Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Cora Dotson Interview

Becky Bailey: This is Becky Bailey for the Matewan Development Center, uh...Saturday, June 30, 1990 and...and I'm talking with uh...Mrs. Cora Dotson in the Matewan Development Center and my first question Mrs. Dotson is what is your whole name including your maiden name?

Cora Dotson: Cora McCoy Dotson.

B: And, when were you born?

CD: Uh...August the 29, 1932.

B: What were your parents names?

CD: Uh...Larken uh...McCoy and Louise Layne McCoy.

B: And um...do you know when your parents were born.

CD: Um...my father was borned um...February the 16, eighteen and seventy-eight.

B: Okay.

CD: And I don't have the information on my mother.

B: Okay. How many children did they have?

CD: Well, um. Both had previous marriages and um...my father and um...nine children by his first wife and my mother had uh...three children by her first marriage and...and two grew to be adults and one died when hit was three years old and Mom and Dad had four children and the oldest one died when hit was a year old.

B: These babies that died, do you know why? What happened to them?

CD: Uh...mom's child died from diphtheria and I'm not sure what my brother died from.

B: Okay. Where were your parents from?

CD: Uh...my father was from um...Phelps, Kentucky and my mother was from uh...Barnshee, Kentucky.

B: And um...let's see, did they go to school when they were young?

CD: Yeah. Um...un...my...they went to school and they both were good readers with reading and arithmetic but as, you know, as far as other education like we get today, they weren't uh...up on that, you know, arts and music and social studies and all this kind of stuff, you know.

B: Do you know, did their first marriages end in divorce or did their spouses die?

CD: Um...well um...my um...father's first wife died and um...my...my mother was divorced from her first husband.

B: Do you know why?

CD: Well, no I...I'm not sure on that.

B: Just never really talked about it.

CD: She never talked about it.

B: Okay. Do you know when your father's first wife died?

CD: Um. No, I don't know the years on that.

B: Alrighty. What did your father do for a living?

CD: He was uh...in his younger days, he worked for his father in the timber industry uh...his father owned a saw mill and a lot of land and uh...in the Phelps, Kentucky area. But in his later years, he was coal miner and uh...worked past his retirement age in the coal mines.

B: What was his father's name?

CD: Larkin McCoy.

B: And so your father's family was involved in the feud, right?

CD: Yeah.

B: Would you tell me about that?

CD: Well uh...my grandfather, Larkin McCoy, was a brother to Randall McCoy, the head family of the McCoy side of the feud.

B: And uh...let's see, they um...I've heard a story that your father wouldn't talk much about the feud.

CD: No. He never would discuss it with us and the first uh...me and my sister and brother heared of it, I was approximately around five years old um...and uh...uh...we moved from Kentucky, out of the Phelps, Kentucky area to Thacker, West Virginia where uh..a lot of the descendants of the Hatfield uh...side of the feud lived. And uh...when uh...when we moved to this area, when we'd be with other children, they would taunt us and you know, like children will and...and say things about our family that they were murderers and that they killed out their family you know, and all kind of stuff like this. So when we went home and ask our father about it, he just told us that they was always three sides to every story. Mine, theirs, and the middle and it was better not to discuss it. That it would just cause friction. So we grew up thinkin', because he wouldn't discuss it with us, we grew up thinkin' that they...what they were sayin' must be true because Daddy didn't defend it, his side. And uh...I was a grown woman with children before I looked into it and got information on it and found out form my point of view, that Randall McCoy and Devil Anse Hatfield, wasn't really the bad...two bad men that they were depicted to be uh...the feud consisted, I feel, more from un....friends and uh...and uh...other members in the...in the family and uh...people that had married into both families and, the most of the killing's and stuff was done by these people rather than...than the Hatfield man and the McCoy man. And uh...so, lookin' back then, I wished I had have known more about it when I was little cause I could have felt better about myself, you know, and uh...but I can understand Daddy's side of it too because, you know, if he'd have told us things then we would have repeated it, it would have caused a lot of friction which, didn't happen.

B: Do you remember, you say you've done some research, do you remember some of the books. Was it books that you've read or movies that you've watched?

CD: Uh...well um...I...I um uh...got a book written by Virgil C. Jones and I can remember him a comin' to our house when a year or two before he published the book to interview my father and he wouldn't talk to him but he did interview other people in the area and uh...So, I read the book and from that, I found that they had, was another book by a Crawford, a New York newspaper reporter, that did...wrote the book during the time the feud was goin' on. And um...he did a lot of interviews at that time and uh...but hit's not in print which I would like to see published again because I'd love to read it. And um...then there is other numerous pamphlets and stuff available but I wouldn't know just you know, where to tell you to look for them at.

B: Um...your father, then, was born before some of the events even happened so he might have had memories that he wouldn't talk about.

CD: Yeah. He did have first hand memories and I can remember seeing my grandfather uh...on two occasions, alive, and at his funeral when I was just a little girl. Uh...we went to visit him once and um...he was, they had a well in the yard that uh...and he was gettin' water from it and he was in a long john underwear with the back open and mom was a tryin' to get it fastened and he kept slappin' her hand away and uh...he was drawin' him a fast drink of water and then we went in the house and I don't remember much about that but I can remember that little incident and then, we went to visit him when he was sick, just before he died and uh...then uh...not long after that, why he died and I can remember going to his funeral. Only thing I can remember about that was where daddy lifted me up where I could see him in the coffin and and Daddy was cryin' and that was the first time I ever saw him cry and uh...hit just, you know, held in my memory.

B: Rhonda told me a story that um...I think it was when your grandfather died, they had to, uh...when he was sick they had to...

CD: Yeah. When uh...when we was there that day, he was at his oldest daughter's home and uh...we was in a, in one room. I don't I can't remember if it was a dining room or living room and I couldn't...I didn't go in the room where he was at, but I could see him in the bed from where I was in this other room and they had his hands tied 'til he couldn't move them very far from his uh...you know and um...he was uh...he'd roll on the bed and...and I heared them all talkin' and they were sayin' that he talked to...about uh...about uh...men that he'd knowed that...that died and they was some speculation that he was speakin' of men that died and possibly, he'd been in the raids where these men had been killed. They wasn't...they was just pickin' up little words, here and there and kindly piecin' it together, you know, and I heared the family, you know, a sayin' that...that uh...he was talkin' about people that he'd seen died or possibly had helped kill during the feud but at that time, I didn't associate it with anything, I didn't. I just can remember that because hit scared me, him in that bed a carryin' on and uh...him tied down, you know, and that stuck in my memory. I couldn't have been more than maybe three or four years old or two or three or something. I can't remember, you know.

B: You wouldn't have known what your grandfather's wife's name was do you?

CD: Uh...Mary Coleman.

B: Did your father ever tell you what it was like when he worked for his father at the saw mill? Did he ever talk about workin' in the timber industry.

CD: Well, see my father was the oldest child of Larkin McCoy and uh...he uh...uh...would haul uh...lumber from Phelps, Kentucky or uh...down to uh...Freeburn. At that time, the bridge wasn't there and they forded the um...uh...river and he hauled the lumber in a uh...uh...a flat wagon pulled by uh...mules and they brought it to a sighting at Delorme and loaded it on flat cars and they had a man there that guarded the uh...cars and when they'd get a uh...load you know, so many cars full, then the train would pick it up and take it out.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Do you know what kind of house your father grew up in because a lot of people say that Devil Anse always lived in a log cabin and I was wondering?

CD: Well, um...my...my father, when I was little, had a picture of my father's home and my grandfather's home and I don't know where hit's at now. Hit wudn't in uh...Mom's possession when um...she died. It's possible my brother's got it. But hit was an L shaped uh...house hit uh...I can remember it had had the porch went in with the L, it went on both sides and hit was according to the picture, hit was approximately around six rooms and uh...hit was weather boarded and I imagined uh...in that day and time, most houses had sealing, what they call sealing, uh...inner walls, and I...I don't know that first hand cause I...I was in the house, like I say, but I was little and I didn't pay that much attention to stuff like that, you know.

B: What kind of flooring did it have?

CD: I don't remember nothing like that but I would imagine, according to the times, that hit was just uh...uh...uh...a board flooring.

B: Was your father already working in the mines when you were born?

CD: Yeah.

B: Do you know when he went to work in the mines?

CD: Uh...hit,was sometime durin' his first marriage. He uh...started workin' in the mines and I would imagine it was around about the time you know when the uh...the uh...lumber business went down in the area and he switched to coal minin'.

B: You don't know about what time the lumber business went down do you?

CD: No. I never heared nobody, you know, hit still...hit still, the lumber business still goes on but uh...in ...in his part of it there, I don't know if he, uh...just mined off his own timber and didn't fool with anything else or...or whether if it was he got to the age when he didn't want to do it no more and none of his sons were interested in it uh...you know. But after my father's second marriage. He didn't have too much to do with his family. I think they disapproved of his marriage to my mother.

B: Was that maybe because she had been divorced or?

CD: Uh...I'm not really sure uh...but I know he didn't have that much to do, and I don't know, I never heared anybody say that they disapproved of his marriage but uh...from, you know, attitudes and little things I heared sayin' that was the impression I got, you know. And uh...even his first children, they never had that much to do with us.

B: Was his first family, basically, grown up?

CD: Well, no, his baby daughter was about a year old when...when uh...his first wife died and um...so uh...I don't know she maybe was four or five, or somethin' like this, I don't know, six years old when he married Mom. I'm not sure that but anyway uh...his three baby children and her three, they um...kept with them and the others at this time that just had, his other children at this time had already established homes amongst his family and they...they would come and visit but they didn't stay with him and um...they never come around that much. We had uh...I had the one sister, Nettie, that visited uh...pretty regular but the others never come around that much. They lived around in the area but they didn't come around and visit and...

B: Okay. Did um...do you know when your parents got married? Do you know what year it was that they got married?

CD: I'd have to...hit'd have to be a guess, I was borned in 1932, August and my sister was born July 1930 and I would imagine if the boy that died was probably borned about nineteen and twenty-nine, so that would made that marriage approximately around 1928. In that area there.

B: Right before the depression. Um...what do you know about your mother's people? Do you know what her father did for a living?

CD: Well uh...he did mostly tenant farming, I think uh...if he did any other uh...he might have did other work but I think mostly his...he would...At that time when man owned a big lot of land, he would have houses on it and he would have what they called tenant farmers and they would farm his land and they got a percentage of...of the um....uh...the produce and so forth and was paid, probably, a small wage. And he did mostly tenant farming I think. That is about the uh...thing I ever heared spoke of that he did.

B: Did your mother tell you all about what things were like when she was growing up? Like did her mother uh...have a mid wife when...

CD: Well, my mother...my brother that's uh...I was delivered by mid-wife and my brother was delivered, he's younger than me by two years, and he was delivered by mid-wife and um...so I...I would imagine my sister and my brother that died was mid-wife delivered too.

B: Do you know the mid-wife's name?

CD: No.

B: Um....do you know, did your mother ever have any trouble with givin' birth? Did she ever...

CD: No, she never ever spoke of any uh...any complications of any kind, you know. Other than just the normal thing, you know, I mean, no...nothing that was major of any kind. But I do know that in that day and time, uh...I heared her say about that, they was big risk factors in child bearing in those days for the mother and the child because they were a lot of uh...women died givin' birth and they were a lot of babies that didn't survive and probably, hit was somethin' minor and they just didn't have the medical knowledge to handle it.

B: We've um...I know, we've talked a little off tape about some of the things my grandmother believed about taking care of babies. We've heard women say their mothers wouldn't get out of bed, for say a week or two after the babies were born. Would you tell me anything like that?

CD: Well, my first baby um...my Mom kept me in bed for seven...five days and um...that hurt me worser than having the baby did cause when I got out of the bed, it would take me two or three days to get my ber...(bearings)...get myself where I could walk around without getting dizzy but that was their belief that hit took five to seven days to recover from givin' birth and then with my second child, I got out of bed the next day and just laid down every once in awhile through the day and rest a few minutes but I went on with my work and uh...felt much better.

B: What about doin' things like um...keepin' the babies eyes covered and things like that? Did your mother ever tell you things like that to keep the babies eyes covered?

CD: Well, not covered but she got a caution about lettin' uh...gettin' where, if it's eyes were open where they was bright sun light and she didn't want you to take pictures uh...she didn't want me to take pictures of my babies with a flash camera and she said this would hurt...damage the eyes. And uh...they um...she tried to pass on to me a lot of her um...he beliefs in uh...wearin' clothes through the winter months that from a certain time in the fall to a certain time in the spring regardless of the temperature, and uh...and some medications that uh...was uh...is not used today was turpentine on sugar cubes and um...castor oil for laxative and uh...not warshing your hair or goin' in swimmin' or gettin' caught in the rain durin' a girl's menstrual periods and um...just...things like this that we had to overcome with her because we didn't believe it but she tried to push it on us anyway, you know, so I knew that's the way she had been raised to believe.

B: Um...I guess by the time you were born um...people had cars and things, but did she ever tell, did you parents ever talk about, say like the first car that they ever saw or anything like that?

CD: Um...no but uh...when I was growin' up , they weren't that many cars in the area, they...they were uh...the exception, you know, and um...so uh...the...oh, within a twenty year period, that all changed in my lifetime, you know, because uh....hit just seemed like, you know all in that twenty year period, almost everybody had a car, you know.

B: Okay. Your father um...being born in...in 1878 saw a lot of changes and stuff like that...

CD: Yeah.

B: What did he think about automobiles and things like that?

CD: Well, he...he was uh...accepted things as they come. He didn't uh...uh...just because he...hit was new to him, he didn't um...uh...say, you know, just shun it or not have anything to do with it and uh...he bought a truck hisself uh...before he retired from the mines and uh...my...when my brother got old enough to get an operator's card, well, he bought a truck.

B: What about uh...television, did your father like television?

CD: Oh, yeah. He loved television and uh...we got it in the area uh...um...oh, I can't remember the year but uh...I'd been married maybe ten years or so, so it was probably about uh...'56 and uh...he bought one. And at that time, we had to run a line from home to the top of the mountain where you could put an antenna and uh...it involved a lot of work because during the summer months when the leaves get on the trees and the growth would come, you had to cut this to keep the limbs off of it. You didn't get real good reception. The picture was snowy but he loved his TV and he was, you know, gettin' quite old at the time and he couldn't do much in the way of work but uh...he watched his TV and he loved it.

B: What kind of shows did he like?

CD: Uh, well, he was...anything that had to do with politics uh...during campaigns, I remember, he loved to watch anything that had to do with politics and um...he loved baseball. And um...he wasn't uh...too much with the uh...the uh...evening stuff if it was uh...just regular drama shows or musical shows and stuff like that, he watched it but he wasn't really that uh...you know, crazy about it. But he loved baseball and he loved anything that had to do with politics. He loved to watch any kind of political shows.

B: Did you all have a radio?

CD: Oh yeah, um...we uh...grew up with radio and uh...uh...me and my sister uh...ordered all the uh...song books from Nashville, Tennessee, from the Grand Old Opry,(Opera) we watched, listened to that show as we grew up and we...and we uh...ordered all the song books from there and my father was a musician, he played the banjo and we'd provide our own entertainment, he'd play the banjo and we'd sing and...and dance and we'd have our friends in and neighbors and have little parties and uh...other musicians would come and we'd have music and dance and sing and dinners and stuff like this. Our entertainment was what we made as we grew up you know. It's a lot different than what it is today. Families did things together more than they do now.

B: Do you remember any of the songs that you used to sing?

CD: Oh, gosh, no, not right off. But just you know, the...the standard stuff that was goin' at that time.

B: It...was your grandfather uh, self-taught playin' the banjo or could he read music?

CD: No, it was my father that was, he was uh...hit was just...he didn't read music, and my brother play uh...he can play almost any kind of a musical instrument but he don't read any music and he's self taught and can play the piano and he can play a horn of any kind, just give him fifteen twenty minutes with it to fool around and get familiar with it and he can play a tune on it. (tape cuts off)

B: I guess the next question is, to ask you questions about when you were a little girl. Do you remember any of the games that you would play?

CD: Well, hopscotch, and uh...ring around the roses and and uh...just the standard children's games, you know, that, a lot of...you know, you never see them play anymore with the kids. And because of my uh...brother not havin' a...a brother I...I was the middle child so I had to uh...play a lot of boy games with him which included marbles and uh...fishin'. And uh...we raised a...a lot of a big garden and had uh...a lot of work there to do and uh...had our uh...own cows and hogs and chickens and uh...although my father worked in the mines, he didn't depend on his miner's pay for a livin' and uh...we had a good life. I never knowed what it was to go to the table that they wasn't plenty of food on it in the hardest of times.

B: What...what did you all do to say preserve food for the winter? You said you had a garden. Did they do that?

CD: Well, uh...yeah, we canned uh...stuff and uh..picked berries and made jellies and jams and uh...we uh...we didn't have the fruit in the area but usually they was a truck come through a sellin' stuff and we'd buy off'n those and...and uh...fix apple sauce and apple butter and canned peaches and...and uh...then on the m...meats, uh...at first, Daddy salted the meat away, you know, put salt on it to cure it and then somewhere along the way, I remember him buying liquid smoke, it was some kind of a...it was a liquid and he'd take a brush and paint it on the meat and it would uh...smoke it instead of puttin' in a buildin' and buildin' the smoke fire, hit...hit give it the same flavor and cured it. But um...then...then we would uh...make our own sausage and uh...and uh...uh...we would fry this and render lard, and we canned a lot of meat so we would um...uh...just put it in fruit jars and...and seal it in there and hit stayed good.

B: Do you remember uh...could you tell me abut how you all would make sausage back then? How did you all make your sausage?

CD: Well, we had a...a sausage grinder and uh...Daddy would cut the meat in little small chunks and put it in the grinder and we'd grind it and then we'd put sage and uh...seasonings in it and mix it and uh...

B: How did you all keep that? Did you have a refrigerator?

CD: No. We didn't um...when the coal mines in our area went down, uh...the electric, elect...electricity was supplied by the mines. They had their own uh...power plant, and um...when the mines went down this went down. So then, hit wasn't until 1949, in the area that we lived in when...when the uh...local power company brought electricity back into the area so but they was a period of maybe twenty-five years or so that they was no electricity in the area where I...hit was other places but it just wasn't right in that area. And they was another mines come in the area, instead of them puttin' their own power system in, they...the local power company run it in there and when they did, they run it to the houses too.

B: You say your father didn't depend on just his miner's pay to make a living, was that a personal belief of his or...

CD: Yeah. It's um...

B: What did he say?

CD: Well, in...in that day and time, the miners pay wasn't that good so people that did depend on just their miner's pay for a livin' uh...they had it pretty hard and they stayed in debt with the company stores and cause, at...at that time, that was the majority of the stores were company owned and they had high prices on everything. So uh...if you had to do your grocery tradin' with the company store, you was overdrafted when payday come because it took every penny you made to just eat so he didn't depend on it for his, you know, just some stuff. And um...we raised the majority of what we ate and preserved it away and had it through the winter months too and then we had our own milk and butter and our own eggs and chickens to uh...kill and cook. And uh...he um...didn't hunt wild game uh...I...he might have went maybe uh...two or three times I can remember, maybe him goin' a huntin' to kill wild game but uh...he didn't uh...go in for that kind of thing too much.

B: Do you remember what company it was that he worked for?

CD: Yeah. Ames Mine Company at uh...and the main mines was at uh...Thacker, West Virginia.

B: Now, did you all live in a company house?

CD: Yeah.

B: How did...where did you all put your garden in there, was the yard big enough or...

CD: Well, no uh...in the area where we lived, it wasn't a coal camp as such, the coal camps were...we were up in the holler above where the coal camps were at. They...hit was about five miles from the main highway to where we lived and in that area, they was four or five real thick settled areas where the houses were real thick, but Daddy didn't like to live like that, you know, so we lived in a company house but it was up there past where the big bottoms were at where they could fill them with houses and they'd just be a house in this little bottom and one in that one up through there and they'd be some space between them. And uh..so you could uh...tend any land that was around you, they was no restrictions on it and you could cut any timber or anything like that as long as you used it like to build, like a barn or an out building or somethin' like like, you know, and any dead trees for, to use for fire wood and,...and you...you had the natural uh...use of all this stuff and the grounds around you. There was no restrictions on...on it.

B: Why didn't your father like to live down with where the rest of the houses were? Did he ever say?

CD: Well, he just liked to be off you know a little bit by hisself and where uh...uh...you know, he wouldn't have a neighbor right in his door. You know.

B: Since your father was older, did you think he was old fashioned when you got say, old enough to date? Did he have a..?.

CD: No, uh...no. He didn't uh...I started datin' when I was fifteen and um...and got married when I was sixteen and had my first baby uh...when I was seventeen.

B: How long did you go to school?

CD: I went to the seventh grade.

B: And was this um...did the...did the company run the school that you...?

CD: No, the county ran the school and uh...I went to uh...the local's two room school and then when we went out of the grades there and was to come to Matewan High School, uh...we had trouble with buses. The county just would not run buses up them hollers to pick us up so uh...hit was almost impossible to get any further than that because, at that time, the county wouldn't run buses to pick you up.

B: Did you ever try to ride the bus down?

CD: Yeah. We uh...pushed it and uh...went down ..went to and that grade I was in, went to Matewan Grade school one year and uh...but, we were so far behind, as far as our learning's was, that we were lost in the high school. They were ahead of us and they had been taught stuff that we've not even heared about. So hit made it you know, impossible for us to go so after that first term, I dropped out.

B: What um...how long did it take you to get from home to school when you were...when you went that one year?

CD: Oh, the bus picked us up about seven in the morning and uh...school took up about nine so we got down here quite early because and hit would be like five thirty, six o'clock at night when I'd get back home.

B: Okay. When you were growin' up, around your home, did the girls have one set of chores and the boys have a different set of chores or...how did you all?

CD: Well, me and my sister, uh...my brother was petted. He was the baby and hit was me and her that was...did the chores and we did them both. We did the boys chores and the girls. We helped with the milking, we uh...fed the hogs and chickens and uh...we worked in the garden and uh...we got in coal or wood. We'd carry our water from the spring and uh...and we helped with the house work and uh...so hit was between me and her and my brother was the baby so, if he helped us a little along the way, we appreciated it but they was nobody made him do anything.

B: Well, what could he do cause he was only two years younger than you?

CD: Uh...he was babied. Mom babied him and uh...uh...as he got a little older, you know, he began to help us more on his own, when he seen that hit wudn't right. But nobody never did push him and make him.

B: Let's see, you got your water from the spring. Was there a spring house? Did you all build a little?

CD: Uh...well, at our...in the edge of our yard, was a little uh...spring but we didn't use it for drinkin' water, we had it uh...dug out back in the hills and hit was bricked up and then, Daddy had a piece of um...some kind of metal on top and then dirt on that was wooden door on the front and then he had rocks in there and we put milk and butter in it,...back in it. And set the milk down in...in the water but put the butter on rocks to keep it cool and then, but the spring we got ur drinkin' water from, hit was oh, um...maybe fifty yards from the house and this water there was clean but it was right in the edge of the yard and we could have drunk it I guess but, at that time, they was natural water springs like that all over. You don't find those anymore. They uh...they're gone where the mountains has been uh...tore up with coal minin' and uh..all these have gone and uh...the water...the majority of the water you get now in the area is got uh...slate taste and this where it's come through the mines and it's literally not fit to drink without it's filtered or...

B: Who did you marry when you got married?

CD: Uh...Anthony Dotson and his family were from Virginia but they moved into the area when uh...he was a baby and uh...lived in the area until he was about fourteen years old and then they went back to Virginia but he didn't go with them, he was raised by a Hatfield family uh...at uh...and then when we got married and then twelve years ago, we came back to the area and now we're livin' in the house that he was...the Hatfield family lived in and raised him in.

B: You told me an interesting story about um...the feud. There's a connection between...

CD: Yeah. The uh...man that owned the house, that we live in um...was Matthew Hatfield and he was a relative, a cousin, I don't know how far off, of the uh...Randall McCoy, uh...Devil Anse Hatfield. And he was one of the deputies that was escortin' the three McCoy boys to Pikeville and uh...when the uh...Hatfields took them away from him and brought them back.

B: Un-hun. What did your husband do for a living?

CD: He was a coal miner until 1964, he was in the army for four years durin' World War II, he fought all through Europe and um...uh...we got married in '48 and he was a coal miner then and he was coal miner up 'til '64. We went to Chicago and come back here in um...1978.

B: Where did you all live when you went to Chicago?

CD: Uh...we lived on the uh...North-east side of Chicago. In the city. (tape cuts off)

B: Now, in this north-east section of Chicago, where...where was it?

CD: It was uh...uh...fourteen blocks off the lake on Montrose Avenue, it was Montrose and Clark.

B: Okay.

CD: And uh...my husband worked for Zenith uh...television company in Melrose Park, uh...no I'm wrong about that, I...he worked to Franklin Park it was, and I worked for Motorola, TV, in Millers Park.

B:: What brought you all back to this area?

CD: Well, my husband was within uh...four and half years of retirement and uh...I didn't go out there, originally to stay. I went to raise my family without goin' on welfare. And uh...so uh...when my, I had five children when I went to Chicago and then I had one out there and uh...he uh...we came back down here. He was the only child still under age and uh...so, we had enough money saved 'til we could uh...live alright for those four and a half years until my husband could get his retirement and uh...so, we just decided we'd come on back and uh...just,

B: Okay. Well, is there anything else that you can think of that we ought to talk about? Cause there's only a couple more questions that I have? Um...one question is...is about goin' to the movies. Did your parents go to the movies?

CD: Yah. Uh...the theater here in Matewan, uh...that was a uh..week...weekend at, Mom and Dad didn't go that much when we were little. But we would uh...go in groups, you know, and uh...a bunch of friends get together and we had to walk that out to the main highway to catch the bus, and uh...nowadays, you wouldn't hardly think that could be true but at that time, they run a special bus from Matewan and we had a bus service all over the area here and a bus terminal out here and everything so they run a special bus from...from Matewan to Thacker. That was about a mile below the holler we lived in. Just to pick up the show crowd from Thacker. Hit was a whole bus load of them and uh...uh...they was about five restaurants here in town and uh...for a good hour and a half to two hours before show time, they would have it all full of people, you know.

B: Do you remember any of the names?

CD: Well, just all the young people, you know, and then after me and my husband got married, he had a truck and Mom and Dad would come a lot of time to the movies with us. Dad liked to go to the movies. He liked Westerns.

B: What did he um...cause I know my mother had a...had an aunt that used to talk to the movie screen or she'd talk to the television cause he thought they...cause she thought that they could hear her.

CD: Dad didn't think they could hear him but...but uh...when he watched ball games he would quarrel with the umpires, you know, he'd say, he wasn't out, you called that wrong, and he'd get really, you know, up in arms about it.

B: Um...do you remember, at one time, John McCoy ran the bus station. Do you remember him?

CD: Um...I don;'t know, he, when we'd come down uh...I wasn't interested in who owned this or who owned that, you know, so I don't even know, you know, who owned it during the times we used to come to the movies so much, you know.

B: What um...what did you think of Matewan when you were a young girl comin' to town? What was it like?

CD: Hit was very crowded. uh...Uh...the streets were full of people and uh...you know, the cars all over the place and uh...uh...hit was just a lot bigger, you know, I mean, not...not the main part of it now, but between the main street and the river. They was a couple of other streets over that way and some businesses was in there but it...and...and residential homes. And uh...then uh...you had uh...outside of, through the under pass they was uh..businesses and uh...big beautiful homes that's been destroyed by the floods and uh...and below...below the main part of town, was a lot of big beautiful homes that's gone from being destroyed by the floods.

B: Did Matewan seem different to you when you came back cause you came back...?

CD: Oh yeah. They was a lot um...just uh...durin' that time we was away, well, I was in uh...the first three years we were out there, we didn't come home. And then, the first time I came back there was a big change but then we were in here every summer from there on up until uh...we come back to live here so I saw it every year, you know, so hit...I seen it happen, you know, from year to year an seen what was goin' down, you know.

B: Do you think Matewan will ever go back to bein' a...a big town, a business town like it was when you were young?

CD: Um...not without some kind of industry comes in, I don't. Um...and the town of Williamson, hits, uh...West Virginia, that's went down to what it was when I was young and uh...now, just since...just since '78, the Kentucky side, down there has been built up 'til that's where the main shopping for the area is at and uh...the main industry, you know, in the area, outside of coal mining.

B: Alrighty, well, thank you for talking to me.

CD: Yeah. (tape cuts off)

Matewan Oral History Project Collection