Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Margaret Hatfield Interview

Becky Bailey: This is Becky Bailey for the Matewan Development Center. Wednesday, June 27, 1990. I'm doing a follow up interview with Margaret Hatfield who's come back into the area on business and my first question Miss Hatfield is uh...would you tell me again on tape, what you remember about Clare Overstreet?

Margaret Hatfield: Well, what I remember about Clare Overstreet, was he was, when I was a child, he was postmaster in Matewan and he was 'til, oh, Lord, I was in high school. I don't know how long he was postmaster but I remember him as being a very kind, nice old gentleman, who taught me when I was about six years old how to work the combination on the post office box. That was when the post office was behind where the annex to the bank now is. The bank itself was there. It was before they built the new bank across the street. The bank itself was there and the post office was behind it facin' out on the railroad track because the mail...all the mail came in on the trains. And then, when they built the new bank, and moved it, moved the old one across the street, they moved the post office around there to the front. Well, the mail still come in on the trains 'til about 1960, but they moved into the bank quarters because it was more convenient and it was a larger area. I guess when they increased the mail output of the post office or they...they were, I think that's second class post office that distributes mail to, Lord only knows how many more.

B: Un-hun. Okay. What about um...your talking about where the, the Dollar General Store is now. What was there before?

MH: Before that, there was some old building and some old houses. Old frame houses in there and I remember that a Mrs. McCoy lived in one of them. She was Glenna Stacey's grandmother. And, oh, I don't know who lived in the other one, they tore those houses down and built Cooper's hardware. That was the Ira Cooper hardware and they had moved it from up here on the street. Well, now I'll tell you where it was, it was right above the post office and originally, that had been Chambers Hardware. It belonged to Broggs Chambers. Ira Cooper bought it off the Chamber's family. And that was put in there in the, oh, I'd say, early fifties. And at one time, the funeral home, Chamber's funeral home was in the back of the...in the back of the hardware there and then after Aunt Dorrie Chambers died, they moved the funeral home down there in that house where Don Matney now lives is the old Chamber's Funeral Home. Hiram Jackson and his wife, Hiram was the undertaker and they lived upstairs over it and the funeral home was in...was in the bottom part of that.

B: Okay. I have a question, we've had some people say that there was a um..a funeral home, or at least a morgue over here in the Buskirk building. Did you ever hear that?

MH: They might have been. I never knew of it. Now the old, I think at one time, they used the Odd Fellows Hall where Hiram Phillip's Seed Store is for something like that but, yeah, what they may be talkin' about a morgue in the Buskirk building is when the detectives were killed, they laid them out in the lobby of the Urias Hotel. That's the only...the only morgue that I can think of that was ever in that building.

B: Okay. Uh.. What was some of the...the things that were in that building, in the Buskirk building cause It's...?

MH: When I was a kid, alright, up there on the corner where Coal City is now, was the Super Market. Old man Howard Sutherland had a grocery store in there and I can tell you who one of the people that worked in there was Daisy Burgraff. Houston Burgraff's wife. And then next to that, there were the, I think the tile's still there that says Urias Hotel, it was the lobby of the old Urias Hotel was Leckie's Drug Store and then beside of that was a beer joint called the Silver Dollar, and then in the next two parts of that was the Hope's Department Store was in there and also, there was a Kirk's Department Store. Louie and Florence Kirk had a store in there and then, of course, the liquor store was always over there and oh, let's see, what was on down through there? The old Matewan Theater where R-House is now. Where you could get in on Saturday mornin' the kiddy matinee, they'd get rid of you all day for fifteen cents and if they gave you fifty cents, if I remember correctly, popcorn was a nickel, a coke was, seven cents, and if you had fifty cents, you could get enough junk to make yourself sick besides being out of your mother's hair all day long. You go in there, there was always cartoons, well, first coming attractions, and then cartoons, assorted short subjects, a newsreel and a double feature which was either cowboys and indians or war, or cops and robbers and Tarzan, swinging through, no there was a serial before the main feature which might be Tarzan, it might be cowboys, it might be Sheena of the Jungles or whatever they called that girl who swung on grapevines and then there was the main attraction which was either cowboys and indians or war or cops and robbers and whatever but you...you'd be in a movie all day long and they didn't have to be bothered with you. It was the cheapest baby sitter in town. Laulis McCoy, which is Robert Ward's aunt. Laulis McCoy sold tickets at the...Frank Allara owned that theater and Laulis McCoy sold tickets and Billy Oh, Thelma Jones, Thelma Jones worked in there and so did Woodrow Hatfield's wife, Grethel, I think was her name. Thelma took up tickets and sold popcorn and came in and threw kids out if they got too rowdy, well, Grethel worked in the concession stand too. And then now, let's see, below that, beside the theater was Abbiss' Department Store, and that was Jimmy Abbiss and his sister Sophie and they, well, they left here after one of the floods and went to Huntington, as a matter of fact, they're still in Huntington. And then you came on past Abbiss' and there was the Smokehouse, which was a pool room. For years, Ernest Ward ran it. Ernest was the one that told a boy that went to work for him that he'd pay him fifteen dollars a week. All he could...all he could eat, drink, and steal, because he knew he was gonna do it anyway,(laughs) and let's see, after the Smokehouse, there was a barber shop down here on the corner where that, whatever that is, that snack shop, or whatever that is now, there's a barber shop over there that was Muss Stafford, and JI Blackburn and that's what was in that row of...row of buildings over there. I don't think I missed anybody.

B: Okay, I talked to a ninety...

B: I talked to a ninety-three year old lady this morning who said that um...

MH: Who was she?

B: Her name was Vayda Mayse.

MH: Right off, I don't know her.

B: She said her uncle, she had an uncle named Charlie McCoy that had a barber shop here about 1914.

MH: Oh, yeah, I know who...Charlie McCoy, yeah, I know who Charlie McCoy was. Charlie, eventually, ended up in Huntington and he barbered in Huntington for years. As a matter of fact, Charlie's wife, Aunt Ellie McCoy, lived to be almost a hundred. She...she died about twenty years ago. Now Ellie McCoy's father was Joseph Hatfield. Charlie McCoy's wife, Ellie, was a Hatfield. She was from up on Blackberry and her father, Joseph Hatfield, was one of the constable who arrested the McCoy boys on the election grounds at...at Blackberry.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Do you know where Charlies' um...barber shop would have been here?

MH: I don't have any idea. In 1914.

B: She said it was on this side.

MH: It probably was cause this town was built facin' the railroad tracks. As a matter of fact, that's why all these old buildings had windows in the back facin' the tracks. Used to be you could see straight through everyone of them. You could stand here on the street and watch the...see, if you'll ever notice, well, the, I guess the old lock up is still over there. This town was originally built with the railroad track cuttin' down the middle of it. This part over in here cross the railroad track, across the street, was mostly houses up 'til after World War II. The only...what was in there was the Buskirk building and then that building, the theater building was put in there later and then the, what the building over there now that Ruby Nowlin owns was always called the Coleman Building. They were put in there oh, say, World War I, because this, as I said, this town was built facing the railroad tracks. The original, first house in Matewan was in the mouth of Warm Holler at oh, it belonged to the Ferrells. And that's where Ellison Hatfield was taken to die. Cause that Ferrell was married to Ellison's sister.

B: Un-hun. What about um...okay, um...what about integration? Were you in school when the school system here was integrated?

MH: Yeah. I was in the ninth grade, I think, when school was integrated and we had no problems. There was never, oh, there were a few idiots that wanted to fight and scratch around but they never got it off the ground. There weren't any problems.

B: Okay. When was that? Do you remember?

MH: 1957. '58, '57 or, I guess it was 1957.

B: Okay. What about um...I interviewed Johnny Fullen at the beginning of this project and he said there was, I was askin' him about the old...the older people in the black community and he mentioned there was a man that worked for his grandfather that everybody called Dad Brown. Was that before your time? His name was Joseph Capples?

MH: That probably was. I don't remember him.

B: Okay.

MH: Now, I remember an old black man that lived out in the back alley. They called him Dap. D,A,P and he lived over there. Lord, he ain't been dead that long and he was older than Moses. Lived out there behind the water works.

B: And, what did he do? Did he just bum around?

MH: Just fooled around. I never did know what he did.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

MH: Then there was one that used to be up Red Jacket, they call Snake oil, well, I never did know him, know him by anything else. Well, he fiddled around and flunked around for the Ritters when the coal company was in Red Jacket. That's another one I remember. There was one that worked with us, that stayed with us for twenty-nine years. His name was Charlie Bruce. And another one that worked for us and I liked to fainted when I saw the movie Matewan and heard them call Ples Fewclothes there was a Ples Fewclothes and he was in Matewan at one time because he worked over on the farm for my grandmother. I guess, after he'd been blacklisted from the mines and he used to come back every once in a while and stay over there and work. As a matter of fact, I think, I think I remember him being there in the late '40's when I was a little bitty kid. And we never knew what went with him. Where he wondered off to.

B: Well, Bertha Damron, John Collins daughter, said she remembered her father talking about him so he...

MH: Well now that's where, that's where Ples Fewclothes ended up ah, because I know, I told my dad, after I'd seen the movie, and I asked him if I was, you don't get a name like Fewclothes, I mean there's not too many people got a name like that and I told daddy that what I'd heard in the movie and he said well, they've...they called my grandmother, Grandma Lettie, he said, well they found Grandma Lettie's well, Afro-American wasn't what he said, but that's what I'll say.

B: Right. Okay.

MH: And they made a movie about him see.

B: Okay, we were talking of tape about um...Ira Cooper, now was he...he was the mayor at one time.

MH: Ira Cooper came her from down around Kermit somewhere to my understanding, yeah, he was the mayor of Matewan from oh, sometime in the '50's early '50's up until whenever it was that he died, about 1960, somewhere like that. He was, yeah he was around here quite some time. Ira, I think originally, was state police. I 'm not sure.

B: uh...huh Well, how about Noah Floyd?

MH: That's my buddy. (smiling sarcastically)

B: I don't...didn't meant to offend you.

MH: Well, what do you want to know about Noah?

B: Just um...we heard that he was...he was big in the political machine.

MH: Noah Floyd wasn't big in the machine. No, he was the political machine.

B: How did he get there?

MH: His uncle, Billy Adair was how he got started.

B: Okay.

MH: Noah actually, actually Noah began this incarnation as a schoolteacher and a school principal and he came from a family of schoolteachers and school principals. There was, his brother Troy, was Superintendent of the schools, the only one in that family that never taught school was his brother, John B. and John B. was not a legend in his mind, John B. was a legend in his time. John B. he was a character. He worked on...he worked for the Board of Education maintenance. He was funny as he can be. Unfortunately, John B. was an alcoholic and he really never amounted to as much as the rest of them but there was, let's see, there was May, May Matney, May Floyd. She first married a Matney and I think he got killed in the mines, then she married a Sipple. She was a schoolteacher, there was Lizzie, Elizabeth Curry, she was a Floyd let's see, there's May, Lizzie, Troy. Troy was the Superintendent of the schools here for a long time. Noah. John B., Rush, Rush was a schoolteacher. Lillan Floyd Webb. Jack Webb's wife, was former circuit clerk and George, George worked for the Health Department for a long time but he was originally a schoolteacher. That whole family were teachers and the way they, as I said, the way they got started at one time, their uncle, their mother's brother, Billy Adair was a member of the Board of Education. And that's how they got their, their start and they just sort of...it sort of grew on them.

B: How...how did the school system here get involved in being a political power base?

MH: It always was. The school system is the best political power base in Mingo County because it's the biggest employer in the county.

B: Has that always been, I mean..?

MH: Yeah.

B: When did that, do you know anything about the history of the school system in Mingo County when it was, you know, organized?

MH: Alright, the school system, originally, and this was true in each...in...in West Virginia, up until about 1932, each district, each magisterial district administered it's [sic] own school system. And they had a Board of Trustees that looked after the schools. In 1932, they went to the county unit system and with a central office and superintendent. I can even tell you who the first superintendent of schools in Mingo County was. Somebody here a few years ago said there will never be a woman superintendent in Mingo County and I said, "there's already been one". First super-intendent of school in Mingo County was Aunt Sally Maynard VanCamp. She was from Delbarton. She had the first master's degree in Mingo County. And that, as I said, that was in 1932. The schools have always been a, even in the districts, it was patronage thing when they unified, brought it under the county unit system, of course, you've got the whole county and it became a bigger patronage deal. But they're the biggest, with the exception that one time the railroad, maybe, they were the biggest single employer in the county. Because, we're not just talkin' about teachers and principals and what have you, then you get to talkin' about cooks, bus drivers, maintenance, the whole sports system, the...they've got, that's the biggest job supply in the county.

B:. Okay.

MH: And naturally, politicians came, saw, and coveted.

B: When did um...when did the power shift from the Republican Party to the Democrat party?

MH: 1934 election. Ask me a hard question.

B: Who..who...who came to power then?

MH: Well, the old Republican machine was Greenway Hatfield, was the Hatfield machine. The...when the Democrats, I know I've heard it said that when the Republicans were in power you couldn't find six Democrats in Matewan and two weeks after the Democrats took over, you couldn't find six Republicans but, it shifted over. I don't know who got elected sheriff that year. I think it might have been Broggs Chambers. And that's when it happened.

B: So did it, was it the Chambers machine, I mean?

MH: Some people called it that yes. And I said Broggs, I don't think it, now, let me correct myself on that, I think it may have been Dan Chambers.

B: Okay.

MH: But Dan, let's see, Broggs was Dan's uncle.

B: How about um...the different Hatfields that have been...

MH: Which ones?

B: Chief of police or...or...or sheriff, say Alan.

MH: Alan, now Alan Hatfield, was from over on the Kentucky side, down the bend of the river. He was a brother to V.T. and Ernest's daddy. And Alan was sheriff, the thing I remember about Alan Hatfield, I was a little bitty kid and I remember setting over there in the old Hatfield feedstore, which my uncle Dewey had, I remember over there, sitting on Alan Hatfield's lap, now this is the way you raise a Hatfield. Sitting on Alan Hatfield's lap and he unloaded his pistol and gave it to me to play with, to hold. And that, of course, I was never afraid of guns after that, but, Alan is also the one who killed Rock, up here in that old building ain't there no more, it went out I think, in the '77 flood. Rock had a grocery store in there. I don't know what Rock's full name was. I know he was an Italian. Uh...Sicilian and he killed Rock. Alan was the one that killed Rock. That happened when I was maybe, oh, four or five years old. I don't...I 've heard the story but I really don't remember. I know...I know that Alan killed him but I don't remember what for. I know Rock was considered to be one tough customer. He was not quite as tough as Alan.

B: A lady told name that um...according to her father, Greenway Hatfield always thought that Rock was involved in the Glen Allum robbery?

MH: A lot of people thought that...they thought that those, well the guys that came here were Italians. They were supposed to be, probably, Mofioso, and I have heard that they came here and they stayed with Rock before that...before that robbery. I don't know if it's true or not but I know I've heard my aunt Maggie tell about when they went up there to smoke them out of the briars and the bushes and the brambles up at Glen Allum, but Greenway took a special train from Williamson, and he got out here and he rounded up every bad character, every tough character he could find and deputized them and, by the time he started finished rounding up bad Hatfield's, and this that and whatever else, Maggie said she saw the train go by and of course she knew most of what was, she said they was hangin' on the vestibules and everywhere else. She said that was one tough crew that went to Glen Allum and, Lord, those mofiosos didn't stand a chance. They ended up, I think, when they couldn't get them out no other way, blowed them up with dynamite. They got them. They brought them out of there on a hand car. That was the last time, well the mafia and Matewan just were not meant for each other. I mean, there are things, well, well as my grandpa used to tell me, you're not...you're not supposed to be afraid of anything because Hatfield's are what were put on this earth for other people to be afraid of, that's like the story I told some kids one time about we were going somewhere and I said, they said, "Are there any boogers up in here?" I said, "There aren't, the hants have already got them." And that was about the story of Matewan and the Mafia.

B: Okay. How about um...with um...you were saying that the Blue Goose Saloon was over here on this side before West Virginia went dry. Would you tell me about where it was?

MH: Well, I think it was right up here about where Nenni's is now. Now, Bob Buskirk had an icehouse, which meant they cut ice out of the river and stored it in saw dust. There was an ice- house out there on the rock bar. Up there about the number two water works pump or where the number two pumps used to be. He had an icehouse but I think, I think that the original, whatever they called that, now, I said, Blue Goose. The Blue Goose was over in Kentucky where the George Leckie house is but I'm callin' it Blue Goose because it was Bob Buskirk's establishment. It was up here facin', well I know that's where it was because when Bob Jr. came back here after World War II, that Exxon station that was there. It was an Esso station, he put that in there on that property so I'm sure that's where it was.

B: Where did all the Buskirk family made their money, where they were?

MH: Well, don't you? (laughing) Liquor. Now, is wasn't, really, the way they started makin' their money, it wasn't illegal, it was...it was...saloons were legal when Bob Buskirk first came here. And the ille...the illegality of it didn't stop him nor my grandfather, or R.T. Hatfield either. They were business partners. They started out when...when it became illegal over here, Bob Buskirk moved it into Kentucky because Kentucky was still wet and the eighth district was the last district in Pike County to go dry so they had, Bob had the saloon over here at Buskirk. There was an old swingin' bridge, used to be an old, I think you probably still see the piers of it. There's an old swingin' bridge that led off'n the railroad tracks and over to Buskirk that went to the Blue Goose. R.T. had one down at the tunnel at the end of the bridge and he got all the business from Sprigg and Mary Martha and down through there and from the railroaders and one thing and another and Bob got everything up through here. And then after, of course, after it went dry, after the Boull Stead Act, what 1918?, 1920? 1918, I think it became effective in 1919. After that, the illegality of it really didn't cramp their styles that much.

B: Do you know where the uh...the Buskirk family came from?

MH: They came from Logan.

B: We've heard that they ran...they had a hotel over there?

MH: They may have, I don't know that much about their antecedents, now I know that Bob Buskirk's sister, was Robert Ward McCoy's grandmother. Aunt Emm McCoy was a sister to Bob Buskirk.

B: Okay.

MH: I don't know what they did over there. (tape cuts off)

B: Speaking of tunnels. What did you ever hear about the Dingess tunnel?

MH: Well, I understand they killed people and buried them in it and all kinds of stuff like that. I've been through it. It's not an experience I would seek another time.

B: Why is that?

MH: Well, at the time that I was through it, the road was broken up and it was absolute water pouring through the top and it was just uh...general road hazard but they, I've...I've heard all kinds of wild, hairy tales about it the Dingess tunnel in Dingess and I don't know how many of them's true and how many of them's not.

B: When was that supposedly going on when they were killing people and burying them there?

MH: Well now, the lumber camp, Ritter Lumber Company, which was the Company, the parent company of Red Jacket Coal Company. Ritter Lumber Company come into Dingess, I guess, about 1900, and it was, at one time, the biggest community in Mingo County and then, of course, Ritter Lumber Company is also the one's that put the big to do in over at Devon, about the same time, around...around the turn of the century.

B: Un-hun. Okay.

MH: All the lumber in the houses that built the camp at Red Jacket was cut over at Devon.

B: Okay. I talked to a lady over, who was raised in Devon, and uh...she said that um...at one time, that was a...quite a busy little place too.

MH: It was.

B: What was over there?

MH: Oh, the stores, and post office, and this, that and the other, it was, well, Linsey, which is, up the railroad, it's one of them can't get there from here places anymore, it was right up the railroad track from Devon. At one time, when Mingo County was first founded, that lumber camp, that would be 1895 when the lumber camp and Lindsey was goin' full boom, I think they talked about puttin' the county seat of Mingo County there and then the next big boom town after Lindsey was Thacker. The first big coal camp of Mingo County was Thacker.

B: Okay. Well, was that the Thacker Coal and Coke? Was that it?

MH: Yeah. That was it.

B: They're um...in other counties, where my grandfather worked they said that, lots of times when they wanted to get rid of men, they would kill them and burn them up in the Coke ovens. Were there ever any incidents...?

MH: I never, well now I'll tell you, as far as I...it could happened, there were people around not too good to do that of course, there used to be around here from the tales I heard that if they wanted to get rid of somebody, they killed them and buried in the sand bar on the river bank. Took them over the river bank and buried them in the sand bar. Of course, the first time the river got up, bye-bye.

B: There's another individual from the '60's I want to ask you about and he's written a book um...Huey Perry.

MH: Yeah.

B: Do you remember him?

MH: Yes. I remember Huey.

B: Would you care to comment on him?

MH: Huey began in uh...he's another one that started this incarnation as a schoolteacher over at Gilbert and Huey's rise to fame, fortune and what have you, started with the EOC, the original EOC. And that's really about all I would care to say about Huey Perry.

B: Okay. Alright. When you were growing up, we talked to um...Vinchie Morrell, when he was growin' up, there was a curfew for the young people here in town...

MH: There was one in Matewan when I was a teenager. They used to blow the fire whistle, of course they didn't, most of us, they didn't have to. Our parents had a fire whistle of their own. If you didn't answer...if they'd whistle and you didn't answer, your pants would be what would be on fire.

B: What was the curfew time?

MH: I think it was nine o'clock at night, if I remember correctly. now, it might have been ten, because, usually the theater let out about nine thirty and they gave you a few minutes to get home. Skin it for the house. (tape cuts off) And further more, anywhere we went, we didn't have, you're talkin' about the generation that didn't have cars. The highest ...anything that went on was either over here at the theater. You'd go to the movie. The high school was up here in town. Anything was goin' on at night, was with in the auditorium or gym up at the football field and you didn't need much time to get home from there. And ten o'clock was when you had to be home anyway.

B: Did you grow up here in town or?

MH: I lived over on the Kentucky side about, oh, a little over a fourth of a mile down the other side. Bit I might as well have been in town.

B: uh...huh Because, one of the things we were askin' people that grew up here was, did the, did the people here in town say the merchant kids were they like the elite clique?

MH: Well, I have heard people say that. I have also been accused of being part of that elite clique. I didn't think so but apparently other people felt that way.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Cause one of the things we were talking about was when the...when the mines were going pretty good, the people that say, were in Thacker and Red Jacket, they socialized up there, they lived up there and the people here in town, they kind of tried to, their kids all ran together.

MH: Yeah. It was, well it was sort of a matter of where you lived. Now, the kids that lived here in town or you know, close within the vicinity, had a better chance of getting to school activities other kids...(tape cuts off)

MH: Other kids that came in on school buses just didn't have that and if you lived on Beech Creek, the only way off there was a school bus so it was, really it was a matter of, more a matter of mobility. I know they felt left out but it was really a matter of who could get there and who couldn't more than it was anything else.

B: Well, the other thing that we also heard was that the merchant's kids, most of them didn't have the...the weekend time that other kids had because their parents would make them work in the stores.

MH: Make them work in the stores or, well, they all, when I was growin' up, they all, I don't ever remember ever being too small to do somethin' and people used to make their kids work and they didn't have, they just, none of us had the free time that all the kids do now is come in from school and pile up in front of a television or hit the road and go. When we came in, we carried coal and we carried out ashes. People who had stores on the weekends and off time, the kids worked in the stores doin' you know, stockin' cleanin' up, this that and the other, doin' whatever. We farmed, so I always had plenty to do. There's no idle...idle time problem for me. I was afraid to say I don't have anything to do. Well, good, that's fine. I know exactly what you can do.

B: What kind of farmin' did you all do? Was it just growin' a garden?

MH: Well, my grandmother always had people workin' for her. She raised a lot of produce and sold it because at that time, you just didn't get fresh produce and had...there's an old black man who worked for us for years. His name was Charlie Bruce. He'd load it up in a wagon and take it to Red Jacket and either sell it through the camp or sell it to the company stores and maw sold a little bit of all kinds of garden produce. I've seen wagon loads of sweet potatoes and watermelons and you name it and you can claim it. Apples, pears, milk, butter, live chickens, what have you and if they didn't load it up and sell it people would come over there and buy it.

B: Un-hun. Now, did he live on you grandmother's farm? Where did he live?

MH: Yeah. He lived, there was a house over from our house. A little house, over from our house and that's where Charlie lived. He ate at the house. He came...he ate...he ate what we ate.

B: He didn't eat with you all though?

MH: No. He wouldn't. He wouldn't. There was a table, well, we ate in the kitchen, too, but there was a side table, a cookin' table, like what used to be a counter top, and Charlie always ate there. He wouldn't have eaten at the table with us for...he just wouldn't have done it.

B: Okay. Um...let's see, what do you remember about um...John and Mary Brown because Johnny Fullen was sayin' that, because of his grandfather's connection to Bob Buskirk, that he got a lot of privileges that other blacks didn't have.

MH: Well, I imagine he probably did. Now, I don't know how, John...John Brown was just somebody that was always here. John ran a dry cleaner for as long as I can remember.

B: Okay. Johnny said stuff like his grandfather voted before other blacks.

MH: Well, now they tell, I've been told, I don't know that this is a fact, but I've heard this tale, that Greenway Hatfield used to get him a car load of blacks and vote them in every precinct from here to Borderland down below Williamson. He'd take them in and vote them and they got I think, maybe a dollar for every time they voted. Or fifty cents or whatever...whatever so yeah, if you were, Bob Buskirk and Greenway were big deals in Republican politics so I guess, probably what Johnny told you is correct. Hell, they'd start votin' them at Thacker and take them all the way to Nolan.

B: One of the things I know I ask you about last summer was the influenza epidemic but can you remember any other...were there any other epidemics?

MH: Well, I know that I had...my Aunt Maggie was born in 1891, and she could remember small pox epidemics and there used to be a pest house out there on the rock bar where I said that ice house was. There used to be a pest house out there where'd they keep, I give, well, I know she said smallpox and said she didn't know what else, maybe, I know, there's a bunch of graves over there on Buskirk cemetery, children and babies that were from, I ask her about it one time and she said it was diphtheria epidemic so, and there used to be epidemics of typhoid fever. All kinds of...it was diseases caused by bad sanitation and a contaminated, polluted water system.

B: uh...huh. So it wasn't necessarily people traveling through this area?

MH: Well, somethin' with typhoid, you didn't have to travel through to get it. You get that from polluted water system. But things like smallpox, yeah, somebody's bound to come in and brought it. Also, people used to get Malaria.

B: In this area?

MH: Yeah. I've heard of it.

B: uh...huh From the...the mosquitos or...

MH: That's the only way I know of you can get it.

B: Okay. I just didn't know if this was ah warm enough climate for the...?

MH: Well, that surprised me when I heard it. But I have heard of people, of course, I know a lot of people came back from World War II with it. You get the malaria parasite in your blood stream, you never get rid of it but I have heard of people in this area having malaria. I don't know whether they got it somewhere's else and brought it back with them or what.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Were there um...I know we talked off tape about the...the fire that...that burnt down um...well, it burnt up a baby and somebody else in John and Mary Brown's establishment, but did...did Matewan ever suffer uh...a, a catastrophic fire?

MH: Not to my knowledge, no. There's been places here and there burned up but never a real...a real major...never a real major fire that I know of. Matewan gets enough from...from floods. They don't need fire, famine, and plague, and pestilence.

B: Um...when did the um...sanitation department, or the water works, do you know when that went in here?

MH: I think it went in after, about World War II. Sometime around there cause use to be every place up and down through here had a well.

B: Okay.

MH: And the sewer lines used to run into big old...I remember when I was in jr. high school sewer lines used to run right into the river. Just an old big sewer line. They's some boys played hooky from school which was not a common practice, back then. It was hazardous to your health. Ernest Ward was police. Ernest caught them out there in the weeds by the number two...by the sewer line. They's settin' out there playin' poker, or tryin' to. Probably as much as they knew about it, anyway, Ernest rounded them up. Now, when Ernest brought them back to school, he didn't take them to the principal's office, he brought them to the classroom they belonged in and here they came walkin' in lookin' like sheep at a shootin' match and there's Ernest with the guns and the handcuffs and I may have been the only kid in there that wasn't scared to death of him anyway because I knew him. Ernest comes in and he's got them boys and he's got this great big bass voice, he said, "I want you all to know what ...where these boys were, what they were doing and where I found them." He said, "They were playin' hooky," and he said," I found them down in the weeds by the sewer where the sewer line empties into the river settin' there on the river bank a playin'...tryin' to play poker." Well, now, you can imagine what happened to them after Ward left. Those boys got teased about that. Well, they never did it again. They got teased about that and people hollerin' sewie at them and all kinds. Everytime they walked by hollerin' somebody hollered, pew, pew.

B: I've heard um...tales that there were people whose parents used to threaten to hide them if they caught them swimmin' in the river. There's some kids that swam in the river.

MH: There were kids that swam...now I would have been cowhided alive but I'd spend enough time around that river that I didn't even want to fall in it because you could go down, at that time, there no, there were no environmental control laws. Lines, lines emptied sludge directly into the river. It was blacker than tar. There were no sewer treatment plants and I've been down there and seen dead horses, dead dogs, dead I don't know whats floatin' down. I wouldn't have gotten in that river and further more, even if it had been clean, up until the mid...the late '50's. There was no Salk polio vaccine and all they knew about it was that it was water born so that's one of the reasons I can't swim to this day. We were not allowed, there were no private pools and if they caught you around the river, you were dead meat. It was all there was to it. It wasn't fit for a dog to fall into, let alone human beings swimming in. As a matter of fact, I can remember...I can remember them fencin' it off so...so livestock wouldn't drink out of it cause they was...especially a milk cow because they didn't want her...want her around the river. Although we did eat fish out of it.

B: What kind of fish were in...were in the river at that time?

MH: Well now, what we ate was catfish and they were good so I guess, I might as well swam in it as ate the fish out of it but they didn't see it quite that way.

B: Another thing that we've heard that was in the Buskirk building was a hospital.

MH: At one time, I think it was. That was before my time. The only hospital that I remember was the old hospital down here, the old Doctor Hodge hospital, the Matewan clinic.

B: But you did hear of it. Was it...?

MH: I have, I think it was an upstairs in the Urias Hotel.

B: At that time, it probably would have been a couple rooms?

MH: Two or three rooms. Something like that.

B: Okay. Well.

MH: It wasn't a major deal.

B: Okay. Well, is there anything you can think of that we haven't talked about because...

MH: Not right off.

B: Okay.

MH: Not anything that I wouldn't get tarred and feathered for repeating.

B: Okay, well, thank you for talkin' to me again.

MH: Yes, ma'am, anytime. (tape cuts off)

Matewan Oral History Project Collection