I know. There's just two kinds of whiskey. There's the kind you drink and get drunk on and the sipping kind and he had the sipping kind. (laughing)

B: Um...another person that we've heard about here in town was a man known as Dad Brown. What do you remember about him?

VM: He would go around and, that's when John Brown had his dry cleaning over here and Dad would go up and down these hollers, camps, and get the dry cleaning and then when they up and ready to take them back, he would take them back out. Sometimes he's ride an old dump cart and deliver them and he I...I reckon, Becky, it didn't make no difference was, he was out.

B: Did you know that his real name was Joseph Caples.

VM: uh-huh. Well, I got to tell you this one now. One of the colored fellows lived out here in this country block housing out here. His sister lived up here at North Matewan. Mrs. Rich (unintelligible) and uh...we hauled him, I never knew him except as Dad, and I knew him for years, and when he died, had his obituary right there and his first name was Lovelace so I don't blame him for using the name " Dad". (laughing) Somewhere, I don't know who gave him that name but that was his name.

B: Lovelace. My goodness. Um...I didn't get a chance to ask you about um...people like Mayor Testerman. Did...did you have any memories of him?

VM: No.

B: Okay. You would have been a very little boy.

VM: Un-hun.

B: Okay. What about Sid?

VM: Nothing except I knew him when I see him just as a kid, but other than that, I couldn't tell you anything more.

B: Probably knew him from the knees down. Um...we talked a little bit about uh...Reece Chambers yesterday. Do you remember Ben Mounts?

VM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Ben Mounts is the one that was tried for that Matewan Massacre too.

B: I talked to his daughter Ruby last year. He seemed like he was a character.

VM: He was.

B: She said her nickname, his nickname was "wild dog."

VM: Yeah. That wouldn't surprise me.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Uh...Becky, when I drove the miner's bus back in the '30's. He rode it from, picked him up here in Matewan took him to Red Jacket to the mines I worked, then brought him back in the evening and let him off right there. Now he and two other guys were drinking buddies. They would get off in the upper end of town. There's a house up there that they'd go and a man would furnish them liquor and then they'd tell me now, you come, will you come and get us about oh, they'd set a time and I'd say yeah. I didn't want them to walk up that road. So if they told me to come and get me at six o'clock I got my bushman up there and got them out and took them home but they stopped and got their drink. Not every day but every once in awhile they would do it. B: How did the younger miners and younger men in town, how did they treat these men that had been involved in the Matewan Massacre?. I mean, were they, did people kind of stand off from them because of what they'd done?

VM: Not as I know of, Becky but I do got, I have to tell you this. I didn't know this until now, Sally Starr Chambers, that was Ed Chambers' widow, that was killed uh...told Kenny Phillips up here at Blackberry City, Kenny told me this a couple years ago, uh...now there's other people involved in that shooting here but, the fifteen that they tried for that massacre there, they swore them to secrecy. Do not talk about it to anybody. Say nothing to anybody. Reporters, your friends, your family, anything, because your liable to cause them to pick up other people that they hadn't got a hold of yet. You don't want them to get involved in it, so all that time now, they never, one time, spoke about it. That's the reason nobody ever talked about it, because they were all sworn to secrecy. Sally Starr is buried down here at Maher, down below Williamson.

B: Do you remember her?

VM: Uh...just the picture right here when I seen her, other than that, I don't know much.

B: Okay. And you probably remember Jessie about the same then? Okay. Do you remember who the next police chief was after Sid? I don't know if I asked you that yesterday but...

VM: I don't know.

B: Okay. You wanted to say something? Were you...When you drove the uh..miner's bus in the 1930's, what did you have to do to get that job? Was that a job that you...

VM: Well, I just got out of high school, Becky, and I knew Alan O'Brien and John Helms. They had the railroad and Ford sales out here and uh...they needed a driver and they ask me would I take it. And I got paid thirty dollars a month and that's, that was big money in those days. (laughing).

B: Okay. Do you remember, I don't know if you are old enough to remember, but do you remember people like Greenway Hatfield?

VM: Oh, yes.

B: What do you remember about him?

VM: Well, as kids, we go down there to that Greenway Hatfield's farm, north, down there, it's built up now and he brought prisoners up there and they worked on the farm up there and then he'd take them back down there to jail at night, in those days, the sheriff got paid so much per day to feed each prisoner. It...let's say that the state line was forty-two cents a day to feed a prisoner. If he could feed that prisoner on ten cents a day, the other thirty-two cents, he'd put it in his pocket and it was legal and nothing could be done about it. So he'd bring those prisoners up there, and by the way, they'd get a whole lot of them hobo's, catch them off the train down there. They'd give them ten days in jail. Keep them about three or four days in jail. Turn them loose but they were counted for ten days in jail. They had a racket and Greenway and his sons, they got, one time, Greenway would be Sheriff, next time one of his sons would be Sheriff, next time Greenway would be Sheriff, next time on of this sons would be Sheriff and he kept that up until finally the county went Democratic and that kicked all that.

B: How long did it take the Democrats to get corrupt?

VM: I think the first day they got in office. Uh...sad thing to say, but absolutely I...I do believe.

B: Did you ever, did anybody ever approach you to try to buy your vote or did you know any of these things that have supposedly gone on for years?

VM: No. No one ever come to me and told me they would give me two dollars or a pint of whiskey for my vote but I had me, now, the man never approached and told me that he would give me a job on the Board of Education if I'd work for him, but, see, in the family there, I could vote, my oldest brother would vote. Dad and Mom could vote. They was four votes there and this man that was runnin' for the Board of Education, he told Mom, come to the house and told her, if all four of us would vote for him, he's see that I'd get a job and then Mom told me that and I came in that evening, and I told her, I said," My teacher wants us to vote for him cause he's a fine man," but I said," Mom, he promises everybody the same thing. They's just so many jobs that you can have. He told you that to get our vote. He told the other families the same thing. There's no way in the world he could get all those jobs so, as far as I'm concerned, he won't get my vote." And he didn't.

B: Un-hun. Um. But he had your vote up until he did that?

VM: Up until he made that remark because, there's no way in the world he could promise all the people good jobs.

B: Okay. Alright.

VM: He wudn't no (unintelligible) it's just his, he's playing politics and...

B: Did you ever hear anything about um...the Dingess Tunnel?

VM: Oh, yeah.

B: What do you remember about the Dingess Tunnel?

VM: That was the main line for Norfolk and Western at one time. Have you ever went through it? Well, I don't think you can go through it now. My understanding is that the Corp of Engineers built a dam down there and the tunnel is flooded now. But, I took my wife to it one time, now, it's 7/10 of a mile long. It's just as straight as it can be, Becky, but, when you start, before you start through that thing, yo had to pull up there and look in it and make sure nobody was comin' through. You had to turn our headlights on. Then you start through with your headlights on. Well, started through there. They just took the rails up. They just throwed creek gravel on it, across side on the intake and it was bumpy and you had to drive awful slow. The water was drippin' off the walls, and my wife got scared, and she said, "What would happen if any one of them rocks would fall out up there and hit us? " I guess they would cave in." "Will we get out of here?" She was scared to death. But, we made it through it and made it back but she never would go under it not more. No.

B: Was your wife a local girl?

VM: Yeah. She was born up at Thacker.

B : How did you all meet?

VM: Well, that's the funny thing uh...she graduated in '20, 29 I believe. Uh...I went, I went in high school in '28, my first year. After I came out of service, I went to work up Red Jacket and her father was shop boss up there and uh...she was workin' in the Red Jacket store and we just start talkin' and first thing you know, one thing led to another, and we just got married. But uh...we'd known each other ever since they moved there and I believe they was twenty, '29 I think, when they moved to Matewan from Thacker.

B: Un-hun. How long did you all date before you all got married?

VM: Well, let's see. I got out of the service in '46 uh...'45 uh...we got married in November, '47. Almost two years.

B: How long were you all married, cause I know she's passed away.

VM: Yeah. Thirty-seven years.

B: Okay. What was her name?

VM: Pansy.

B: Okay. And she was older than you?

VM: Two years older than me, yeah. SHe was born in nineteen and ten and I was born in 1912.

B: Okay. Alright, well, there's a person you were telling me about the other day uh...name Jellyroll, would you tell me about him?

VM: His name actually is Harry Brown. Everybody called him Jellyroll Brown. Now while he was goin to school up here, he would, during the lunch hour, he'd come down here in the pool room right straight across the street over here. He would go in the Stoney Mountain uh..store right there, coal company store and get him a jellyroll and a pint or quart of sweet milk and he'd go in the pool room there and play pool until it was time to go back to school. He got to be a pool shark, later in life, that's how he made part of his living with playing pool and that's where he got the name Jellyroll and that stuck it with him all his life.

B: One of the things we've been talking about, more maybe this year than last year was the floods. What, what's the first flood that you remember in Matewan?

VM: In '57.

B: Okay. How bad was it?

VM: Well, it was...it was bad, but now I got to tell you this, now one of the Hope boys, Jack,- and that was one of the boys that drank a lot uh...everybody talked about, I've always heard when I was growin' up about the 1917 flood, how bad it was- and we was standin' on the railroad tracks out there above the underpass there in '57 when the '57 flood was on and then somebody started talking about the '57 flood or '17 flood and Jack said," Now, quit talking about the 1917 flood boys, we've got the 1957 flood now. Forget the '17 flood, think of the '57 flood."

B: Un-hun. Um. So they were supposedly, had been a flood here in 1917.

VM: (unintelligible) Now, that was, I've always heard, was a lot worse than, other than the '77 flood.

B: What do you remember about the '77 flood?

VM: Well, Becky, sister and brother both lived down here and uh...a nephew and I went down, Frank, my brother and his wife had already got their furniture or what they could out of the house. The rest of it was put up in a high up like you always done. Well, Danny, and myself and a colored boy, we went down to Lida's house there, and we started to take, and we took a lot of furniture and stuff and brought it up here and put it in the Baptist church. That's where they do it every time floods uh...water would come up. And then the rest of it, the rest of the stuff, we'd put it high up so the water wouldn't damage too much. It might as well stayed on the floor, what happened. And uh...Danny, that's my nephew, he kept telling me, he said several times," We'd better get out of here. This river's raising too fast." so when we got out of the house, Becky, we was wading water above our belt line in a, but, it wudn't too bad cause we'd waded all our life, not that high, but in other floods but they was raisin' fast. You could almost see that water comin' in, wadin' up there. Well, that night, that's when it hit the fourth and fifth of April. And it tore up everything.

B: Where were you living at that time?

VM: At Red Jacket.

B: At Red Jacket?

VM: I'd been living at Red Jacket since '48.

B: Now I just, they've flooded, say, probably here and Williamson and Iaeger and places like that didn't it?

VM: It flooded all the way to Crum.

B: Did it flood any in Red Jacket?

VM: No. There really water, creek up there, it was Mate Creek and it didn't bother up there. It was back water, river comin' up here and back to Mate Creek up to North Matewan there but as far as water catchin' where I lived, it never got anywhere close.

B: Do you think that flood was caused just by the rain and things like that because I've had some people say they think it might have been...

VM: Well, uh...well, they had Becky, if I remember right, it, that period of time, it rained about I think, fifteen inches of rain fell and they say that they was a dam up Dryfork there, up Iaeger there, coal company dam up there busted and stuff, well, it had to be above that too, because Iaeger, Dryfork comes out in the lower end of Iaeger. Well, the upper end of Iaeger got flooded, so does Welch. No, no places up through there got it all so it could have been, maybe, a coal company impoundment could have busted but most of them, I believe was from the heavy rains that we had. Just like they had down there Shady Side, Ohio there where it flooded here a few months ago. That flash flood there.

B: Okay. You'd talked um...before about how the town had just built a new clinic and that...and that got ruined? What kind of effect did that flood have on the community?

VM: Well, Matewan's never got over it. And it'll take a long time before it really, the town will get over that because well, look around, you know how many houses is gone, now. People who lived here. And businesses left here that was here at one time. They're just not, like it used to be. But, eventually, hopefully, if they get that dam built or the flood wall built here then, people will come back.

B: Now, your brother's home, was it washed away?

VM: Brother and sister. Both of them lost their homes.

B: How um...how completely was it washed away? I mean, was it picked up off the foundation and washed off or...

VM: Well, uh...we really don't know, cause see, nobody saw it. The only thing, my sister uh...was up at Grace Hatfield's house. She had about fifteen of them that caught in the flood stayin' up there with her and Louise Darwin, a colored women that works here in the bank there, Louise lost her house out there too. Now, Lida didn't know that all this had happened down here. Lou did. Lou come down to where she could see it, you know and uh...she went back up there, well, when the water started going down, Lida, she went hack up there, well, when the water started going down, Lida made the remark," Well, she's gonna have to go back down and start cleaning up that mud and everything, and get the house back in order". And Lou told Lida, said," Just forget it Lida," said," Your house and my house, Frank's house, and everybody's house, along there went down the river. It washed everything away". And...nobody saw it happen cause it was after midnight but it did, probably picked them all up off the foundation and took them along.

B: Did people just pack up and leave? Did that really happen as often as people say that people just left town or did...?

VM: Well, it possibly, it just...you know, you can stand just so much like that. And eventually, you get, you think, well, what's the use of staying here and going through this time and again. About every uh...well, it's '57 and '64 I think and then I think the next one was around uh...'64 and then uh...I think it was uh...and then the '77 would have been '84, '85 was another one. See, in a twenty year period, we've had about five floods here. And, you get tired doing that much. Every time, before the '77 flood, we'd all pitch in and people'd go down and help and they'd go down and warsh the mud out of the houses, hose everything down. Dry everything out. Take your bought furniture you stored up there in the church or wherever, take it back to the house and it was back in business again. Til the next one came along and then it went all over again. The same thing. You know the amazing thing about the upper end of town here, Becky, the water, along where W & E is, was uh...Collin's Carry Out is now, that Solo spot right there, well, Mate Creek started backing up, that's the first place it floods. An the river starts flooding all the way from the upper end of town there alright, every time, from the '77 flood, uh...from the '57 flood to the '77 flood, no, very few people up in that end got flood insurance. And...and, back then, when it first came out, it was fairly cheap. Now I carry flood insurance where I live. Uh...I hope I never have to use it, but I live in that holler there and something could happen and if it does, I've got it. I'm like the lady that was flooded out down here at Lobata. She moved up there in a house about three doors down from us and she told my wife one day she was goin' up to the beauty parlor there and ask her said uh..she's a Hatfield lady, if she had flood insurance. My wife said, if I lived right in the middle of the Sahara desert, I'd get flooded and I don't want to go through another one like I did down Lobata. See, they didn't have it. They lost everything they had. It's...it's uh..heartbreaking and every time you see it on TV where there's flash floods, you have a feeling for those people 'cause you know what they're going through. And here's the sad part about it, Becky. A lot of those people uh...they didn't have the flood insurance in our area at that time so they couldn't get it. And, there you are.

B: Were people more prepared? I mean, was there flood insurance and stuff like that when the '84 flood came?

VM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. People came, Bob up here, was one, took care of a whole lot of that, now, like I said, I carry it where I live hope to never have to use it but something could happen.

B: Okay. One thing we talked about off tape that I wanted to go back and put on tape now was, we were talking about some of your way time experiences out in Hawaii and I'd ask you about General Richardson, would you tell me some of your...some of your stories about him again?

VM: General Richardson was commanding officer there at uh...one of the bases on Oahu Island uh...I didn't run into him until I got on Siapan Replacement Depot and he was a, well, everybody classified him as a nut but he had to do something, had a good education or he wouldn't have gotten as high as he did in the army. Uh...he uh...when the war started winding down, the war in the European theater operation was over, then the point system come out and anybody that had eighty- five points or better wanted to get out of the army could apply for discharge and that worked on a system of one point for each month's service, two points for each month over seas, five points for each battle participation, five points for the purple heart, five points for bronze star and something like that, and if you were married you could get, had children, you could claim three children, no more. If you got eighty-five points or better, you would be eligible for discharge, well, there's no way in the world that they had enough of station in Pacific to redeploy the men from the European theater operations in the Pacific so they gave the guys, even the European theater operations, if they had eighty-five points or better, a chance to get out of the Army. Well, there was about twelve hundred of us in a replacement depot in Siapan there that either was wounded, had been wounded, waiting to be sent back to the States or back to their outfit, actually, I thought I was going back to my company. I didn't know nothing about the point system at the time and uh...when the point system came out, he (General Richardson) didn't like it so he called a meeting of them guys that...that could be eligible for discharge and he told us, he told us what he thought of us wantin' to ge [sic] out of the army before the war was over, well, nobody said anything, they just kept quiet and then he made a remark that he'd been in the army for about twenty- eight years and he hadn't seen any combat yet. All twelve hundred of us had been in combat, one time or another, then he went on talked a little bit more. He said he had his son stationed at the Pentagon in Washington had been in the army about two and a half years or three years and he hadn't been in combat, well, when he said that, I reckon there must have been around about eleven hundred, nine hundred and ninety-nine people raised their voices. I didn't raise mine. I set still and boy, it made him mad. He couldn't talk no more. Every time he started to say something, they'd start hollerin' and he discharged uh since, called the meting [sic] off. The officers told us one backed around here. (tape cuts off Well, they got back replacement. (silence)

B: You got sent back to your replacement?

VM: Yeah. I went back there and it was about an hour or so after I got back, when a little PFC come down there through the area there calling my name out told me to come on up to the supply house, if I can, and pick up a rifle, and a canteen, and that and this, you know, I was gonna be on security patrol that night, on twelve hours and off twenty four. Well, a lot of the guys didn't like that so they all took off and went down to see Inspector General and they told him what they thought of that, you know, and tried to put us on security patrol there and uh...they still treated die hard Japs up in the hill there that didn't want to give up. He didn't, took uh...rescinded that order because Inspector General raised Cain so he had to drop that but he just might as well put us on security patrol because he sent of the, we went in areas that actually where, five of us in the outfit doin' some work. One had to work, and four had to stand guard cause. It was just something uh...uncalled on his part, well, they was (unintelligible) and everybody blew it. And when they...all he was doin' uh...Becky was puttin' uh...flower pots and plantin' flowers around his uh...tent and the headquarters there and beautifying the area for him. That's all they had us doing.

B: So, did he actually manage to keep you all in service longer by doing things like that?

VM: He possibly did keep us a little bit longer because I do know that uh...the first list come down that we were to be discharged. Now this was before uh..all this broke out at that meeting there uh...I thought I'd be on the first list to come down, well, I wudn't and uh...next time, a couple months, about four to six weeks later, second list comes out, I said," Well, I'm sure to be on that one." And I wudn't on that one. Then, when they called the meeting and that's whenever things hit the fan. And the third meeting come up, or the third uh...list come down, I was on that list. Now that came down about four o'clock in the evening and we were told the third list now, was left down there first. We had just about two hours to get everything ready and get out of there and go down to the base and load aboard to the ship. The other two uh...lists, those guys just wudn't ready to go, for some reason or another, they sent the third, the people on the third list went out ahead of the other two. But I was glad of it. I wudn't gonna argue with them. I wanted out of there. And when I got to uh...Honolulu there, at Fort Cam, the first thing they asked me when I could uh..processing center there did I want out of the army and I said, "Now, I told them people back over Siapan ten thousand miles back that I didn't want to stay in the Army. Why should I tell you different now? "Don't get mad, I just have to ask you." I said, "Well, okay, you know I want out." Okay. So they said, alright and I come to the states. Down at Camp Atterbury, just out in the Indianapolis down there. That's the first thing they ask me that, no, it was Vancouver Barracks, in Washington. That's the first thing they ask me when I come through there and I said, "I told them people in Siapan and back in Honolulu there that I wanted out. And I'm telling you the same thing." "Don't get mad about it." "I'm not mad, I'm just gettin' tired of telling these people that." Alright. In Aherbury, that's the first thing they asked me when I came to this place. (laughing) I told them the same thing. I finally got out. But what came back to the same place they had this little, wudn't enough stationed here as in Pacific, the redeployed, the people they were bringing out of the European Theater operation in the Pacific. Well, it didn't make much difference because before, a whole lot of those soldiers in the European Theater and operation got in the Pacific. The war was over and the ones that was on their way down there, the ship just turned around and brought em back. The one's that we're down there on some island, they just picked them up and brought them back. One hearin the mistakes, they didn't go down, naturally, they were discharged. They wanted out of the army.

B: What did...I'm sorry, go ahead.

VM: Go ahead.

B: What did you think of the Japanese soldiers that you fought against? WHat did you think of them?

VM: Um...Becky, in the early part of the war, they were fanatics. They would not give up or anything. If you were, either they died or you died. That's all they was to it, now, actually, they was, they never gave up in any numbers at all until the last big battle of the war and that was Okinawa and they give up by the hundreds. But then, by that time, see, the mainline Japanese soldier that had been, fought uh...in China and Burma and other places like that. All of them had been killed and the one's that they had in Okinawa there weren't really soldiers, they just civilians, just like they brought them in there. They was like, by the way, there was one hundred thousand troops on Okinawa when they landed there and they give up by the hundreds rather than fight and only one time in the whole Pacific war that the American soldier had to fight house to house like they did in European Theater operations, take the city and that's when they took Manila back, other than that, the rest of the time, all the fighting was done in the jungles.

B: How did um...did you ever see any close combat when you were fightin'?

VM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. You, you see it and you don't see it, Becky, that's the main thing. It's (the jungle) so close, so close to you that uh...they'd start firing and you didn't know where they were. You just had to hope you didn't get hit and...

B: Un-hun. What did you think when you heard about the Atom bomb being exploded?

VM: Well, a lot of people criticized Truman for it but I admire him for doing what he did because now, we knew, before I was discharged, but we were at the hit, the main island, Honcho, the Japanese island there, on November the first, at "o eight hundred" that same year and we were told it would be at least a million casualties that would be wounded and dead and like that. Well, now, that was an awful lot of people to be dying, and when he dropped that bomb, I said," More power to him," the only thing bothers me is why he didn't take and go straight up and down that island and drop them every two miles and got rid of all of them. Just droppin' two bombs, like he did.

B: Un-hun. What do you think now, about um...what do you think of the fact that Germany and Japan have become two of our biggest allies?

VM: Well, actually, it eventually had to come to it. Cause, but the main thing is, we won the war but we lost the peace. Now that's the biggest thing. Now you take the Japanese. The Japanese is buying property up and buying businesses here in the United States. Before too long, they're gonna own this country. They say that they own almost all of Kentucky now. Germans are not that well off in this part of the world, but they, they'll eventually get there. But the Japanese, that's what's buying everything. Now, Japanese are industrious, they copy everything they see. They and...and they work long hours. They don't mind it and American people got so that they don't like to work. They think that everything should be handed to them on a silver platter, well which isn't true, now, I don't uh...I don't, realize there's a lot of people who need help and a lot of people should have help but you know and I know the people up the street, why, people walk up and down the street here, you see young boys, young men that's uh...on welfare that actually could work but, you couldn't get them workin'. Now uh...Herschel Morgan, I don't know whether you know him or not, now he was in the Battle of The Bulge. He was in the hundred and first air born.

B: Hum. Do you all...do..do..do the veterans from World War II, do you all ever get together and...and talk about?

VM: Well, my platoon sergeant, a fellow, he lives down here at Williamson. Me and him there. That's the only two of us I know, but we soldiers, the outfit that we was with, we have a reunion every year and me and him say, well, we're goin' to one of them one of these times but we never have. But they have a reunion every year uh...we call, it's uh...a book they sent after the reunion. They sent it to me and I read it and seen who died and all that and who's made, and who's stepped up in the organization and all that and I give it to Elbert and he reads it, but one of these days if both of us live long enough, I reckon we'll make one of them reunions. B: What do you think of the um...of the friends that you made while you were in the Army? Did you ever stay in contact with any of them?

VM: Well, now, uh...last two to three years uh...I hadn't heard from some of them. But Christmas time, we would send Christmas cards to each other to uh...and then Becky, I'd get a hold of that bulletin and start runnin' down through there and come to E company three, the first infantry, and see the names right there and everyone of them passed away but then, the soldiers at the time and it happens pretty regular. Well, you see, all of us are up in our years now.

B: Un-hun. When you first came back, I talked to uh...Robert Huff yesterday, and he told be about when he first came back, he decided that, for a certain amount of time, he was gonna sit down and drink and read and relax and I was wondering if you did anything like that?

VM: Rocking chair. That rocking chair (unintelligible). I never did. I came back uh...I just started on the second of August and uh...I got a job up Red Jacket there at the mines, little work, and on, in September, now in the mean time, I started, just grabbed around a little bit but I didn't draw any of that there uh...fifty-two twenty club they call it, rocking chair made, and I drove, I just traveled around a little bit. And then I came back and my youngest brother of mine, Mack, was working in a supply house up there and he knew the boss of the shops up there. A fellow by the name of Dan Moran, called him Yankee and he talked to Yankee and asked Yankee would he give me a job and Yankee told Mack tell me to come up and see him. And I went up see him and Yankee told me to go down to the doctor there and take a physical and everything and then he give me a job. Well, Becky, I got that job, and before I could even go to work, they come out on a cigarette strike up there and men couldn't get enough cigarettes at the store so they struck.

B: Cigarette strike.

VM: And I was off and then after that cigarette strike was over, I went to work, then between Red Jacket and Island Creek, I've worked thirty-two years before I retired.

B: When did your parents pass away?

VM: Mom passed away right after the '57 flood, she's a diabetic and that threw her off her medication and...and uh...she just..Dad died, he was eighty-three when he died uh...I forgot what year it was but, it had...it had to be before the '77 flood because, I believe it was around about oh, '71 or two, when he died.

B: Okay. Well, did they ever reconcile or did they stay separated?

VM: They never did.

B: Okay. But they never divorced either?

VM: No.

B: Do you know why they separated?

VM: No one knows. Knowing dad, he was one of them there hot headed Italians and anything could happen.

B: Was that common back then when you were growing up? Were many people's parents separated or divorced?

VM: No, not, about the only thing that would separate parents in them days, is usually man worked in the mine, if the man got killed. Now there's been several bad accidents in the mines, well, Monongahalia mines a few years ago uh...Island Creek had a whole lot of men killed up in uh...uh...King Mountain there, an explosion up there. Now Mom's first husband, he was killed in a mine in Pocahontas that was my half brother's father. Modesto's daddy and normally, it usually uh...the miner, the man was killed usually in the mines and then the woman, later on, remarried or maybe never remarried. She'd just raised the family the best she could.

B: Okay. Were there ever any serious accidents at Red Jacket or...or Island Creek in the...in the mines right here?

VM: No. Nobody has been killed but we didn't have uh...uh...of what they consider a serious accident when there's five or more men killed at one time. Now, other than that, one two or three, now there have been as many as three of them killed here at one time in Red Jacket in the mines. But, this mines up here is not classified as gaseous mines. That's normally what you have up here. Either roof falls or and accidental electrocution or maybe a...a tram motor run away or wreck, something like that. But, well, gas, after you had the most trouble with the...with a large number of men gettin' killed.

B: I just thought of another question that may have something to do with your dad. Do you know, how long had the water works, you know, the public water been here in town? How far back do you remember the water being public water?

VM: Well, before, they put the water system in here, now, back in the '30's, your drinking water, the water was pumped straight out of the river and on the hill up there at that railroad. You couldn't drink it, you couldn't even use it for cooking or anything and they had wells around there and the people got the water from those wells to do there cookin' and the only thing that this water out of the river was used for was to flush toilets and they had wells around here. But other than that.

B: Okay. So that went back as far as the 30's. Okay. So by the 30's, most everybody had flush toilets and things like that down here in town.

VM: See, that's when they run that extension uh...the sewer system to North Matewan. Built the extension on the reservoir up here and started filtering the water and then here come the '77 flood and ruined everything they did.

B: Now, so your saying, was the, I guess the river probably wusn't even safe to swim in when you were a little boy then?

VM: Oh, it was the safest place in the world. Becky, we use to get down here and...and you could uh...we dive in there and get a mouth full of water and come up and squirt each other. Clear as a whistle. It was clear as plain as we're looking at each other now. Water was clearer. It wudn't anything in there. And...and we'd swim around down here, big rock we called it, stick us a line up there uh...swimmin' hole up here at McCarr, swimmin' hole down here at Hatfield Bottom and...and every place you went there, the water was, it was. The only thing, we wouldn't drink it but we'd get a mouthful and squirt it at each other. But the water was clear, dived down there and opened your eyes and you could see just as plain as day it is now.

B: Hum. Was it always that way. Did it stay that way or did it ever get polluted.

VM: No, now, in the spring whenever it had the slight rains and the water would get muddy but then, after they cleared up then, they'd go back to just as clear as it could be.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you for talking to me.

VM: It's been nice. It's been a pleasure. (tape cuts off)

Matewan Oral History Project Collection