Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Venchie Morrell Interview

John Hennen: It's June 13, 1989, this is John Hennen for the Matewan Development Center Oral History Project preparing to interview with Venchie Morrell of Matewan in my apartment in Warm Hollow. It is approximately 1:00 p.m. (tape cuts off) (this intro. from original differs from intro. on copy.)

J: Mr. Morrell, would you tell me your full name and when and where you were born, please.

Venchie Morrell: My full name's Venchie Morrell. I was born in Red Jacket...

J: And...

VM: West Virginia. September 12, 1912.

J: Okay. Where were your...what were your parents names and where were they from?

VM: Well, my father's name was Joseph. He's an Italian. My mother, Sophie, uh...she was from Luxembourg, and I think she was Austrian.

J: Okay. What was her maiden name?

VM: You know, I can't tell you that. It's a funny name and I swear I can't pronounce it. (laughter)

J: Okay. Was your father born in Italy?

VM: Both of them were born overseas.

J: Okay. Do you have any idea when they came to the United States?

VM: Uh...somewhere around about 1900.

J: Alright uh...did your father immigrate immediately to this area or did he go to other places first?

VM: No. He went to Beckley first. Worked up there for awhile. He didn't like it. He heard about the coal mines down in this area and he came down here. He went to work in the mines in Red Jacket.

J: Okay. And that was, approximately when?

VM: Somewhere in the neighborhood about nineteen and eight.

J: Okay. Did he uh...was he speaking English uh...by that time?

VM: In fact, John, he knew several different languages.

J: Did you learn any Italian when you were growing up?

VM: No that's the funny thing, see, they wouldn't speak it to us. Naturally, my mother didn't know it and Dad knew it, but uh...they never spoke and we grew up listenin' to American, that's all.

J: Spoke English exclusively. Okay. Um...did you have brothers and sisters?

VM: Oh yeah. There was eight of us. Five boys and three girls.

J: Alright. Are any of them still living in the area?

VM: Uh I...well I got one brother livin' in Huntington and one, a sister, livin' in Dayton. That's the only three of us that's still alive.

J: Uh-huh. Did your brothers and sisters who are now deceased, did many of them stay in this area?

VM: Well, they did up until World War II, John, and then they started migrating away from here.

J: Where did you come along in the family? As far as ages?

VM: I was the second one. There's one older than me.

J: Okay. Now, your father...did your father work in the mines his entire career then?

VM: Red Jacket...not all...not entirely. He went to work at Red Jacket, John, then we moved down here and he went to work here in Stony Mountain.

J: And how 'bout your mother. Did she run the household?

VM: She was just a housewife.

J: Okay. Did you all keep uh...a garden and keep farm animals in your house...around your house?

VM: Oh yes. My mother had...she had a hog they called Salome, followed her around just like a dog.

J: So you had a pet?

VM: Yeah. We had chickens and cows, too, one cow and chickens and a hog and us kids had dogs and the girls had cats.

J: Did you go to school here?

VM: Graduated from Magnolia High School.

J: Um-hum. In what year was that?

VM: 1932.

J: How bout your elementary school. Where was that?

VM: Right here with, exception of about one year in Red Jacket, then we moved down here. The rest of it was all here in Matewan.

J: What do you remember about the uh...the period or the events surrounding the strike in 1920 and '21. Did your father discuss that with you much?

VM: No. Now he was in it John. In fact, he was down here when the shooting started and, uh,...he wasn't tried here in Williamson ...with that bunch that was tried down there. Later on, they got him and several other men and took them to Charleston but they didn't have evidence enough to convict 'em so they turned them over to the...and that's when he had to get out of the mines 'cause he was black-balled what I'm gettin' at John, he'd meet the train right here whenever the coal companies brought these uh...people in here to work 'em in the mines...he'd meet the trains and he'd start talking to them, and he'd tell them what was goin' on around here. Well alot of them wouldn't stop, they'd get back on the train and go away and they blackballed him then, he never did go back to the mines after that. That's when he started plumbing. Well he worked for a long time for the town down here for the waterworks, and the plumber too.

J: Okay. Now, when you mentioned that he would...he would meet the trains and tell the people what was..what they were doing, would these be...would these be Italians pretty much he'd be communicatin' with or...or just all the folks who came in?

VM: Different nationalities. Like I say, he could speak about three different languages and he would talk to them, and maybe some of those people there would understand a few languages to talk to some of the others that uh..he didn't know, and they would get word to each other, you know, what's going on around here, striking and a lot of them wouldn't go settle here. They'd get back on the train and move away from here. Get out of this area,

J: And he was...you're saying, he was later prosecuted in Charleston. Were these for events surrounding the Matewan Massacre?

VM: No. He was...they took him over there but they didn't have enough evidence to prosecute him and the other men they took over there, so they turned him loose over there at Charleston same as they turned them loose over there at Williamson. But those in Williamson, see, had a jury trial. Those in Charleston didn't 'cause they didn't have enough evidence to hold them.

J: Uh-huh. Do you recall the day of the massacre itself?

VM: No. Uh...John, see, I was only eight years old, and we were living in what's called Stony Mountain Camp. That's right straight down from us here almost to the under...below a crossing down there in Matewan and I was out there playing on the track whenever the shooting started but I heard the shooting, but I didn't...you know, it didn't dawn on me what it was.

J: Did you have to leave your home later?

VM: That's during the time at daytime, before the company made us move out of the house, Dad put all us kids in one room and took mattresses and lined them up on the wall? 'Cause see there was shooting from across the river over in this area, too, and we had to stay there during the daytime and then at night, we'd go up town, there up over where...the old post office building there, and stayed there overnight upstairs there.

J: Is this your family or other families also?

VM: Several other families there. Then when the companies forced us out of the house, in right where the Methodist Church is now, we stayed in tents there.

J: How did you manage to survive in the tents?

VM: Well uh...the United Mine Workers took care of a whole lot of that. See, they gave us food and clothing and, we made it but it wasn't the best in the world but anyway, it wasn't the worst either.

J: And, approximately how long was it before the strike was actually broken and people started goin' back to work? Those who weren't blacklisted.

VM: Well, actually uh..the uh...strike wasn't over...really over until (F.D.R.) Roosevelt came in see, he's the man who passed that law. That's whenever they could, uh....join a union voluntarily without...that's whenever the union came in strong. But before that, if you was a union man, you had to keep it quiet or you were in trouble.

J: So in the...in the interim between nineteen twenty-one and say the mid-thirties, there was no union here then, basically.

VM: There was a union but uh...it wasn't strong, and what few people belonged to it just kept it to theirself because they... they didn't pay any dues, so the company...coal company wouldn't take it off their payroll, they didn't recognize the union. Then when Roosevelt came in, that's whenever they, really the union came out.

J: Okay. And your father was blacklisted and couldn't get back into the mines so he turned to plumbing, is that what you said?

VM: Plumbing.

J: Okay. Where did he learn that trade?

VM: He picked it up right here. (laughter) Right here on his own, right here.

J: Self taught.

VM: Um-hum.

J: How long did he live?

VM: He was eighty uh...eighty-two years old when he died.

J: Which would have been what year?

VM: Uh. John I don't know. He's been dead several years, actually. I really can't tell you.

J: How about your mother? Did she survive your father?

VM: No. She died first. She died in 'fifty-seven. After the first flood. See, she was a diabetic, and that throwed her off her uh...medication and her uh...treatment she was takin' and her food that she had to take that she had to have, you know...And that throwed her off her routine of everything, and she died in fifty-seven, shortly after the flood.

J: The flood of fifty-seven?

VM: Um-hum.

J: Okay. Okay. I'm gonna' ask you some...some..some general questions just about what life was like in..in the Matewan area. I know you've indicated already some things that stick in your memory. What kind of things did you do, what kind of things did the children of Matewan do for recreation?

VM: That's uh...uh...I wish Marthie (Martha) Hoskins was livin'. She was a schoolteacher? She taught school for about sixty-some years, and she used to and uh....the next day after we'd get out of the streets down here and we'd go to school. She taught a lot... she taught I reckon several generations of people, but she would tell us she heard us out in the streets last night and we sounded like a bunch of Comanche Indians uh...all we done was just played on the streets. We played games. Hide and go seek and one thing and another and they had a playground up there where uh... right where Dennis Queen's old place used to be and we grew up there, and you supposed to be, curfew was at nine o'clock. But we'd post boys down to watch for the law to come up and when we see the law comin' either up the track or up the road or on around on forty-nine, he'd go up there and sometimes try to catch us that way, and he'd let us know and we'd go hide and ole Fred Stevens, he was chief police for a long time, he used to come up there...

J: What was that...what was the name ?

VM: Fred Stevens.

J: Stevens. Okay.

VM: And he would holler and he would tell us he said "now, I know you all are around here. Every one of you I...I know you're here, and I could pick you up tomorrow but I couldn't make it stick. But if I catch any of you tonight, you're goin' to jail." But he never could catch us. (Laughing)

J: Never caught anybody for breaking curfew?

VM: No. He wouldn't have put us in jail anyway. He'd just sent us home, is what he would've done. But you know, nine o'clock, when you're a kid growing up, you didn't want to go home at nine o'clock.

J: Hum. Why did they have a curfew anyway, do you have any idea?

VM: Well, really John, it's just to get the kids off the street by nine o'clock and uh...really, make 'em go home and study, I think mostly.

J: Uh-huh.

VM: But now, lot of the kids would, after the school was out, they would do their studying before they'd get out on the streets. THeir parents made them do that. We had to do it. Then we could go out and run around and play if we wanted to but you had to be in by...before nine o'clock, or by nine when that bell would...and by the way, right where the bank is now, the bell was right there and it...what we would do, we would make sure that the law wasn't anywhere around. We'd climb...skin that pole and take that clapper out of there and throw it away and they'd get another clapper and put in there. In fact it was just a game between the boys and the law. The Chief of Police. (laughter)

J: Now, did this fellow Stevens, was he the next police chief after Sid Hatfield?

VM: No. I don't remember who was after Sid uh...but it wasn't him.

J: Were your parents strict about education?

VM: Oh, yeah. That's one thing...if my kid brother was here, you could ask him, see Mack, he didn't like to go to school? And uh... Dude Botulin was a freight agent for Norfolk and Western for years, and Mack would come...slip up the back alley there around the station there and he told Dude said "you'd better hide me" he said "Dad is after me and I was supposed to be in school." So then we would get under the station there. And Mack got under there and Dad come up there and he asked Dude, "Have you seen Mack?" And Dude said, "No" he'd never seen him, and he kept pointin' down like that and Mack...and Dad just come up there and opened...pulled that board apart and seen Mack's head and grabbed Mack's hair, dragged him to school, and Mack, and Dude told him later on, "yeah, you was right" said "I told him I didn't see you but I was pointin' down like that all the time." Oh, but they made us go to school. Now all of us graduated from school except one. The oldest one. And he went in the navy in, uh, thirty-four and uh,..he was the only one that didn't graduate out of Magnolia High School. But all the rest of us did.

J: Is...is Mack the brother that lives in Huntington?

VM: Yes.

J: How 'bout uh...several people have mentioned to me that the carnival used to come to town. Did...was the circus come to town when you were a boy?

VM: Yeah. Lord. Uh...go down to the river bank down there? And uh..I don't know whether John McCoy told you, it probably might have slipped his mind, but at one time they came in there and John, it was as clear a day, the sun was out so bright. It hadn't rained for a couple of days and they put their tents and everything up there, and it rained up the river somewhere, and they had a heck of a time gettin' their equipment out of there. The river raised on them. But most of the time the circus would go into Williamson. Down over in south Williamson? And that's where we'd go. But you could ride the train from here to Williamson for ten cents. Pay two cents for crossing that uh...toll bridge there...white toll bridge there in lower end of Williamson right there? And go right there. But the circuses did come here. They'd go up to North Matewan sometimes and sometimes up where the grade school is now, and down...only one time right on they went on the riverbank down there and they got flooded out and I think that broke them but now, other than that, Oh, by the way, I don't whether you ever...you knew a fellow they called Silas Green from New Orleans? He was a colored man. He brought a carnival show of his own.

J: Uh-huh.

VM: And he had a railroad car. Hits pulled everywhere it went... the train took it and had it on...written on there "Silas Green from New Orleans." And we would wit for that man to come in...he'd a come into Williamson there, and we would go there. He was a colored man but he was good.

J: He'd come every year?

VM: Not every year. Huh-uh. He went all over the country, I imagine, with that car.

J: Silas Green from New Orleans?

VM: New Orleans. (tape cuts off)

J: Okay. How 'bout, several people have mentioned to me that some of the boys used to play baseball in what they called the sandbar league. What can you tell me about that?

VM: That's down on the river bank there. You went down there and we cleaned that off down there? Took all...and we made us a baseball diamond down there. Not only us played on it, they was a uh... grows people uh...men that they had...played baseball and they'd come down there and...and uh...have games down there on that diamond that we fixed down there.

J: Uh-huh. At one time, Matewan had a town team didn't they?

VM: Uh...not that I know of. Now the coal companies had teams. Now Red Jacket team...Red Jacket Coal Company team was known as Ritter Giants and they were called, were named after W.M. Ritter, the owner of the coal company. And then you had over here at, Red Birds over on Pig...over on Pond Creek over there, the different coal companies had different names for different teams.

J: Did you ever attend any of those games?

VM: Almost every time one of them had one. We played a whole lot of it ourselves. Just kids.

J: Who were some of the guys you played with when you were growin' up?

VM: Just about all the kids grew up in Matewan, John, and uh... (Pause)

J: I guess, train travel was...I mean it was the way people got around...

VM: That and buses.

J: Uh-huh.

VM: We had bus service at one time uh...the bus service and...well at one time, I think the train...they was five trains went through Matewan going east and west. You didn't have any trouble gettin' in or out, and you could get the buses that run from Matewan to Williamson. They run every two hours and then you got to Williamson, you could catch a bus there goin' to Huntington, Logan or Pikeville. You had no trouble gettin' in and out.

J: Um-hum. Now these...did these five trains run every day?

VM: Yeah. You know, now,...they had uh...number four was the fast train. It come in, the mornin', somewhere in the neighborhood of about five o'clock. They didn't stop, but you had one come in at eight o'clock. It was a little local. It'd stop. Then you had one about eleven thirty. It was a local train. It stopped at every place. Then you had one at four o'clock, four-thirty. It'd stop. Then you had fifteen uh...uh..comin' in and it didn't stop, though. It was a fast train so you had...but you had enough local trains that would stop every little cow path along the road. You never ...we didn't have any trouble gettin' where you was goin'.

J: Now Mrs. Accord was tellin' me, or her name was Dixie Webb, was telling me the train used to stop right outside of town and her grandmother ran a boardinghouse and would deliver things to them, just...

VM: Yeah. They'd do that. And see there for a long time the railroad uh...had a...a...they would deliver ice and everything to the uh...work crews along the right of ways and they...bring ice and stuff to the stations. That uh....that they used in there. And that was...it went up one day and down the next, and that was every day of the week except Sunday.

J: Backtrack a little bit, when your father became a plumber, was he self-employed or did he work for the city?

VM: No, he was self-employed. Now he was...he worked for the city when he was workin' for the waterworks, in, Matewan waterworks.

J: Where were they, then?

VM: The old pumping station was right down over where the city hall is now? Right there.

J: Okay.

VM: And he took care of the pumps and the lines but then when he went to plumbing, he was self-employed.

J: Did he have a truck to get around in?

VM: No. Just right in town here was all he done. He didn't go anywhere. He had to go out of town several times, he would do it...people would take him. But come and get him and most of his work was right here in town.

J: Okay. Now you graduated from Magnolia High School in 1932. What was your next step?

VM: I went to work full time, just drivin' a bus.

J: Passenger bus?

VM: Passenger bus for awhile and then I worked for a lumber company for awhile and then I went into the service.

J: What lumber company?

VM: Uh...Mingo Lime. It's out of business now and has been for several years.

J: What did you do for them?

VM: Drove a truck and delivered.

J: Okay. Where was your route? Do you recall or did you have different routes?

VM: Everywhere. Wherever that was...anywheres...mostly here in Mingo and Pike county, I was...

J: Okay. And went in the service when?

VM: In April of forty-one.

J: So you went in before Pearl Harbor, then?

VM: Yeah. I was overseas whenever...war was declared. I came out in August of 'forty-five. I got out under that point system John, they had at that time.

J: Point system?

VM: You had to have eighty-five points or better. You...you could apply for a discharge and uh...you got one point for each month uh ...in service, two points for each month overseas...five points for purple heart, five points for bronze star and uh...five points for each battle participation that you were in, and if you had kids you could get as much as twelve points for them, which I didn't, I wasn't married at that time and didn't have any. All mine was time in service and uh...battle participation and purple heart.

J: Uh-huh. What branch of the service?

VM: Infantry.

J: Now, since you went in in April nineteen forty-one, then you must have enlisted?

VM: I went in for the year under that Selective Service but I spent fifty-two months before I could get out. (Laughter)

J: Things heated up once you got in there. Let's see. And were you stationed in Europe?

VM: No. I was in Alaska when war was declared.

J: Uh-huh.

VM: And in all of my service...that was from Alaska all the way down to okinawa.

J: When you left the service, were you determined to come back to Matewan or did you consider moving somewhere else?

VM: Oh Matewan. I had the awfullest argument with them people there on...on...Siapan when the Depot there? Asked...when I went up there they fixed me up and told me I had eighty-five points I had better than eighty-five. Did I want to go home or stay in service? Said, I wanted to go home, and, "Okay." Well, next place they stopped was at Fort Cam, Honolulu and uh...they had a lady there and she asked me the same question and I said "if I was gonna stay in service, I would have told them back on Siapan several thousand miles back that I wanted to stay. I'm gonna tell you the same thing I told them: I want out. I wanna go home." They asked me the same question when I came here to uh...Fort Benjamin...Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana. And I said "what's a matter with you people? How many times I got to tell you I want out?" They finally got it through their heads that I didn't want to stay.

J: They let you go home then, huh?

VM: Uh, John, don't get me wrong uh...I enjoyed it while I was in there, but I didn't like it enough to stay. And I wouldn't have made a career out of it anyway. No way in the world would I made a career out of army service.

J: What uh...what kind of work did you get involved in then when you came back to Matewan?

VM: I went drivin' for Mingo Lime.

J: That was the uh..timber company?

VM: No uh...wait a minute let's take that...when I came out of the service, I went to work for Red Jacket Coal Company.

J: Okay. In the mines or...?

VM: Yeah. Well, I went in the mines but actually I worked in the central shop. The machine shop.

J: Okay. Where did you pick up your training as a machinist, on the job?

VM: On the job. I had two guys right there that were the best machinists in the world. They both taught me.

J: Do you remember their names?

VM: Louis Vagott and Victor Conley.

J: Louis..

VM: Vagott.

J: V.A.G.G.E.T.

VM: No. V.A.G.O.T.T. And Victor Conley.

J: So you were basically, like an apprentice to them.

VM: That's right. Um-hum.

J: Did you stay with that work?

VM: Thirty-two years.

J: So you were in the...with Red Jacket...?

VM: Well, Red Jacket and Island Creek. See Red Jacket sold out to Island Creek in January of 'fifty-six uh...'fifty-seven uh... fifty-six. Get it right. And I stayed with Island Creek until I retired in sixty-six...uh...seventy-seven.

J: Now up into the 'fifties, say, did the uh...did the coal companies continue to have athletic teams or baseball teams?

VM: Yeah. In fact, they would bring a lot of boys in from out of state that were...played baseball. They'd bring them in here during summer months, give them a job at the mines. They didn't go inside, they worked in the supply house, or up...anything just to get them out...and we had one place up on the hill there, a car shop up there, we had one boy there he was from New Jersey, I forget his name but I do remember what he'd do. He'd come up there... he'd lay out all night long, and he'd come up, supposed to be workin' in the car shop. And he'd come up there and... and he would tell and he...the man that was in charge up there a fella by the name of Bob Hopkins, he said "now I'm goin' up here next to that tree up there and go to sleep. If the boss comes up here, you throw rocks up there and wake me up or come up there and wake me up." But, if the boss would have caught him, they wouldn't have done anything because see that was part of the company policy they...didn't expect the fellers to work anyway but they wanted them out there.

J: So he was hired to be a ballplayer?

VM: That's right.

J: Was there any uh..wagering went on with...I mean if they were so anxious to get ballplayers, then, was there any gamblin' that went on with the games.

VM: I imagine it was, John, but I don't...most of it was just uh...whole...it was just an individual effort on...on the people's part and you ought to see the turnout in those games.

J: And this is in say the 'fifties, we're talking about?

VM: Yeah. They would turn out there and you'd think the whole camp was out there the way the people'd come.

J: Un-huh.

VM: They'd follow their team wherever it went.

J: And they played other coal...other coal companies?

VM: Oh. Yes. Yeah. That was the idea. They played them...sometimes the other coal companies would come here and they'd go some ...over there and they'd go to different places, and different coal companies would come in here but they all...all the companies... coal companies had baseball teams that, you see, at one time.

J: Now, by that time, were people still riding the trains to and from or...still riding the trains.

VM: Yeah.

J: Okay. When did the passenger service decline in and out of Matewan?

VM: Uh...John I really couldn't tell you but it had to be...see I was married in uh...'forty-seven. Now the passenger service was still goin' because I know it had to be sometime in the 'fifties now, exactly when I don't know.

J: Okay. Who did you marry?

VM: Pansy Willis. She's dead, by the way. Now, she died of cancer in eighty-five.

J: Um-hum. Did you all have children?

VM: No.

J: Was she a local girl?

VM: Yes.

J: So then you stayed with...with Red Jacket and Island Creek for the rest of your working career then?

VM: Um-hum.

J: Okay. As a machinist?

VM: Uh...yes. All of it. I started out as a uh...truck driver, delivering supplies, and I went into the car shop and worked there for awhile and then went to machine shop but all of it was uh... truck driving, I stayed a year I think. I stayed in machine shop, or car shop, about a year and the rest of it was all in the machine shop.

J: Um-hum. And was that a....were you with the UMW?

VM: Oh, yeah.

J: So all the...pretty much all the companies in the mines at that time were unionized?

VM: Yeah.

J: Okay. Were the fifties pretty good times, economically, in this region?

VM: Yeah. There's one thing about it uh...John, you don't see many coal companies anymore, that...you see, Red Jacket was a family owned company, and they took care...in fact when I went to work up there in the car shop the man that was my boss, Bob Hoskins, he'd been with the coal company for a long time, and he was just then gettin' out of debt with Island...the Red Jacket uh...took care of him during the depression years when there was...wasn't much work. Now see he worked during the war years but he owed the company so much that they didn't...they just took so much out and he told me he was just then...just then gettin' out of debt. But what I'm getting at, Red Jacket took care of their employees. It all depended on how many children you had, and how big your family was which they would allow you a week or a day to spend in the store. The bigger the family you got, you spent...they allow you more money to spend.

J: In the company store?

VM: In the company store. And then...they was...most company thought if you didn't have the scrip or the time in the office right there, they wouldn't carry you. But Red Jacket was, like I say, a family-owned company and they took care of their people.

J: So they would run you some credit, and then you could just pay off as you go. Did uh...did the atmosphere of the company change when Island Creek bought out Red Jacket?

VM: Oh...Oh you bet it did. Before they even made the change...I knew this man, he had been workin' for Island Creek somewhere and they put about twenty-five years and uh...see my wife worked in a store too and this fellow I was tellin' you about, his wife worked in the store too.

J: Mr. Hoskins?

VM: Uh...no. He told me one day he said, uh...I don't know how we got together, but anyway he said, "I hear...hear rumors that Island Creek's gonna buy Red Jacket out." And I said, "I've heard the same thing." He said, "Well, I'll tell you one thing, I hope it never happens for the mens' sake that's workin' for them. Says, "If Island Creek buys it out...how many men you got working up there now?" I said, "There's somewhere in the neighborhood of little over a thousand." At one time. There was sixteen-hundred up there but see they closed out some mines and that, anyway, he says, "Well, I'm just hopin' they don't buy the mines. If they do, within the year after Island Creek gets a hold of it, if half of those men are still workin', it will surprise me." And he says, "You can bet on that." You know what happened? Within a year after they'd bought the mines and took it over, John, there was less than five hundred workin'. It got down where there was only less than two hundred workin' at the mines. They cut off everybody else.

J: Now, when was this? The early sixties or...

VM: Um-hum.

J: What did those people do?

VM: Well, they just most of them done what they could do. Lot of them left the state, had to go find work somewhere else. There just wasn't any work in the mines. And if you went to another mine, they had rosters of the union men, see, it was idle before they would hire anybody from another company, they had to take those men in first.

J: Um-hum.

VM: So there you was. When you got hundreds of men off and uh... dozen of them at your mines, and you got several dozen coming in from other mines. Naturally you're gonna take care of the men that worked for that company first...your company first before you start hiring outsiders.

J: Now, where did you...did you live where you're living now while your workin' for,...uh, Island Creek?

VM: Yeah. I got married in...in uh...forty-seven, I moved at Red Jacket in forty-eight. But uh.. I been living there ever since.

J: Okay. Just to backtrack again. You were, off the tape a while ago you were tellin' me about a...I'm very interested in some of the extracurricular life around Matewan includin' bootleggin', moonshinin', and social life. That sort of thing. Um...who was...who was this Mr. Justice you were discussing earlier?

VM: John L.?

J: Yeah.

VM: He was a Justice of the Peace.

J: Okay.

VM: (Laughter) And he..he uh..actually he was a fine gentleman. He was big-hearted as could be. If somebody come in front of him in his court and they didn't have the money to pay a fine, John L. would just forget about it and tell them to...to get the devil out of there and go on and uh...but...like I told you before uh...they would take him along when the law...when they was goin' up the river there to stop these cars and see if they got any...catch any bootleggers comin' out of there? And the sheriff, if they found whiskey in it, John L. would write the warrant out right there for them.

J: Um-hum.

VM: If they didn't find any, they'd tell them to go ahead. If they found whiskey, then they would arrest the man and they'd bring it down there and put the whiskey in John's office there and that's when I told you when they were later on whenever we'd, boys'd go down there and go across the street from where his office and we'd wait for him and we'd watch him come down the street and go to the post office and get his mail. Talked to everybody and...he was a talker, and then he'd come down the street and he'd go in his place ...in his office there and we would wait less than five minutes, he hit that door just a hollering across that street at us and run up town there right quick and get to the law and "hurry up and get the chief police and bring him down here. Somebody broke in here and took all that whiskey we got off them bootleggers last night but they left a little bit for evidence." (Laughing) And you could go downtown, John, and the bootleggers had whiskey in the town and sold...people sold whiskey in town..

J: Un-hun.

VM: They sold the whiskey to them. (Sold the confiscated whiskey to bootleggers)

J: So they had...they had got it from J. P.'s office and taken it downtown to sell?

VM: Yeah.

J: So how would...how would've...now this was during the depression day or excuse me, the prohibition days I guess you're talking about. Is that right? Uh...how would somebody go about finding a place to...to get some moonshine?

VM: Oh, you didn't have no trouble in the world. There's three places in Matewan that was well known. Aunt Carey's place, Miss Murray's Night Club, and Bert Ramey's place.

J: What was that last one?

VM: Bert Ramey's place. That was in the upper end of town.

J: Okay.

VM: THe building's gone now but uh...all you had to do was go down to Aunt Carey's fami...while, lived right there next to the city hall is now...

J: Un-hun.

VM: And uh...Miss Murray's night club was right there next to the underpass in Matewan and Bert Ramey's place was in the upper end town, and all you had to do if somebody wanted to drink whiskey, "where could you get a drink around here?" You...if he's standin' right there in town say "well you got the choice of either go to Miss Murray's Night Club or Aunt Carey's down there. If you're goin' out of town you can stop at Bert Ramey's."

J: Now Mrs...Miss Murray's Night Club, was it an actual club?

VM: No.

J: They just called it a club.

VM: That's what we called it.

J: So that was their main business, then?

VM: Well, that was not their main business but they did have it just...

J: What other kind of business were they?

VM: Well, actually they...they sold uh..uh...food. They had a little restaurant, stuff like that but you could get a drink if you wanted it. You could..in fact, you could go in just about any, you could go in the pool room in Matewan as far as that goes and uh...if you wanted to drink whiskey then, you knew the people right well, and they would give you a drink,...wouldn't charge you for it.

J: Where was the pool room?

VM: Right where the uh...Smith's flower shop is now?

J: Okay.

VM: It's the Silver Dollar, is what it was called.

J: Who ran that? Do you recall?

VM: Uh...Dewey Hatfield. He ran it for years.

J: So you could go in there and shoot a little pool and get a drink if you knew the right people?

VM: If..if...see, Dewey had it...he, for his own use.

J: Un-hun.

VM: And he'd give you a drink...he wouldn't charge you for it. He wouldn't charge anybody. He'd just give you the drinks, as far as that goes, but Dewey bought the whiskey for his own use.

J: Did you ever know Mr. Buskirk that had the saloon across the river?

VM: No. Now see he died before I, before we moved to Matewan.

J: Oh. I see.

VM: You're talking about Robert's daddy, R. W. Buskirk.

J: Right.

VM: Yeah. Have you ever seen a picture of him sitting on that fine horse of his?

J: Yes. Yeah I have. I think I have. In front, is it in front of the saloon?

VM: Yeah. Used to be down on the lower end of the Buskirk building there. That was his first old Blue Goose.

J: Oh he had a saloon...in Matewan?

VM: On this side. Yeah, that's what's called the...right off of ...that's were the underpass is now. Wasn't, it wasn't an underpass there at that time.

J: And then what, when West Virginia went dry, did he move across the river? Is that what happened?

VM: He was over on...he built that one over...Blue Goose over across the river there.

J: When prohibition was repealed in the early thirties, did that open up the town?

VM: No. Now you could go on across the river and get it. Over in Kentucky but in...as far as in Matewan, no...but the uh...liquor store where they had what they called an agency in Matewan at that time. They didn't have the stores that you got now. State stores. And a man had had a grocery store could apply for a license and sell uh...bonded whiskey but furnished by the state. But now the first beer that I ever drank...other than uh...than uh...well the first beer I ever drank was old Blatz beer whenever it came in after they repealed prohibition? I went across the river. I went to old Blue Goose, and got that first beer I ever drank. Now homebrew is something different. It's beer but it's just a little different than...now homebrew, you could get that anywheres..,people made that.

J: Uh-huh. How is it different?

VM: Well, it really, I couldn't tell you, John, but anyway it's different drink all together. The people uh...just make it at their own homes. But that's the first beer that I ever drank was Blatz beer and V. T. Hatfield, that's Ernest Hatfield's father...?

J: Um-hum.

VM: He's the man that had the old Blue Goose and started selling it over there.

J: Started selling Blatz?

VM: Uh...beer.

J: How much did he charge you for it, do you remember?

VM: If I remember right, it was fifteen cents a bottle. I know it wasn't now when you pay what a dollar and something now for it? (Laughter)

J: Yeah.

VM: I haven't drank any beer in years. Not that I can't afford it, I just don't have the desire to drink it.

J: Yeah. Lost the taste for it huh? Did you ever attend, or observe, are you familiar with religious revivals in the area?

VM: Well, as kids, we used to go to every one of them but, no we went with just uh...just uh...see what was goin' on...other than that, it didn't interest us at all.

J: Were they pretty big deal around here?

VM: They was at one time.

J: Where were they held. Do you recall?

VM: Well, uh...usually they would come in here and hold, have tent revivals. And uh...they would...up at Blackberry City, on top of the hill right there, it would be there. Up at North Matewan... anyplace where they had a bottom that they could put a big tent up. That's where they would have it.

J: What did folks do, say, for recreation after World War II? Was movies a big deal?

VM: Movies was a big deal until television came in, and when television came in, the movies was over. John, I seen that theater there, the line stretch from where R-House is now, that was the theater building at that time. I seen the line...

J: Now, this was in Red Jacket?

VM: No. Right here in Matewan.

J: Oh. Okay.

VM: Where R-House is uh...straight across from the developing place there?

J: Oh. Okay.

VM: I've seen the line stretch from right there at that ticket window clear down that street and around the corner down there at the end of Buskirk building.

J: Wow.

VM: Now that's how...that's how popular the...the...

J: Would that be on a Saturday night probably?

VM: Saturday and Sunday. Now Sunday nights, it was a little bit different, it was usually on Friday and Saturday's when it really had the biggest nights. But they had the house was full the rest of the week anyway and Sunday, they didn't uh...church was over I think at uh...usually at seven o'clock or eight o'clock, but they didn't open up the theaters until after church let out.

J: Tell me about the man you were...the story you were telling us in the office a while ago. The man with the pails walking across the swingin' bridge.

VM: Oh.

J: That's a good story.

VM: Uh...oh, for years everybody thought you know he's bringin' milk over here. Had those aluminum pint pails...?

J: Was he comin' off from the Kentucky side?

VM: Yeah, go up and across the swingin' bridge there and he'd come over here. He'd set them down right where the...it was the bank at that time... on the lower...next to where the bank building is now, the Hope building...he'd set them right there on that there window sill, go around to the post office, get his mail never... come back and walk around town and talk to people and then when he got ready to deliver, he'd go get his two cans right there and take them wherever he wanted them and people assumed for years it was uh...milk, when they finally, somebody squealed on him. It wasn't milk...

J: Was it moonshine?

VM: (Laughing) Oh. It...

J: That's funny.

VM: It uh...now Matewan used to have some characters in it.

J: Who were some of them?

VM: Right where uh...Bob McCoy's got his place of business now. That, well right where the uh...ESSO station is now or was. That was the old ice house there. A fellow by the name of Regger, Hazel Regger was his name. We all called him Rigger (could be Rigger or Regger). He brought...he had produce shipped in here by the carloads and they brought a hundred pounds of ice. Three-hundred pound blocks of ice would come in on boxcars and they would take that ice and put it over there in that ice house and he'd have watermelon, cantaloupe, and stuff like that come in in boxcar loads? And he'd put it over there, you know, and had it in their where it was cool and he'd keep it and uh..we always make sure we'd go over there and help him get his wa-termelons out of there? But for some reason or another, every once in awhile or another they would slip through our arms and hit the ground. And then they would burst and naturally we wouldn't want to waste it, we'd eat it.

J: Just happened to slip, huh?

VM: Yeah. Right through our arms. (laughter)

J: Who were some of the other uh.,..notables that you remember from your childhood?

VM: Well, uh...Regger was the most prominent one uh...I can think of uh...the others, they...oh, I don't know, John, there's so many of them and uh...they had different things that they'd do. But Rigger...was the one that we always uh...had the most to do with.

J: Did you know uh...Mayor Cooper?

VM: Ira Cooper?

J: Yeah.

VM: Yeah.

J: He was mayor for a long time wasn't he?

VM: Yeah he done everything in the world to get me to take the police job right after I came out of the service. And I'd tell him...I...I went to work at Red Jacket, and he would call up my apartment there and tell me to come down there and talk to him. He'd leave word...around town there...he wanted to see me and I'd go down there and I said "Iree (Ira) told you time and time again that I didn't want that police job." He said, "Well Venchie, you'll make more money at that then you can up Red Jacket." And I said, "Yeah." Well you'll get a salary of about a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month. But the rest of it you'd have to get it from the bootleggers and things like that. And Iree, I don't want it. "Well, try it.", I said,"No, you just might as well forget it. I'm not going to take it", but see, he's known me ever since, oh I don't, for years and he known my family and he's done favors for my family and uh...we just thought a whole lot of him and yet he had one of the awfullest reputations there was.

J: Is that right?

VM: Yeah. Yeah.

J: For what? Corruption?

VM: Well, it wasn't as much as corruption, as he would see a person drunk and he would send the law after them and have them arrested to get a fine out of them.

J: Oh. I see.

VM: He...he was...(Laughing) see he was Metropolitan Insurance agent for a long time here...and anyway, I...I couldn't get it through his head and finally I reckoned he just, finally dawned on him that I wasn't going to take it and then he hired a boy that I knew right well that lived at North Matewan. And uh...he asked me one night when I run into to him in town when I's talking to him and shake hands he said, "Why didn't you take that job?" I said, "Chick I told Iree (Ira) I reckon Iree (Ira) told you why I didn't take it." He said "No, you just told me you wouldn't take it." I said "Well, I'll tell you like I told Iree, I didn't want it." He said "Well, Venchie, you don't make much as a salary but you do, hardly a month go by that I don't give anywheres...somewheres 'tween...five-fifty six hundred dollars a month extra." I said "I know you get pretty good out of it but I don't want it." I said "I'm not that much interested in that kind of money anyway."

J: So that extra came from where?

VM: Boot...payin'...bootleggers payin' 'em off to let 'em alone.

J: Um-hum. To your knowledge, did anybody ever run any prostitution rings, or any prostitution in town?

VM: No. That was...you could...Oh you could find a girl if you wanted one but as far as a person having a place of business, runnin' it, no.

J: So there was some independent...

VM: Yeah uh-huh. Just between the woman and the man.

J: Um-huh. What about uh...every town seems to have favorite spots that people hang out, talk...talk about the town. What were some of those places in Matewan? Coffee shops or restaurants or the bus station, I heard, was a pretty big place...

VM: Yeah. And B and C oil company was another one and uh...right where, uh, the Silver Dollar pool room...that was another place and the kids liked to uh...hang out over across there where Lisa Stewart has got her beauty parlor now? If I remember right, that place was called the Hucklebuck. It was run by a young girl and they sold milkshakes and candy bars and uh...uh...hamburgers, hotdogs and sandwiches and stuff like that. That's were the young...the real young people hung out there.

J: When would that have been?

VM: Uh...back in uh...in the late thirties.

J: How 'bout John McCoy's place. He ran a restaurant for a long time.

VM: Yeah. Right where the Chatterbox is now. And that's you know, John...now, John's independent. You found that out. And uh...when there were these uh...hippies first started to come in there you know, with them long hairs and them beards and everything, they'd come in his place of business and oh, they'd come up to the counter there and want something and John just looked at them and go on about what he was doin'. Wouldn't be another soul in there and they would uh...until...asked John, they'd like to have a hot dog or something and John would just look at them and go on doing whatever he was doin'. He wouldn't wait on them. I want to tell you this about John, too. I told you John wouldn't wait on those hippies and they would get mad and they would get...they would leave, you know. They wouldn't stay around. They would finally leave out of there and uh...John let his hair grow long, though.

J: Un-huh. I've seen pictures of him with long hair.

VM: Well, he had...and he had a sister named Josie and Josie uh... uh...Josie was her mother all over, Em, we called her Em and uh... she went to see John, see. John didn't, very seldom went up to the house and she like...wanted somebody to take her down there to see John. So one of her brothers, Bill, the oldest one, got her in the car and brought her downtown there and John was standin' out on the street and they pulled up there and uh...Bill said, "Did you see John?" She said, "I see somebody with a long beard, and long hair." She said, "That ain't John." "Said that is John." "And him looking like that?" She wouldn't believe it.

J: Did she get out and talk to him?

VM: No. (Laughing) She said, " I just wanted to see him, now take me back home." I thought I'd never see the day that you'd see John lookin' like that.

J: He ran the bus station? Is that right?

VM: Yeah. Um-hum. (Long pause)

J: Now this...this area has a...I guess, has a reputation of sometime having some colorful politics, is that uh...is that reputation justified?

VM: It sure is, John. Yeah, it is. It's not so much now as it used to be, but at one time, it was something.

J: How...how would have those politics work?

VM: Well, really to know what it's all about uh...now Ira Cooper, I'll have to tell you this on Ira. He's dead and gone now. Anyway I was workin' for Mingo Lime there at that time and uh..Ira come down there one election day and he brought about...guys brought about I think twenty cases of whiskey and put it in the office there. The man..it was managing the office down here, Mingo Lime in Matewan, he was running for county court at that time and he was up on the grounds, you know helping hisself. And Ira was supposed to pay these guys off when they come in there. They either got two dollars, or a pint of whiskey, whichever they want but they...when they came in there, they give Ira a little card and uh...Ira'd take that card and he'd turn it and look at it and he'd either pay them off or he'd tell them "no this is no good" and the guys would start arguing with him when he'd say "this is no good," but now Ira'd say, "I know what you've done." Said "You got paid off on the other side and you're gonna think you can get paid off on our side. This card is no good. You did not vote a democratic ticket. You voted Republican ticket. We're not gonna pay you. Now get out of here." And they would argue and this and that and after they got out I said "Ira, how can you tell that those guys voted wrong?" And he started talking to me and I said "Oh, forget it. I don't want to know anyway." But he says, " I can tell, but whenever they give me that card I can turn it and look at it and I'll know whether they voted Democrat or Republican ticket." Said now and to top it all off, John, at one time the schoolteachers you know they were trying to uh..they were fightin' for a raise and they had to have the politicians told 'em that if they didn't get out and vote for them, for certain ones on the Board of Education, they was no way in the world they would get that raise and this woman...she was one of the finest school teachers you'd ever seen and a woman ... fine woman at the same time and she told...

J: What was her name?

VM: Several days after uh...uh...oh, wait a minute and I'll think of a first name uh...her last name was O'Brien.

J: Okay.

VM: She told me several days after the election was over she say, "I've always heard that they bought and sold votes in Mingo County." And says, "You know..."I never knew it could be a fact until I worked on the grounds that day.

J: She saw.....

VM: "She said that...that...I never knew that but I've always heard it. I said that is...when I saw it, I didn't, wouldn't hardly believe it." But said "I had to because I set right there and seen it."

J: Had she grown up around here?

VM: No. She was from up in Virginia.

J: But how far back did that kind of politics go? To your knowledge?

VM: Oh, it went back, I reckon, back to Greenway Hatfield's term. Back in the twenties.

J: Um-huh. Was he the mayor?

VM: No. He was the sheriff of the county.

J: Sheriff? Okay.

VM: Yeah. see, way it is they, one Hatfield or another, Greenway you...at that time the sheriff couldn't succeed hisself. You can now...for just two terms. One time, succeed hisself one time. Greenway would run four years, and he would let one of his sons get it the next time and they'd run four years and then Greenway would take it next time four years and he'd lay off four years and one of his sons had it then he'd get it the next time and it went on like that for oh, generations. They...they...they just had a racket.

J: Um-hum. So they were...they ran...pretty much ran the sheriff's office then?

VM: The sheriff ran the whole county (pause)...and uh...a whole lot of that uh...it was...a lot of it was prac...practically all of it was crooked. But nobody tried to fight it...nobody done anything about it. The law wouldn't step in and do anything about it, that is the federal or the state until this past couple of years whenever the state and federal moved in and all these politicians and got em' indicted and some of them sent to prison and...

J: Um-huh. There was uh...I'm just gonna mention this name because I've heard of him associated with Mingo County politics, a man named Noah Floyd...

VM: He's still livin'.

J: Do you know him?

VM: Yeah.

J: Where does he live?

VM: In Williamson.

J: Now he was pretty big in politics.

VM: Oh, you bet your life on that, and you know what? See uh... Lafe Ward is the one that beat him whenever he run for senate... senator there at that time? Noah was state senator for a long time and... now I didn't have anything against Noah, I knew his brother a lot better than I did Noah, and anyway, I'd be in the court house there for some reason or another and Noah would come in there and actually, John, the way he acted, it sort of rubbed me the wrong way. He acted like he owned that courthouse, which he did, on account of the politics and him being a senator.

J: Um-hum.

VM: And I made up my mind the next time he run, regardless, I like the whole Floyd family. They were all good but Noah was crooked as they can come uh...I said well, "I'll vote against him." When Lafe Ward ran against him, I voted for Lafe. I'm sorry I did but I picked what I thought was the best option at that time and it turned out it didn't work so good. (laughter)

J: Now, Lafe didn't work out too well either huh?

VM: No. Then Lafe got beat by uh...uh...Truman, so it...it..

J: Truman Chafin?

VM: Yeah. That's it.

J: Now, that's another big name in politics around here, Chafins.

VM: Yeah. He, Tom is Truman's daddy. See, Tom was sheriff two terms and if you listen to Tom, you'd think he was the pillar of the church. And if he's the pillar of the church, I'd hate to be standing right close to that church. It'd fall on you.(Laughing)

J: (Laughing) That's Tom you're talking about?

VM: Yeah...yeah. Oh...

J: Did the uh...say back in the twenties and the thirties, did the coal companies play a role in politics in the area?

VM: If they did, they didn't play as much as they did here lately. Actually, really, they didn't come into it until Massey moved in here...

J: Oh, I see.

VM: Massey's the one that's really...is playing all the politics.

J: Um-hum.

VM: And they...I...I've never met that uh...uh...Morgan Massey but I've talked to several people who have and they said that he's the most, I don't know how to put it, a man that you could, that you wouldn't want to meet. Just put it like that. "He had no feelings for nobody. He's just uh...he...in fact, if I could classify him that, he's not even a man but he's a human being. Let's put it like that." (garbled), oh, said, "forget him."

J: Just all business, huh?

VM: Just forget it and, that is his business is his business, not yours. You don't have any business where's he's concerned. If you don't do what he says and do things that he wants you to do, you don't have any business. He don't want to have anything to do with you. Now that was the impression that the people I talked with uh..have told me and they've uh...met him several times. In fact, one fellow was a...school teacher, professor, talked to him. I can't think of his name right now and he told me he said, "You don't want to meet (E.) Morgan Massey. Just forget about him." Said, "You'll, you may blow your top if you do." Let him alone. He's not what you think he is."

J: Now his father, A. T., was in this area way back, I guess. Right?

VM: Now, I don't know. Now that's something I couldn't tell you.

J: Um-hum. The uh...floods seem to play a big role in life in Matewan. You mentioned the '57 flood uh...of course I guess the real big one was the '77.

VM: That's right. That was...

J: Were you in town during that period?

VM: I lived at Red Jacket but see I had uh...in the '77 flood, my mother was livin' right there anyway. That's when she got off her routine...(actually speaking of '57)

J: Oh, that was '77. Okay.

VM: And that caused...we really believe that's what caused her death, but in the 'seventy-seven flood see, uh...my brother and sister both lost their homes in the flood: washed away. They lived right down on McCoy Alley down there? Just down below where uh... the bank is now? And both their houses washed away. and my sister and brother...both of them are dead, by the way, now. It really turned around, the only good thing about that flood, John, is you...and as far as anybody knows, nobody was drowned, or died in it. It just tore up whole towns up and down the river but nobody was drowned in the flood.

J: Let's see. There's another fellow I want to ask you about who uh...Rufus Starr told me a little bit about and I'm really interested in him. He was a coach here...guy named Glen Taylor? Do you know Glen Taylor?

VM: Yeah. Oh yeah.

J: What sort of a man was he?

VM: He was one of the best guys you'd ever meet. Now he was uh... his uh...last wife was Lena Chambers Harris. See Glen's first wife died and she...he married again after..several years later, and married Lena Harris. Now Lena's still livin'. I think she's lives in Huntington. Maybe...maybe around Nashville where some of uh... the kids are. But Glen's one of the nicest guys you could ever run into.

J: Now, he was, I guess...coached all sports here for a long time. Did they have pretty good sports teams in Matewan?

VM: Yeah. See, Victor Glen Allara, that's where Vic got his uh...Victor Glen, Victor come in there when they were...when they played Williamson and uh...they won...

J: Un-huh.

VM: And then when Vic was born, why they named him Victor Glen, after the victory and Glen Taylor.

J: Oh. I see. Did anybody ever try to get Glen Taylor uh..to run for political office?

VM: Oh, he was state senator for a long...long time.

J: Oh, he was?

VM: Yeah.

J: Oh, see I didn't know that.

VM: Yeah. He was...yeah...state senator for a long time.

J: Okay.

VM: And see, he run the bus company down there after John McCoy gave it up. He had that for awhile...

J: I see.

VM: But he was state senator for uh...oh, I've forgotten how many years, but he had several terms as a state senator.

J: Um-hum. Now, was he more on the line of uh...straight politics or did he get...was he involved in some of the dealing?

VM: Uh...I don't think Glen was involved in...he might have been a little bit but as far as...bein' uh...really involved heavily in it, I don't think he was. Naturally he had to go along with some of it to get...stay in office.

J: Right.

VM: 'Cause if he didn't, they wouldn't back him or...or donate towards his campaign and stuff like that.

J: Um-hum.

VM: But as far as I know, I don't think Glen ever voted for things that would hurt people here, or anywheres in the state. And I don't know whether John told anybody but one time, shortly before Glen died uh...he had an interview. Broggs Chambers was uh...president of the Board of Education at that time and Broggs had Chamber's Hardware and they uh...Glen come down here and applied for the job that was open and it was on Monday after the weekend and Broggs was a heavy drinker.

J: Was this for a coaching job?

VM: Yeah.

J: Okay.

VM: So...Broggs was a heavy drinker, so Glen went to talk to him and Glen told me, said he knew that he'd lost the job because said, "I knew Broggs had been on one," and said "oh," said "he was a... a...mean as a...a bear that just lost his cub," and says "I tried to be as reasonable as I could with him," but says "I leaned over backwards not to make him mad," and but says, "when I left out of talkin' to him, I just knew that I lost the job. And I said, "I made up my mind I have to go somewhere else," and he said," You know what, it wasn't a couple days later I got a call from him and told me I had the job."

J: He liked him after all?

VM: Yeah and Glen stayed here, oh, see he died, not but about five years ago, I believe. Now, he was from up in the northern part of the state. Him and his wife both. That's where they took his body. Back up there.

J: Was he still working at that time or had he retired?

VM: No. He had retired.

J: I hear a lot about Reece Chambers. Did you know Reece?

VM: Oh Lord, everybody knew him. John, now that was a character. That man was. And nobody bothered him. He...he was just... he was good to everybody, but you could...better not cross him. No see he was, Reece, Ed Chambers, now Ed was...Reece was Ed's daddy.

J: Um-hum.

VM: And Sid Hatfield, it was supposed to've been the three men (Reece, Ed, Sid) that instigated the shooting here in the Matewan massacre. And they actually wanted,...Sid and Ed was killed...just revenge. That's all that was. They got them up there and just killed them where the two uh...Felts brothers that was killed here in that...in that battle. But they wanted to kill Reece, too, but Reece told...made the remark that "if they want me, they have to come down here and get me" but said " 'fore they get me I'm gonna get them." Now he wouldn't go and uh...long uh...oh several years after Ed had died, we lived down there next to Reece. I'd go...be comin' up the alley there goin' uptown just a little before dark, and Reece would come to the door there and he'd holler at me and he'd say "Venchie, you goin' uptown?" and I said "Yep." He said "If you see Ed, you tell him to come home? It's gettin' dark and I don't want him to be out after dark." And see Ed had been dead for several years but to Reece, Ed was still alive. But though they never did come down and try to get Reece. Now he had a uh...a high-powered rifle and a pistol and he had one or the other with him all the time and if any of them tried to get him they would...they would have never made it.

J: Did he carry the rifle with him?

VM: Sometimes if he got mad at somebody, he would. I...well I give you an incident about that. Right where the uh..liquor store is now, that was a pool room at one time. Talt Chamber's uh...Talt was uh...was uh...Reece, I think was his uncle if I'm not mistaken, anyways some kin there. Talt was sittin' in a booth there with uh...Mont White Howell and somebody else. Talt pulled a pistol out and was gonna shoot through the floor and he didn't aim it right and he shot Mont White through the foot. Well, Talt jumped up and took off. Mont wasn't hurt too bad but he's shot in the foot. Here Talt took off. Somebody went down and told Reece. Reece come uptown....he had his high-powered rifle with him over there. He saw me there he said, "Venchie, have you seen Talt?" and I said, "No, Reece, I haven't of...I know what you're huntin' for him for. He said "If you see him, you tell him to come on down to the house. Come to me. "Says", we don't want the city police to get him. Not the county or the state police. 'Cause if they get him, he's be in a lot more trouble than it would we get him." I said. "Well if I see him, I'll tell him." He said, "Well, be sure." and I said "I'll sure do it Reece." So Reece kept...went from one place to the another, you know, and I happened to be over there next to the jailhouse at the old uh...railroad station. For some reason, I forgot what in the devil I was over that way...I saw Flunky Jim Chambers. He was chief of police at that time. (Called Flunky because he walked with a limp according to Jim Chambers)

J: Flunky Jim?

VM: Yeah. Flunky Jim came over, and go into the jailhouse and there wasn't nobody in there at that time. I didn't know there uh...wasn't anybody in there. I saw Funky go in. Reece must have been somewhere where he could see the jail because it wasn't just a uh..a minute or so...here Reece comes across the tracks and over there, and they had a uh...window...had blocked it off with uh... sheet iron and they had just a little hole up there they could look in there and uh..Reece hollered in there and said "Talt" and nobody answered, and he hollered in again and nobody answered and Reece said "Well if you won't answer, said "somebody must be in there keeping you quiet," said "I'm gonna shoot the lock off the door and come in." Flunky Jim said "No, Oh no Reece. Don't shoot that lock off the door." Said " Talt ain't in here. It's just me." He said, "Flunky open that door and let me see." Flunky Jim opened that door and Talt wasn't in there. He made sure that Talt wasn't in jail and when he made sure Talt wasn't in jail, he come out and went on. Some a little bit later on, uh...somebody either Talt went down to Reece's house or somebody told Talt that he... they were looking for him to get down there so Talt got hisself down there at the house. But now Reece would have...Flunky Jim would have been in trouble if he hadn't opened that door cause Reece would have shot that lock off.

J: There's a story that uh...Reece...now where was Reece's house?

VM: Right uh...you know where uh..Aileen Phillip's house is there? You know where Hiram Phillips...

J: Next to the store?

VM: Yeah.

J: Um-hum.

VM: Alright. Now, Irene uh...uh...Aileen's house right there the brick? Alright, now, Reece's house was in that area there but now they was one house uh...there, in there, and next to was Reece's house but uh...Reece's house is right back of Fonnie Whitt's house. That's where it...

J: Okay. There's a story that Reece used to sit on his porch and that...that the Baldwin-Felts would come through on the train and wanted to get a shot at Reece. They knew Reece sat there and he would always hide then. Is that...have you heard that story? (Reece living near jailhouse at that time)

VM: I've heard of that...the uh....man rode in a pullman car. He had the windows and he had a high-powered rifle scope on it and tried his best to catch Reece where he could get him, but he never did. I tell you another thing on Reece. Now uh..Mrs. Bert Shannon lived down uh...where you cross the bridge now goin' over in Kentucky? They was a house right there...that's where they lived. Her husband run a uh...grocery store there in Matewan. Well she had a little grandson. His name was Jim. Named after his father and a bunch of them was up there next to Reece's house one uh..day fooling around there and they had, they didn't have anything except sticks and things you know and they was pointin' at the house and goin' "bang, bang" and I come up...went home. I come down from town and I went on home and I told them kids I said "Now you better get away from here and don't point at that house over there down like that." I said, "There's nothing but sticks in your hand but now Reece might take it different." I said " You better get away from there before Reece comes out of there." Oh they went "no" and they'd go "bang, bang" you know. Well I ...just as I got in the gate down there..I happened to look back up there and I saw Reece step out of the door and I saw him have a pistol in his hand and I said "Well, sure is gonna be on." Now Reece didn't point the pistol at the boys, he didn't..he shot in the ground where the concrete...uh...wall right there. He shot right down at the face of that concrete wall. Them kids took off runnin' in every direction. Little Jim Shannon went down that alley just a flyin' and run into the house down there and told his grandmother that Reece shot at him. Then Shannon fainted and uh...the law come down there. They wouldn't gonna go in and talk to Reece. They knew better than that. They come down the alley there and I's sittin' out there and they asked me if I seen anything or heard anything. I said "Yeah. I saw Reece shoot the gun." "Did Reece point at them kids?" I said "Why no." Why," he said "that little Jim went down there and told his grandmother that Reece pointed that gun at him and shot at him." I said "No, he didn't. He pointed right down at that... facin' a that concrete wall there and shot." Now I told them kids not to do what they was doin' and to get away from there. And I said "You all know Reece just as well as I do. Now they was pointin' sticks out there and goin' 'bang-bang' and all that now Reece wouldn't stand for that and you know it." "And he didn't point the gun at them?" I said "Why." Said, "Well that's all we wanted to know."

J: These were the local uh...town police?

VM: Yeah. Said "that's all we wanted to know" said "he went down there and told his grandmother that Reece pointed that gun at him and shot him...at him."

J: Did Reece live there by himself?

VM: Yeah. His wife had been dead for...now, his uh...one of his daughters is still a living though and him, John,...lives in Huntington yet. Elsie Miller.

J: Oh. She is still livin'?

VM: Yeah.

J: I've heard her name, yeah. Um...now you mentioned earlier that Reece, he never quite, I guess he never quite accepted or realized that Ed was dead? Did that stay with him for the rest of his life?

VM: I...as far as I know it did. See, and now Elsie came and got him in later years and took him uh...put him in a home somewhere because he couldn't take care of hisself and, and uh...they were gettin' a little bit concerned about him.

J: Now he died in, I think, 1958, uh...

VM: I don't remember what year it was but...

J: 'Bout how long did he live in that home. Do you have an idea? I mean in, when she took him.

VM: I don't have no idea.

J: Okay. Do you recall anything about the reaction around the area when...when Ed and Sid were shot?

VM: Well, most people tried to get to Ed and Sid not to go to Welch. In fact, Reece told them not to go. "They're just settin' you up." And the sheriff of Logan County, McDowell County, rather told them that he would give them protection if they'd come up there and uh...stand trial on something that they didn't do. It was just something they wanted them up there for. All they wanted to do was kill them two for the killing of those two Felts brothers there in Matewan and that's what they done. But uh...naturally people...different people had different uh...feelings about the whole thing. Now nobody was in that there...even the widows, Sid and Ed's widow and uh...all that the men that was in that, none of them are livin today.

J: Do you...do you remember any reactions that your father had at that time?

VM: Uh...no. The only thing he just made sure that we got in our room..daytime stayin' behind those mattresses.

J: Um-hum. Is there anything, I know, you never cover everything in an interview but we've covered a lot of territory here. Is there anything you want to add that I haven't asked you about it that you might want to bring up yourself...on the tape?

VM: Uh...John, they's a I don't know whether anybody mentioned this the big fire they had in Matewan in twenty-seven...anybody?

J: Oh no, please do. 'Cause I've heard of that and nobody's... I haven't talked to anybody about it.

VM: Now, right where John McCoy's building is now?

J: Um-hum.

VM: The Chatterbox and all that? That was called the Dew Drop Inn uh...it was a wooden building with tin facing on it? And they was a garage and the Dew Drop Inn was run by John and Mary Brown, and then on the upper end was a uh...Singer sewing machine shop and they's, the fire supposedly started up in the Singer sewing machine part up there and it burnt out clear down there, through that, part of the uh..first part of Hope's building down there next to the old post office? That was a vacant lot through there then. They wouldn't any...the next place was Cham...S.D. Cham,...Chamber's Hardware and Furniture then come the uh...the building we're talking about had Dew Drop Inn and all that burnin' and then across the street over there, now where the bank is now, we lived in the house right there that burnt. And then next to us was a grocery store and apartment up over that grocery store that burnt out. At one time, while that was burnin' right there, it looked like the whole town of Matewan was goin' up and how they saved uh...uh...Greenway Hatfield's building is something of a miracle. But the N & W Railway sent their uh...tank cars of Matewan's water and that's where they pumped water on that to keep it from...uh...but they couldn't have enough...didn't have enough water in Matewan to do anything. So they sent them up there and they pumped water there to get that Greenway Hatfield building from goin' up.

J: How long did the fire burn?

VM: Well, it uh...it didn't burn more than a...possibly a night and...and it was all over with all it was...all these buildings were wood.

J: Um-hum.

VM: The Dew Drop Inn and that, you cross the street where we live there's a big um...two-story house had about, somewhere I think about twenty rooms in it. We just used the bottom part. The top part, we never did use. And a store and an apartment next to us right there, all of it burnt within hours.

J: Um-hum.

VM: And now, right where the parking lot is now down where the fire station is now, that was a corn field, that's where we laid out there in that corn field watchin' that fire burn.

J: As it burned...you and all your brothers and sisters?

VM: Um-hum.

J: Where did you move after that?

VM: Well, we went back uh...down where we lived in uh...uh...Mary White's house, down there next to uh...the Masonic building.

J: Now that fire burned down the old movie house didn't it?

VM: No. No, the old movie house burnt down by itself. The old movie house was down on the lower end of Buskirk's building. Now uh...where the underpass is now? Sometime when you're down there, you know where the road that goes up from around the back...next to the railroad that goes down there?

J: Um-hum.

VM: You'll see that concrete uh...facing right there. Now that's part of the foundation for the old movie house.

J: Oh. It is?

VM: That's where it the movie house,...over there. When they got ready to build that there underpass there, they moved that building and John, that thing was uh..it covered half-an-acre of ground. It was one story but it was just a uh...a...oh, a big building. They moved it from there back over where the old car, or bus lot used to be, and that where it burnt when it was there. But where the movie...where our house is now, that was the movie house after they pulled the water tank down, it used to set there. See, that was a big...the vacant lot was a water tank there that had water for the town of Matewan.

J: Um-hum.

VM: And you couldn't drink the water it was just straight out of the river there. It was just used for flushing toilets and other than that you couldn't use it for anything.

J: Um-hum.

VM: And then when they pulled that tank down and got it out of the way, then they built the theater building in there.

J: So it was built as a movie theater then? That's why it was built...

VM: R-House." Yeah. Where it is now? See, whenever she moved in there, they had where they...you know most theaters, they've got a slope on the floor like that? The closer you get down there the floor there...the people way in the back would sit up high and naturally as you go down...it tapers up and down at an angle. So they had to go in there and fill that all in and built up to what it is now.

J: Now. About when was that built? Do you know?

VM: Uh... That, I...they can't remember that but it was uh...it had to be in the in the early thirties because I run those machines there, movie machines there in...in the...in the middle thirties and they were goin' then. I tell you, uh...Edith Bootee is not here now but Frank L. Lace was quite a...a camera buff, and he took pictures of just about everything he could can think of and he took pictures of that tank while they was pulling it over see, and where those uh...where the parking lot is now?

J: Un-hun.

VM: That was a vacant place back there. They was gonna build some houses in there, and they had to pull that tank over to get it out of the way. When they got it out of there then they built four concrete block houses there and naturally they went down in the flood, too. (1977)

J: Somebody told me that there was a theater also over at Red Jacket.

VM: Yeah.

J: And it was kind of a walk up...walk in theater...outdoor theater, or something?

VM: It was an outdoor theater (Laughing). Well, the first one they had, John, the only thing you had was a...

VM: First theater they had was really an outdoor theater because it had no top on it and if it rained or snowed right hard, there wasn't no show because everybody set out in the open. Then cross, where the Kiwanis's playground is now, it was a big building there, then the theater moved over there. And then, but the one that they were talkin' about...the one you're talkin' about probably what they referred to was where the old theater use to be and do you know what, after we moved to Matewan, bunch of us boys used to go up there just to get up...go up there and sit outside and...have

J: Um-hum.

VM: You had no top on it but like I said, if it rained or snowed, no show.

J: What did you have to pay to get into the movie there?

VM: I believe it was a nickel if I'm not mistaken. The company run it. Coal Company, yeah. I know it wudn't much.

J: Did...did uh...anybody ever figure out what caused that big fire in 1927?

VM: They think it started up there on in uh...Singer sewing machine area up there, see they had a lot of oil in there, and where they worked on those machines, and stuff like that. They figured that's where the fire started. How, I don't think anybody ever figured that out.

J: Um-hum.

VM: But now Johnny Fullen, the mayor...the present mayor of Matewan? That was his granddad and grandmother that run that...run that Dew Drop Inn there.

J: Oh. Is that right?

VM: Um-hum. And I got to tell you this too uh...see Frank L. Lace had the place down there where NAPA place is now? Auto parts?

J: Un-hun.

VM: We'd go down there to get ice cream off of Frank L. He'd take that and go up there and get his dipper down there, and when he'd bring it up there all the time, he'd scrape everything off of that dipper except just what was in the dipper, and he'd put it on a cone and that's all you would get! Well we'd go up to John Brown there and John would reach down there, with that dipper, and he'd fill it up and it'd be hangin' over the sides and everything and we'd go up there and get our ice cream off from him...rather than goin'...laughter

J: A little better deal there.

VM: Yeah. (laughter) it was better for us.

J: And that...but that was at the Dew Drop Inn?

VM: That's the Dew Drop Inn. I was talking to Daisy Nowlin the other day there at the post office and somebody uh...asked everybody ...and she mentioned the Dew Drop Inn and they said "Daisy, you're not old enough to remember that." And she said "Don't you kid yourself."

J: So that was uh...a restaurant/ice cream parlor?

VM: Um-hum. Run by John and Mary Brown.

J: Well, you've been real helpful. Is there anything else you want to cover. We got...

VM: Um...no. Nothing that I know of.

J: Okay.

VM: Oh, wait before you turn that off, now. Robert did mention about that man livin' in the mouth of that mine up there.

J: Oh. Yeah. Good point. Yeah.

VM: That Lower Seam, of the old Stone Mountain coal corporation. See the lower seam there, they concreted in there so far, I have forgotten how far back in there, but the old gentlemen went in there and blocked the back end of it off so the mine air wouldn't come in on him? And he fixed the front end of it so he could go in and out. Had a door and everything and he lived in that thing for several years and when I went in the army in forty-one, he was still livin' in that. How long he lived in there I don't know.

J: So this was a mine that was no longer in use?

VM: No longer in use.

J: So he moved in there...do you have any idea where he had come from? Did he used to live in Matewan?

VM: I don't even have good recall a thing about what who he was or anything. I do know that he...'cause see we...that's where we used to go up the hill right there and go up to old top seam of uh...Stone Mountain Coal Corporation, and they still had some of those uh...mine cars up there and we used to take them and push them back in the top seam, mine up there and it had a down slope on that thing you know and we...the only brakes you had on it was just a lever brake you know, sometimes it worked and sometimes it wouldn't, and we'd get in it and we'd come out of there a pushin' that thing just a ...as hard as we could. And we'd all jump on that thing and come down there and the further down that track we got, it had a big turn down there, we'd be flyin' time we get down to the bottom of it. Just a wonder...we wrecked a few of them was...when we wrecked, we saw they was goin' over the hill, we left them and I...I know that we'd been...before the mines even went out of business, I know they cussed us several times. They had to have, because they couldn't figure out how them cars got over the hill like they did. But it's a wonder some of us hadn't got killed or injured the way we'd uh...

J: No wonder they put a curfew on you kids.

VM: (Laughter) But you know what? We were mostly there's some mischief, but nobody was mean.

J: Yeah.

VM: Nowadays, it's different. I don't know what happened. Somewhere along the line somebody's values of life has changed a whole lot.

J: Yeah. Seems like it's harder for kids to have fun now, doesn't it?

VM: And the main thing it is it's...life is too fast...The parents wants them grow up too quick and...once a child grows up, if he don't have a childhood before he grows into manhood, he's lost. Now I...I know we used to...when school went out in...in uh...May, the first thing Dad done to us, he took our shoes away from us then he shaved our heads, cut our hair off and shaved it and we had no shoes and no hair until we got ready to go back to school in the fall.

J: Yeah? (laughter)

VM: And we laid on the river down there. We fished, and we boated, and sunbathed, and everything like that, but we was happy and...and nobody was mean. Now, I don't think...and nobody pushed you to try to rush you into manhood along before your time for it. Now I...I ...I get so mad at one of my nephews, he's got two boys, one of them is second year in college now and the other one just graduated out of high school, he gonna, he uh...long before they got out of high school he got on to them about gettin' a job and doin' this and that. Instead of lettin' them grow up gradually like you should.

J: Yeah.

VM: And I used to just raise cain with him for it. I said "why don't you...if you don't grow up as a kid, you're lost." And we always had a dog. That was one thing that...(laughter)

J: Did you...did you hunt with the dog or just have a pet?

VM: No. Had them as pets.

J: Any particular kind of dog?

VM: Just a...just a dog. Most of them we'd pick up around town.

J: Un-huh.

VM: Somebody...we'd just see one we liked and it didn't make no difference what uh...kind of dog it was just so it was a dog .

J: Start feedin' it then it's yours, huh.

VM: Yeah.

J: Yeah you don't see...you don't see that as much around here anymore, of course there's so many vehicles, I guess people are afraid to keep dogs, is one thing.

VM: Well, you can't for uh..now, for a long time, I fed, I still feed stray dogs up on the mountain where I live. One of those little fellas that I been...myself and next door neighbor, got hit by a car. It was a little over a year ago and we think maybe that was what caused its death. We wasn't sure of it anyway, the little fella went over the creek bank there above my house and my neighbor told me about it bein' over there an said it's been hurt and said "I think it's been hit by a car." So we built a shed for it and I started feedin' it and she did too. And we fed that little fella for a year, took care of him, and got him out of whatever was a matter with him, and he was just as frisky as he could be and then uh...we didn't know it was gonna' have pups and uh...here it was, we found out that she was a female and gonna have pups. And we kept watching her, you know, thought "well she's gonna have them... .wouldn't have any trouble with them." So by golly, was our neighbor's boy there...we put her under the house plus we'd afraid she'd get hit my a car out there the way she walked. She started across the road and it would take her two/three minutes to cross it. So uh..I'd look after her, and he'd look after here and we would check on here pretty regular. So, that day that she died, I went up there about ten o'clock and she was alright and I had...she didn't eat all her food so I said "well I'll come back later on and leave her some food" and uh..he went up and seen her around about oh, must have been about two o'clock and uh..he come over to the house and told me said, " Well we got trouble." said "She died." And uh..we went over there. Sure enough she was dead. She died trying to give birth to pups and we think maybe uh..the cause of it was, being hit by a car.

J: Um-hum.

VM: Maybe it was...she was too young to have them. Maybe the pups was too large, you know, but anyway, if we'd have caught her in time, we'd have run her to the vet and let the vet take the pups away from her but she was dead when we checked on her the next time. What I'm gettin' at, I feed them dogs on the mountain up there, how many there are, I don't know. At one time there were a slew of them but we got, the dog warden, he picks them up...some of them are killed by cars. Some people shoots them and then they wander off somewhere else so uh...there's just...

J: Did you, I'll ask you one more question then I'll let you off the hook here. Uh...did you all celebrate Halloween when you were a kid?

VM: Oh, you bet we did. (laughter)

J: How did you go about that?

VM: Well, now that's something else in a...now, the uh...hardware where, the NAPA store is now? That was a hardware at that time. On Halloween, they would take in all their barbed wire and wire, you know, and put it inside, because as sure as they leave it outside there, the guys would get it and string it around town from telephone pole to telephone pole. And uh...really uh..we didn't chop down trees down the road, and do things like that and block that, but we put that...string that barb wire from telephone pole to telephone pole and...and just to be aggravatin' I reckon. But uh... uh...never really done anything that would cause anybody any harm, or cause any trouble and..and they wudn't no cars in those days, hardly. The only way they could get around was by horse, or walkin' or wagon.

J: Now how bout the uh...chief of police on Halloween night, was...

VM: Well, he just like we always knew where he was.(laughing)

J: You had your signal system? (tape cuts off)

VM: Yeah, (laughter)

Matewan Oral History Project Collection