Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Fred Shewey Interview

Becky Bailey: The twenty-first, July, 1990, and I'm in the office of Mr. Fred Shewey, of Kermit, West Virginia, and my first question Mr. Shewey is when and where you were born?

Fred Shewey: War Eagle, West Virginia, that's in Mingo County, twenty-five miles south of Matewan, that's a coal camp.

B: And when were you born?

FS: 1916, August the twenty-second.

B: What were your parents names?

FS: My father's name was Thomas A. Shewey, my mother's name is Figley May.

B: Okay, do you know anything about their background, when they were born?

FS: Uh..my father was born in eighteen and seventy seven, and uh...Seawiz(?) Virginia, it's just out of Wytheville, between Wytheville and Blande, Virginia, and, and my mother was born at Bramwell, West Virginia, and she would of been eighty-seven. She's ten years younger, so ten...Eighteen eighty-seven...

B: Okay, do you know how your parents met?

FS: My father's superintendent of what they call the Big Four Coal Company, near Kimbal and uh...mother was hired in the office, there by him and she had uh...graduated from uh...

B: Uh...you were saying your father hired your mother to work in the office?

FS: Well, I don't know that exactly, she might have already been there, she was hired there and I couldn't say that he hired her no, but the met there. They were later married, and I think they were married it was either nineteen six, or nineteen eight, I don't remember...

B: Okay...

FS: But I have a sister that's six or seven years older than I, so in ninteen [sic] sixteen, I would say somewhere along nineteen six, or eight.

B: How many siblings did you have?

FS: Three...

B: Three, okay.

FS: Dottie was the oldest and I had a brother and myself, about two years apart, give or take...

B: Okay, and uh....what kind of work did your father do as a Superintendent...?

FS: Uh, as a young man he left Virginia and went to a college in Tennessee, and self-educated himself, by waiting tables and whatever, and uh...took engineering. And he came back to the coalfields, as a Newirk from in Virginia, come over from Bluefield and you go down into the coalfields, and he was a engineer and he put in what's known as Big Four. It was a shaft mine. Uh..he was there and he didn't get along with the people, he didn't like they were from New York and at that time they weren't that popular, with southerns, that, those people weren't - so...so consequently it was a uh...division of the ways and he came to War Eagle. My sister was born in Matewan, in the little hospital there in Matewan - after he got through there - and her name is Virginia, and uh...then uh....My brother was born at Welch. I was born at home, with a Doctor Heatherman, a company doctor was the one that delivered me...Dr. T.J. Heatherman.

B: You wouldn't have any idea where the hospital was in Matewan at that time, do you?

FS: Well, yeah...you ask someone it's the one down there, I think it's a close to where Butler Pitcock lived down, uh...well it would be, just a half a block, from the way you turn left over in Kentucky, coming down from town...is where I remember it then. I don't remember the name of it or anything...like seventy-five years ago...

B: Okay...

FS: So, I don't know somewhere up there can clue you in on that, I don't know...

B: Okay, why were your brother and your sister, born in these didfferent [sic] places, did he work for different companies, before?

FS: No, ma'am. It's just that uh...my mother was born in McDowell County, and she might of been, up I have no idea, no more than just...At Welch was uh...was uh...one of those Metropolitian Centers, where the coalfields are concerned, because it was the county seat and many, many coal companies had their head quarters there. It was a nice hospital and she might of gone there and various reasons, because her people were from uh...McDowell County and Mercer County...Not Mingo County...Because you know Mingo County is up in the new territory. When the railroad came through here you followed the railroad, as they went no where...

B: Alright...

FS: I would say that is the reason, I don't know...

B: Okay, I don't know, uh...just to back track a little bit...About your parents, your last name is rather distintive [sic], you wouldn't know the ethnic origins of your name would you?

FS: It's Dutch, German. Mother was English Petry, it was English...

B: Okay...your father uh...would of been born not that long after the Civil War, was there any Civil War stories passed down to...?

FS: No, I learned those from my mother's mother which was born in about eighteen and fourty [sic] or fifty...

B: Uh-huh

FS: And she would tell me stories of the Civil War, not my father no,.. but she did. Learned all my history of what happened and how soldiers did this and thus...

B: Do any stand out in you mind?

FS: Uh...not particully because, uh...at that time, and I look back and think, if I had someway of taping it, or if I had mind enough to had it written or whatever...I would of been away ahead of the game...

B: Yeah...

FS: I...I'm just sorry that I do not know more about it, but even my father and mother knew certain things, uh...I think you will find there somewhere, you will have the great robbery you will be hearin about...and I will tell you more about it when you ask the questions, instead of answers. I don't know whether you want to know now or not...

B: Okay... Well uh...where, you say your mother's mother, told you the stories that you...

FS: Yes, uh...the Civil War.

B: Was she from Mercer County at that time?

FS: She was from Kimbal...

B: Kimbal...

FS: But I don't know, Mother was born in Bramwell so...her uh...grandmother's husband was a Tipple builder so he followed mining...coming down through the coalfields.

B: Okay, well, moving right along, uh...since you've already mentioned the Glen Allum payroll robbery...

FS: Yes...

B: What do you remember about hearing about that?

FS: Well, my father was from War Eagle, if you go look at the map, is real close in there and he was dear friends with the doctor and the other person that was killed, I can't think of his name, on the uh...on this handcar. Which is Italians robbed this bridge there at Longfork or whatever, no that's not it or whatever it was... Springfork I believe is the name of it, Springfork, uh...he was good friends of theirs and that's the way, (by handcar) that they came into town, and got their money for their payrolls. They had cash payrolls and so these people, they laid these from Glen Allum...which is real close to approximately...to uh...as they said they knew each other. And it just so happened that the Justice of the Peace in the that area, Stafford district had died, and they appointed my father to be Justice of the Peace...Who after this, he was involved in the posse which hunted them down, and killed the people that, the seven Italians...Then he helped the inquest over them, and they of course were put in pine boxes. And I know you have seen the pictures and stuff one of them being on a cart car, I mean a little handcar...and uh...I would that my grandmother was here, the one that told me the richest story, not only my father, because she was on the scene, and she even had some of the bullets, how they were leaden', solid bullets, outside cassing [sic], you don't see them today...And if somethings that happen because it seem like your grandmother, you would set and listen to her tell things, well your father was too busy. Because after we got here, we moved here when I was six weeks old...into this area from War Eagle, I was only six weeks old and my father's operating a non-union mine and they were trying to organize it so he didn't have much time to tell me anything. My grandmother told she lived with us...and my mother of couse [sic], my grandmother mainly...because it seemed like she had a better touch with story telling and tell...

B: Uh-huh, okay...So how did uh...did they ever talk about people viewed uh...what the possey had done by killing the Italians instead of bringing them back from a trial...?

FS: UH...no, well the way they uh...put theirselves down in the hole, and kept shootin' back...they would throw dynamite in and kill them just like hand grenades we would know today...Throw in behind them and kill them because they felt like these Italians had come in a few days earlier, and they didn't know who brought them in, but they could not speak English. But whoever brought them into the company stores, and where they were, would buy them food and they were there and people was there and seen them and knew of them being in there, not particully met him...They had uh...is reported, they could not speak English, none of them, filling in English they might know a word or two. But after the robbery they took to the hills. And then naturally you kill a doctor becuase [sic] the doctor was uh...a great person and in the area of a coal camp, they were uh...uh...almost God...because they uh...brought healing and uh...so people looked up to them, and they were decent people and and talked and taught a good lesson to the people in the county nad [sic] in the coal camps...So when they killed them, and the superintendent, seem like to me there was three killed, I can't remember right off...But anyhow what ever it was, it was all of them that on this little handcar, it was one of these things you pump...you go up this branch line, off the N & W, and uh...I don't remember enough to know. The, sta... the question asked how do people feel? I don't think that ever came into it, because the first thing that you do to a mountaineer is revenge. I mean if they shoot you, you shoot them. It's funny, but the idea of it is uh...if it's unwanted. I mean uh...these people come in and cold blooded, it was blood...it was their sentence anyhow...

B: Right...

FS: So it didn't matter. I don't know, that's the way they explained it to me, but I know that would be the my heritage. That's the way I feel...

B: What else do you remember about your grandmother telling you the story, do you remmeber any other of the details of the story?

FS: At this particular story, no, no more than just daddy was out several night and my mother too. See figured this as I said, she was my grandmother in that because she was better or smoother, maybe spent more time with us, my mother about that time had to go to uh...Baltimore to uh...Clinic in Baltimore...

B: Johns Hopkins?

FS: Johns Hopkins, she had to have a serious operation, and my grandmother, and uh...made, literally took care of me for uh...two or three years while she was recovering, and was in the hospital...So I remember her telling me that more, than I guess I did my mother...she knew it naturally she was there...I know daddy was out several nights and it was not, well it just wasn't to be heard of because he was part of the posse, that they were hunting them down...So I did not know, I had...don't know anymore about, I don't believe because...'cause it's something as I said, I never thought that much about it, it was just a passing gant... Just like stories she would tell about the Civil War and how they would kill of their, steal their chickens, or burn this, burn the sheds, and how ruthless some of the soldiers were. But it didn't mean anything to me...until after she was gone. I thought about it, but then it was too late...to think that it...more fully...

B: Okay, uh...when you were a small child and the unionizaton [sic] effort was really first uh...picking up steam, with your father being a superintendent, what kind of atmosphere did you grow up in?

FS: I grew up in the atmosphere right what you see here, this was the superintendent house, that's right here now, that you see out here...And uh...whenever they were organizing, say in about 19 and 20 or '21, whenever they came in...He, we had a high fence up and we kids would go out in the yard playing and the strikers, what they would call them, would jump the fence, we would have to run from the horses, they were only frightening us, I don't think they would of (have) done any harm. But at that was just the way, then when they, late at night they would shoot into the house and daddy built a stone cellar, so we could go into it at night so we could go in at night when the shootin' got real bad...We would go in there and stay at night - and we had a maid, black maid and...and later we had a black maid and a german maid...when mother was gone, we got her uh...uh...let's see what was here name, Mamie(?), Mimie(?) I forget which it was, and uh...she uh...helped raise the children - and uh...this stone cellar, whenever they'd get to shoot (ing) into it and shoot into the house then, we would go to Bluefield to stay with my mother's sister...until things cooled down. But at my age and at that time, I can't spell out details...'cause what you hear you get to thinkin' that's the way it was...and maybe that's not the way it was...the whole story you hear.

B: Right, okay. Do you remember uh...your father as you were growing older, of course unions didn't become legal until the '30's, what was your father's opionion [sic] on the unionization of the coal industry?

FS: He felt like they had to be something because at that time coal business was so bad, that they could unionize and all they do is to raise wages at the time, and they do this and do that and all the many things that unionization they require. But it just shut the mine down because the price of coal is so low that you couldn't operate if you understood to do that..

B: Uh-huh

FS: So consequently he had...I guess (to) just go with the uh...the fall I guess. I don't know just exactly how you would explain, but in the '30's it got so bad, that coal uh...uh...I say fine coal at that time, after it, I believe in was twenty five cents a ton you got for it. It was only a by product, just to keep from taking out and dumping it. They would ship it...and that would be from this area right here now, that was after we came from War Eagle down here, I don't now what is was at War Eagle. I was six weeks old...which we came here in 1916, Septemember [sic] I believe it was. So uh...his fault with unionization only led to believe I've spent the rest of my life more less, uh...sympathizing with the union. But it was always radicals that created a problem or atmosphere which you have a natural stupiodous or dislike, you don't want to be pushed by it, because we understood to be...(telephone ringing) go ahead...tape cuts off)...

B: Before we uh...we were interrupreted [sic] uh...we were talking about your father's business his, his professional , what did he uh...what difference were there being superintendent's son from being a coal miners's son at that time, that you, you where aware of?

FS: We came, you went out in the camp over here, whenever you want uh...you had to be a good fighter...you had to know how to street fight, just like everyone else...Because uh...you were not looked up to, you were looked as someone that was uh...a enemy and you just had to be one of the boys...You couldn't be a sissy...you had to fight, and I learned to fight at a young age because if you dind't [sic] you wouldn't make it and uh...We just I don't know it was just one of those things...you just lived with...

B: Was that becasue [sic] they, your father would be better off, financially?

FS: Yes, they would consider it that way, uh...it was uh... things they would feel that you had that they didn't have. 'Cause we had uh...a yard, and we had flowers, they would steal flowers out of the yard, because they didn't have uh...flowers in the yard. They didn't, well their parents didn't care...maybe they weren't uh...that it wasn't the fact that they didn't care, maybe that's the wrong word, but they did not plant roses, or what have you nad [sic] so they would just come and pick them out of the yard or do this...And there was amount, you would almost say jealousy because, you had more...and we did, we had more...It wasn't that much more because at that time, we, by the standards today, we were all poor, we were at the poverty level and didn't know it...'cause we didn't have it, but we still lived better, because I would say the security was more. Of course our security hands down the fact, as whether you can sell the coal, and mine the coal and their livelihood depended on, which is the same thing it was just that maybe we had saved more or but back more, maybe had more when we came into it. But we had more...not that much more, but that somewhere...

B: Uh...did your mother shop at the company store and just like...

FS: Just anyone else...

B: Anyone else?...Okay. Did you go to school at the uh...at the, I guess, the company schools...?

FS: Other schools...uh-huh...that's it...(unintelligible)

B: Okay...How uh...the early '20's unionization crisis, how did your father get along with the majority of his men, my grandfather was a coal miner and there were several superintendents that he worked for, that he...felt that he, was quite close to..

FS: My father was very compassionate with 'em and they got along fine, that's the reason I didn't have any more trouble as a kid, gettin in there. You would have some that would be more rebellious than others...but he had people that was real loyal to him...and he got along fine with him...It was the one's coming in the marches that was trying to organize it, they were happen what they had...(unintelligibel [sic]) but that wasn't the problem, it was an outsider that always came in and create the problem... But my father as far as getting all the men, and they had uh...the men nearly worshipped him because he kept it going whenever they needed it, and they all knew because he would share anything with them, is this coal selling for that, and it costed it to get it out...I can 't do any better and they knew, they was doing all they could at that time. There was no place they could go anyhow...and they sat down and reasoned it out..and he had loyal people working for him...and he had, in their view, troubles...

B: Uh-huh...okay, where their many immigrants that came to work in this area?

FS: Yes, there was, there was uh...Italians, German I'd say would be the ones we notice the most. Then...in this coal camp here, now the whole coal camp, is a place just across the river, called Himmlerville. A man named Himmler went back to his native Hungarain [sic] roots, and brought over and put in a mines, and got lots of money together, and put in what they call - it's about like a mile and a half through Kentucky, in Martin County - and uh...he brought all the Hungarians, must have been forty or fifty families that he drove in, the first generation, and brought them in and put them to work in the mines...And I would say that uh...I would say there was immigrants, that would be the greatest, most visible means of immigrants. Because most of the time filtrated in and it would be a few blacks and few that, but that was all, patically [sic] all Hungarians...And how I got to know and know them, they was such fine people, they didn't have a school in Martin County at that time, and they came to our schools over here and walked over at there. I'd say our junior high and high schools...

B: Uh-huh...you mentioned uh...blacks, did your father have much trouble, managing race relations because they there reports...?

FS: Well, the only thing is in this part of the country there is no blacks and in Martin County there was no blacks...And when my father came down here, we had worked with blacks in War Eagle and, and War Eagle and Big Four both...and they uh...Lady, the woman that raised me, the woman I would say was named Maggie Anderson, and she was black...and she was the greatest person in the world...Then he brought like his stable boss, and some of his bosses with him...and they lived here. They went to school with us...and nothing was every said...that was, just remember in the early twenties...We had blacks, we had immigration, no one paid any attention because they weren't unexpected, just the way it was. There was no black school or segregated school it was all the same...and they didn't have any trouble they did not dislike... They, everyone, thought no, just a big family the whole coal camp, family affair because they worked in the mines together and they uh...they lived and died together, the old saying is... But uh...19 uh...24 or 25, it was election and these blacks were registred [sic], going up to vote, and they got into a fight up at the polling place up at Kermit and there was three people killed over the black. The blacks were going to go and they were going to be here, after that they left, they say it was not going to work, 'cause the assignment was just right beside the coal camp. It was not in the coal camp it was outside of it...But they had to live with the town of Kermit, just as well as this, because this camp, would not been a part of it, it was almost alien to it. But still they left. And then soon after our maid, they left and went to Louisa, she would not stay, and there was not a black here, not a black in town and is not yet...There was one Jewish, two Jewish families, one of them had a store, the other was a Jewish aman that married a Chafin here, which would be a native.. And outside of that, there is another band, any immigration that are Jewish uh...(unintelligible) in our community it just had been that way. Martin County is the same way that there are through here...Now the other part of Mingo county where we were before, was uh...just uh...part of the business. There was nothing said or done, Williamson, I think it was eighty percent black, and maybe still is, I don't know...

B: Uh-huh. So your saying your father actually had some black bosses working for him?

FS: Uh, the uh...stable boss was black I know that, the others was a set of, it's just a little far back for me to remember... definitely...

B: Okay. Okay, uh...I guess my next quetion [sic] that...that follows is uh,..Kermit was not a coal camp itself, it was like a town like Matewan independent of the...

FS: There was a coal mine here, there was one at Stepptown, about a mile north of here. There was one over here at Worthville and there was one Emmaville and there was Earlsten(?) and there was Bunny Creek(?)...They were just surrounded by coal mining camp(s) becasue [sic] the railroad had just come through here. 'Cause the railroad when it started in Norfork and Western at nineteen and one or whatever it was, it is what they call the old line at Naugatuck seven miles south of here. He turned and went the old line into Wayne, they only put the road block here after the nineteen century (20th century) started and that's when these mines fall up in here...this one was in nineteen and eight...(tape cuts off)

B: So they uh...railroad didn't actually pass or did not pass through Kermit?

FS: It..it passed through there but it was I think on these tunnels it was like ninteen [sic] four and five...Now the railroad is in to this area, in Mingo County before then...but it didn't come throught [sic] this area...This what was called the...followed the river into Kenova...Well that the old line went over through Dingess and uh...the old line as they call it, and there was much longer and many bridges and tunnels. This was the new one and they made, developed coal around here...

B: Okay, did anyone in your family uh...did you have any of your uncles that fought in World War I? That you know of in the first war?

FS: Uh...I don't know, uh...I'm almost sure, dad...daddy had a brother, which was in Bluefield, which was in World War I, and then outside of that, I just cannot, I...I can't comment on World War I, I know my mother had relatives, because we talked about them, and wrote letter and what have you, but I can not identify them...

B: Okay...You would of been a very small child when this happened but do you have any memories or did the family ever talk about the flu epidmeic [sic] of ....

FS: Oh, yes, yes, it was uh...I think nineteen nineteen was it?

B: Nineteen nineteen, or nineteen twenty.

FS: Yes, it was several people died and of course we lived here then and uh..I know my father and mother and grandmother talked about people dying, and I heard about it later and they, there was so many that died I don't know if it was any of our family died...but it was many that died and they told about how it was, and it wudn't particuraly [sic] lack of medical attention, it was just the lack of knowledge that's what it was, because, none of the people had pnuemonia [sic], or bad colds what have you and they treating the old way, and this way it just was something that was about three days, and that was it, you were out of it...And I will never forget my father tellin' later on, and I think we was in Cincinnati in the fourties [sic], and I know we stopped in the bar and we were driving back, and we had, had a drink and this was the first time he ever seen me have a drink. He don't that I would drink, but I was so tired after getting up at four thirty in the morning driving to Cincinnati and drivin back. He told me the story that he said "You know, I had never had anything to drink in my life," he said, "when during the flu epidemic, I had the flu and I took a tablespoon of liquor and it almost kill me."

B: I guess...

FS: This his story of drinking always stuck with me...it just isn't good for you...and my mother did not drink either, she was not a...

B: hun...What uh...religious denomination uh...?

FS: Methodist,

B: Methodist...

FS: My mother was Presbyterian, my father's Methodist and when we came into this community - the church was built after they came here - and it started just like a basement, or in a high school what have you. And it was more Methodist until, so my mother changed to Presbyterian to Methodist, and it was a Methodist church...which I still belong to today...

B: Okay, I was just wondering if their habits or whatever was based on religious beliefs or?

FS: Uh...I know probably because uh...you know, a Methodist over the years had been uh...drinkin' is one of the pleasures, I mean non-drinkin, is one of the pledges that you sign that you use to in the Methodist Church, so I would say that it had something to do with it. But by in large they were just people, what was the use to drink, if you didn't have to, why drink it wasn't necessary. So I think my father was more of that attitude than you would say a religious belief, it wasn't necessary, it wasn't right, and why do it...And coal camps you saw many times people and men would work all week, and real hard, and that seem like they couldn't wait until Friday night or Saturday night whatever the case would be and get drunk and just get completely out of it. And Monday morning come back and go back, gone to work, like nothing ever happened and it was so useless to say...But that was the way of life, why feel that way, and why do it...and as I said my family did not drink so I had, I don't know, but I do now remember of seeing people in the coal camp and many did drink and many didn't, they had religious beliefs same a we did...It wasn't right, or it wasn't necessary but some of the folks did...

B: Okay. Alright, my next question is...is about your education, you were educated in public schools. Do you remember when you started school?

FS: Uh...I say in 1922, cause I would of been six years old...give or take, I meant uh...I don't know that to be a fact, but I been six years old...And they had a little grade school down here, it was just down here on the side of the hill, just a little one room school, and uh...I went there until, I guess about the fourth or fifth grde [sic], then we had to go to Kermit to school...We could not, did not teach above that, I think they did teach before that time. But then they changed uh...from I believe it was the fourth grade, we went up there where they had seperate [sic], there would be a fourth grade in one room and fifth grade in another, so we all had been in a one room school. And then after that, naturally went on to the junior high and finished high school there. But in my fourth year, I mean uh...my second year of high school, I guess I went to Greenbrier Military School and my brother and I both and uh...I did not like it and did not stay, neither of us stayed. Oh, I don't know, two or three months and we quit...I had never been told that I had to polish a doorknob, or polish someone's shoes...and whatever you got in there you had to be a pep, I guess you had to do what they say. And I just thought to much, I didn't do it...Something all the time, I was on the football team, and I liked that and I liked the courses I was taking, everything, but I just would not, I was not a performance, whenever they would say do that, I would do it...Thats just the way in and that might of been my upbringing, because I didn't have some kid because, he is from a broken home, or something like that and he was ranked above you, he say, "Polish my shoes," well you only had one word for him that, "I don't do it." So immediately, you were punished and then it wound up a fight...and you know, and I knew how to...

B: Did you continue your education after, after ....

FS: Oh, yes, I came back and finished high school, and I went to National Business College, uh...well I wanted to get in business, I wanted to get in to coal business, and that was the quickest way in, to get a business plan. Going through, my sister had gone through college, she got her A.B. Degree and brother, he went to uh...he didn't care for it and went to work. And then I went to National Busness [sic] College, and I... did not get a degree because I felt like, I wanted to go to work uh,...quit before the degrees was out I just did not stay becasue [sic], I felt like I wanted to go to work...And so I did and that was about about nineteen thirty six, I guess...

B: Uh-huh...at that time when your brother and uh...when you went to work, did you all go to work for your father or another company?

FS: No, as kids we worked around the mines, but I went to work as soon as I got out, for other the companies. I did not work here because in ninteen [sic] thirty-four my father had sold this company...and he did not own it...

B: Okay...

FS: And I didnt' work there...and my brother worked for the Norfolk and Westeren [sic] railway, and my sister worked in public school systems, as a teacher.

B: Where had she gone to college?

FS: Marshall.

B: Okay...Did she ever marry?

FS: Yes...she married in nineteen and thirty eight and then uh... before she married, let me see there, just after she and her husband went to Ohio University uh...no, Ohio State, Ohio University, that's right at Athens...and got their masters. B: What did your brother do for Norfolk and Western Railroad? FS: Uh...he worked in the yards, I don't know exactly what his title was, like steamfitter or whatever, I really don't remember. But he worked in the say the car repair department...of the Norfolk and Western Railroad....

B: What...when you went to work do you remember your first job, home from college?

FS: I went to Beaver Creek, in Kentucky, that's up the river from Prestonburg, Kentucky, the Central Elkorn Coal Company. And uh...my first job there was to institute and started there as puttin in the social security system, that's what I was hired for. When social security first started and that was my first job, to tell it to the people and how it was and put it on the payroll and get that done, and then I was payroll clerk to get that. And the next job was over at Logan, Chafin Jones Heathman Coal Company, at Peach Creek in Logan County...And during the times when the coal business was bad, and, and I said so, then he (Shewey's father) was then, cashier of the bank, what's known as Kermit State Bank. They had a bank in Kermit and he got involved in the gas business, of drilling gas wells...and uh...then I became on line there as knowing how to uh...weld in the background so on, I knew how to help. But then I later went to work to the Columbia Gas, that would be the United Fill Gas at that time, and work until nineteen fourty [sic] for them. And then uh...uh...my daddy drilled several wells and that's where I first became acquainted with the gas business, because that was coal all I ever knew. But uh...he had hit several good wells, and uh...after I quit the Company gas I went to Radford Virginia and worked for the uh...I think they called it the Radford Ordinance works. That's about the time they was talking about War in Europe and I went there, and went to work. And then I saw how much pipe fitting paid and took a steam fitter formen's job at Radford, Virginia. And I went with that company on to Lousiana [sic] at the uh...Lousiana Ordinance Plant and Mendin(?) is just out of Shreveport and was there almost a year, less than a year. And war was declared and I came back to Charleston and enlisted in the Air Corp...in Charleston West Viriginia [sic]. I didn't want to be drafted from down there and I was turned down up there becasue [sic]of the knee injury of construction work that I had, and uh...knee never did develop...so I, I took my licks there. Then after I got back I also worked in Ohio a while...at a plant, and it was an Ordinance Plant like this because it was during the war...Then nineteen and fourty [sic] two, my father decided that truck mininig [sic] was up and coming...and that's something you never heard of. You heard of a wagon mines, back in the World War I...My father mined coal out of here and hauled it out of Marrowbone in wagons, and shovel it into cars, box cars or anything, and that was called wagon mining. Coal was in so much in demand now, why don't we put in truck mines, that was trucks at that time...So we put a ramp in here, and started mining coal, and about nineteen fifty three, nineteen forty three, and we mined coal successfully in here by that method in about four locations with sightings, until about nineteen fourty [sic] eight. As the old saying is the bottom dropped out of the coal busines [sic], the war was over and there was no more in demand for that type of energy, you know. And then uh...then that's when we knew that the gas business had to be, because it was a cleaner fuel and it had to be a lot of things. The gas business was at that time, the coal, the ash, and smoke and a lot of things began to create problems, enviromental [sic] problems, but there wasn't much said about it...so we started (?) gas. I had my own company, drilling and construction of gas and oil and wells and lines, and roads. And that started in nineteen fifty, and that's incidently [sic] that's the same...that's the same year my father died, in December that year, and it was quite a loss because we always worked so close and everything...And it was quite a loss to me...I think that's one reason why you wanted me...to ask me about the gas, was one of your main purposes of talking to me. And I'm at, this is all been leading up to it...but the gas then, I was doing drilling and I had a knowledge of it and the Columbia Gas had a office in here and had been in this area since the turn of the century. They had been gas wells drilled and drilling and uh...well I don't know how to explain it but we drilled the wells, we did turnkey jobs, is one way of saying it, for the Columbia Gas, we did pipelinin and we did everything except obtain the land, and the leases...And then I got into it on my own then, I would go out get only's, drill my own well and so on, and like that an had been, but I did a little construction, but that's what I did until about nineteen and sixty...And then you asked about the oil and gas, you said gas and oil, there' such a little bit of oil in Mingo County. It's at what they call Breeding Creek, and there was oil and we had several oil wells over there. And they were very small, and uh...the were very hard to sell, because they had to come and pick it up, they had a pipeline for a while and it rusted out so, oil was never developed. And anytime you got oil in gas pave, it only had a chance to run down and ruin the pave....so you usually tried to plug it off, and not develop because it was not possible. If one sells about like two dollars a barrell or something like that, so it was not profitable, he tried to get away from it...So the oil industry in Mingo County, I can truthfully tell you that, it would account for such a minute part the country, that shouldn't be even counted...The oil of the economy, of our economy...

B: What about the gas?

FS: The gas I think it is strong...there's gas in every part, I know in nineteen and about fifty-three or four, I drilled one of the larger wells in the Matewan area, it be just south of Matewan, off the Kentucky border. And there been some other drillings and I got in there and drilled which is known as the lime formation, and they put in a compression station and took that gas several years, and it was very profitable. But the real gas in this country is in the shale, is the is... the uh...prime gas that you want, is a shale formation. It will last longer, see the lime, some lime will last, but most of the time lime is very porous, and it will flush production and it will go by the weighside...but uh... the shale formation let's it out slower and it's more of a formation than lime is, like say uh...hundred, hundred fifty feet thick... shale, you go through shale for hundred feet and you will hit pockets all through it...So we have shale in each part of Mingo County, except I would say Matewan, would have the least shale gas, and Gilbert...It's mostly the other formations, up from that becuase [sic] we drill a shale well in Gilbert and it was fifty four hundred feet deep and by the first well, was every drilled over there into the shale formation. And it, to my knowledge is still producing and that was in the early '50's...It was drilled by the uh,...by the uh...C & O Railroad, it's the uh...not the uh...there is a mineral, land company, not Chesapeake land but, anyhow, it was a mineral comapny [sic], that was owned by the Cheaspeake [sic] and Ohio Railroad Company...Western Pochantas [sic] Corporation is what it's called...

B: Okay...what uh...how what kind of revenues does the gas industry produce in....in...Mingo County, would be your estimate now?

FS: Well, I think uh...that had to be done at the clerk's office...and I will tell you why, the price of gas when we was talking about this drilling in the fifites [sic]...was something like eight and ten, twelve cents a thousand...it suddenly jumped to four dollars and something...So when you talk about revenues you would have to see, because all company's you sold your gas to that is, small producer's particularly...had to turn in to the accessor, how much they bought from you, and you were accessed on that day...Well the fact that you had a bossfalse rate, because it's two dollars a thousand now...so at one time it was twice as much...or more, and I don't know whether you would say they gave that much to economy, because when it was twelve cents, it was a dollar was worth so much more...But I don't know the exact answer that...

B: Okay...I assume that this gas is natural gas does...

FS: Sure it's natural gas...

B: Is there a refining proces [sic] for it or can it be (?)?

FS: Uh...natural gas will come out of here and at one time years ago they had the Virginia gas and oil, they would take the gas, the natural gas and run it through a plant and they would take the by products from that, and that would be gasoline and butane, and propane (coughed). But they later got until that was not profitable, because they could not get enough from it and then they later, but in that plant somewhere, oh...in Kentucky near Ashland, they took it out of the big line, as they called it. These lines were not gathering lines, were not the place to get it from, but we sold a compressure station, I mean sold it to Columbia Gas, they brought it through their compressure station would pumped this gas say to Balitomore [sic] or something. This would be the first stage of it, of pumping...and it would be go to one, and when the pressure got down they'd pick it and pump it again. ..And uh...our shale of gas, we have wells in this country, I have wells right now, that was drilled before the turn of the century, they are ninety years old, and still producing and good producers. I did not drill them of course, I mean I bought them, and uh...I mean I have wells I drilled in the 40's and helped my father drill, they are still producing and good producers, and most of them are in shale...

B: How can that be, how can something produce a product like that for so long?

FS: And they uh...forties it was rumored that the uh...gas stoves and any gas appliances was really not a good investment because gas was going to run out and we did not have it...But somehow the reserves and the way it is locked in and the way the gas is formed at that level of in between four and five thousand feet...I don't know enough about it, I 'm not a geologist you could find that somewhere else and get it, better than I can explain it to you...This uh...reserves of these are locked in until they feed up only sold a certain uh...you can't uh...would be impossible, to check the reserve, because right now, after ninety years, these wells still produce and they first came in with the rock pressure, seven or eight hundred pounds. And the rock pressures what they was, they were forced out of the ground in that rock pressure is down, about two hundred pounds now, but they are still producing. And now there is other formations, I'm only speaking of the shale and the line, because that's what uh...we have weir and other gases, but uh... the shale is the one, that is the real paid, the only one to get.

B: Okay...uh...How did you come to be a business associate of Mr. Harless?

FS: Uh-uh...in nineteen and sixty, uh...well I had know him over the years, and we had been in Kiwanis and church work and so on together. And starting about the fifties and we were on a Board of Education, had a building meeting and we were on it, I say forty-eight, fifty-nine, I say somewhere in there...Then I got to know him and in '56 I was elected to Mingo County Board of Education...And so naturally I got to know him better, he was a suppporter of mine, he was a supporter of mine. And then there was a chance in 1960, uh...all the men in this area, I saw all the men, all the miners...were literally out of work because coal had actually gone flat. It was actually no coal business, we could not sell any coal, no mines was prosperous. So uh...we got the idea, through he and Mr. Harless and I, Mr. Allara and Mr. Glenn, that was the ones that was involved, and going uh...in 1960 and gettin a loan from the Federal government to put in what we called a dimension plan over at Varney. And you might of been over there, you might of visiting a plant, it's a chair plant or something like now, whatever it is you go to it sometime you can see where it started...That was one of the first satelltie [sic] industries in the this area outside the coal business. We put it in and got people from North Carolina to teach the people in here...how to...how to make uh...dimension plants, and that would be like take a chair you would make the stage and make this, and make the bottom and we sent it to North Carolina to be assembled, we do not assemble furniture, that the reason why it's called National Seat and Dimension...And uh...we operated for I guess a year and a half and we was only in training because all we would hire is ex-coal miners 'cause they were the ones that was in bad shape. There was some good people and uh...they lost their jobs and then they went to Columbus and he went to Detroit, Cincinnati anywhere to get a job...So we put that plant in and we were hiring at minimum wage, and the uh...district fifty of Union Mine Workers decided to come in and unionize it, and they did. So uh...we gave it back to the government then, and that's the way it was...you couldn't operate it, because everyone wanted what you would get workin' in the mines, which North Carolina factories paid the same price we were payin'. You come up here and you would have to pay three times as much, and ship it back there. There was no way you could do it...so uh...we just uh..uh...took our losses because we had put up money too, we borrowed this and paid off, got all our money, lost everything, and gave it back to the government... and put it for sale. And that's when I became acquainted to Mr. Harless, because we worked real hard at it, trying to make it work and he had a knowledge of the lumber business and he felt like it could work...But whenever the union got involved with in it, got a man out of Pikevillle [sic] come and organize it and he knew nothing of the local history or anything...it was just cold blooded. So we just decided it was best to get out of it...and we did, and that's when we became associated in the coal business...But we did keep our gas and oil drill, and we have drilled the wrong gas for several years...

B: Okay, how did you all come to be involved in the coal business?

FS: Well, Mr. Harless had been in the lumber business all his life and over there was a place that uh...Massey Coal Company owned and they had left quite a bit of surface mine coal. So we bought it and decided to surface mine the coal and we got a contractor in on it...(tape cuts off)....

B: How you and Mr. Harless, we were talking about the nature of Mr. Harless' business and lumber, uh...industry over, is this toward the Matean [sic] Area? Uh...say toward Red Jacket...

FS: Well, Varney would only be over the hill from Matewan it's in the same district...magisterial district...it may be touching the district, but maybe the Magnolia District. But uh...we had become friends uh...through church and cities organization and through the board, we have got a mutual respect because we both had the same idea as to work people and be fair, and what have you...and that's want Mr. Harless is today...and it's just the same way. And we became close friends and this coal business just grew out of our association...With this lumber plant that we had gone in, have they invested in, and then I had a knowledge for the coal business, because I was raised in it...and Mr. Harless also had because he had been an engineer, uh...doing engineering work. I don't know what his title was at Red Jacket he'd been there for I don't know how many years in the '40's...So uh...he had a knowledge of coal...and I also had knowledge of coal.

B: What was the uh...nature of your business, did you all uh...buy mines and operate them or?

FS: No we just started it...started the mines, we called it and the first one is called Dash Coal Company...

B: Okay...

FS: And uh...that would be the first company, and then we grew from that, from Gilbert uh....uh....Gilbert Imported Hardwoods and the reason it had the hardwoods in it, is that the coal was up here and we were in the hardware lumber business, and it was just better to take that name and keep it. We just didn't have the coal name, we had a coal division, and a lumber division...But it was called the Parent company was Gilbert Imported Hardwood...

B: Okay. So when you say, you just started the companies what do you mean by that?

FS: Well we uh...leased the coal...got a certain man out to mine it, got a cntractor [sic]...surface miners, and got trucks to haul it down and put it in a raft and we sold the coal...See the sequence in which it came in...

B: Okay...how much uh...did this lead you to an involvement with the unions? Did you all employ union miners?

FS: Not until uh...say oh...probally [sic] about five years, we've been in the coal company...and been mining coal...did we go union as you would say?..So, I think from this point on is for being the coal, the coal end of it, with Mr. Harless, it would be best...to talk to him about that and get, he's got actually dates and all because that's at Gilbert, that's fifty miles from here and I can, he can give you dates, and names and so on that I cannot give you.

B: Okay...Well like, oh I'm sorry...

FS: Go ahead...

B: If you don't mind me backtracking would you talk some about your involvment [sic] with the uh...board of education?

FS: When I got on the Board of Education, a man named Okie Glenn that was a druggist and I started campaigning to clean up the school. Our school system had got until a teacher had to buy their jobs, if you sold Coke Colas you had to uh...pay for the rights to get into school, the bus bids had, they had to have a kickback, everything was a kickback. And we, both happened to be wealthy enough, we didn't have to and we weren't so turned that way, our nature was not that way...'cause we haen't been raised that way. So we started campaigning and we defeated the people that were in...by a large majority. And we started what is known as cleaning up. What we were called "the new board..." We cleaned it up and got and uh..we got a man by the name of Hershel Morgan, Superintendent of Schools and he is in Matewan today. And I think interviewing him would be well worth your time... to know the sdchool [sic] system of Matewan...

B: Uh...my collaegue [sic] interviewed him last summer, he's one of the greatest, he is...he is a great person...

FS: And uh....then what he done for the school system, I think I happen to be a staunch backer of his as Okie Glenn, and later Mrs. Brooke Lawson that's the Brookey's Lawson's mother, that's there in Williamson that's an attorney...And Okie Cann, and another was Pearlie Epling, and we over the years uh.,..I don't know how many years, after we got the old board out, we then ou...comprised to what's on this "New Board" and Mr. Morgan ran it, and he ran it with a hard hand, I mean he ran it the way a school system should be runned. And uh... uh...we brought it out of...of I don't what you would call it, and where it was at that day, and it seemed like politics is what caused it to get there, and we took it (word) out politics, because the courthouse did not tell us to hire, and when to hire, and what to do...We were independent of it...We were a Board and we could stand on our own and we were independent and we didn't ask them for help or money or anything to be elected because what we did costed us money...Everytime I went to a board meeting, it would cost me money, it...it uh.. took (away from) my busines [sic]...So, and so uh...Mr. Glenn was the same way and so was Kent and all the rest of the boys, I don't know about Mrs. Lawson, was quite a lady and she did not work...So it didn't mean a thing to her, but she had to put her prestige on the line and she was uh...was, I think West Virginia University's Women's President or whatever, the place may be in this area and she was quite a lady...But uh... then the system came on, in nineteen and sevety [sic] four they began to get it back to politics, you began to get until, it was all about the early seventies and they got someone two on the board, I prefer not to name, which...we then had to have the majorities before that time when anything came up we were all for it, because it was ether right or wrong, Mr. Morgan checkd [sic] it out and it was either right or wrong...And then we got these people on and then they wanted other people, they wanted this and they wanted that so...it started to deteriorate. In about nineteen and seveny [sic], I'll say that's close by it, so uh...I went on and served my term and then I quit because I would not be told what to do...I come into life not being told and I quit military school because I didn't like being told, and then I ran my life that way because no one told me what to do.... Because I was independent, and of course that's nothing to be proud of because you should be and of course that's I was indenpendent [sic]... and of course that's nothing to proud of because you should be enough to listen to someone else, but they had to listen to me. And then when a decision was made, I used my best judgement, I used there talk or their discusssion [sic], and I made the decision, and I didn't look back. I didn't regret anything I did, I do it the same way again...

B: Okay, what year stand did this cover?

FS: '56 to uh...and to '74...Now that was not a full time job...

B: Right...

FS: We meet, I...I worked at the construction and drilling wells, and at the coal companies, and what have you...Stayed real busy for those years and uh...

B: About how much time do you think though it took? (participation on school board)

FS: Well, what I would take on the phone and being threatened and uh...so on and I would say that it would take a least uh...a day and a half a week...just being a member of the board and having someone that ran it that you should be there only, a meeting would only last say four or five hours, that's what it should last. But uh...it didn't happen that way you would have to go on in to the night and you would prepare for it and you were always out. And I knew everyone, and who they were related to and their names, because I was a good campaigner...I meant whenever I campaigned...I told them what was going on and I knew every one...So you didn't do just as I said an hour a day, it took at least a day and a half or more per week.

B: When, when you say threatened, I'm sure there was a machine, a political machine in existence probably up through that time period?

FS: Yes, yes there was, I had people follow me, and they are reasons for that. (It) was in, I can't remember the exact year, but the key men in the teamsters union organized all the employees except the teachers, and they under...undertook, just took over, starting telling you what to do and when they would run the buses on. We excepted it, we thought, well that's alright, they had their benefits and we just go along with it, and after a few months, we saw it was wrong so we reversed their decision and threw it out. So consequently it, it became the issue so we fired every hourly employee, everyone except teachers was fired, and the ones that didn't go back we hired new people in their place. ..And that's when I got verbal abuse from everywhere, even from in the front, people come up and try to picket my business and do all this crap that goes with it...I just didn't give, I said nothing never did scare me, because I had been in non-union coal mining...through the '50's, and so then my father, uh...bluff doesn't bother me...and that was most of them were...

B: Okay...the most uh...infamous person we know about related to the school board was a man that his name was pronounced differently, "Blind Billy"?

FS: Blind Billy Adair.......that's the one I beat in '56, Okie and I beat. He and uh...I believe it was Charlie Perry or Butler Pitcock. Butler was from Matewan, I can't remember but we beat, I believe it was Charlie Perry and Butler Pitcock...

B: Okay...now you say you were uh...a life long Republican and we know between us that this is a Democratic county?

FS: Democratic, six to one...(laughs)

B: Was your uh...father a Republican is that how you?

FS: Yes, he was... I think how we was elected, was just the system got down and so uh...uh...corrupt, that they would of (have) taken anyone..But they had known me, known how I worked, and I had been fair, and Mr. Glenn had been, Okie Glenn had been pharmacist (at) Strosnider...Drug Company in Williamson, and they've known him all these years and they been on the company in Williamson, and they known him all these years, and we had been fair and honest above board and we just ran and campainged [sic] to get rid of that...And so people accepted, I had people that was Democrats, came to me on the second time of running and they said, "I've been a Democrat all my life, and I hate a Republican, but I'm going to vote for you, 'cause I know, no one is going to tell you what to do, and you are going to do it right... I might be wrong, but your going to do it right, I mean the way you think it's right, your, your not going to steal anything from us." So that's uh...I think that's they they felt...I don't know if that's one hundred percent...But I do know in cases of it...

B: Do you...what do you remember about Blind Billy as a person?

FS: Uh...I don't know. I'm at a disadvantage to say because I tell you what, he had two newphews [sic] one of them was superintendent of schools, Troy Floyd...and one was the assistant superintendent...

B: Was this Noah?

FS: No, and uh...as soon as Billy was beaten uh...right shortly after that week, we tried to straighten Troy up and get him in the right corner, and it just seemed like he had gone to far with them and so we had to fire him...and we later fired Noah. So uh...to me to say what kind of person Billy was...I knew Billy; he would come to your house, he was very convincing, and uh...the fact he was blind, was not really a handicap, because he had a memory that offset that and a mind knowing names and recognizing voices. That he...he was a phenomenal person...absolutely people would bring him and what was wrong Billy was not as bad as a person as the people behind him. That he was popular and if he liked them, and he done favors for many people so consequently they stood behind him and let him take some of the flak. Which he was not guilty of; he was not that bad of a person, he was a good hearted man, and he would let someone else tell him. And naturallly [sic] handicapped being blind, he could not see some of the things that went on...

B: Right...was this uh...the people behind you speak of, were they involved in say other agencies say the police or the political party or uh...?

FS: I say the political party as a whole, because the board hired more people than anyone else in the county, they were the strongest, they dictated who was going to be sheriff or whatever on down the line, the board memebers [sic] did because, they hired more people...And that's where it got corupt [sic]. Cause if you didn't do what they say, you would be, your school would suddenly, you wouldn't be teachin' here, you'd be teachin' somewhere else and that's the reason it got corrupt but uh...Billy was not, is cold blooded. It's some of the people behind him and uh...actually, it...it said, he was not, he let it go on and I don't know whether he did it because he didn't know what was goin' on or he didn't care. He had so many relatives in it that they used him but uh...and I won't say that Troy and Noah used it. Troy began to drink and he...he was a wonderful superintendent and had a personality that you couldn't stop, but he got...Alcohol got the best of him and then, Noah got into politics. He got to be our Senator and uh...he was uh...uh...he began to fight what was known as the "New Board" and so consequently, we started fightin' him and it made a deal in there where that uh...politics began to creep back into it because, we were not goin' to let him run the new board out and that was what we had to do and uh....Noah is a...is a..was a well educated man and his wife was a good teacher. She taught in the school system, but the only thing is, whenever he got to be Senator it seemed like that uh... in that, the balance of power shifted more to the state than it did to the board so consequently, he began to use that as an advantage and then he wanted the board also and that's where the trouble started. It's not that he's an evil man. Don't misunderstand me and nor was Troy. Troy was, just let liquor get the best of him. He was a good man and I liked him.

B: Well, what do you think um...when this fighting ensued between you and your fellow reformers, did children lose time in school because of um...lack of employees or what kind of repercussion were there?

FS: No, there was none. No uh...no, we had, you can ask Mr. Morgan about that and I think, because he was right there on top of it all the time. You can ask him and I think it would be, well to go back to him and refresh some of this to see if you want to know that question. No school, no kid lost time because uh...Mr. Morgan saw to that. Uh...and this infighting had nothing to do with it. This was between the parents and us, I'd say. It was ...it didn't have anything to do with it and then, firin' all these did not have anything to do. It might have been a day or two of strike or strife, but by a large, two or three days would have been the most that would have been lost because it was just cold blooded. We just fired them and hired new people and that's all it was. The ones that wanted to go back, sure, they could go back but uh...if they didn't, they were out and I still carry scars today over it. I had people I won't turn my back on and that's been a long time ago.

B: Did you ever feel truly threatened, I know from what your... your background. I know my grandfather said he...he knew a real threat.

FS: Oh, honey. I've been threatened many times. I would not have the shades up at night for someone to take a pot shot at me in the house and then I also had a body guard for years. I never got out of his sight. And I mean, I'm talkin' about twenty-five years or more. Actually it's been longer than that. Cause I would be threatened. My wife would be harrassed and threatened and the kids and by phone calls and then you couldn't, that was before you could trace a phone call that way. You can now have devices that, it made it much easier today. But no, I've been threatened and looked in the eye and threatened so, it didn't bother me as I said, I...I've just never been one for frights.

B: Do you think that you and your fellow members on the...on the new board made a lasting uh...impression?

FS: The reason I say that, I've had so many come back after we got a change of the board and it began to deteriorate, in my opinion, I'm not sayin' it did, I'm saying in my opinion. They begged me to run again, to try to get it back to where it once was and get someone as superintendent cause they would get a good man and then the board wouldn't back him. They'd have a good superintendent and...and they'd have a lousy board that year and things would happen. I think our school system, overall, is deteriorated and another reason for it, I think the state has stepped in and it's not a local school board as much as it is, they dictate it from a state level, so consequently, you don't have the power you once had. To call the shots is to hire the people you should. They've got to have certain education. Many times, there was people hired. They was dedicated and was better teachers than someone who had a better education but you could make the decision. You can't make the decision. Advertise a job that's open and you, it's a different ballgame now. So I don't know if you blame anyone with it, I jsut [sic] say that it's not what it once was.

B: Okay. What would you say, I...I know you know that West Virginia ranks low in the quality of its public education around the country. What would you say locally are the biggest impediments to a quality education?

FS: Well, I believe it would be more than one thing. I don't think you can pinpoint one. Is that the fact that we don't have, we're one industry area and your either a miner or you either work in a fast food chain or something, I mean, it's just about, that's not exactly right but that's...that's parallel. So consequently, you have almost, uh...you have children that are say, from wealthy families and then you have the children from not exactly poor families, you have them from poor then you have the miners that have wealth because the miners make good money when they're workin'. But the worst thing, is they're out of work and so, that kid is just bounced around and he'll come to school in a...in a Mercedes or something and some of these kids that's on relief doesn't have it. And then there's a class war almost goin' on between a middle class that works and just makes a nominal wage and the relief person over here which has more money and their kids have bicycles and they have this and they have more vacations. Then they go and they work everyday and they can't enjoy it, but someone on relief can so, this man over here that's workin' at the mines, making forty thousand dollars a year so, he enjoys one status and another one enjoys another one. And I sometimes believe that is one faction in the school cause it puts the teachers to try to teach uh...that everyone's the same and it can't because the kids don't let it be that way. They...they... they have a problem with accepting that because you take someone, they're not particularly hungry. Whenever we say our kids are hungry. They're not hungry. That's not our problem. It's just that they don't enjoy what the Jone's [sic] enjoy and then we have another one, we have politics. We have, when the court house decides to send up someone to be a teacher or a worker and they're political hack, they send them up in the boards that comes to that and puts them on. That weakens the system because the teacher has someone sent up that's not as qualified as she is or not the teacher she is and how he's dedicated and they'll send someone up that could care less and I feel like that's a problem. We have so many. We have more than one and that actually, I don't that it fits all of West Virginia, but I can only speak of Mingo County and I've watched it from the beginning. And uh...we have uh...low salaries, but the thing about it is, the teachers, until the miners got like they did, made more money and have made sufficient money, the only thing is, if you take the fact they spent the years in school. Just like a doctor, he justifies his salary or his money by the fact that, "I've spent all these years and that's true." But a teacher does the same thing. They spent money, I mean spent years spendin' money and not makin' money and some of these other people just go out and go to work. Then, I think we had a lack of trying to train people to work. We did not train them. We have taught them and, I don't whether you know it or not, but a quite a few of our people in our county draw a check, (unintelligible). That's a broad term. A check and I don't say that it's social security, I mean, that's not what I'm talkin' about cause they're legitimate but there's some that's on social security, that should have never been there. They've broadened the laws of social security so they could get on so of course, whenever you get back to your school system you've got all these different people to live with. And in...in big cities, they're having the same problem. I mean, we're not alone in it but they have the same thing in other systems. They...they...they tell me about it but uh...I don't know, uh...I know our low salaries got a lot to do with it. But whenever you start payin' a teacher thirty five or forty thousand dollars a year and we've got so many people that don't make half that much, there comes another, I don't know, like a class thing in there where the miners and then they will be on a strike or out of work, or the mines closed down and then they get on welfare or whatever, unemployment, so, you say our school system, it has so many ups and downs that its...its not straight uh...forward. Every year, the same thing. A kid likes to go to school and not have any disturbances. They like to go next year and know they're gonna have the same little group they had last year and go right back to the same teacher and go back to this, go back to that and they have no guarantee. And uh...cause that teacher has quit this area and gone to one that paid more money and you can't blame him. I mean, they..they...they needed more money and they were willing to. We have them goin' every day out of here. I know I didn't answer your question because I think it's too broad to say, what you think it is. The easy way is to say not enough money. If you had enough money and you pay a teacher enough, you'd have a better school system. But the real trouble lays more back with the parents than it does with the teacher in our county because the parent does not start that kid to school in the morning with the right attitude, by and large cause uh...they don't want the teacher to punish them. They don't want them to make them mind in any degree where the, when I was a kid, if you got a whippin' at school, you got one at home that night. You got, so, we don't have that. They blame the teacher too much, well, the teacher has to put up with a multitude and uh...as I said, we have a multitude of problems. We don't only have one to mention. We have others that I've, not, on the tip of my tongue right now.

B: Okay. Well, one thing that people, I noticed you..you mentioned one problem this area has is it's reliance on a single industry. What, as a businessman, have you seen through the years, um...that would either give you hope or...or make you think that there couldn't be economic diverisification [sic] in this area?

FS: Well, one thing, I think it's just come out lately is, I don't know whether you're aware of it but there talkin' about upgradin' route 52 to a four lane and it would cost a lot of money and when coal is gone, what are you gonna do? Okay, the argument is, is that your gonna have land that's left with lots of workers. Level land from the strip mines, level lands from this and, people that are gonna want to work and they're good workers in this area. They're intelligent people. May not be educated as well as our...they're intelligent and they're good workers. They're not, they don't mind working and uh...if that road goes through here, it would leave us with something which we could get to market and get somewhere and have a plant where that it could be in an area where it would be nice. Wouldn't be a shack or something like that. I know, in recruiting workers from North Carolina to come into this woodworking plant, to back up just a minute, to 1960. As we would bring people in from North Carolina. They loved our plant. It was a state-of-the art plant. It was everything first class. Well, whenever they brought momma here, she'd look up and see a shack and washing machine settin' on the back porch, she said, "no way," so that's, would be one of the things we have to overcome and we have by in large, it's...it's much better. But a road through here would help us be able to be competitive because if you put a compass there, I mean a drawing, you will see that we're in the center of the metropolitan area within five hundred miles. (tape cuts off) Of markets that would amaze you. Particularly to the North East and uh...we could compete with anyone in almost anything. We had a bad experience in this lumber business because I don't think the union gave us a chance to ever get a plant in. They organized us while we was still training workers that couldn't, they'd never whittle out a toothpick. They wanted to organize right now and get too much money so I had a bad experience with it but I'm willing to try. (tape cuts off).

B: Okay. What other industries do you think would...could work in this area?

FS: Well, I feel the woodworkin' industry is a...is a natural for it because we have some of the best, and that's something else you want to talk to Mr. Harless cause we have saw mills over there which is the state of the art saw mills and we sell lumber even, abroad, I mean, we sell it over seas, we...we have an international market and uh...I think it'd be best for him to expand on that because he can name names and species of lumber, what have you, but we saw it, that's thirty years ago that the lumber industry could be good because they were comin' in this country from North Carolina, buying our logs and lumber, takin' it down there, and all the jobs are in North Carolina. North Carolina was building up and becoming a...a wonderful state and it had always been the Tarheel state if you know, it had been backward in other words. And uh...here they were, suddenly beginning to come to the front, well, we could see then that if we didn't get jobs and people, that we would be uh...we'd be left so that was one reason for puttin' in the plant over there and as I said, the lumber industry is one of them because lumber replenishes itself. It's not one that's gonna work out like the coal or the gas or what have you uh...lumber is gonna be with us. It's gonna come back cause every thirty to fifty years, we can cut again. And have a whole new ballgame.

B: Well, um...another problem that...that people point to in this area is now, especially in this area like you mentioned and they have it in the inner cities too, are second and third generation uh...relief recipients.

FS: That's right. Um.. That's right.

B: What do you think when you talk to the average person in the area like this, they don't, they seem appathetic [sic] or they seem to have a feeling of hopelessness as far as their economic outlook. What do you think about the possibilities of ever changing that?

FS: Well, there's been several uh...uh...back in nineteen and fity-seven [sic], I think it was, I was on the economic development agency, which the Governor Underwood, created and we had a man named L. E. Ward that we borrowed from the Norfolk & Western to come in and help steer it and he said, some of these people would have to be taken out of their environment to change them. If they were consistently put back with the environment where they raised, eight kids and that eight kids looked forward to drawin' a check and they multiplied and it suddenly got to be ninety kids and they were all lookin' for it. It only got worse. You had to begin to take them out. Well, who can say that you can take a child from its environment when it's a child and take it somewhere else. You...you just can't do that. You've got to fit the environment to the person and that's where that we felt like jobs would be the best thing if you could get some of these folks jobs that I know are on relief when I was doin' pipeline through here, some of my best men that I worked came from folks that had been on relief. Their..their daddy's were on relief and some of their brother and sister what have you. But uh...it's somethin' that everyone is always, talkin' about that. We need jobs. Every politician. Have you ever heard one that didn't say, we want jobs. That's one of the first things and that's true right here in our own county. We need jobs but we have other's in the lumber industry. You just ask for one. We've got other uh...assemblies of uh...machinery and uh...just many things that we could do but the only thing is, is our road system into here forbids us to have anything that anyone would come in here on. It's just like when people want to come visit us outside when we stayed in Florida a whole lot and they come out, why I'm gonna come by and see you. You're not gonna come by and see us unless you particularly want to. You're not gonna go by an interstate and drive up Route 52 unless you desperately want to see someone.

B: That's true.

FS: So the same thing's true about some of these people, now, many of these people are on relief. They left and went to Columbus and they got jobs and I say Columbus 'cause that was the main one because when they went there, it was just, they begin to pick up steam. If someone went and their brother would come and their sister and sister-in-law and so on, it got to be a whole families goin' to there, but Cincinnati and Detroit and Chicago is all the same. Whenever the great Exodus in the '50's was, but uh...we have other industries that could come into here but I feel like at many times, West Virginia has not had a condusive climate to go outside. We do not have a right to work law which makes something that is real bad, now, I know that you, from what you've listened to me, I'm anti-union and I am to a point because I don't think they think it out and I know that that's true because, if they would think it out, we'd have a right to work. Why should they be if their union came in. You have to join their union to work. Why can't you do your own thing and uh...so we do not have a right to work. We have other states around us. Virginia and Kentucky both and have right to work and you'd be surprised how much better they can entice other industry to come in.

B: Well, my grandfather was a reluctant union member and he said that the coal miner's union in particular, in the '40's and the '50's as he would say, priced themselves off the market. FS: They were very millitant [sic], priced theirselves out of the market. They got it and tell it. That's when oil began to come in and they begin to change oilers up and down east coast at Bunker Fuel and why, gosh, you couldn't compare. And then of course, work came along and they could not get the orders, a lot of things couldn't, and we had coal and we had a great bundle in the '40's and then, it was again in the '70's we had another, we had another oil embargo. We had another (unintelligible). And so uh...really, they were priced out of the market but you must remember that a miner and uh...is same as a lot of other people, that is a dangerous job. They should be paid more than someone maybe that uh...that samples fruitcake or something like that. I meant uh...it's a more dangerous job and uh...I think one of the bad things about it over the years, it's not been steady. They never know when they're gonna work. They're out of work so much at at time is uh...market conditions, mainly. But they did price themselves out of the market because fuel oil came in and it began to take and then it was less pollutants and uh...began, people began to be environmentally conscious now and coal has to overcome that right now. Our coal that we have in Gilbert, we're fortunate, is it is medal, I mean it's uh...compliance coal. It's less that .70 sulphur so that makes it desirable where a little high coal is three percent from Northern West Virginia, Western Kentucky.

B: OKay. Um...I just have a few more questions that...that deal well, let me get one out of the way uh...you say your father was a Republican. This is just a social history question. What did he think of Franklin Roosevelt?

FS: He didn't like him. He thought he was too much of a liberal and then of course, at first, it wudn't that much said, but whenever he began to take the attitude that he did, and uh...uh... like, well, packing the Supreme Court for his benefit and things like that, he began to, well, I'd say, go from dislike to...to hatred. He just thought that he was not good for our country because he would point back, I know before he died, he told me to look back, that was the beginning of our downfall was Roosevelt. Cause uh...some of the things he did, his programs and a lot of thing that he had, he had a lot of good programs. I never did one hundred percent agree with him cause I felt like social security has been a wonderful program but I don't look back at some other's that was not wonderful. I do not and uh...I had to agree with him on several of them but by and large, him being a Republican, you wouldn't hink he would embrace him anyhow. I mean, so he would have to have a reason and that was.

B: Okay. What did he um...what did you all think about Herbert Hoover because uh...you know, history books, how, show that... that Herbert...Herbert Hoover was not the evil man that he was depicted as at the time. What..what do you remember about your father talkin' about him?

FS: Well, I remember and uh...and at that time, as he was a victim of circumstances after the war ran down and times began to change or get hard as we say in local area. And then, there was a draft that came upon him at that time and people began to be hungry from lack of food, not only from the fact they didn't have jobs, but they weren't raisin' food then. Wherever they were and our economy was at a low level and he was an intelligent man and some of the things that was to, well, like the Hoover dam and things that was necessary he built and, and it shows that he wasn't a complete idiot. But he was portrayed as a, as one of the worst presidents we've ever had because that's when Roosevelt came in and started all of his programs and it...and it took away from the..the ERA, the whatever the initials, all of these initial programs began to start then and uh...it was something that had to be done but they, it should have been more temporary. They made it permanent because it was it was so good politically that they made them permanent. But we had to have something temporary but I don't think it was all Hoover's fault.

B: Okay. Okay. Um...switching our focus back to uh...the local scene, what do you remember being your first trip to Matewan? About how old would you say you were?

FS: Uh...I would have been about like eighteen, it's back in...in the, when I's about eighteen. It's about when I in high school. They would have big name dance bands come in here and Matewan was more agressive [sic] than it and Williamson and we were down here, we did not, at that time, we began to have, our troubles with the coal business and they had Red Jacket and some other coal mines that still sponsored and...and we'd have big time bands. I can't recall one of them, but like Glen Grey and ones like that. You wouldn't even remember. You're too young but uh...we would go up there to dances and I can remember that as being at Matewan. Going to dances would be my first at say about eighteen. I might have been there before but that's the first I can recall. Then shortly, there after, uh...in sports, now I had been there on football, basketball, I'd forgotten that. But uh...by in large, that would be my time of goin' that would be outside of...of scholastical affairs and then, later, I got to know uh...friends there like Mr. Allara and O'Brien and ones like that but I would go back and uh...and visit and I got into the well drilling business up in there about 1950. I would have been a little older then of course and then that was the time I remember most of goin' back is when I got involved in politics. Matewan was a very political area for politics.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Do you remember where these dances would be held? Were they held at Red Jacket?

FS: No, I don't...I...I think they were in the gym and cause, Matewan had one of the finest gym's in the county at that time and I'm almost sure they were in the gymnasium because I can remember one of these men male, or someone, he would not set down on the level where people could get to him, they had to elevate the stage where they couldn't, the common people couldn't get to him. But now they had also dances in the Memorial Building in Williamson. But that was the one in Matewan. They did have them at Red Jacket, as I remember, but the thing about it is, that's not what I remember most. (telephone rings, tape cuts off).

B: Um...what were the...what were the young people like in...in Matewan um...say when you played against them in football and basketball. Were they brawlers , were they nice people or, did you all have...?

FS: I don't know uh...it would just be different times, different problems and maybe carried over but uh...by in large, Matewan was competitive and so was others. I can't recall any, that I had any particular grudge against so I can't answer your question fully because I think we were all raised with about the same backgrounds, our areas through here, we were uh... natives, most of them at that time were natives and we had some foreign element and then uh...we would play on the playing field, if you were competitive, naturally, someone would clip you or something like that and you might have a fist fight and then it would break over into the parking lot or something like that. Same thing it does today, so I don't think it's different.

B: Okay. When you all would go to the dances, um...in Matewan. Did you take your own dates because I...I interviewed a man who graduated in 1932 from Matewan High School and there were twenty-four boys and eight girls, so I don't think any young men would have been very welcome if they hadn't brought their own dates.

FS: Well, going from here now, whenever we went from here to Matewan, in that, at that age, usually, took your dates with you. You didn't go there, dating, because if an outsider would come in and date a popular girl, it was usually problems. And so, you just didn't do it. You brought your own date. Whenever you went...so I would say that was true in Williamson and other places, you got to meet others or where you could see them maybe socially at a uh...another function, but not particurly at a dance....Because they were pretty much in demand that one that would be in demand there that you would want, also so...so I would say that uh...wasn't uh...any case of hatred or anything between people that I recall, as I can recall, you would have isolated events, I know that uh...Matewan came down here and I think my brother had fallen out, he was Hoskins, if I remember, cause I saw him in later years and he told me about it, and Tom laid him outside the high school and laid him out...it was just for, that was just a isolated incident, which was very unfair to them...and it demanded a apology, that was not the way things went you tried to get along...Then you'd see it, maybe somewhere else, someone would happen over Gilbert there it would happen at Chattaroy...and so uh...by and large it is just like it is today, it's...it spills in over the parking lot...it's not any different...

B: Uh-huh...okay...um...how did you come to know uh...Frank Allara?

FS: Uh...I don't know exactly the first time I met him, but on at the Country Club I probably met him, but I got to know him so well, whenever we got into this lumber business, see this uh.... national scene in deminsion [sic]...he was one of the partners in it, he and Mr. Harless and I and O'Brien and Glenn...and that where I got to really know him well, but I knew him before then. But I can't say the the time and the place though...

B: Okay...uh...he was also president of the Matewan National Bank...

FS: That's right, he sure was...

B: For many years? Okay...

FS: Yes.

B: What kind of business man was he, he seems very popular from his earlier days at the theatre?

FS: Uh....he...he's was very popular and did well at the bank and brought it as a good record...whatever he did, Frank's a hard worker, it's just a shame he is in the state, that he is now of been confined the way he is, it just tears us up when we think about, because he was always such a friendly and joy be with and be around...and it's just a shame...

B: Uh-huh...What did uh...what did you learn from him about business in Matewan area and your other experiences there?

FS: Well, I would say that in the gas business he didn't know the first word of it, so I would say he didn't teach me anything as far as gas is concerned, but as far as being uh...fellow human being he knew the people and uh...and you liked him, and everyone else liked him and uh...learned I guess that uh...friendship probably...searching for, but as far a business no, no more than just he was just a straight forward and honest business man that...Mr. Harless is, we just uh...made our mark that way that uh...there weren't any hanky panky or any of this, it was just straight out business...

B: Okay...he was a eyewitness to the Matewan Massacre, did he ever talk about those memories with you?

FS: Yes but uh...uh...I don't know of, I read them and so on, he just repeat them just like a kid, and he saw it and he run, and somebody told him to run home and he did and ....And it would be just highlights that you probally can have someone up there... He's repeated them to me but that's all I know, I was too young at that time to know anything about it..

B: Uh-huh...I was just interested to see how, whether or not he was reluctant to discuss it or,if it didn't bother him...?

FS: I don't think it bothered him as it was just like something today if you was around and witnessed something...you would say it...

B: I think that's what I saw...

FS: It didn't have no name attached to it, it was just one of those things...I think it got more important as he got older, because not that many people seen it...but you know Frank is gettin' on in years...that's the years he's told it, I said what they would tell you up there it would be more of...of I guess better than me repeating 'cause it would be the same thing...

B: Okay...uh...just like, on a personal note when did you met your wife, is she, she your only wife...?

FS: Yes, uh...uh and her father was a doctor, local doctor here in Kermit, and I met her in high school, met her when she was uh...I believe a sophomore and I was a junior or senior... and we started, I say dating, and then, but I left and I uh...uh. ..worked outside of it and came back and then she went to Virginia Intermont...girls school there and uh...later was married.

B: What year did you get married?

FS: '38.

B: Okay, and how many children did you have?

FS: Three...

B: Three...

FS: Oh...two, two...two sons...

B: Okay. You, you say she was a the daughter of a doctor, did, did, that sounds as if you all had similar social standings, was that a important issue with your parents?

FS: Not exactly the parents, but it was in uh...it would be maybe in a little bit whenever we grew up together...several of the families more or less partied together or whatever in town... and I would say that it made some difference...But we didn't carry that over into school, we had friends that it didn't matter or where station life it's from...it didn't matter that much, but on our uh...deciding to marry and so on, there wasn't much opposition. Both families objected to the point they felt like they were too young, they were saying that we were two young... and maybe she should continue her uh...uh...college career and uh...you know should have a college education, and she didn't... And uh...in mine I was working on a uh...as a bookkeeper and that was not that steady, I had not started business of my own, I had a filling station, which I owned and hired someone to work, I had, I always been that type of person...But uh...but by and large we had uh...it didn't have anything to do with our marriage, I don't think it had anything to do with that, it's the fact that we ran in the same circles...more or less...

B: Okay, you say at twenty two you owned uh...a filling station...

FS: That's right...

B: Had you inherited money or was this something...?

FS: Well my parents had a little money, I had the only thing is I worked my way into it, I mean, I, you borrow money and at that time...you could get into and I just, just was enterprising, I guess you would say...

B: Uh-huh...Okay...

FS: But my family had uh...some wealth, I mean they weren't rich, but uh...as I said we all was below the poverty level and didn't know it...no matter what ya...

B: Okay, Well is there anything I haven't asked you about today that you would like to comment on, cause I...

FS: No, I don't think so anymore than my life, and I look back over it and I'm proud of the way I lived and the friends I've met, what I've done. And I like mention like a moment ago, and my career looking back over it, I'd do the same thing literally the same literally the same...I haven't made that many mistakes, the mistakes I've made is the ones that cost me money...it's not been, something that I did, that I harmed some one or didn't do this or didn't do that...I have uh...joined the church in the '40's and uh...more or less been working within the framework of the church, and civic organizations all my life and I would do the same thing again...And as I said uh...far as maybe some decision made that like, well you would drill a well out there, and you are a little bit doubtful it was a dry hornet and it would cost you alot of money, you wouldn't want to do that again...But that's the kind of thing I wouldn't want to do over...

B: Okay...

FS: By and large in my life, what it means to me, I would do the same thing, because my friends the ones I have, are the dearest in the world to me and we made it through hard work and believing in each other...

B: Okay...Well the last question I have for you then is, do you think that it would be right or proper for Southern West Virginia to capitalize the history of the coal fields as far as tourism is concern? (explosion in background. Shewey explains noise)

FS: Yes, I...I, that's a strip mine over here I think... Uh...(laughing), I don't believe that you would look at it as being capitalizing on it, I just believe Williamsburg, Virginia would be an example as Yorktown or what have you, there would be no difference, this is heritage. There is many people in this are... (telephone ringing)...excuse me a minute...do you think it would be any different, the heritage, is there been so many people reared in this valley, there has been so many big families, and they had to got to other places and they amaze you to pull to a stop light with West Virginia license (plates) and you see the people come up along you beside you and ask you where you were from and so on like that...But it's a heritage and you know how your background had been and how you come up, and people you associated with in these mountain and these floods and what have you, poverty we might say too. And if you take a area of it which Matewan, and say that you are captitalizing [sic] on it and I don't think would be distributed as captializing [sic] that would be really is, is would be something that is fine for people to look back on, and it's been going on and let them know that some of the older people to see that they were part of making just like Matewan. Not only Matewan but it's going to be the other villages and so...I don't hardly think, it could be called capitalizism [sic] but...I mean capitalizind [sic] but I don't believe that until they look at it...

B: You said one word that made me think about, and I promise this will be my final question, how devastating was the floods uh...were the floods do you think....?

FS: Well, you couldn't believe what happened to Williamson, I don't think we ever recovered from the floods, it was just that bad, there's no use then going into details because the Jamestown flood you have all these and I know you can got back and you can look at the economic picture and take records of dollars and cents, and see what happened....and uh...But it was devastating because we took in refegees [sic], and kept two of them for weeks.

B: So you think then for the life of this area that the floodwall project is a necessary thing.

FS: Well, in a way yes, and in a way no. I don't think the floodwall will accomplish what it is suppose to. It...cause a walled city is a walled city and it is our county seat and has to be protected and they're not going to move it. But I don't think it's going to mean that much because you look what we've gone through with getting that and the businesses out...how you going to get it back into Williamson...where it's gone now. Williamson's not a trading center...it use to be a trading center for everything...but now it is not. And it's just how it will come back.

Matewan Oral History Project Collection