Matewan Oral History Project Collection
Sc2003-135

Harold Dickens Interview

BECKY BAILEY: This is Becky Bailey for the Matewan Development Center. Thursday, July 26, 1990. I'm in Ashland, Kentucky in the home of Mr. Harold and Mrs. Sallie Dickens. Mr. Dickens, for the record, would you give me your full name?

HAROLD DICKENS: My full name is James H. or James Harold Dickens.

B: And when were you born?

HD: Uh...June the first, 1921.

B: What were your parents names?

HD: My father's name was Roy M. Dickens and my mother's name was Eva Margaret Dickens.

B: Do you know anything about where their families came from originally?

HD: Yes. My father's family was from Eastern Tennessee, near a little town called Mountain City, Tennessee and my mother, uh...was borned in uh...Mary City, Ohio and then she immigrated with her father to, father and mother to Southern West Virginia near...Logan or near Logan, West Virginia. The fact is she did live in Logan, West Virginia at one time.

B: Okay. You wouldn't know when they were born, were you, would you?

HD: Well I have a pretty good idea. Uh...father was born on February the eighth, uh...1893 and my mother was born on August the twenty-ninth, nineteen and three.

B: Were you their first child?

HD: Yes, and the only child.

B: And where were you born?

HD: Gary, West Virginia. A coal camp by the name of number ten.

B: Do you know anything about um...what your father's family may have done professionally say...

HD: Well, my father's family, his father, my father's father was a farmer and uh...he, he originated somewhere in North Carolina, I'm not sure where and later they moved uh...into Eastern Tennessee, which is close to the boarder of North Carolina and Tennessee.

B: Did your father um...come straight to West Virginia from Eastern Tennessee.

HD: Yes. Yes he did um...he moved, he moved to the coal fields which is uh...at Gary, West Virginia and came there to, lookin' for a better...better job and more...more wages and he worked, went to work for United States Steel Corporation. He worked for a time in the mines and then later went to work for US Steel in one of their company stores.

B: Okay. Do you know what he did in...in the store?

HD: Uh..yes I know what he did in the store. Prior to that, He worked, when he worked in the mines, he was workin' on the outside and uh...and worked, I think he worked in what's called the shops. Later he went into the store and, well, it was a general merchandise store and uh...he sold uh...all those things that are normally sold in a company store and then later, he started uh...workin' in the uh...meat department and became a butcher and that was his occupation the rest of his life.

B: Did you know your grandparents at all?

HD: Uh...I knew my father's grandparents. I mean only one of my other grandparents was my mother's father because her mother had died when she was just a young child.

B: Un-hun. Did your father's grandparents ever tell you stories about the old days or anything like that?

HD: No, I was never, I was just too young at the time. We didn't visit that often and uh...so uh...they never really, that I can remember that they'd tell me stories about their life or anything like that. Growing up uh...I just wudn't in contact enough with them. Wasn't close enough to them and uh...it uh...as a result, I wasn't that familiar with them and they...they weren't that familiar with me either. Uh...where they lived in Mountain City from where I lived later on in Matewan, that was, it was several hours drive. At that time, it took uh...a day or so to get up from Matewan, West Virginia, to Mountain City and when you're driving over rough roads and you...and you didn't have the best car in the world so it took a while to get over there so we didn't get too close. I regret that but there's a lot of things I'd like to know that I don't know today.

B: Un-hun. Alright, uh...how did your father travel from Mountain City to West Virginia? Did he come by train or?

HD: Well, uh...I guess he did, as much as he could, uh...I'm not sure really. In nineteen and after the World War, after World War I, uh...I don't, I'm not sure how they did travel. It must have... must have been by train. Catch a train and make connections and come into Bristol, Virginia, and get back to Mountain City the best way they could. Maybe horse and buggy and wagon or whatever and travel that way. Uh...so I'm not really certain what route he took or anything else how they did it. They didn't get home, they didn't go home too often because the fact that it was a pretty good journey at that time and uh...but as I, when I was born, later as I grew up, why, it was generally one or two trips a year that we'd get back there to Mountain City and eventually, my grandfather lived in what, it was just sort of a, back in the hills uh..Tennessee hills because my grandmother had gotten sick and...and was advised by the doctor to try to find uh...a sort of a quiet place and they moved back into the...the hills. He still owned land down in the bottoms and some land where he could find a level land to farm up near the foot hill...foot hills but now, they were in the hills too, I'll ....I'll tell you that. They was strictly hills. It's almost as bad as where we were...

B: Um.

HD: When we, in West Virginia.

B: What do you know about your mother's people?

HD: Well, I do know that uh...my mother's mother died when she was about nine years old and uh...I think, she uh...she, if I'm not mistaken, she was, died in...in uh...living while he was living in Ohio and then they went, no, I correct that, she died when they was living near Logan, West Virginia...

B: Okay.

HD: Uh...at a place called Whitman Creek and after that, the family was split up. She had two other sisters and a brother and they were sent to other members of the family. Some of them down in Kentucky. My mother stayed there with a lawyer in Logan, West Virginia and help baby sit and take care of some of her children, their children and later on, later on, my grandfather, did run a restaurant and had a business in Logan and uh...well, prior to the death of her mother, he owned this business and restaurant in Logan, West Virginia but, like a lot of fellows, uh...men that lose their wives why, he couldn't handle it very well and that's when he took off and left the children, well, later on, I guess he was able to get straightened out and he came back and he got married again and so, they had a step mother and, they did uh...work in the, they didn't work, her step mother worked in the restaurant with uh...my grandfather and later on, why, they decided that they would give that up and they decided they'd move to McDowell County, West Virginia. That was down in Gary and Gary Hollow so that's where my father met my mother, in Gary Hollow. As far as my grandfather, Shelton, which was my mother's father, uh...he was a farm boy that come from uh..Clinton County, Kentucky. I guess he was just uh...he was a farmer. He grew up as a farm boy and he worked on a farm where my grandmother's mother lived, well, they eloped and ran off and got married and, and he ended up in Ohio around Mary City, up in that area, where he worked in the coal mines if I'm not mistaken and from there out, I don't know too much about their life after that.

B: Okay. Did your mother's mother die in child birth or was she...

HD: Uh...no. Turn that off a minute will you. (tape cuts off). My grandmother Shelton had had one last child and her name was Elouise and I think, she didn't die in child birth but afterwards, she never did get well and she died as a result of some ailment. I don't know what it was.

B: Okay.

HD: It could've been any number of things at that time so uh...that's uh...uh...then that's when my, and then she died there after. Well, Elouise, child and mother died. That, after she had, my grandmother had died, that's when my grandfather uh..pawned the children out to their uh...his...his and..and her uh...relatives. Aunts, uh...his sisters and sister-in-laws. And they kept all the children except for my mother which I told you previously that...that lived in Logan with a lawyer and stayed with them until the family got back together. And that was a few years so, my grandfather and grandmother uh...lived in Logan, I don't know how many years, but like I told you, they did live up Whitman Creek, now I'll tell you a little something about it. Uh...my mother had, I tell you a little something about Logan and Whitman Creek, there is a story that my mother used to tell me about uh...Devil Anse Hatfield. You want this?

B: Yes, sir.

HD: Well, you hear all kinds of stories about Devil Anse and I know a lot of them are legend now and days but uh...but I take it to be the truth cause, at this time, what happened to her, she was a child. I give you a little background on why this happened with Devil Anse with my grandfather. My grandfather ran the restaurant and...and I guess a saloon in Logan for, prior to prohibition or maybe after prohibition to, I don't know, but anyway, uh...uh..he would come down to Catlitsburg [sic] and Ironton down here and buy whiskey and they pack it in suitcases and take it back to Logan County and back to Logan uh...in these suitcases, so I'm assuming that it was after prohibition uh...came in, well, he would buy this liquor and take it back, then he would have it in his home, I guess in Whitman Creek where he lived and uh...Devil Anse Hatfield would come down to pick it up. Well, Devil Anse, while he was there, he took a liking to my mother and my mother, when he come in and he took my mother up on his knee and bounced her on his knee with her, my mother who told the story would tell the story about how Devil Anse had such a penetrating eyes when he looked at you and then he had the big old beard that come down on his chest and she was scared to death of him. She was frightened of him but that was just another story and uh...in the history of Devil Anse Hatfield. But I never doubted uh...her, she truthfulized in the story cause I...she didn't have no reason to tell it otherwise but that's just a little gym about Devil Anse and another little gym about my grandfather. Well, later, my grandfather and my mother and her brother...brother and sisters moved to Gary, West Virginia and they lived there uh...for several years and they lived at what they call Fork, West Virginia. That's number four, Gary, and my grandfather worked in the mines there in Gary, well, during this time, I guess, that's when my father came to Gary, West Virginia to get a job and he got work there and he worked in the company story at Gary, in Fork, West Virginia, and that's where he met my mother. She was a young woman and she was quite young and, as you notice in the birthday's that he was approximately ten years than my mother, well, she's go to the store and she met him up in the store and when she was there to buy groceries and this and that so, in later years, I guess, they got to courtin' and finally they got married, well, as a consequent, they got married and later I was born so I was the only child that ever come to that marriage, well, that's about the uh...story about my mother and father as far as I know.

B: Okay. Did your father uh...serve in World War I?

HD: Yes, he was a...a veteran of World War I.

B: Did he ever talk about his experiences?

HD: Some, he uh...some, not much uh...occasionally, he uh...achieved a five, I think he achieved a rank of Sergeant and then he's in uh...I would have been quarter master, quarter of what corp it was and he was finally in charge of uh...he was a cook and a baker and in charge of mess halls and uh...whatever goes with them and then he was discharged out of the army, uh...after the armisists [sic] and that's when he came back to uh...Gary, West Virginia and went to work there and that's when he met my mother.

B: Okay. Did they ever tell you about the flu epidemic?

HD: No, they never did. My father talked about it, a little bit about it during the, while he was in the service, about how many were so sick then but, they might have talked about it. I just don't remember uh...after I grew up and down around Matewan, I remember hearin' people talk about the flu epidemics, particularly Sallie's mother. I've heard her tell stories about it, and other's too, around Matewan during the flu epidemic. That's about the extent of my knowledge. And as I got older, why, you'd read stories about it.

B: Un-hun.

HD: But...

B: Being with the uh...Quarter Master Corp, do you, do you think your father, he did go over seas probably?

HD: My father told me that uh...they had boarded ship and all the troops that he was with and boarded ship and they were on their way to Europe and they got about the middle of the Atlantic ocean and there was an outbreak of measles and so, as consequence, the whole ship was quarantined and they turned around and they turned around and took them back to uh...took them back to the United States I guess. They were out, out in the Atlantic somewhere, I don't know, maybe almost to Europe and they had to come back home.

B: Um.

HD: It's been, I still have his uniform.

B: Really.

HD: Yeah.

B: That's amazing.

HD: Yeah, well, there's a few around. It's not in too good a ship, shape, but uh...uh...I don't have his hat. Yeah, I do have his hat and his uniforms. I don't have the putees and things that goes with it to complete it. I have it in the trunk and I guess it's still there.

B: Un-hun. My goodness. How big were their families? Did your father have, how many brothers and sisters?

HD: Uh...my brother had, my father had seven brother's and one sister.

B: Okay.

HD: My mother had three sisters and one brother and one step sister.

B: Okay. So, your father, by the time you were born, he was in uh...Gary or...or Thorp, working as a butcher?

HD: Yeah. Meat cutter...butcher.

B: Okay. Did he ever tell you any um...stories about the mine wars because Logan was really the other last hold out..

HD: No, my father never told me anything about it and there's very few other people that ever told me anything about it. I don't really know how I picked up the information that I did, uh...I'd hear some talk now and then and really and truly I didn't know actually where they, the fighting and...and the uh...happened until this last few years. And it was right...right back where in, next to the railroad there in Matewan, where I played a lot when I was growin' up as a child. Played marbles and shot marbles in, right up and down the backside there and we didn't really realize that. Uh...I imagine the participants in that uh...had very little to say about it particularly to their children or anybody else because the fact that, the organization that they were fightin' with still had a lot of people that lived uh...in Southern West Virginia down around Bluefield in that area that, they might have been frightened that somebody might try to come in and do them harm. I imagine that they didn't really want everybody in the world to know who they were. I just assume this. Uh...and I think it's logical that that would be true. So, there wasn't too much information given out.

B: We...we were told that um...I think it, I don't know if she told her brother, Rufus Starr, it was someone that Sallie Chambers told that...that since there were more men around the day that that happened, that the, the participants that were put on trial agreed never to talk bout it so that...

HD: Possible.

B: It would never get any one else in trouble.

HD: That's possible.

B: That might have been there.

HD: That's possible. I have a, a friend that lives in Huntington and her father was involved in it. She just, she's just upset about the whole thing, about this Matewan, about the uh...Matewan massacre and with the movie and all this and that and she just doesn't, she just doesn't see that this is necessary that they publicized this uh...as far as I'm concerned, it's a history now.

B: Un-hun.

HD: So what difference does it make. Her father's dead and a lot of them are dead. Oh, there's some things happened that probably wouldn't want known but uh...you can't...you can't deny history and it's gonna be told somehow, someway...

B: Right.

HD: Uh...it'll be told. No matter if there's skeletons in the closet or what's there, It'll come out somehow.

B: Right. HD: We...we were just talking about the mines and things around Matewan uh...we remember when the mines were working at times uh...at the Stoney Mountain Mine which was, I guess, prominent in this Matewan massacre uh...later on, the mines was abandoned and people go broke trying to run it cause it wasn't very profitable what they were doing and during the depression years when we were growing up and we kids, would get up there and play around the mines and dig in the mines, we'd go back in those mine drifts, back in there, just kids explorin' and I was never too keen about it cause I could hear the mountains poppin' and crackin' and the timbers apoppin' and crackin' and I didn't care much for that particularly when you turned the light out, why you was, it was just black as a...as a, I don't know how you compare it to black as what. It was dark as the '80's and you couldn't see your finger in front of your face and I...I didn't like that at all. So, I never was too keen to work in the mines. I...I guess I would've if I'd of had to. I worked around the mines and at the mines. But we did play up there and uh...around those mines and up on the mountains and we had good times up there and were adventurists and do things like all children will, but, uh...we found out that it was a, as far as the children's concerned, you might think of it was being dangerous in one way but it couldn't begin to compare to the dangers that children face in our present day time and being around Matewan itself, that was a good place for children to grow up. Now a lot of people wouldn't think so, because they've heard these stories about the massacre and the Hatfield and McCoy Feud and they thought, my goodness, what a place to come from. But as far as children concerned. I think they had more fun, life was simpler for them at that day and time uh..they had more fun. They were well taken care of and I expect, everything and everybody around Matewan always had an eye on their children. Uh...so we always felt sort of, pretty safe about it. That was if you were older than that, you're goin' to school and everything grew up, why we began to learn a few things and uh..it had happened and uh...it might have been sort of frightening then, that you begin to learn. I guess when you're children, you don't know a lot of things so I guess, there's not much there to frighten you but, living in the town of Matewan uh...growing up and going to school and everything, I think it was a pretty pleasant experience for most of us that grew up uh...during the depression years, uh...prior to World War II. Uh...no matter how long we been away from it. For Sallie and I, Matewan is just a part of our lives and we can't...we can't get away from it. We don't go there very often and one reason we don't go, because the floods have destroyed so much that we held dear and it's sort of painful to have to go up and try to look at it. Now, I think the people who stayed there and continued their life had an awful lot of courage uh...to be able to stick around and fight at the battle and..and restore the town as much as they have.

B: Un-hun.

HD: But uh...Matewan, itself, although they had a mine mass...massacre there, from my standpoint is children, you'd have never thought that anything could happen. Uh...just calm as it could be. Oh, well they had their Saturday problems and a drinkin' and a revelin' and everything else at times like, any community does have and some things that happen, why, you would have thought, oh, they were horrible but I do know and found out later that the cities had problems even worse and bigger than we ever dreamed of having, so uh...as a child there you felt, I felt pretty good and I think the rest of us did to.

B: When um...you say um...you came to Matewan when you were about three or four?

HD: Yes uh...my father and mother moved to Matewan, no exactly to Matewan. My father had a brother that was workin' for Red Jacket Coal Company and uh...this brother had written my father and told him he could have a job there with the coal company if he wanted it and I guess the wages were pretty good and, I get to thinkin' about, I imagine the wages were a little better down around in those coal company stores and at that time, cause probably alot people wouldn't go there to work cause the problems that they'd been havin' down there from twenty on, so brother told him that he could get a job, so they, I guess decided to come down, tell you,they's another little thing about how things work for awhile down there. This brother and my father's (unintelligible), my dad said now, you let me know when you're gonna come so I can be down there to meet the train. Not just to meet the train to show you where to go but to be there and meet the train because if someone came into town and no one knew them, there were people that would want to know, meet the train and wants to know who you were and what you were doing coming into town. A bunch of business (unintelligible) so uh...I told you one thing, that they was still suspicious and afraid that somebody might be comin' in to try to do them harm because of that there mine war. But my father came on down and went to work at Red Jacket and that's how they got done here so, I estimate that I must have been oh, probably two years old, there abouts and we lived at Red Jacket at two different places. We lived at...at uh...what's called Mitchell Branch, uh...for awhile. My dad worked in the big store there and later we moved to Junior uh...and my father was the manager of that store for a while, well later on, this is the reason how my father got to Matewan, later on, the manager of the store, a man by the name of Mr. Bert Shannon he uh....uh...decided in some way, he had a disagreement with Red Jacket Coal Company and he either got fired or he quit and he decided he was going to Matewan, West Virginia and put him in a store so he ask my father if he'd go with him and my father decided that he would go with him and help him set up his store at matewan. Consequently, uh...we moved down there, so when we moved to matewan, uh..I'd say I was about five years old and finally, we got settled in and then that's when we moved next door to Thurman Broggs Chamber's and his family, in Matewan, West Virginia and we lived there next to them for, I don't know, two or three years, then, we moved and lived in other places in Matewan after that. But that's how we got to Matewan.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Who were some of your playmates when you were a young boy that you would go up in the hills and to the mines with?

HD: Well, one friend of mine. (tape cuts off)

HD: Well, one friend of mine, or he lives here in Ashland, Kentucky, is Haskill Chambers and he was in the hills a lot and I'd go with him sometimes and, there's other's that are in town there, that we played with. There's two colored boys. Uh...Dave Brown and Curtis Brown. They were playing with we children all the time, we boys (tape cuts off).

B: Okay. You say you played marbles uh...

HD: Oh, yeah.

B: Where did you play?

HD: Well, this is when, at one time, we lived up, I lived up in town with my mother and father and we lived in a, a building, an apartment building there on by E. B. Chambers and uh...all the other times, too, when we lived other places, but we lived in apartment building. Kids would get out back and right in the area where all the shooting place, took place during the...the uh...massacre and we'd get down there between the railroad and the buildings and play up and down the strip there and all through that section. We played marbles and run and if we had a bike or something, ride up and down through there and just played around in that part of the area, particularly here, because it's the, the surface was good for playing', shootin' marbles and there was different ones of us that played marbles in there. There so many children that lived there and uh...well, like I said, the...the...the black boys, Browns, then there was some Sheers uh...they were, his father was like a merchant clothing uh...there was a Keatley boy uh...I...I can't remember them all now.

B: Okay.

HD: But anyway, that's uh...they...that's the strange thing about it. We were playing right in the area where a lot of the people died. We never knew that for years. Now, we do remember that the bullet holes in the bank, I mean, or at that time was the, over where the post office was and there was bullet holes in that and they was right behind uh...Sallie's father's hardware store, where it took place and I do remember bullet holes over in the Methodist Church across the railroad. The bullet holes from that uh...mine war back in the...in the church. You could see them. So uh...later, most of the things we knew about the strike, as we, that were growin' up on my age bracket uh...we just had to get it by bits and pieces and people would kindly talk about it later years, talk about it uh...and bring these things out but, that's...that's the way it was with us when we were pretty young. We just didn't have our great knowledge. We knew these things happened but how they happened, who was into it and oh, there just wudn't much said about it.

B; Un-hun.

HD: We do know, I do know that is one over, there's a couple of men had I knew that they were in that mine war because, one of them was a friend of mine, uh...Haskell's father, uh...he was involved in it because he had...he was shot in the hip. In later years, he was crippled. He walked with a...a limp.

B; Un-hun.

HD: And then, there's another old, another fellow was in it was uh...he was a Chamber's, we called Uncle Reece Chambers and we knew that he had been in it because he was always watchful. He's watching all the time. He's very careful and uh...and he'd watch the trains comin' in. The passenger trains and who got off and who got on.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And at night, he was uh...always watchful cause I can remember seein' a house where he lived. Right across the railroad track in later years where he lived and he would be at the window in his house in the dark but you know he's be at the window watching. And he never, he was way up his years then and uh...he became a good friend of my fathers but no one even would ever bother him and you never see anyone havin' much of a conversation with him but, he become a friend of my father and he used to get my father to take him over in Logan County where Devil Anse Hatfield is buried in his old home place and, I think he admired Devil Anse Hatfield a great deal and he'd take him over on a Sunday's when the weather was right uh...whenever he wanted to go and then bring him back home.

B: Un-hun.

HD: Cause he was a young man during the feud.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And evidently, he and another one of his brother's were uh...friends of the Hatfields. They like the Hatfields, so, uh...knowing too many people involved in that in Matewan, you just didn't happen. As far as the young people is concerned. You'd hear a little story every now and then but you didn't, you just didn't put it together too well with other things you heard until they, later on when you got older.

B: We've heard reports that um..there were times when people would say they saw uh...say a rifle, the end of a rifle sticking out of a train waiting to try to get a shot of Reece...

HD: that's probably true.

B: Because of what he did.

HD: That's the reason, he at night, particularly watched and at day and, I imagine he was watchin' all the time to be certain that nobody was gonna, what you call, get the drop on him or something like that. I'm not, I don't think, Uncle Reece wasn't a coward. He was just a prudent caution cautious man and I imagine he could be a dangerous man and there's others that could be dangerous too uh...and we as children, why, we associated with them and we never did think of them as that way or anything like that and why would we, they were our father's, our friends father's and uh...brother's and people like that.

B: Did your father ever say who was the police chief or the mayor after Testerman and Hatfield?

HD: No, I don't, see, like I said, my father only, we only came there when I was, maybe, two or three years old so he wasn't acquainted in the city...town of Matewan at that time and what he learned, I guess about it. What he knew about it was later, was only what he learned from people in town after we'd moved there so, I never heard him talk about it, but once again, he never talked to me about it. What he did know, he didn't tell me.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And other people that we were pretty close to, they knew about it. Uh...Sallie might have told you about the old lady Morrell, that was put out in the tents over there and her family. Well, I was, I was a friend of that family. I spent a lot of time with her family and her boys. I never did hear her talk about it either. So they, they were sort of mum about this thing happening and I understand why.

B: What do you remember about Clare Overstreet because he, in...in the picture of the...the massacre participants, he just seems so meek and mild mannered compared to the rest of the...

HD: I never did know much about it either. About him. And they, all the girls are good friends of our family. My mother and they come to our house quite often and were good friends.

B: What kind of person was he? Do you remember him?

HD: Well, he uh...well he was always friendly with me uh...as far as when I was growin' and he just treated me as any other child around there and he was...he was always sort of kind to me, now, I never heard anything about him that uh...would have uh...been detrimental to his character or anything cause he was a...he was a well respected citizen in the town and he was married to the daughter of the local banker and...and he had brother's and sisters that lived there and well thought of family and uh..he just, always appeared to be a mild sort of a person but, uh...that...you can't tell who the, what a person by lookin' at them really and I never heard anything detrimental about him. Not really. And then he was the post master in town for years and years so he had a position. A responsibility, prior to that and being a postmaster, I think he was a merchant and was in business and had a store there in town.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And some of the other's uh...uh...uh...well, Reece Hatfield, I don't remember, I mean, Uncle Reece Chambers, that was a correction. Uncle Reece Chambers I don't remember, I know he built houses.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And uh...the only thing about him, we as children, what we knew and what we had heard, and we were told to leave him alone and not bother him which we did and nobody, he never bothered anybody else and he was always, he was just there. And there was some others that we knew, later, and, uh...you just didn't bring up the subject.

B: Right.

HD: That's the whole thing about it. And to tell you the truth I don't think I really wanted to know much about the subject.

B: Some of the other people just to ask you to see if you knew them or knew their children, uh...the Burgraff family. We interviewed...

HD: I know some of them Burgraff's. Yeah. Uh...I knew some of them. Not well uh...just bein' a kid there in town, uh...I knew Herb Burgraff and several of them. I went to school with some of them and uh...some of the rest of them that lived there in town. There's some of the Smith's live, went to school with them. Like I say, the Chambers'. I went to school with Haskell Chambers over he. He's a couple grades a head of me and his sister baby sit me when I was real small when we first came to Matewan. And uh...oh, I, you could probably call their names off and I can tell you whether I knew them or not.

B: Okay. Do you remember Ben Mounts?

HD: No. Not well. I did know some of the Mounts. Not well.

B: Okay. Let's see. Isaac Brewer.

HD: No, I wasn't acquainted with that family.

B: Okay. Okay. There the...there the ones that we tend to ask about um...you...you played with two of the Brown boys. What do you remember about John and Mary Brown?

HD: Well, all I remember is John owned the uh...had that dry cleaning plant across the railroad track and uh...and Mary and her sister Gaye were there and I can always remember them uh...Mary was big and heavy and I remember Gaye, she was a real, she was a real pretty woman, or black woman and...and I think Gaye was the mother of Dave and Curtis if I'm not mistaken and I do know that John, John uh...Brown, he...he was real light colored as far as his color was concerned and he was always very friendly. In later years, uh....I got to thinkin' maybe he's a little patronizing sometimes and a black family and black put in a position like he was with the city or town with not many blacks in it, uh...he, and then with the people that are in trol...control of the city uh...he has to use all his wiles and everything to survive.

B: Un-hun.

HD: But he was always courteous and as far as the people in Matewan's concerned, the ones that were, lived there most of their lives, I imagine John Brown would have done anything to come to their defense if they needed him. He was a local bootlegger. He...he..he uh...he sold liquor and many a citizen traveled to his, his business over there to get a drink. That was common knowledge. But the two boys we played with, well, we didn't really know they were black. We didn't look for that. And they were with us in about everything we did and while we were still kids, and young...young children and we had good times together with them and they with us, too.

B: Do you remember um...from your childhood, Aunt Carrie because I interviewed Venchie Morrell and he said she used to like to match quarters...

HD: Oh, yeah.

B: With the kids. Do you remember her?

HD: Oh, yeah. We uh...oh yes, I, Carrie, she was a, well, she was a bootlegger as you probably already know. You've been told. I'm not sayin' so much she was a bootlegger, she would sell whiskey and everybody knew it in town and everybody wanted a drink, well, they went to the Carrie's to get a drink why, and, later years when the liquor store wudn't open, they couldn't get anything and even when they could get it, they go, seem to go to Aunt Carrie's uh...they meet a lot of other people come in to but anyway uh...she's been described to you by other people what she looked like and so on and so on, well, I won't go into that. She was crippled, but uh...she would. She's go down there and, and, we'd match quarters with her. And we children used to, she'd buy, we'd go out and collect liquor bottles and she would buy them from us. Well, she'd use them you know, and uh...uh...she lived in a little end at the end of the, in a house at the end of the street there and, another thing Carrie did, she cooked for half of Matewan, I think. When it come time to make, uh...fixed turkeys and hams and everything else uh...she did a lot of that and she was well liked by a lot of people and her husband, you'd see her husband around uh...you didn't hear too much out of him. Carrie's the one that did a most of the talkin' and she more or less run the business you know.

B: What was his name, no one?

HD: John Henry.

B: John Henry.

HD: John Henry Burrell was their name. Did you know that? Did you have any information on that?

B: No, we'd never heard his name.

HD: John Henry Burrell.

B: Okay.

HD: And her name was Carrie.

B: Okay.

HD: And, oh, she was like an old hen. She'd get all excited and oh, she'd just start talkin' and talkin' and talkin' and talkin' and do this and do that and she was always afraid that somethings gonna happen, and as far as we children are concerned, when we were small children, smaller children than...than in your teens uh...she didn't want us in the house and she wouldn't let us in the house either. It had to be a...a, some occasion where we were pickin' up food or something that she had cooked for our families or something like that. And even when we, when we were pickin' up liquor bottles and whiskey bottles, uh...she would never let us in. She'd meet us outside and she'd buy them from us. But uh...she was crippled and she just shuffled around like an, well, I don't know, like a little gnome. You know, she was bent over and crippled. She's like a little gnome. She'd just shuffle around and fuss...fuss...fuss.

B: Un-hun.

HD: What are you doin' here and all this stuff goin' on all the time.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And uh...like I said. She was well liked by a lot people in that town. Uh...a tragic thing happened to her husband. I don't know what it was about and I heard later that there was a constable in town and, at, in town at the time and I don't know why, he shot him and killed him. Killed her husband. But there was families, well, a very prominent family one time uh...they left here with a lot of crystal and stuff and gave it to her and I don't know what all she had that people had given her. That were residents of Matewan.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And, you probably have heard the story about her during the flood? When she wouldn't...one flood there, in the flood of '57, it was up around her house, of course, she lived right near the river bank.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And uh...she, she was in her house and she wouldn't come out of it and she went upstairs and she never would come out of it until it'd all gone down, but in the flood of '77, she had to come out of it because it warshed the house away like all the rest of them. But, she'd now, you would have called her a local character I think.

B: Definitely.

HD: yeah. Now those are the, there was other black families in town. Not many. There were very few right in town.

B: Un-hun.

HD: Carrie. John Brown. A Jackson family. Well, up the river a little piece, there was a Moore family. There was, there's not, there wasn't very many black families around and in Matewan.

B: There was a...a really apparently old um...black man that lived in town in the '20's that worked for John Brown and everybody called him Dad Brown. Do you remember somebody name that?

HD: I don't remember. I don't remember him.

B: He may have died by the time...

HD: He uh...he...I...I might have known and then there was, there was a little black man used to come in town. He was all crippled up and he'd come into town and...and when he walked, he was almost on the ground because his legs were all crippled.

B: un-hun.

HD: And I remember one thing that was prominent about him. He always had a coat on and had a hat on and a cane. And he wore a copper bracelets and pieces of copper wire around his arm wrist. You ever heard about his old man?

B: No.

HD: Turn this off a minute.

B: okay. (tape cuts off)

HD: Uh...I can't remember this uh...colored man's name, but he was all crippled up with arthritis and I guess maybe it had been hurtin'. He wore these little circles of copper around his arms and on his ankles and that was supposed to have been something that would help cure arthritis, help arthritis. I...I'm sorry I don't remember his name but he was another part of the...the picture. and uh...they used to tease him all the time and uh...I guess the younger ones would. Said he had a tail and he'd get very angry when you told him that.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And he tried to hit people with canes and I don't blame him. I would have hurt him too, if somebody told me something like that. So as far as blacks concerned. We...we wanted, the older one probably had a lot of prejudices, but we as young people didn't have too much prejudism. Uh...later, you learn that stuff as your growing. You know, get older and your supposed to, I can't, I tell you why, I say that, we used to go to that little movie in Matewan. They had an upstairs section and I never could figure out why they had it up there until years later, I mean, when I was a kid growin' up and later on, I understood. And that was the section where the blacks went. Well, we used to sl...sneak up there and go upstairs and smoke and smoke in there, but I didn't know, there was black people up there sometimes but I didn't realize what that was all about.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And uh...uh...so, you can see, you can see, young people don't have as much prejudices as older people do.

B: What do you remember about Frank Allara? Because he started out with the theater.

HD: Well, Frank Allara, the stories I heard about him, he and his family, well, his mother and father and Frank, Frank lived in the, worked in the mines and he was a foreman in the mines at one time and I guess his father and them, what his father had to do with the mining industry, I don't know. And then, Frank came to Matewan and Frank Allara was a very enterprising, gung ho, dynamic person. Uh...he had a lot of energy. He worked real hard. And he took those theaters and he took Matewan theater and he took it at a time, I guess, when theaters was startin' to make a come back and uh...he made a success out of it and owned several theaters uh...Matewan and other places and uh...later on, he uh....got into the coal and lumber business with uh...Ellis, that you've heard about up there and evidently done real well and become...later becoming executive vice president of the bank of Matewan and he done real well. His uh...he had a large family himself and I guess he was just an upstanding, outstanding citizen in that town. And involved in commerce and church work and everything else.

B: Speaking of church, were your parents church going people?

HD: Uh...more, my mother and I were more so than my father. Uh...my father, he worked all the time. I guess he worked from about five o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock every night including Saturdays and I don't know whether he felt that...that Sunday was a day he needed to rest but my mother and I and particularly me because she saw to it that I did go to Sunday school and church and uh..she was a great church goer too. (tape cuts off)

B: What church did you and your mother attend?

HD: Matewan Methodist.

B: This may have been before your time, but, we've heard stories that the uh...Klu Klux Klan used to come in and...and put contributions in the...in the collection plate. Do you remember about that?

HD: Well, they may have. I...I don't know. I heard it. I had heard that maybe the Klu Klux Klan was in Matewan at one time. I hear that. That was years ago. But who might have been in the Klu Klux Klan or whether they were there, or what went on. I have no idea. They kept it a pretty good secret.

B: Well, it doesn't sound like it was the....the same organization that it was in other areas.

HD: I don't think it was. If it was there, I don't think anybody ever discussed it very much.

B: They sounded much more morality minded...

HD: Yeah. I think that's...

B: racially.

HD: the whole thing behind it.

B: Okay. Okay. What's stands out in your mind about going to school in Matewan as a young person or as a child?

HD: Well, one thing about Matewan, the school at Matewan, I...I guess I knew most of the teachers. My family knew most of the teachers, just like Sallie. Uh...and the teachers in Matewan, particularly, among the children that grew up there or growing up, I don't know, I guess, in a way, those teachers thought that their children, that they were teachin' were, were more of a family of theres than they were students. Uh...I think Sallie verified that fact, that I think they were always lookin' out for us. They were tryin' to teach us and I think, most of those teachers were dedicated uh...they were concerned about us. Not only as Matewan, the teachers and the other kids that come in there and went to school uh...well, I guess it was like all school. There was probably rivalries among the teachers i school and so on and so forth but uh...on the whole, I think the teachers of Matewan High School at that time, and probably had a great deal of concern for their students and, there's a lot of us that lived in close where they lived. They knew our families. We knew their families and, in a way, I feel that was a lot of pressure on those teachers that we knew so well because, if we were going to school now, our parents might have thought, now, you...your expecting to see that they learn and learn and get an education.

B: Right.

HD: But uh...on the whole, I think that was a good place to go to school. I enjoyed it. Now as far as I was concerned I, I didn't have, I had friends. I guess I, I was more by myself than a lot of kids were. Mauve I was, has to do because I was just the only child in the family and I don't think I was that spoiled because, I've never said, heard anybody say that I was spoiled. And uh...what do they call them? Loaners. I don't know whether I was a loaner. Talkin' about, I used to go up in the woods and I'd go a lot by myself. I know other kids did it too, but uh...and Sallie just says, why I don't understand that, I don't see you bein' by yourself. You might have been frightened. I said, I'm not frightened and I wasn't interested in the girls when I was goin' to school too much. I had other things to do. Lay, fish on the river, something or other, but uh...it was a good place to go to school. And I think in...in the rural West Virginia and Southern West Virginia, all the places uh...every, all the activities mostly centered around the school anyway.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And the church. (outside voice - are you recording this?)

B: (Yes, mam) When did you become interested in girls?

HD: I don't remember. (laughing) I've known one girl for sixty some years, correction, sixty-five years.

B: Was she your only sweetheart?

HD: Um...yes. I guess so.

B: Okay.

HD: Oh, I've had dates. This is not a confession but I've had dates. She's sittin' around listenin', I don't want to tell her everything.

B: Okay. (tape cuts off)

B: Okay. Um...This is tape two of Harold Dickens interview um...Mr. Dickens, when you went fishing on the river, did you fish off the bank?

HD: Yes, mostly. Un-hun.

B: What kind of fish were there to catch?

HD: Oh, there was catfish and, occasionally, a bass. Bluegills, they don't call them, they call them Bluegills now, used to, we called the Sundads and uh...uh...Suckers, they called them Suckers then or Redhorse or which is a bottom pitting animal.

B: Un-hun.

HD: I guess that's about it. I can't remember any perch or anything like that.

B: Un-hun.

HD: But uh...Tug River used to be, it..it pretty productive for fish. I...I've never caught any of the giant, big ones but there's some tremendous catfish come out of that river.

B: Un-hun. Okay. Um...when you left high school, uh...you graduated in 1939?

HD: yes.

B: Is that correct? What did you do until the war broke out?

HD: Well, my father and mother and I moved to a place called War, West Virginia. That's in McDowell County. I guess this is southern most town in West Virginia. That's right. Not far from Virginia border. About thirty miles and we go into that town. My father went there a lookin' for a job. For a better job and he went to work there and for the first year or two, uh...I have private taxi. Well, my father's car was put on as a taxi under a license held by aunt, her husband had owned a taxi company and then subsequently had died so we moved up there and he put the car on as a taxi. Well, I drove that for awhile. and up until about the summer of '41, and then I went to work ah...at the mines known as Carter Coal Company, at Coretta, West Virginia and my job, I worked there on a what they call the preparation plant today. It was the tipple then, at that time and, later on, in the fall, well, that's when I joined the Army Air Corp and that was in the fall of '41.

B: So, you actually joined before we were brought into the war? Before...

HD: Yes. I was in, I joined, well, I joined before even the draft was effective.

B: Okay.

HD: I wanted to get in there. I had a desire to try to learn to fly and uh...that was the only way I could go because I had no college education and...and couldn't afford a college education so, that's the only way I knew, route I knew to take so I joined the services and went on into the Army Air Corp then.

B: Would you tell me some about your training and then where you went when the war was...

HD: Well, well, I was inducted at Fort Thomas, Kentucky like hundreds of thousands of others and from uh...Fort Thomas, Kentucky, I went to Ellington Field, Texas. That's near Houston, Texas. That was for my basic training. And from basic training, after I finished that down at Ellington Field, I was shipped to...to Mather Field, California which is in Sacramento, California. Well, there, I was there for I forget, hum...I was there until May of '42. And I worked, while there I worked on the line and helping clean and keep the aircraft in con...flying condition and at that time, it was a training school for uh...flag personnel. Incidentally, while I was there, I remember, uh...you see them on movies every now and then, that's when Jimmy Stewart was taking his flying training. He become a flying officer and I can remember seeing him coming out. That's the only personality, Hollywood personality I was close to. To see him come out and he was really as tall and lanky and a gangly as he looked in his and he was just like that. He was thin and tall and he'd just like, well, I don't want to be derogatory but he was like a turkey, big tall and hanging out there, but uh....a real nice gentleman though. Now, from there, that's when and I applied for flight training. Pilot training and uh...I was finally accepted in a class from there. I went to Santa Ana, California. Outside of Los Angeles for a free flight and from there I was sent to a place called Mercette, no correction, I was sent to a place called Santa Maria, California. That's where I had my first phase at flight training. From Santa Maria, California, I went to Merced Army Air Force Base, at Merced, California, which was in the valley.

B: Could you spell that for me?

HD: M, E, R, C, E, D.

B: Okay.

HD: And, from Merced, California, I was sent to the third phase of my flight training to Roswell Air force Base, in Roswell, New Mexico.

B: Okay.

HD: Well, there's where I finished up my flight training in Roswell. And Roswell, New Mexico, I'm a leavin', I'm a leavin' out two or three places, transitions and this and that uh...from Roswell, I went through trans...two or three transitions in just a few days and then, I was uh...placed with a crew that picked up uh... picked up what we called uh...YB 40's at El Paso, Texas and an LV-YV 40 was a heavily fortified B-17 bomber.

B: Okay.

HD: And we stayed in those and flew all to, all the way down to uh...uh...I..Orlando, Florida. I want a digraphs there a little uh...when I got with this crew. We flew, no prior to this crew, uh...I was in transition training at a place called Piot, Texas and it was a, a B-17 flight training school and it was right down in the corner of New Mexico and Texas area and that's when I went and picked...later after I picked up the YB-40's and went with that crew. We went to Florida and from Florida, flew all the way North uh...through to Newfoundland. From Newfoundland to Greenland and Greenland to Iceland and hopped over to Scotland on down into England and I landed down in South-East England where all of our are the flyer bases where and attached us to a...to a group down there and started flying mission over Germany from that group.

B: What was the name of the place where you were stationed in England? Do you remember?

HD: well, there was a couple of them. Uh...one base I was at England, was near a little village called Aulkenberry.

B: Okay.

HD: And later, our crew...group moved to another station called Padding uh...and I forget what county or whatever it was. Little village near there called Paddington and then we fly, we're flying our bomber mission out over France and Germany.

B: Okay. Mrs. Dickens had mentioned on Friday that um...a place called Swanford. Did I understand...

HD: Yeah. That uh...Swafford.

B: OH, Swafford, Okay.

HD: Swafford was a place in Germany where they manufactured ball bearing for use in there, all there, everything they use ball bearing which would be tanks, planes, and cars and anything else and they're deemed critical to the German war effort and uh...on August, I think it was August 17, my group as well as other groups in England uh...flew to Swafford to bomb it. Try to put it out of commission. Well, it was a, pretty rough trip in and out even on that mission. Well, we got back later, and they've got pictures that they hadn't done the job they was supposed to and why, uh...to destroy the target so uh...on October the fourteenth, they planned another one. In the meantime, there was other missions in between uh...that...that mission and this one. October the fourteenth, they planned another mission and sent it in uh...this Swafford, once again, well, on the way, there was such a terrific air battle that uh...the Germans shot down many of our planes and my plane was one of them they shot down. So I hit the ground and in, down near, between Frankfort and Munich in that area near the mountains somewhere. And finally, I was captured and taken back and interrogated in a camp where they did, Germans did interrogations for ten days or two weeks. Later I was shipped to a prison camp uh...south east of Berlin about sixty kilometers and, (unintelligible) three and I was there for up until January the, about January the twenty-seventh of '45 and then the Germans marched us out with thousands and thousands of prisoners from other camps across Germany and Poland and everywhere else towards southern Germany and then in southern Germany, we were in camp down there and, but, in different groups of prisoners, for instance, every nationality you could think of had been moved by the Germans down in that area and it was in the area where the dock out prison. Dock our concentration camp and we were just north of munich just a few miles. About twenty, oh, fifteen or twenty miles, so we were there up until uh...April of, when uh...'45 then we were liberated by a Patton's, part of Patton's army that come in there and liberated uh...

B: Un-hun.

HD: From there, we uh...was flown and transported out to a camp on the the(unintelligible) of France. We was there about a month and then they shipped us out home.

B: Okay. When you were captured and interrogated, did, were you interrogated in English? Could you understand...

HD: Oh, yes, uh...oh, they had interrogators and uh...that spoke perfect English. Some of them sometimes would have ox for accents and occasionally on, when we're bein' transported up toward uh...uh...Berlin, or that camp near Berlin, on a train, they had fellows that lived in Chicago and different places and different cities and they spoke English just like we did. Probably some of them spoke better English than we did especially the ones that were officers or had gone to school in Oxford and lived in England, at times. Their English was impeccable.

B: Um...were you ever prepared for the thought of being captured. I mean, at that time, did they put men through training saying all you give is your rank name and serial number?

HD: no, that was the uh...prescribed information that you were given and that's what most of us gave them and the Germans had uh...there uh...the Germans, at that time, over there, they pretty well knew what units that you were in. They uh...had a lot of information. They could tell...they could tell you just about uh...what station you were on and so forth and...and they had a lot of information there. Their uh...espionage is pretty good. Pretty good shape. As far as training is concerned, about uh...we never had any instructions actually to what life would be in a prison camp and uh...they never, well they always left a little, left an impression as if to say well, if you were shot down, you surrendered, that's not the best thing in the world to do, you know, they left an impression, where by you thought well, uh...maybe you just shouldn't have done that. But uh...I talked to a lot of men and that same, what they were trying to do is not trying to keep you from quitting. Just leave that little dot and you might, if you quit, you might not be the best soldier in the world or something like that. That was in, that was put into your mind and the, I think it was to keep you going. Keep you fightin'. Just keep on tryin' as hard as you can rather that send you for a (unintelligible) or anything like that and that, I always thought about, I think it was in the Korean War when they started uh...gettin' tortured and everything and finally the guys confessed and this and that uh...really and truly uh...being a prisoner of war or whether it be World War II or Korean or Vietnam up until Vietnam, marryin' soldiers weren't conditioned to be a PO...PO...POW. They weren't, didn't know how to hand...they weren't taught how to handle this thing and particularly those in Korea and Vietnam where they met all this torture. They hadn't been taught that they were gonna be tortured like that so I guess there training methods today incorporates something to tell them how to handle this thing uh...but then, a POW then, you didn't know anything. When it was gonna take place.

B: So, you weren't tortured then?

HD: No, I wasn't tortured. Oh, they put the pressure on you trying to get information out of you. Unless...unless they...they knew if you had a lot of rank, that you might have information that they would like to have. With their sources of information that they already have, uh...and if you were a certain rank, well, they pretty well judged whether you would have, information would be useful to them and in most instances, now, there were camps where men were put in camps that uh...I guess they got, they got mistreated. They were mistreated and uh...they were probably beat up, a lot of them were but there was camps that were designed especially for, what you might call incorrigible. You know, somebody that's trying to escape all the time or do this and that, like you say, I hear this'll be, say this'll be a maximum security prison out here, they would have, maximum, maximum security prison camps, too. POW camps and uh...they'd send the people that they had problems with to those camps. But in our camps, those things happened though during a war. Men get shot. Men escapin' and gettin' executed and those things did happen, but on the general, as a whole, our camps were administrated by Airforce, German airforce personnel and I think they tried to make it an elete [sic] system of camps which later on, that broke down because as the war got worse, they couldn't continue that and uh...so, there were other camps that were worse and I guess they were some maybe better. B: Um...how many, do you know, of...of your crew survived being shot down? Do you know?

HD: Well, the crew I was with when I shot down, there was some of them, they were new. We took. There was some of them that were new men but uh...we'd gone to a part new and part old crew. Some of the men with us, on our old crew. Well, the pilot I was flying with, his dad, uh...one guy I was flying with, he'd been shot up though and he wudn't with us when we went this time. I saw him later in Chicago. I don't know whether he's dead now or not. I don't know of anybody that I know right now that was my crew that would be still alive.

B: Un-hun.

HD: The navigator we had, I written him. A few years back I wrote him and finally I get a card from him, but in later years, I never hear from him so that just stopped that and the last two people that was on my crew, I called them and I talked to their wives and I didn't know that any were dead and they had died. Both of them was in a period of a year. One of them was a tail gunner and one was a pilot and they both had died. So the rest of the crew. I don't know if there is any of them still livin' or not.

B: Un-hun.

HD: I never did hear anything from them. (outside voice - are you people gettin' hungry?) (tape cuts off)

B: Before we stopped for lunch, we were talking about your experience in uh...once you had been takin' prisoner and I was wondering, when they, when you were in the camp, did you get any new about the war?

HD: Only uh...the Germans gave us news uh...they let the German Newspaper in which was interpreted by some people in the camp that could read and write German and was fluent in it and uh...they sent a little newspaper they tacked up on the board. Has their view of the war. But in the British camp and American camp, it seems like they uh...acquired uh...even the British had been, see, the British had been in prison camps there since '39 and '40 because, that's when they started their battles, you know, with the Germans and between Americans and British, there was a Clanestein radio and that must have been circulated or taken apart in pieces and this that and uh...they would get an evening report of the news. BBC. And then, they would have runners that would come around to each barracks and pick some particular person in the barracks that could remember a lot and brief him on all the news, or the pertinent news anyway about the war. What was goin' on and then he'd go from room to room or he'd call the room, what they call room leaders in and have a meeting and pass the news on like that. Lots of times, he'd go up room to room in the barracks. He's pass out the news according to the allies, well, lots of times, in the later part of the war when things got going rough for the Germans, they would give out their news and they'd say well, we're, we withdrew uh...to strategic...to strategic uh...positions. We withdrew. Well, we might be two or three days ahead of their news when the news we're gettin' is reports we get.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And actually when they were moving us, we got down into southern Germany, people must have carried that radio with them because, they got down there, we'd get news reports before the Germans would give us anything. So the Germans never gave us news that was uh...in favor of the allies.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And when they gave us any news about themselves, it was an always, I withdraw to a previously prepared strategic point. In other words, never sayin' retreat. It was strategic withdraw, so we were ahead of them in news but if they'd ever caught that, people that had those radio, and they continually searched for it because they knew that the news was coming in and they continually or continuously, whichever word you use, searching and looking for uh...that and escape materials and tunnels that were being dug in these prison camps all the time trying to escape. I want to tell you this story about that part of it and then I guess were gonna wrap it up and you, there's book out and then also there was a movie called "The Great Escape".

B: Un-hun.

HD: Well, that actually happened. That was...that movie and the book was based on fact. A camp, the British camp next to us is an amens camp. Uh...I forget what dates it was and what year. It was '44 I think it was and what, it was in uh...sort of in the fall, I think, well, the British had a camp there that and they had been digging and digging and tunneling and tunneling and Germans had finally...finally found one of the tunnels and they collapsed it and did all they needed to do to crush it and sort of cave in. First I'll give you an idea about the tunnels. The tunnels are dug in Sandy soil and it was very difficult to dig one of them and they used to show up the inside like, it was, form of mining. To show up the inside, they used bed boards and any other boards they get so, in our beds, we h...we'd give them all our bed boards we could give them except a few to hold the beds up, well, they used them then to shore the thing up and everything and the sides and all and then they dug in there and they used a milk, these big tin cans of milk where the milk would come in it and other cans and then water, suture them together from the suture that they salvaged off of these cans, you know, that they seal them when they uh...take the stuff and put the stuff in it. So that used to pump air into the tunnels. And then they'd steal wire, electrical wire and stuff and hook it into the German uh...uh...wire in the barracks and get that electricity for puttin' lights in there. Prior to that uh...they might use homemade candles or somethin' like this in case they didn't have electricity to dig. Well, finally, they completed this tunnel. Well, they, that night, they escaped and they was about eighty of them had escaped and got out, well, all we knew it when they started blowin' sirens and this and that and everything else. Well, they found several of them in and around camp where they're in the woods trying to get away and they captured those and took them back to what they call the cooler and uh...so there was several of them got out into Germany and they went on for days and days and days, so finally they announced in camp that they were bringing back, there was forty-two of them, if I'm not mistaken, that was the number that the Germans had the, had recaptured or captured them and that they tried to escape again after capture, well, we knew that the SS troops, which is Hitler's elite uh...troops and the Gustopo [sic], that was his, you know, his secret...secret organization, wudn't so secret uh...they had shot them and killed them. Well, actually, they murdered them. That's what they done so they brought them back and they had a ceremony out there and buried them and everything else, well, after that's when Hitler declared escaping would no longer be a game and if you escaped that uh...you would be shot and then executed. Well, actually, that didn't stop the Americans. Because, they kept on trying to do it.

B: Un-hun.

HD: Dig out if they could.

B: Un-hun.

HD: But it was quite an operation in the camp, the escape activities were because, they were makin' uniforms, passports, all kinds of papers uh...clothing, civilian clothing, all these activities. Manufacturing uh...processes were goin' on within the camp. They get a lot of their materials and stuff. They bribe the guards with uh...chocolate and cigarettes and everything like that. They get the material they need to do that. Well, out of several thousand prisoners, you always gonna find that theres artisans and experts at this and experts at that and they can produce, they produce stuff that, and just, well, it just looked like German manufactured somewhere in a German uh...facility. But that was the great escape. Now, there was some other things happened around camps uh...some of the roll calls and having us out on the fields for hours and hours and hours and uh...confrontation confrontations with our officers and uh...and uh...we men with the Germans trying to count us and uh...we uh...make it hard for them to count and this and that.

B: How did you do that?

HD: And then they'd bring...Huh?

B: How did you do that?

HD: Well, we'd get out on the drill fields and whatever it was and everyday, we had two roll calls and they called it an apealle and I think that was the French word for roll call or something, I'm not sure, one in the morning one in the evening. We went out in the morning and they'd put you in your room you were in and you'd have to line up according to your...(tape cuts off)

HD: The room you're in and your supposed to stay in line, like a military dress, formation. Well, when the co-captain (tape cuts off).

B: We were talking about the role calling and you said...

HD: Yeah, and you move back and forth so he couldn't get an accurate count that way and this went on and uh...for I don't know how many times and, it was cold, too, it's been snowin'. It's cold out there, so uh...this old German captain, you know, he was angry. Couldn't get that role call so he dismissed us. We went back to barracks. I bet you we weren't back there for fifteen minutes. Called out again. Went up there. Well, the Germans had moved in uh...troops with their automatic weapons, machine guns in the towers and the German captain told our CO, said, I'll bet you'll get a count this time, otherwise ,you're gonna be shot, well, we saw that they meant business so our colonel, he uh...gave the word out that uh...you, to let him count you so when he went down through there this time, he got the count, well another thing that infuriate the old captain, during the time he was trying to count while the guys were doing this and that and one guy stuck a cigarette in his mouth and boy, the old colonel just slapped it right out of his mouth. We knew that he was angry when he'd do something like that, so, uh...but there was other times though they kept us out for hours and hours and hours. Standing out in the snow and, then, uh...punishing us for something that they thought we did and then, at times, they'd cut the water off in the camp, trying to make us do certain things or they withhold a food parcels that come into the camp uh...if we wouldn't do certain things and...and then there was an order that the men were suppose to e doing an air raid. There's no military targets around where we were, but during an air raid, British, American planes comin' over and mostly British at that time. Now, we were to get in the barracks, well, we all did but a time or two, them guys was standin' in the door so they shot a couple, killed a couple of them for that and uh...there was all kinds, just things like that goin' on all the time, but uh...uh...that probably was, as far as camps would go, that was where we were standing at that time. That was something uh...it was probably considered a palestine compared to what we got into later on in Germany, in Southern Germany and uh...there was not comparison between the camps there cause ours was, well, all of them were, we people were in, just like we were in the military unit at home. We had our officers in charge and so on and so forth in command so that's about the way it was run. So that's about it.

B: What did your barracks, what did the barracks look like?

HD: Well, just long buildings and they had the, let's see, I expect that each building had, they were just long, I'm trying to think of a building that I could tell you or compare it to her. They were just long buildings built and they had shudders for windows, on the windows, they had windows and then they ha shudders on those. Had door at each end and the grass grew up above the ground so high and uh...then, and each room, there would be a little stove that used, that had a very small chamber for the fuel. But it didn't put out very little heat. I guess they were built to conserve fuel rather than to really burn fuel and uh...then it had a room, well, it finally reached a point where there was twelve men to a room and they were usin' three decker bunks, so it ended up twelve men to the room and I guess there was, there must have been, four, eight, just about ten, about ten rooms to the building. I would say, so uh...if there were twelve men in a room, that would have been about ninety-six, close to a hundred, hundred men per barracks and like I said, it was above the ground uh...high enough that a man could crawl underneath and they wanted them that way so they could always crawl under and see if there's anything goin' on in the escape activities any tunnels bein' dug or anybody hidin' out under the buildings. They're just dark and drab and he had windows that open and closed not up and down but they swung out and then out on that, they had big wooden shudders that you could pull to to close the windows off too, because, at night time, you didn't let any light out. You kept the shudders closed at all times. And by doing that and particularly in the summer or any other time, and it was always several of us that'd smoke and if we'd smoked in there, it got pretty thick and heavy, but after lights out, if you wanted to, you could open the shudders. And the Germans always had dogs in the camp. They turned dogs loose in the camp or they'd have one with them. And we used to bate and tease the dogs. We'd be makin' a lot of noise and have the shudders open and that gets the dogs all stirred up and the dogs would run gonna leap in through the, leaping in through...through to the room and about the time he'd get, he'd leap you know, why, somebody'd jerk the shudders to and them dogs would hit the shudders, co-wham, did I ever tell you that? Co-wham, it hit them shudders. (outside voice - well, you told the Russians ate one). Well, those dogs would hit those shudders and them German guards, they'd get so mad, they just about, they'd cuss. You could hear them cussin' out there and uh...'til finally they raised so much devil about it, they quit that. (outside voice - tell her about the fleas. Oh, that was down in Southern Germany and uh...that was after we got down there (outside voice - as much as they could.) Yeah. (outside voice -they'd put the dogs in there and there was fleas on them.) Well, them dogs, you know, any place, you don't have to dogs to carry the fleas, they come in anywhere. Lice, fleas, bed bugs.

B: Okay. Well, um...my next question would be, how was the health care in the camp? How much did your health suffer from being...

HD: Well, some of us lost a lot of weight. Some, in our camp, there was a good deal of weight loss, not as much as compared to some camps. Uh...I expect I lost, from the time I went in, I weighed about a hundred and seventy-five pounds, I guess. A hundred and eighty-five. When I was captured and I'd say I, overall, I was there nineteen months and I probably lost oh, about thirty-five pounds or more. Seem to me, thirty-five, forty, something like that.

B: Un-hun.

HD: The German raisons were rather slim. About all they ever have us was potatoes and barley or some barley soup or sometimes they'd bring in some or, huh...start to use the word (unintelligible) that was the GErman word for artificial or imitation. Jelly and oleo, the oleo was made out of coal or, I don't know how it was produced but it was made out of vegetable matter. and uh...no coffee or anything like that. They didn't provide anything like that. Maybe once ever three or four months they'd bring in uh...some meat and ground beef. Not ground beef uh...I think it was ground horse meat what it was and uh...that's about the extent there so, we got REd Cross food parcels that was furnished by the Americans, Canadians, and British. We got those so that supplemented us while we were up there. We was supplemented pretty well and the german's used those um...like I told you, they cut off the food parcels sometime and just and whip us in line but uh...we'd supplement. We'd take, trade around with the British on some items that they uh...didn't carry in their AMerican food parcels and we'd get on that they'd something and we'd have in our parcels we'd get and swap back and forth. They didn't care too much for the coffee. We;d take the coffee and give them the tea we'd get and other items uh...back and forth uh...so, we didn't to too bad. There's enough, I guess you'd have a, I'd say eight or nine hundred calories a day. THat's just about what you had enough to give you that...that much. EIght or nine hundred calories a day.

B: Okay. Until you got, we got down to Southern Germany where things are really, real critical as the war was comin' to an end and uh...not wudn't, very often we got a cross, cross well, food parcels because, they mostly been comin' out of Switzerland and uh...other areas that were neutral and there was no transportation for them and they, things got pretty honoree, pretty desperate and at times, at times up in , near Berlin where we had that camp and those camps, we got a little slim every now and them. Transportation got mixed up or that. So uh...uh...it wasn't the best diet in the world to have. AT some camps I guess they's, didn't fare as well as we did.

B: Did you all know um...some people say at the time, that the rest of the world really didn't know what was going on in the concentration camps? Did you all hear anything about?

HD: We didn't hear too much. ONce in a while we could se Russians prisoners, Russians out workin' around out camp and also, we'd see Jews because they had the big star on their back an yellow star and had the star on their back and star on their front of the clothing they were wearing and we knew they were Jews and uh... a what was surprising, they were still alive. I guess those were ones that were still healthy enough that they were workin' them and uh...we were aware that the uh...that the concentration camps were there because they're, every now and then there would be a prisoner come into camp or some of them like uh...might have been in uh...one of the camps like uh...try to think of the name of the camp right near us uh...Dockout [sic], was down there, Munich was about oh, I'd say, twenty..twenty miles north of us. Something like that and guys down there told you about it cause some of them...some of the prisoners that uh...list of personnel had been in those camps. They'd been stuck in some of them and they knew how it was but early on, uh...early on, I don't think the people in this country and the nine, thirty-nine or forty really realized what was going on and the, finally the message was brought out, I think to, our president and some of the leaders and they didn't make any effort to do anything right at the time and uh...so, that was always a puzzle to most of us why the Jews didn't resist more than they did but, but their...their culture, I think, had a lot to do with that. They were taught since they were little children, to strive for peace and get along with his fellow man and another thing, they didn't think that they would do, the people in Germans would do such a thing but they did.

B: Un-hun.

HD: And it's, the sin today is that there's so many in Germany I guess, and other parts of the world trying to act like that that never happened. And that's been done, too. But we know better the ones of us that are still livin.

B: Un-hun. Did you...did you ever see any refugees that have been set free or, I know when you all were liberated, what kind of process did you have to go through to get back?

HD: Well, when we were liberated, uh...we, I...I didn't actually, there was others that went on out of camp. Went out into the towns but uh...we were liberated. We were taken for out camp and uh...up to an airfield. We had to wait a few days for them to bring planes in to haul us. My gosh, huh, all nationalities, now this is just my estimate, where we were, all nationalities, I bet there were americans, I would say there was fifteen, I'd venture to say there was fifteen thousand or twenty thousand AMericans in that area where I was and there was all kinds of other nationalities. I totalled them, goodness sakes, I bet they was a total of sixty, seventy thousand prisoners of all nationalities. Everything, every nationality that you could think of. Russians, German, Frenchman, Poles, AMericans, British uh...people form uh..the black...black troops that fought for the allies down at AFrica, the Algerians, all of them. They was...they were prisoners from all over the world in that area. But we were taken to an airfield and then planes came in and we were loaded on these planes and flew to LaHar, France. At LaHar, France, we were examined and given clothing and...and deloused and uh...then, taken, if we went to the clinic, we, to see what was wrong with us and medicated if we had things wrong with us and then we're taken to the camp and then they said they didn't have the shipping and uh...we stayed at that camp. I was there at that camp at what they call lucky stripe for about a month and that give them time to feed you and fatten you up a little bit so then they had to put you on a ship and send you, sent you home. Well, I got on a German motor ship. It was an ex-German motor ship. We rode that from LaHar over to England and ten from there, the next day and took off for New York City. Well, I landed in New York about June, around a little before June, latter part of May. From there I was processed again and camps there. I went into hospital at Fort Meade, Maryland for about a week and now, then, that's when I scared my mother and Sally to death cause they thought they was something real wrong with me cause I didn't come on home, and particularly, my mother. I know, she probably envisioned legs and arms off and everything else, which is legitimate. That would have been legitimate thought but then I was sent on home and that was it.

B: Why did you stay for that week. Did you have uh...

HD: I stayed in the hospital. A ward in the hospital. An ulcer ward. I was having trouble with my stomach and, they put me in the ulcer ward and turned me loose. Said you eat all the ice cream and drink all the milk you want which was a...I...I appreciated that because I'd been without a, I hadn't had a taste of milk for, good gracious, from May of forty, April of '43 until June of '45. Fresh milk. Good old milk.

B: Un-hun. I guess you would like it if you went that long without it.

HD: Yeah. It was right tasty. Now, they met us at the ship, when the ships docked in New York and the Red Cross and other organizations were right down on the pier, you know, and they were passin' out this milk, you know, in the little container. Them guys were going crazy over it. Can drink as many as you can get. As many as you can hold. Oh, I will put this little tid bit in after gettin' back and being processed why, you know, when you're in prison camp, or in a camp like that and you don't have much food, and you're always dreamin' about what you're gonna eat and everything when you get home. Your gonna have steaks and you're gonna eat pies and cakes and all kinds of stuff that you hadn't had for months and months and months and how much you was gonna eat, well, anyway, we got back and we were processed and everything and they had a big uh...mess halls down there and incidentally, they had German prisoners. These were prisoners of war. They were German doing all the work and waitin' on us. And they took us down in the mess hall and went up through there and here are the great big juicy steaks are on there and they fixed us a big juicy steak, baked potatoes. EVery other vegetable you could think or. Pie and cake and ice cream, oh you loaded up, my gosh, I'm really gonna enjoy this. Get back there and eat just a few mouths full and that's all you could eat. Your stomach had shrunk so much that it just wouldn't take the food and then the ones that did it down, it didn't stay down very long cause you weren't accustomed to that kind of food.

B: Un-hun.

HD: But that old stomach really shrunk and you couldn't eat it anymore and they talked about it being uh...unhappy, you couldn't get it down. Yes, siree.

B: About how long did it take for your diet to...to get back to normal?

HD: Oh, I'd say about, really get back to normal, I'd say about six months but still there's certain things that I couldn't eat. I...I had trouble with my stomach. It give me problems every now and then and then I'd get diarrhea and then I've had diarrhea off and on most of my adult life since then. Comes and goes. I don't know whether it's due to nerves or whether it was my stomach or what and uh...I think the services, the V. A. seems to think hat they call some kind of stress syndrome that you have.

B: Post dramatic stress syndrome.

HD: Yeah. That's it. Post dramatic stress. Has to do with a lot of, some of uh...some uh...people have it, I guess it's organic problems or uh...organ problems but uh...I've had a lot of tests but they say that they can't find anything. I wonder whether they can or whether they can't. If it means compensations, they can't find it.

B: Right. Okay. When did you actually get back to um...your home? Did...did you come to War or did you go to Matewan?

HD: No. I went to WAr first and then, actually I was there 'til about, about '56 of June somewhere like that. No uh...Sallie had a brother lived in Baltimore and uh...he and his girlfriend and when I came in uh...I came from the hospital down to visit and I got with them and uh...when I got ready to go home, why, his girlfriend had made arrangements for me and got me a train ticket and everything and so, I didn't have any problems so I went into shop and got me some uniforms so I, while I was in Baltimore too, cause all I had was just, regular old (unintelligible) clothes, you know, they'd be, uh...regular old army issues, but had to wear that so I went in and bought me a uniform. A new jacket and this and that so then, she helped me get the tickets and she and Roy and her brother uh...got me on a train and sent me back to War, West Virginia.

B: Did um...Mrs. Dickens meet you there?

HD: No. Hun-un. She was at home down in Matewan. and I was there for awhile and...and then my mother and dad and I, we went to Tennessee and were, my father's family, kin folks and where he lived as a man, young man then we come back and then I asked Sallie if I could come down and stay a few days so we come down, I come down and stayed a few days and so, then we made arrangements that we was gonna get married so, forty-five years ago on this day, we got married. How does forty-five years sound to you Becky? Long, long time doesn't it?

B: I...I...(Outside voice - is your tape on?) Okay, my last few questions um...Mr. Dickens are about your life when you came back from World War II, um...after you were married, where did you settle down?

HD: Well, we lived in matewan for awhile and as far as work is concerned, oh, I...I worked for a, well, i went to work for a painting crew at first and uh...I worked for them for a little time then after that, I didn't care too much for that and then a job came up that I knew was gonna be open and I knew the man that had the job and he was livin' it and it was with w wholesale firm out of columbus, Ohio, and they uh...sold uh...household goods and hardware and stuff like that so I applied for that job and took it and then had to serve a few weeks training but I traveled all over Southern West Virginia and I forget, I must have done that up until about, nineteen and fifty-two. Early '52. Well, uh...prior to that in 1948, or '49, our first child was born and I was still travelin'. I was gone so much and that's one reason I left that job so uh...I was trying to get another job which was rather difficult right at that time and we moved to War , West Virginia and I went up there. That's where my parents lived at that time, so, finally, I landed a job up there with a wholesale distributor of beer and I went to work for him and then I was on limited partnership basis with him and, and i worked at that for about four years, so, Sallie, neither Sallie nor I particularly cared for my self bein' in the beer business and what we were doin' and what we had to do, you met, nothing wrong with people that drink beer, but some of the places in Southern West Virginia or in West Virginia or beer joints and it's rough. It's rough. It's a rough job. You meet some rough people, so I'd heard about this job uh...bein' open with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company because some friends of ours and friend of my family in Matewan were aware of it and they let us know and I mad an application for that and come down and got a job with, and I did get the job with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company so, that was in about '56, so for the next twenty-seven, twenty-eight years, I was in the insurance business with Metropolitan Life. That's about my job history.

B: Okay. So, when you were working in the insurance business, was when several of the...the floods that hit Southern West Virginia hit. Is that right?

HD: Yeah. Uh...in nineteen and fifty-seven, Sallie and I were living in Williamson and uh...we had uh...three children at that time and then, her daddy had died at that time. In January, they had a flood then so we stayed up there and left our children, one of the babies, the baby down in Williamson and we went on up and our two older children were with us. We didn't realize it was gonna flood and we went up there to arrange for the be with the funeral and all this, well, it started raisin' the river started raisin', so more or less, we were trapped up there, so we stayed with a friend, her cousin, Mrs. Reems. Mrs. Alan Reems and that came upper end of the town all over and flooded her mother's house, so, I guess uh...that was worse, 1963, we were living in Huntington, I think, yeah, Huntington, but I was up there working so I was up around Williamson area in 1963 when they had a flood and it was up in the streets, had been up in the streets from third avenue and uh..around Williamson and then, we were living here in Ashland in '77 when the '77 flood came up there and uh...that's when it done the most damage in that area. Uh...I went with some vans, some church vans two or three times. I took it and loaded up a few uh...clothing and stuff and then water and later I tooka pickup truck with water and this and that, just, and materials and stuff up there to see if I could help and I went into Matewan, then couldn't believe it. It just totally destroyed, it whipped out houses. Destroyed them and what it didn't destroy, why, it damaged so bad, including her mothers home that they just had to take the bulldozers and uh...and bulldoze them down. That's all you could do with them. Especially that strip from the bridge, above the bridge a little bit and on the back alley there, that stretch right down through there cause the water came right down that river and then it started making a curve again and a full force of the river went right over top all those houses down through there where the bridge is and then all up in town. All up the way upper end of Matewan. They call it the upper end, I guess it's more or less the northern end and all those houses have been flooded by the creek backing up and only a few houses up there as you can see now that have survived...survived that, so, I guess that's the extent of my flood experience. OH, I lived there in 1937 when they had a pretty big flood. THat was the big flood. It hit huntington on the Ohio River when they had to uh...well, it just about wiped out the Ohio River basing down through there.

B: Un-hun.

HD: So they built flood walls ont he, all up and down the river now that protects it and it doesn't matter uh..disastrous flood on that river in a long time. That's... (tape cuts off).

B: Goodness.

HD: That's about the extent of my flood experience.

B: Just one quick question, back to your um...time in the service, did you ever see any of the USO shows or anything like that when you were?

HD: I saw, I saw one. And that was in England and the old boog...booger that's still uh...(tape cuts off) he was then, just about, well, what was then, just about like, like he is today. It was he and Les Brown the Band Reknown. There's a guy that used to play with him called Tony something that had the accordion and uh...Jerry Col...Colona, Francis Langford, uh...Martha Ray, um...Anne Divorick [sic]. She was a big tall actress wasn't she? Yeah. And who else. I can't think of any of the rest. That's...that is the only US show that I actually have seen.

B: Un-hun.

HD: Now, there was some, I guess, oh, there in uh...some fellows, I think I went down one time, I wudn't much of a dancer, I went down to the Pladium in Los Angeles one time, I think that's where the Pladium where they the big bands but that wasn't a USO Show, it was just a big band. But that's the only USO shoe I ever saw. And I didn't have time to stay in anything long enough to see anymore. That was it.

B: Um...would, goin' back a little bit to when you all were in high school, did um...what was the teenagers hangout place? Did...did you all have a hand out place?

HD: Well, Sallie and them hung out at the drug store. The one around town. That was Leccie's Drug Store, I think it was. (outside voice - I always stopped at daddy's store) That wasn't a teenagers hangout. (outside voice - well that was about the only place I, I was telling her our recreation was centered around the church) well, (outside voice - you know, mother always made big thing out of a birthday. We had a birthday, you know, there were seven of us and she'd have nine people who had birthdays)

B: My goodness.

HD: (outside voice - and so there was always a big cake and a big dinner and presents and it was a big...big thing to have a birthday.) Yeah. I just thought of something. Children, today, you know, uh...they talk about tryin' to get a kick you know, when they're drinkin' this and that. I can remember what they told me in the...in the drug store one time, Sallie. Said you take a coke and you mix it with cigarette ashes, and that's supposed to give you a kick (outside voice - oh, my goodness). Now, I could never figure out how that that could happen unless it was the lie in the ashes. (outside voice - I never heard that). Oh, yeah. I've heard that one. Yeah. Mix cigarette ashes with coke. (outside voice- we'd stop at the drug store and get us a milk shake and...) Yeah. Yeah. (outside voice - you know, when we were on our way home form school) the drug store (outside voice - when they had a ballgame, we walked form one end of town clear up to the other end of town to the ballfield) The...the drugstore was the gathering place for the whole community. You got...you got our medicine, your advice uh...met you neighbors uh...your gossip, everything you could think of happened at the drug store. Yes, siree.

B: I was wonderin' um...some people talked about this place. They were a few years oldie than you all so I don't know if it was still there, it was called the Hucklebuck? Do you ever hear of ...

HD: No, that was after us.

B: That was after you all?

HD: Yeah. That was in the McCoy building.

B: Okay.

HD: Uh...it was in the McCoy building. Your niece, Lorraine, your niece Lorraine, you remember, I talked to her one time about the Hucklebuck and I asked her about it. (outside voice - I guess John McCoy had it where that restaurant was.) I think so or James A. Goble. (outside voice - I...I heard that uh...uh...Harley Hope was in the lumber business but he was a contractor, you know, we were talkin' about the carpenters, that built the houses. Uncle Reece and the...Henry's family, she said Harley Hope was a contractor.) that's right. (outside voice - and he helped contract the McCoy building. Had it built. I didn't know that.) Yeah, I...I heard, I didn't know that but, since you'd mentioned that, I got to thinkin' bout it and I remember now that they said Harley Hope, at one time, was in the lumber, or contractin' business, though, but I didn't know he made, I didn't know he made the arrangements for that building to be built. (outside voice - she said he did.) See, that's one of the first places after we moved from down here at your house that we lived in Matewan is in the McCoy building. We lived there and we lived in the McCoy building and we lived in the Chambers building there in two different apartments in two different times. Once we lived on the front and the other time we lived on the back apartments. (outside voice - and up there is where Dr. Whitt had his dentistry) Yah. That's right.

B: Okay.

HD: And uh...see, the old Hatfield building was there. It'd been there I don't know how long, how old that building is. At one time, Hatfield, I, he let it go or the family did and it went into a state of disrepair and oh, it was horrible in that building and not very, I don't know of anybody hardly lived in it and finally somebody bought it and started fixing it up and repairing this and that and made apartments out of it but uh...in later years, why, I guess it was a pretty nice apartment building but uh...I did, we did live in, in the upper part of the town or Mackenzie owned several small houses and my mother and father lived up here for awhile and I lived there with them but uh...in Matewan, Sallie and I lived in Dr. Whitt's, no Dr. Smith's home and he had a little small brick house right beside of it and we're talking about Fonnie Whitt when I say Dr., that's Dr. Whitt's wife and Fonnie's the one lived in a big brick house. You may know there that is. Right across...right across the street from the clinic. What used to be the clinic. So we lived in that little brick house, then we lived up in the apartment. We lived up in the apartment there, the McCoy apartment when we were first married and then the little brick houses SMith's, and the next time we came, we lived in her mother's house for awhile and then we moved to Williamson after that then back to Matewan.

B: Okay. Were you ever involved in any of the uh...Halloween pranks. I know Halloween used to be a big prankster in time.

HD: Why do you ask that question?

B: Um...well, Venchie MOrrell had talked about uh...people stringing wire across the streets in town and...and just how the boys would always seem to get in trouble.

HD: Oh, theres a few things. Uh...(outside voice - tell them about halloween. What you did on Halloween) Well, Venchie's brother um...and uh...this fellow Haskell CHambers out here, and I was with them and there was a black feller in , live in Matewan, and his name was Roscoe, I forget his last name, and you know, at one time, where the international order of the Odd Fellows is, where the building is there and were Phillip's has his seed store, well, I didn't know whether you knew that. THat was a funeral home once upon a time. I remember a particular one halloween uh...we got a big white sheet and Haskell got upon Joe Jr.'s shoulders. Go back in this, recessed in that door and got up on his shoulders why, we saw, I don't know why Roscoe was a down, comin' down that street, but he was and he came down that street, well, anyway, I got behind them so they run acrossed, out across the road and up on the bank and up that sidewalk on the other side and Roscoe was comin' down through there a whistlin' you know, like this, and every kid was afraid to go by that spot. They run out of that place out yonder and he got, he almost turned as white as that (unintelligible) up there and he was a stammerin' and a studderin' you know, so I feel like I literally scared him to death and uh...he finally recognized who it was and oh, he got mad then. But we were involved in a few other pranks so we just uh...there's a family name, White, she was a very prominent family in town there and she had a...a, oh I guess her uncle by marriage and uh...her aunt was, they called her Tonte and her name was Seeman. Her last name was Seeman and they immigrated to this country you know, but he was an old, I think he must, he said he come from Alasas-Lorraine, in between GErmany and France and uh...but I think she was German, but anyway, he got there and we'd aggravate him and if he had, we'd get in and get his apples and everything and sometimes, on Halloween, why we played pranks and do this and that. Just the aggravating kinds...kinds of things. Why, I don't ever remember destroying property or anything like that. If we would have destroyed property, we'd have been in big...big trouble and uh...just things that would irritate people and things like that. Yeah, that Venchie, he was a good friend and I was a friend of his family, and I dearly loved all those people. His...his family, his mother. (outside voice - tell her how we used to ride sleds in WArm Holler down to the church) OH, my gosh. (outside voice - around that curve up there.) You know Warm Hollow, you know where it is and...see, those houses past Grace's house, there used to be no house houses owned up that hollow and we'd get way up there and get a good snow and get way up that hollow and get on the sled, you know the house that, well, for awhile, there wasn't a house, just a telephone pole. Well, later, Rupples built that house there and you come out of the hollow and your biggest was try to make that curve and make that turn and go in, then go right straight on down toward the railroad track, you know, on down there and uh...half the time, you didn't make that turn. You'd wham up against that telephone pole. Yeah. Well, last time you'd bang up against the pole but you'd put your feets out and sort of help stir yourself a little bit and make it around the curve and, boy, it was a good ride. (outside voice - and you know another thing we used to do? We used to get on the slate dumps and ride those metal sheets, what were iron or steel?) A piece of sheet uh...stuff, metal that you put on roofs. Roofing. (outside voice- well, they were this wide.) Yeah. That's right. (outside voice - get on that thing and ride down the slate dump.) I've done that with a tin, paper box when.,..when it was real dry, you know, real dry, get up real dry and have a big paper box and just tear off one of those big pieces of cardboard and you get on the booger's boy, and that slate would be as slick as it could be and zoom. But you're talkin' about ridin' sleigh, you know where you go to Blackberry, you know, you go up in town and you turn right and go across the bridge and then come back up this way and then go up on around the hill and up this way then back down, we used to get up to the top of that hill, where the curve is. And then we'd come zoomin' down right here and make this curve right, and you know, in this curve, you look way off, you look way off over here and then get around that curve and then go down there and...and you'd be a flyin' pretty hard and you'd come down there to the bridge, and it does a...a right angle turn just about. We'd kick it around, kick it around and go right out, shoot out into tow, out into the street out there and there had, I never did go over too much a time or two, you'd go over, when all those houses weren't there, where, across the river where you go up to the cemetery. There was no houses and get up on top of that cemetery and there's a lot stubble and things stick up and brush and bushes and well, we'd take off down that hill and I didn't like it over there cause they'd be sticks stickin' up and thighs like that that you could stick into you if you aren't careful. But, Frank Allara, you talk about Frank Allara, over on this side, you know, where I was tellin' you, this side of the river, you got up like you're goin' to Blackberry city, comin' off that hill. He'd get up there and ride the sleigh with us. And another thing he'd do, he'd get an old him old car and he'd let a bunch of sleighs hook, hang on behind him and he'd pull them and then I think he had a big old sleigh that he had made and he'd hang it on the back of that car and let them ride ont he sleigh. HE was always, Frank was always playin' playing like that too, with the kids and all. He was a lot of fun.

B: Okay.

HD: I tell you, tell you one about my mother, one day, Frank was always pullin' jokes and tellin' jokes, pullin' things and you know where the underpass, the car underpass goes in here and they used to be a separate place you could walk through, no, I correct that. The underpass, there's a sidewalk right along it, you walked in where through where the cars go, now there's a separate place to walk in. Mother told me she was goin' up to visit a friend of hers, she said, here come Frank along, just a whistlin', hauls off and gives her a big smack on her rear end, and he gets up in front and said, oh, my goodness. Mrs. Dickens, I thought you was somebody else. And I told my mother later on, don't kid yourself, Frank Allara knew who you were. He just that kind of guy. He's makin' tricks like that. I know him. (outside voice - let me tell you a scary thing that happened to me one time - mother and daddy was upstairs. It was about ten thirty, eleven o'clock ad I was written' letters. That was when Harold was in (unintelligible) camp. He had friends. I would write to them and they'd write to me and then I'd tell him what they said. So I was writin' and I heard someone come up on our front porch and uh...they knocked on the door and when I opened the door, this man walked right past me into the living room and I was lookin' at his face. I wasn't afraid. It was our laundry man that picked up the boys shirts every week but when he got in the middle of the floor, he was covered in blood. His clothes were torn burrs all over him and I was in shock and he said, uh...he went to the picture door, it was, we had one big room here and one over there, he (unintelligible) and he looked toward the sink and he said I want a drink of water and I said, go to the sink and get it, so when he did, I flew to the bottom of the steps. I said, daddy, come down here, so he came down and by that time, the man had walked back to the living room door and he was lookin' around and he turned to daddy and he said I want to use your phone and daddy said, you'll have to go up the street. There's a telephone operator up there. So he left and dad turned to me, and he said, un-hun. You'll open again, the door again sometime, won't you, and I said, well, I knew him. He was our um...laundry man. I know you knew him, but where's he been. so we found out the next day he'd been in a car wreck and the police was after him and he'd been down under the river bank trying to get ut of town. He was trying to get a taxi from Williamson or somewhere to come and get him.)

B: Um.

HD: (outside voice - that taught me a lesson. ) Well, Matewan, there's always things that was goin' on uh...some things I don't, it just doesn't pay to repeat them I guess. (outside voice - no it don't). And uh...around, just like any town or any city that a certain things, you just, probably don't talk about. (Outside voice one day, Ruth and Jr. and I went swimming up where the curb of the river is? we called it slickly cause we'd throw water up on the clay and then we'd dip down into the river so when they came home, Jr. says, well, I'm goin' back in one more time, but, what he didn't know was, where we were behind the rail house, it was a lot deeper so he got in a Ruth went after him and went under and I went after Ruthie and I went under, so we were all greased. My brother was walkin' behind us the Bogg's boy. They called him Sambo so, SAm got Ruthie out and when I looked up Jr. was up over me and so I put my hands up under his little bottom and I was pushing up just as hard as I can push and walked up on the bottom of the river. I wudn't a bit afraid. I didn't feel that I was swallerin' water. I didn't feel like I was smotherin'. I was just walkin' and I dept saying to myself, well, if Paul see's him, he'll know where I am. laughing. so Paul got him out, he say, Sallie, I like to never found you. He had to swim under water to find me. And then one SAturday, I was catchin' chicken for mother. We killed three or four every Saturday. Daddy wanted more than two for his breakfast on Sunday. I fixed his gravy, see, so I was finishing the chicken, had it up here in a brown paper bag here and a coal stove.(unintelligible). And then I fell backward over the water fall. So I said, the lord's been lookin after me good. He really has. )

B: Okay. Well, I think if you're ready for a rest, I'll...I'll...

HD: I'm okay. I'm alright. If you're ready for a rest.

B: well, I could talk to Mrs. Dickens or..

HD: No, it doesn't matter to me. If you have any more questions.

B: Okay.

HD: (outside voice - we would like to tell you about the uh...Blue Goose.) How much do you know about the Blue Goose now? (outside voice - just what I've heard) Okay, well, tell her then. (outside voice - up above Matewan there was a water tank with a train stopped to get water, and I used to wonder, why wasn't the water tank downtown or down the lower end of town, well, they built the water tank where the swinging bridge was. It went over to the Blue.) I think. (laughing) (outside voice - I did, well, why didn't they put the water tank down there.) Do you think they built that water tank there just because the bridge went over to the Blue Goose? (outside voice - well, it made it very convenient) Well, that was just a better place to get. (outside voice - the water would be put on the train, they could run get them a drink.) That was a better place to put it to get the water supply, Sallie.(outside voice - well, I imagine that they gambled over there. I imagine they..) What they did...(outside voice - over there.) Lot of times, there'd be an engine come up and go up the rail, called REd Jacket hollow and that's to pick up the coal, fill coal cars, you know, and they'd come out of the hollow, there now, and there now an engine but uh...would come out of the hollow then come in through the switch and onto the tracks over there and then they back up that way and uh...it would uh...get up there close, well, one engine would come up with a bunch of cars they were gonna put in a miens somewhere else uh...right across the river up there in Kentucky, well, they pulled down there and they'd wait and act like they gettin' water or sometimes they would take home some water maybe, but, you looked and watched in a minute and here maybe one or two guys would run across that bridge. Well, they's be goin' over there and would come back and somebody else would run across it. They was goin' over to get them a beer every now and then. That...that was when prohibition had come in uh...had been repealed and it was effective in Kentucky before it was in West Virginia, you know, so Kentucky had got their beer a little sooner than...than West Virginia had and they was runnin' over there, and I don't know, every know and then, you'd see that old engine down there takin' our waer [sic]. They was takin' on something besides water. Yeah. It was a sight. BUt honey, I don't think they built that tank there just because. (outside voice - the men who ran it was (unintelligible) McCoy and Bob Buskirk and). That's young Robert's grandfather.) (outside voice - and...and his grandfather, Bob Buskirk had a boat. A big boat and when the river was at flood stage, she brought it down to Catlitsburg [sic] to get whiskey and he had to rush back up there before the water went down and the boat was named Melodiebelle. His first wife was named Meldon and the second wife was RUby, Bo's wife's name Ruby, but it the Melodie...) Say, the story, I think the story was, when Bob Buskirk married Ruby and all this, all this crystal and crystal and dining stuff was up there. That was...that was uh...Melodies. All belonged to Melodie. When Ruby and Bob Buskirk got married, that was stuff, wasn't just gonna stay there so it all ended up with done Aunt Carrie Ferrels house and she had some real expensive pieces down there. HIt was just uh...yeah, what was that? Isaac cut. Cut ice. I mean real cut glass. Not just pressed glass, it was cut glass crystal. She had the whole bit and I think uh...Ruby was givin' it (unintelligible) Now see, these are little stories, gossip stories you're hearin' now. (outside voice - yeah, we don't want to tell a lot of things. We don't want to say things that might...) Well she can use, she can use it this way, instead of sayin' Buskirk uh...you got that thing on, instead of sayin' Buskirk, just say a prominent family in town and use it that way and cut out the name. Do that. CUt out the name and say a prominent family in town. You might leave the circumstances in, so if you leave that in, I don't think you're gonna live anybody that way.

B: But the more life hearted stories, I don't think anyone gets offended by it.

HD: I'll tell you another one, use dot, kids would always go swimmin' in the river, but you always had a few daring kids that lookin' for something else to do. I never would do it because I was afraid to, for a reason you will understand in a minute, but Sallie's brother, and his friend, he had a friend, and uh...well, a couple of friends. NOw you remember, can you... you remember seein' that water tank up on the hill? Well, used to in Matewan, the water, before they got a filter and plant in to treat the water, they stored water in that reservoir and it was used in the city but it couldn't be, you couldn't drink it. YOu might boil it or something if you want to or uh...not many people had bought it and drink it but, you could use it for warshing your clothes and everything else. Well, Sallie's brother, Jr., and his friends, they'd go up there and one time, they had a rood on them but the roof rotted and give way so they just down away with that and, they'd get in there an swim in that reservoir. They'd get in there and swim in that reservoir but the problems was, occasionally, the water would be so low, or the water level would be so low, or the water level would go down and they'd be swimming there and they couldn't reach up and get a hold of the ledge and uh...what was it, Jr. was, said he was holerin' at his buddies to help him? (outside voice - Jr. had to hold onto the iron...) Ladder like thing. (outside voice - body down as far as he could) So they could get...(outside voice - and the boy'd crawl up his body to get...) Yeah. To get out of there because the water had gotten down, now that...that's another thing.

B: Hum.

HD: And then (outside voice - we played games out in the street. We built a big bonfire at Reems. There used to be a lot of elm trees in our backyard, great big trees and one out on the curb and we'd say, go (unintelligible) go. We had two teams. REd and one red and one blue and we'd hide and the other team had to find us. We'd go under the river bank and if they stayed too close to the base, we could say base huggers, base huggers and...and...and we'd watch them and if they'd get close to the base we'd...we'd yell red vird, redbird, redbird. And they got was a far away from the base it was bluebird, bluebird, bluebird and we'd go up town and around the back alley. Play games. ) Well, I tell you another thing, this one is, well, I won't mention names in this but I will tell the locale. There was a man up at Matewan near there and there was another man that had a wife, oh, no, the two men were trying to date the same women, woman. (outside voice - well, I don't think you ought to tell that) I'm not saying any name and one time uh...uh...they must have meant and one of the men just hauled out a pistol and shot the one man and killed him. Well, he didn't kill him out right, now I think they's a way, one reason they didn't,..didn't take him on to the hospital cause it was too far to get to a hospital and he would have been dead by the time they got there so, Mr. Nenni had a restaurant right at the end of the, where you go down the steps you know. Where the ice house, and a restaurant in there and there was sort of room you could put and they took him down here and they had him on a cot and, so we could see him and particularly, we young, younger people, well, we saw what happened to him in that argument, then this man left was laying there dying, cause he couldn't breath. He's shot in the chest. Started bleddin' inside, well, Okay, the man died. Well, this fellow that shot him, he was arrested, put on trial and he was convicted of murder in the first degree which was a hanging penalty. Well, they took this man and they was in the prison at Moundsville, West Virginia, I guess that's where they hung him. When they brought him back, they brought him back to the same place and they had him in there and they had it, his shirt and things open so that we young people could see the rope burns around his neck where it burned his neck when he was hung. Well, there's an object lesson to that in a way. It was sayin' uh...we young people, look what can happen to you if you violate the law. There would have been no other reason unless people just wanted to see the man. Now, maybe that was a little bit of sensationalism, uh...there was a lesson in that too. At uh...these are things that just happen a little place sometimes. And, but we kids, we run around and played in the mountains and went fishin' on the river, later on joined the scouts, a lot of us did and went on campin' trips down, up and down the river there. Swimmin', campin' out with our school teacher's was scout master uh...fellow by the name of Joe Hoffstetter. A great big burly fellow. He was the coach. The football coach too and uh...we had a pretty good time. So on the whole, there was very. (tape cuts off)

HD: There wasn't a great deal of delinquency that I know of that happened or anything like that. It was a pretty good town. A little.

B: I've got one last question I...I think this may have been an age group about ten years older than you all but I just want to be sure. Did um...did boys ever play baseball out on the sand bar in the river when it went dry and did it ever get that dry when you were young?

HD: It might have but I don't remember it. They may have played baseball down there. I don't know. I might have been fishin' or been up on that mountain or something like that or on the river. It's possible that they did, but then again, it might be a little, the one's might have been a little older than I am.

B: I, thought of one more, um...what do you remember being in the downstairs (tape cuts off).

HD: When I was real young, I remember one part of the Hatfield building there, uh...was it Mack, a feller by the name of Mack Patterson had a taxi stand or a bus stand there, then in later years, after they remodeled it and all, uh...Louie Kirk had a clothing store and there was a, they might, then there was a fellow had a grocery store in there. His name was Bill Dial. My father worked for him, then later my dad had the store in the same position, place that Bill dial had his and then, and then, next to that, was the Corey CHambers, that's the aunt of uh...George Howell. She had a popcorn stand and and uh...I don't know, candy's and stuff like that. Turn that off a minute. (tape cuts off) Don't quote me on any of that. But uh...let's see, and then I think there was, well, in her (unintelligible) there was a Sears Department Store was in there then that...that ended the Hatfield building cause there was another building there owned by uh....Schaffers...Schaffer...Schaffer brothers clothing store. I forget who owned that at the time. Schaffer's did I guess. And on to the end, before we moved away, right on up near the end and I think that's where Testerman had his jewelry store in, right at the end of the street there. I believe. Later, I don't know who later was in there after TEsterman but there was a a jewelry shop, I think or something in there later on. I can't place it all. Sallie had that diagram the other day. She showed you. I don't know whether she gave it to you or not, but she showed you and Jenny uh...Mrs. CHambers had a better outline that I can really give you. Just here, sitting here thinkin' about it. And later on, they renovated that building and worked it over and everything and made apartments up in it which uh...they was rented out to several people around the area there.

B: Okay. Well, thank you for talking with me.

HD: Well, you're welcome. I talked more than I should have had or maybe I would've. Huh? (tape cuts off).

Matewan Oral History Project Collection