Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Willard Mounts Interview

C. PAUL McALLISTER: May 26, 1992, this is Paul McAllister conducting an interview with Willard Mounts. Mr. Mounts will you please give us some background material about yourself?

WILLARD MOUNTS: I would be happy to. I was born in a little place called Cedar, WV, which is about 30 miles or so up the Tug and it's right across from Harper Creek that comes out from Majestic, between there and Freeburn on the Kentucky side. I was born there in 1915, so that makes me 77 years of age. When I was about 9 I moved into a little coal camp called Vulcan, which is no longer on the map. I lived there until I was a Sophomore in High School. I walked 2 miles to Delorme, caught the bus and rode 9 miles to the school in Matewan. My father in 1932 became the chief of police here in Matewan, so we moved here in 1932. The next year was my Junior year, I was a drum major for the band for the two and a half years I was here. I was president of the Senior class and graduated in 1934. I became affiliated with the Methodist church and Sunday School shortly after moving here, there were none where I had lived before. I became president of the Sunday School class. We had a youth group that everyone became interested in, so we decided to form a youth club between Kermit, Chattaroy, Matewan, and Williamson. We called it the Kerchawilma, that's using 2 or 3 letters from each name, and it was still going strong when I left here in 1934. I was in a graduating class of 43 boys and girls and as far as I know only 2 of us had gumption enough to go away to college. My problem was I had no money, absolutely none. My dad went at the Bank and borrowed $25, that's what I went away to college on. The other boy was named Bernie Holt and you're quite familiar with the Holt family I'm sure. As I understand it, he didn't last to long in college. He ended up on skid row and probably died during that situation, so I'm probably the only college graduate from the class of '34 that's still living. We had great football and basketball teams during that year. As a matter of fact, I just saw the runner-up trophy for basketball '34 at the high school. I left here and went to Parkersburg, the Mountain State College, and graduated there, working 3 part-time jobs. On Saturdays I worked 14 hours at JcPenney for $4.00 a day, two nights a week I worked in a shoe store stocking shoes for $1.00 a night. I had learned to type in high school, so I addressed postcards for $2.00 every hundred, for a total of $8.00 a week. Now that wouldn't quite pay my room, board, books, and tuition, so I found a boarding house where I could get 2 meals a day for 75 cents. That still wouldn't hack it, so I found an elderly lady that lived in the neighborhood, whose relatives were all deceased, and she needed someone to live-in just to notify the authorities in case she died. My only expense while rooming there was the cost to laundry the towels and the bedsheets and of course, we didn't launder but about once a month or so. In fact, I was so poor growing up, we didn't have sheets, so having sheets to sleep on was something new for me. Anyway, I graduated there, got married in the meantime, moved to Eerie, PA and lived there for 7 years. I had 3 daughters while living in Eerie, PA. Then in 1944 I moved to Denver, CO and lived there ever since. I was Comptroller/Business Manager for a large Cadillac-Chevrolet agency there for 40 some years. My hobbies were several: I skied, golfed, fished, but my main one was scouting. I was a scout master 27 years, my number one scout became a professor at Harvard. He also did research on Why and How the Brain Retained Memory and in his Junior year the American Medical Association had him come to Baltimore and do his thing on Why and How the Brain Retained Memory. He was invited to come to Mexico City to the Latin-American Medical Convention, all expenses paid, which he did. The next year he was invited to come to Geneva, Switzerland to the World Medical Association Convention, all expenses paid. That same Fall the Moscow State University invited him to come over there, all expenses paid. While he was over there, my wife Jeanie and I were entertaining a Russian lady professor, from that same university, in our home. I started working on sending scouts to Russia by writing Gorbochev a letter Jan. 1, 1986, and he thought it was a good idea, his secretary sent me a letter. It took me four years to get that consummated and finally, I couldn't get our own National Scout Headquarters to give me permission to take scouts to a communist country. So, I wrote the International Scout Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland to get them to put pressure on our own National Scout Headquarters in Irving, TX and within 21 days I had permission to send scouts to Russia. I sent 7 boys and 6 girls for 30 days in 1990. Then in 1991, they sent like number of boys and girls for 30 days and they toured Colorado. About a week before I left home, that was about 6 weeks ago, one of the scouts that I sent over there knocked on my door and gave me a wristwatch that one of the leaders had made in the watch factory in Kiev. He wanted to give that to me because he had been a guest in my home and I had given him some badges, patches, neck kerchiefs and so forth. That one scout now is teaching English in the schools in Kiev and scouting at the same time. You might be also interested to know that one of my scouts was on the Flag ship "Tarsol" in the Gulf during the heat of the war in the Gulf. I have a picture of him holding up my scout neck kerchief. Another scout took it to the South Pole in Nov. of last year. Another one took it to the top of Mt. Fuji, in Japan, in 1963.

P: Could you tell us a little about your parents?

WM: My parents were Kimball Anderson Mounts, they called him K.A. Mounts. He started out working in the coal mines at the age of 12 for 25 cents a day and eventually he started operating his own little coal mines in Cedar. That's where I lived until I was about nine years old. He then came to Vulcan as a foreman, they called them bank bosses at that time, in the coal mines. When I was 12 years old I joined my first Scout troop there and we had no place to meet except the Superintendent let us meet in the combination beer hall, pool hall, and barber shop. We used to hold our scout meetings back around the pool tables. I still keep in touch with a couple of the scouts in that troop in 1927. It was quite an experience living in a place like Vulcan, of course it's no longer there. That brings up the bridge that the Russians helped us build, but we can get back to that after I complete telling about my father.

P: Do you remember who your Scoutmaster was?

WM: Yes, his name was Pat Fanning. He was the undertaker and he had offices in several places and he was also the telegraph operator on the N&W Railroad. I helped Pat involve a few people when I was a teenager. In fact, I moved a lot of his equipment at one time from Gilbert up to Welch. There's a little story with that, I was moving this stuff from Ieager to Welch in a '24 model Dodge hearse. When I got to Welch the doors were all locked and the windows were nailed shut and I had to find a way to get in to put the equipment in there. When I finally got it in there I went up town and had dinner. When I returned it was dark and the lights weren't on in this building and it had previously been an undertakers office. So I tried to find my way in, between the caskets and the smell of formaldehyde and all of that, it was quite spooky. It was so hot, I couldn't get the windows open and I was trying to sleep in my shorts. But it was so stuffy I decided to go out and sleep in the hearse that was out on the street. The next morning, right before daybreak, the miners were going to work and had their carbide lights on. They woke me up and I heard a couple of them talking, I heard them say, look at that stiff laying in there. If I had thought about at that time, I would have raised up, I had nothing but my shorts on, and spooked them but I was afraid they might shoot me, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I did work for him a couple of summers. Then my father came to Matewan as Chief of Police in 1932, that was only 12 years after the Matewan Massacre and there was a Mayor Hoskins at that time. His son had been the Chief of Police but he became so corrupt that the people here in Matewan forced his father to fire him. Quite frequently my dad would catch cars loaded down with liquor that were coming from up Peter Creek in Freeburn. You could tell a car that was loaded down because the back-end was low and the front-end was high and they would catch them, take away their liquor, fine the fellow and let him go on his way. Then they would store that liquor in Hoskins' garage and every time they would do that, the next morning they were suppose to go over and break these half-gallon jars of liquor. But as time went on those hundred jars of liquor got down to where there was no liquor there without breaking them. So that got dad on the outs with the Mayor. Now the Mayor was the one that hired dad to come in here. Not only that, his son would every once and a while get on a drunk or a binge and dad would have to take him to the lockup to sober him up. One time, he didn't want to go, he started fighting with dad. Dad got him about a door or two, where there's a stairway that goes up to the second floor and back down on the other. My dad fought him up those stairs, he had on big heavy boots and was kicking dad in the face and so forth. Finally, dad got him up to the landing and knocked him down the other side. When he rolled down the other side he went to the lockup. Another time, he had a problem with a fellow by the name of Goodson. Goodson's mother was my Sunday School teacher, we called her Goody, she was a wonderful woman. When her son got out of high school he started drinking and so forth. Dad put him in his car, to take him to the lockup, as soon as he started the car this boy started beating on dad. Well gosh, he had to stop and kinda maul him around a little bit. Finally, after two or three times of this, he had to take the butt of his gun and hit him in the head a few times, not hard enough to do any damage, but, this was the only way he could get him to stop. He then took him on. One time dad was taking one of his friends to the lockup and was crossing the railroad tracks out here and he started to pull a gun on dad. Somebody yelled, "hey Kimball, he's pulling a gun." Dad looked at him and grabbed him, took his gun, and took him to the lockup. The next morning, dad went over and let him out of the lockup and gave him back his gun.

P: Can you describe the lockup?

WM: Well, the lockup was just one room. It was across the street and was about right across from where the old bank was, Brooks Chambers ran the bank at that time. To go on with that story, that son that he put in the lockup tried to burn our house down because he didn't like dad, of course, and dad was already on the outs with the mayor. We lived right beside Dr. Hodge, in fact, we rented from Dr. Hodge. There was a building next to it that was two-stories, I think it was the Blankenship Building. But, it was empty at that time. The story goes, he took a five gallon can of gasoline in there, poured it around both stories, lit a match to it and ran away. Well, I woke up shortly when the blaze started because I was sleeping in a room with shades up and the windows open. It was the hot summer time, I was sleeping in my shorts again. I jumped clear over the foot of the bed because I thought the house was on fire. I ran out and saw what was happening, I was in my bare feet and my shorts, people started gathering. I went out to the little creek that ran between our house and the railroad tracks at that time and I dammed it up a little bit so we could get water. Then people went to either end of town to get the pump, hose, and nozzles. The only difficulty was the nozzles were hidden away, we couldn't find them. The story goes, this son of Hoskins hid the nozzles. So when they brought it there and started pumping it would just fall over, it had no pressure. But guess what, within ten minutes he was up there helping us put out the fire. Now there was a lady by the name of Morrell, that lived on the street in back in some old shacks. We used to go over to her house toward the river. Now those houses are no longer there, but there were just shacks back there. She had a son by the name of Vincent Morrell and she had a couple daughters. We used to go over there and she would make spaghetti in a dishpan for all of us kids, we'd all gather around and the garlic was to high heaven, if you know what I mean. We had a wonderful time. She had one daughter that played the piano something real good. Anyway, she couldn't sleep the night this fire broke out. She was sitting at her front window and she saw this Hoskins fellow run from where the fire was down the alley towards his home because he lived right down there with his father. That let us know who it was that set the fire. When they seen he had keys to these two places where they had the pumps, he could have gotten from his father or it could have been left over from when he was Chief of Police. But anyway, nothing ever happened with that it didn't burn us out. The garage caught on fire right next to us, where dad kept his car. We kept throwing water upon our house and the garage to keep them from burning. Before we moved to Matewan, the Hoskins lived in Vulcan. I used to do a bit of boxing while in grade school and high school. I boxed a bit with Paul Hoskins, that was the younger brother of the Chief of Police in Matewan. We got into hot and heavy a few times, even without the gloves. Well, that meant that Paul didn't like me. So, the year before I moved here I borrowed my Dad's car, I got my first driver's license when I was 14.

P: Do you remember what kind of car?

WM: It was an old Studabaker with a great, big high top on it. It looked like it wanted to turn over all the time. So anyway, I was staying over for a basketball game and I knew that Paul would try and pick a fight with me. Yet a friend Paul Chambers, who later on became Sheriff of Mingo Co., and I knew that they would accost me. I got myself about a 12 inch piece of lead pipe and I put it in my hip pocket. As I went into the gym, there were those turn stalls, where you go into to keep the cows and so forth out, Paul was sitting on one side and Howard on the other side. I suspected they were getting ready to accost me there, so when I got up within about 20 feet or so, I got out the lead pipe and was kinda testing it in my hand, so I walked on through without any interference. I know they were going to beat up on me. Now, I didn't know Howard very well at that time. Anyway, when we moved to town it was in the spring of 1932, I had been bothered with tonsillitis alot every winter, when we moved I was in bed with tonsillitis for the first week. When I first felt like getting up and walking up town, I walked up the sidewalk over there and there was Paul and Howard in front of the barber shop. Paul challenged me to put on the gloves with Howard. Now Howard was about an inch taller, weighed a little more and had about an inch reach on me.

P: Were you in front of the Buskirk Building?

WM: In front of the Buskirk Building, yes. I said, I would be glad to oblige you if you wanted to wait a week or two as soon as I get over my tonsillitis. I've been in bed a week and I'm weaker than a kitten. Then, Paul said you're just a yellow-bellied such and such. So that got my dandruff up bad, I said well, I'll put them on. I knew that all I could do, at that time, was protect myself. I didn't have strength enough to fight him. But guess what, after about 10 minutes of sparring around with him and keeping him away from me, I started to gain a little energy and so forth. My juices started flowing and we really had it for about 5 or 10 minutes. All of a sudden one of the strings came loose on my glove and the little metal furrow, that hides the string down on the end, caught him in the corner of the eye and he started bleeding, so that stopped the fight. The next thing that happened, there used to be a pool room right along here. A fellow by the name of Hatfield ran the pool room.

P: Dewey Hatfield?

WM: Dewey Hatfield. Okay, I was sitting in there in the first booth right by the window. Paul and Howard Chambers came in. Paul wanted to sit in that first booth by the window. He tried to get Howard....

P: Paul Hoskins?

WM: Paul Hoskins, his father was still the mayor. Howard thought about it, but he didn't. They went over and sat down. That made Paul mad, oh he was so mad he could scream. Uh, later on, Howard joined the youth group that I was President of in the Church and the Sunday School. This Sunday School class had this lady Goodson and that was about the time I thought I was old enough to start dating. I started dating a young girl by the name of Ruth Compton. At that same time, Howard started dating Ruth's sister, Virginia. And so then we struck up a common friendship there, because we used to double date all the time. It was about that time Ruth's father died. In other words, I was in the home and they lived down here almost where the railroad crosses. They lived about two houses up from the mayor. And uh, I still correspond with Ruth. She lives in Goodview, VA and she has edited my autobiography, which I have just finished, for me. It's 165 pages long and I left a copy of that with Mr. King, down at the school, and he can make copies of that for you, 'cause I only have one other copy left and I have somebody I need to give that to. Now it's unedited, I'm going to redo it when I get back home and take all the typographical errors and stuff out of it. But anyway, so...

P: Uh, back to dating. Where would you go on dates?

WM: Well, you see we had no money and we would go over to the girls' home and we would make fudge or we would make waffles, something like, or go to Sunday School or go to Kermit, Chattaroy, Williamson or whatever. In doing that I would borrow my father's car. And uh, there used to be a fellow by the name of Helmantoller, that lived on the other side of the river and he was superintendent of the large mine here. He had a daughter by the name of Mary Margaret Helmantoller. Now, I sang a duet with her over here in the church for a Christmas cantata and since I don't read music I really had to follow her, I had a voice at that time, but I couldn't read music. But I learned the song and we sang a duet at the contata [sic]. I'll digress a little bit and say that ten years ago, I went into her home, up in Pennsylvania. She didn't know I was coming. I hadn't seen her since 1934, that was about 50 years ago. I knew where she lived because my girlfriend back in Goodview, VA, Ruth Compton knew where she lived. I called her on the phone and wouldn't tell her who I was, but, I kept telling her about things we did together. In fact, she had me in her home once, all day long, playing the piano and showing me albums and that kind of stuff. So finally, she invited us into her home. My wife said to her, "well, wouldn't you like to know who he is?" Ginny said, "you're Mounts, you're Willard." "Yes," I said, "that's so." We had about a two or three hour chat there. I still keep in contact with her by Christmas cards and stuff like that. Well, let's see getting back to Matewan again. Uh, I might have mentioned before that I was President of Senior class, President of Sunday School class, I was the drum major. Oh,...

P: Who was the band director?

WM: Phelps, a fellow by the name of Phelps. One time now, we knew he was either hitting drugs or alcohol one of the two.

P: This was the band director?

WM: The band director and me being the drum major, when he was out of the room, which he was quite frequently, during band practice. He'd have me conduct the band. Now I couldn't read music, but I had good rhythm if you know what I mean. And so, one time he was out of the room and when he came back he found fault with something I had either done or not done. I don't know which, anyway, he found fault with me. He was going to shake me around a bit. Well, I ran out the door to go and report it to Carl Montgomery, who was the principle of the school at that time, and he caught me just as I went out the door and uh, he took a swing at me. Now I'd had lots of practice at boxing so I dodge his swing. He weighed, oh, a hundred pounds more than I did. I probably weighed 115-120lbs at that time. And so, when he took a swing at me I kicked him in the groin and tried to run again. But he was running after me, I probably didn't do a very good job of kicking him. Then Bob McCoy, who was about 6" taller than me and played tackle on the football team, interceded and he caught Phelps the band leader and I went on over and reported it to Carl Montgomery. The only thing that happened in that is I got an "F" that semester in that band class.

P: How many members were in the band?

WM: Uh, gee, I have pictures of that band, by the way, that I can send to you. I would say about between 25 and 30. I have pictures of us when we went to Logan to a band contest. I have pictures on the Logan County courthouse there. We didn't win, but we had a great time. Uh let's see, there was 43 of us in the graduating class. Oh, later on, Howard Chambers became Sheriff of Mingo County. At that time, the Sheriff couldn't follow himself so he ran his wife, Virginia, and she became Sheriff for the next term. She was on "What Is My Line," back in New York, at one time. It was a program where you guessed what their line was, now, this was years ago. Nobody could guess what it was. But, let me tell you what ended up with that young lady. She now lives in Huntington, we visited her in 1980 and she is paralyzed from her waist down. She had an operation about 30 years ago and had a spinal injection and she's never been able to walk after that. But, she told me a story that I think is worth telling here. She had raised her two grandsons from the time they were babies, they were now getting ready to go to college. She said that their mother was killed. What happened there is that she put the two babies to bed and the young fellow next door was mowing his mother's lawn for her. The lawn mower kept waking the babies. So, this mother went out and asked this young boy, could he wait about an hour or two and mow his lawn 'cause it kept waking up the babies. He went in the house and got his mother's butcher knife and went over and carved this mother all up. Cut her breasts off and her arms, oh, just mutilated her.

P: Was this in Matewan?

WM: No, this was uh, let's see, where did they leave at that time, I can't tell you where they lived. I might think of it later on. Anyway, so she told me that story and then I left there. And where did I end up, North Carolina, visiting my double-first cousin, Heweling Junior Mounts. I was telling them this story and his wife, Ernestine, said to me, 'Willard you're not going to believe this but, I have a sister whose daughter is married to the father of those two boys." Now, that's a trillion-to-one shot that I would drive another 4-5,000 miles within two months period of time and end up in North Carolina that had that connection. Now let's see, let's get back to Matewan.

P: Who was the Pastor of the church where you went?

WM: Gee, I wish I could tell you but I don't know. I hope to go over to the church after I leave here. I hope the Pastor, who is about getting ready to retire as I understand it, will be there. I'd like to tell him about the Kerchawilma and so forth. I have things at home that I'm going to send to the high school down here. I have pictures of the band, my graduating programs, I have programs of when I was in the Contata[sic], I have my graduating certificates. I have lots of things that I can send him and if he wants to share those with you, be happy to have you do that.

P: Back in Matewan, at that time, do you remember any of the lodges that were in town? Like the Odd Fellows.

WM: My father belonged to the Odd Fellows. But I wasn't old enough, at that time, to belong to any lodges.

P: Was that a very large club?

WM: I really don't know because I never went into the club. I just don't know. Let me say that my dad was really rough and tough. I mean, I've seen him come home many a time with his fist all bruised and his face black and blue. He had to be tough, in fact, he got a carbide light shot off the top of his head one time during the coal strike. As a kid of about six, at the time, the unions tried to run us out of the little coal camp in Cedar and they shot into the house and so forth. A bullet barely missed me, I was sleeping in the bed and it went in one side of the wall and lodge in the other side of the wall not far above me. We had to run down to another house that had a cellar. All the women and the kids hid in the cellar while the men were out trying to find where the shooting was coming from. Now the way this happened, there was a little motor car about a block up the railroad tracks and they had a big canvass in front and they were shooting from behind the canvass so that we couldn't see their fire. I thought that was kind of clever of them.

P: This was the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency?

WM: No, no that was the union men, that were trying to form unions. Dad was operating his own little coal mines there at that time. Of course they didn't want him to operate that coal mine.

P: This was at Cedar?

WM: That was at Cedar, yeah. And so, when they finally found out where the shooting was coming from, we had some men from Texas that were gun slingers - Charlie and Lesley Clay - isn't that funny I can remember those two names and I was only six or seven years old. Got out there, we had a clay crochet yard at that time at our house, we played crochet, there had been a little sprinkle that night and when the bullets hit in this clay the clay would kind of bounce up on them and that's how they figured out where the fire was coming from, from the guns.

P: Your father had hired those two?

WM: Yes, yes, he had hired those two. Now getting down to the Baldwin-Felts Detectives and you've seen the show "Matewan" no doubt. The name Mounts is in that show twice and if you'll look at it again you'll see that. Uh, and now the show doesn't go quite far enough, as I understand it, although they did do an analogue there that told about Sid Hatfield getting killed up in Welch, but, they should have put that in the show, as far as I'm concerned. Telling about how he supposedly shot Mayor C.C. Testerman's wife and by the way, this Ruth Howell that I just got through talking to you about, that is my friend and edited my manuscript and so forth. Anyway, she and her family were friends of C.C. Testerman at the time he got shot. Now, the story was that Sid Hatfield shot him because he was in love with Jesse, the mayor's wife. And uh, so they went to Huntington the next weekend to get married and they were shacked up there and the Sheriff came along and put them in jail because that's when it was against the law to shack up with someone without being married. Well he talked his way out of it because he said, "We're going to be married tomorrow and I'm chief of police in Matewan," and so forth. Then the story goes that the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency got the Sheriff up in McDowell County to issue a summons saying that they had created a disturbance up in Mohawk. Well, as far as I know they had never been in Mohawk. Well, anyway, the Sheriff said that he would give them protection from the time they got off the train, crossed the railroad tracks and walked up the courthouse steps to answer this summons. Now, he and Ed Chambers, who was in with the Massacre bunch here, by the way, there was a Ben Mounts in that group also, so as they started up the steps two Baldwin-Felts detectives stepped from behind a couple of pillars there and shot them and then turned around and in the wall, put the guns in the hands of the guys they just shot and said we shot in self defense. There was never even a trial. Now, of course, when they tried to take these people to court that killed these seven fellows here of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, thugs we called them, uh, there never, well they tried to have a trial in Williamson, but they couldn't get a jury that was satisfactory. Then they went to Pocohontas [sic] County from here and tried to form a jury over there. But, you see, the Baldwin-Felts were always trying to buy off the judge, the jury, etc. They couldn't do that up in Pocohontas [sic] so they stopped the whole thing and there was never any trial as far as the men here. And I think there was some, oh anywhere from 15 to 17 men that was in that group, I've lost track of the number.

P: Did you know many of those men when you were growing up as a kid in town? Or did they keep that pretty quiet?

WM: No, you see, I was only five years old when that happened and I was living in Cedar. But, I grew up to hear all of these stories many, many times. Now, if you would like to hear a real bizarre story about my dad, I would tell you that and it would take about five minutes.

P: Please do.

WM: It was during the coal strikes, dad was walking up the railroad tracks coming...

P: About what year?

WM: About 1920, he was coming from the post office, which my uncle Hewelling ran at that time, and a little grocery story down at what we called New Cedar and that's right at the mouth of Poplar Creek that comes out from Majestic where the old bridge goes across there, the steel bridge. By the way, I was born right at the edge of that bridge on the West Virginia side. He was walking along this railroad track and it was at night and he saw this light coming down out of a tree, down by the river. It walked up the embankment onto the berm of the road and started walking towards my dad, of course, he drew his gun. I get choked up when I tell this. She said Kimball don't shoot. She said I've come to save you from death, hell, and destruction. She held out her hand, there was a picture of three men. She said if I hadn't appeared right here, as I am, right now, you would have been walking on this railroad track tomorrow and those three men would shoot and kill you but you'd kill all three of them at the same time. I've come to save you from that. Now you can't tell anybody about this, but, I want you to meet me up Pond Creek two weeks from now. He said, well, how will I know where to come up Pond Creek to meet you. She said, you cross the bridge and go over on the Kentucky side, there's a stable there. You go in and rent a horse. He said, well, how will I know where to go. She said the name of the horse will be Red Bob and that horse will know where to go. Two weeks later, he crossed the bridge, went into the stables and that's what the name of the horse was - Red Bob. There was a little drizzle when he got on the horse and out. He went about 10 miles up Pond Creek, pretty soon the horse took a left and went over and stopped by a tree. After that meeting was over with, oh by the way, my father passed those three men on the railroad track the next day and nobody pulled their guns. Let me say that my father was a rounder and many time he had more moonshine in him than the fellows he took to the lockup. He also had some extramarital situations that I'm not proud of, but, he was my father. I never knew him to lie. My brother Gratho who lives in Williamson now, talked to him extensively a few years before he died. He reiterated at that time that this was really the truth. Of course, there was always some question in my mind, although I believed it. To end up the story, my father always read the Bible even though he was a rounder. In fact, I have one of his Bibles that he wore out and he had three of four Bibles that he wore out. He never joined the Church until he was getting senile living in Williamson on East 4th Avenue. He had mom call the minister one night and said I want to join the Church. The minister said fine, come on in Sunday and we'll baptize you and you can join the Church. Now knowing they had never gone to Church, I'd never saw my folks in Church ever. He said no, I've got to join the Church tonight. My mother talked the minister and his wife into coming out to the house and baptize my father right there. He signed the certificate that he'd brought. So when I talked with my mom on the phone a few weeks after that, I said, "mom do you take dad to Church on Sunday?" She said, no. I said, "why not?" She said,"well, that's not my Church. When I was 14 years old down at Webb, WV, I was baptized in Tug River at the age of 14 and I was a Baptist, that's not my Church." It was a Christian Church of some kind. I said, "good God, mom what difference does it make what name is up over that Church, it's God's Church." I pleaded and beg with her. Of course, I've been a Church member all my life, since I joined here, I've been everything in our Church at home, including lay leader, pastor/ parish relation committee, chairman of all the committees and so forth. That doesn't make me any different, though, from anybody else. We all sin, you know what I mean, I try not to. But, I never killed anybody or beat up on anybody or anything like that. Anyway, that was how my father ended his last days. He died in Michigan and is buried there.

P: In Michigan?

WM: In Michigan, yes.

P: What year did he die?

WM: He's been dead, I think he died in 1973 and he was born in 1893. The old house that he was born in is still there, it's reconstructed. They tore it down and built a new home out of it. It's right there across the river from Poplar Creek that comes out from Majestic. It's the big two-story there. When he was 15 years old a family by the name of Marcum came in there from Webb, WV. They were carpenters and they were helping build the houses in Vulcan but they lived in Cedar. My mother, at the age of 14, walked across the railroad tracks and went to the well that was in the backyard, where my father lived. My father and his younger brother Heweling were looking out the window when they saw her walk across the railroad track for the first time to get water. Dad said to his brother there goes my wife. He was 15 and mom was 14.

P: What was your mother's name?

WM: Margaret Nancy Marcum. She died about 3 or 4 years after my father. She had a stroke while living in Daytona Beach, FL, where she had retired to. She was paralyzed from her neck down and I went to visit her twice in three years. She couldn't talk, she couldn't eat, they fed her through her nose. I prayed to the good Lord everyday to relieve her of her misery. She was a good mother, although, they had so many kids they never had time to show us love, you know what I mean. I never knew of her picking me up and sitting me on her knee and telling me how much she loved me.

P: How many children?

WM: Seven.

P: Seven, and you are the?

WM: I'm the third one down. I have an older sister whose is 81 years old, Gratho is 79 and I'm 77.

P: Gratho?

WM: Gratho, he lives in Williamson and he'll be in the phone book here. He worked for J.C. Heinz for about 25 years. Before that he worked for the WPA back during the depression. In fact, we got so low that his was the only income for a family of nine while he worked for the WPA as a timekeeper. Now, while I was here in Matewan, two summers in a row, I drove Dr. Hodges on his vacation. I'd never been out of these hills before, I didn't know there was another world out there. The first year I drove him to New Jersey. We went to Williamson and drove a straight-eight Chrysler, a black Chrysler, off the showroom floor that he had already had them service for him. I drove it off the floor and started for New Jersey at twelve o'clock at night. Drove all night, it was raining that night and the roads were narrow, they had no markings whatsoever, no center lines and very few signs. By the time I got a hundred miles from home I was lost and I'd have to stop every once in a while. Of course, he was in the back seat sleeping. He worked 24 hours around the clock here. And so that was the way he had getting away from his wife. His wife was kind of a nut and they had kids that just drove him up a wall, etc. So, we would go on a two week vacation. Two times and Gratho drove him the one time after I left here. So, we went to Redbank, NJ. We did crab fishing and laid out on the beach. One day we got on a boat there and went up the New York Harbor pass the Statue of Liberty. We stayed all night in the Lexington Hotel and the next morning we went over to take the subway, they called it the elevated train, to Coney Island. Well, I had never been in a big city before, I was 17 at that time. So in getting on this elevated train I waited for the women and kids to get on, of course, they were operated automatically, the door would close. So he got on and I didn't, there I was, I couldn't even find my way back to the Lexington Hotel and I had no money, and there he was on the train. What are you going to do? The only thing I knew to do was wait right because he knew where I was, if I got on the next train I wouldn't know where he was. About an hour later he came back, he was on what they called an express train and he went for miles, then got off and got on another train and came back and went underneath and came up and there I stood. Then we went to Coney Island and saw the girls on the beach and all of that, you know what I mean. Now, I also drove him down to Covington, KY. He wanted to find his niggermammy, and pardon me for using the word nigger because I hate that word but that's what it was called in those days. He had nursed on this niggermammy for two years. He slept with her in her bed until he was about seven years old.

P: Was he from Matewan?

WM: He was the Dr. Hodges here.

P: But was he born and raised here?

WM: Oh, I don't know. Evidently down around Covington because that's where the niggermammy was. It took us almost two days to find her and we drove out into places where the road turned into cow pastures, like you could see grass up in the middle where the tires would keep it killed over. We finally found her, she was completely gray, almost blind and almost deaf. When we went in there she was sitting on some ground in a rocking chair. Because the house was so dilapidated the porch was falling down and she had a 2 x 4 there trying to hold it up. The house had never been painted, it was just slabs and so forth. It took him, I would say approximately 15 or 20 minutes, to get her to realize who he was. Then, of course, they had the greatest hugfest and crying. I'm sitting out on an old well listening to all of this. They must of talked for two hours and he was telling her how much he loved her and all of that. Now, I don't know if you ever knew Dr. Hodge or not, but, he was so tight that when he was here working he would squeeze Abe Lincoln on the penny until he cried, if you know what I mean. He was that tight. But when we went on vacation, he carried a big wad of twenty dollar bills in his front left pocket and before we left there I saw him get out this big wad of twenty dollar bills, God he started leafing off those twenty dollar bills. I'm sure he gave her three or four hundred dollars. Now that would have kept that family for several years. The only income that the family had was the younger daughter of that lady, it might have been a granddaughter, I don't know. She came to the door and she had on a dress, it had a slit in it and you could see everything she had. After her were kids, about a year apart, at least 7 or 8 kids and that was the only income she had. About once a year, she'd go to Cincinnati and shack up and that was their only income. But every year she got pregnant and of course that meant another mouth to feed. When I saw him giving them that money, I cried. I still get choked up. I'll tell you a story that happened a Vulcan. We used to have 16 passenger trains going one way and 15 going the other way, I don't know if they still are here on the N&W or not. Are there any passenger trains?

P: I don't know.

WM: There was a little porter on the train that's about nine feet tall and he used stop at Vulcan because that was where they put new coal and new water in the train to run it, in the engine, in the tinder. And this little colored John would get off the train and play with us kids. We thought he was god because he played with us, nobody else had the time to play with us. One time he got off the train with something wrapped up in newspaper, it was a chunk of ice, and he gave it to me and I ran home to show my folks a chunk of ice. I'd never seen a chunk of ice before. We didn't have an icebox or anything. We always liked to see him stop on Monday because he'd go through the train and pick up all the funny papers. That's where we learned about the Katzenjammer Kids, Joe Palooka, Daisy Mae and Lil Abner and all of those. We were too poor to buy newspapers and he kept us supplied with funny papers all that time.

P: He was the conductor?

WM: He was the porter on the through train. Now the main part of the story that I want to tell you though, and if I get choked up again you'll understand. There was a family that lived over in a shack along the riverbank and the father and husband was killed in the mines. By the way, it was quite usual for us to see people killed in the mines, in fact, I helped embalm some of them later on.

P: This is in Vulcan?

WM: It was in Vulcan again. Now this was way before any kind of insurance or unemployment compensation. That family was actually starving to death. You'd have to understand now, what the coal operators, they were all for the money, they were not for the coal miners themselves at all. But he did allow that mother and her two kids, a son and a daughter, and her brother, that was fetched in the head and he didn't know where he was half them time, to live in that shack. But they had no food to eat, the way they kept alive was colored John going through the dining car every day and picking up the scraps and putting it in a bag and giving it to that family. God bless him. I didn't know that family was starving at that time, but, now realizing what he was doing that kept them alive. Every after that and I've been home twenty times since 1934, in this area here. I had a brother-in-law by the name of Mark A. Mills that was a telegraph operator on the N&W at Vulcan and that's where my sister married him. But he became a telegraph operator in Iaeger and Welch and I always kept track of colored John through him. Finally, he retired and finally, God bless him he died.

P: Do you know where he was born?

WM: I think Bluefield. I've preached that sermon from the pulpit while I was scoutmaster for 27 years, seven times in my church. My scout troop the entire service, if you weren't a scout or scouter you didn't participate in the activity we were putting on. In other words, they did all the greetings at the door, ushering, contributions, and then did the whole program from the podium and so forth. I always gave the minister's part and I spoke for twenty-six and half minutes, the last time that I did it in 1976, on brotherhood. I brought in that we treated the indians so badly here, we took their food, place of living, everything from them, and killed millions of them, thousands anyway. Not particularly with bullets but with white man's disease. Three-quarters of them were white man's disease. I told about the black man we brought over here and kept in bondage for a number of years and of course, of Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, that was signed in 1863. My heart has been out to the black people and the indians all my life. They've been so mistreated, now I'm not in for going out and giving them things, but I am in for equality and equal opportunities so that they can make something of themselves. That's all we need to do is give them the opportunity because today there are alot of smart black people. In fact, Pres. Thomas Jefferson, after his wife died, had an affair with some negro mulattos and so forth. Some of his offspring became presidents of colleges and universities later on. I don't know if you know about that or not.

P: Do you remember what race relations were like in Matewan when you were a kid?

WM: Well, I think there was one Catholic family living here at that time and there was no Catholic Church. We all grew up to think that they had poison, if you know what I mean. It made no difference to me, in fact, I have good Catholic friends now, good Jewish friends, good black friends, I have all kinds of friends. But at that time, they lived down here, and I think the house is still standing, it's a big, brick building off on the left-hand side down about where the clinic is across the street. They were the Catholics. Now, I take that back, the Italian family, the Morrells, were a Catholic family also. We associated with them, there the ones that fixed the spaghetti in the dishpan. Now as far as race relations, there weren't many black people here in Matewan, that I can recall. In fact, I don't even remember any in high school. But up in Vulcan and Cedar there were lots of black people. Now I was going to tell you a story about Ernest Ward. Earnest Ward was one of the star players on the football team when I was in high school and he was just rougher than the cob, just like nails. One day he got mad at Hatfield and walked in his pool hall and grabbed a cue stick and beat him up something fierce and went on his way.

P: Earnest Ward?

WM: Earnest Ward did that. That was after he graduated from high school mind you, 'cause then he started drinking and running around and all of this. About six months or a year later somewhere along in there, it could have been two years later I don't know, Earnest got drunk again up in the east part of town and he told somebody that he was going down and beat up on that s of a b Hatfield again. Well, the word got down to Hatfield....

P: Dewey Hatfield?

WM: Dewey Hatfield. Dewey got his 38 revolver out and laid it out up on the top of the bar and as soon as Earnest walked through the door he shot him, right through the chest. They picked him up and threw him in the back of an old pickup and took him to Williamson where, would you believe he lived. Now, about a year or two after that, three brothers from over on Pigeon Creek, they used to come to town about once a month on Saturday night. They'd come in, they'd play pool or buy groceries or whatever and go on back home. One weekend, one of the younger brothers came by himself. He was in the poolhall and Earnest picked a fight with and beat him up something, Earnest wore big, hob-nailed shoes at that time, I don't know if you've ever seen hob-nailed shoes. He got him down and tromped him in the face and just brutally beat him mercifully. About 3 or 4 weeks later the three brothers came to town and they met Earnest in the poolhall and they got him down and [transcript ends]

Matewan Oral History Project Collection