Book Excerpt: ‘Memory of a Miner’

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Please welcome guest author Dr. Michael Ruth. Dr. Ruth has just released Memory of a Miner: A True-Life Story from Harlan County’s Heyday. This book is the story of his dad’s life as an old-time coal miner in “bloody Harlan” (Harlan County, KY) in the early to mid 1900s, told in his own words and dialect.

“Reading the book,” says Dr. Ruth, “is somewhat akin to listening to a captivating storyteller tell some very intriguing – yet true – tales from a first-hand account of life in a southern Appalachian mining town.”

After earning a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford Graduate School, Dayton, TN, Dr. Ruth went on to publish his first book, Shadow Work: A New Guide to Spiritual and Psychological Growth, in 1999. Since then he has written on the subject of personal growth, as well as the developmental stages of childhood. He is on the book review board for The Family, a professional family therapy journal. Dr. Ruth is a counselor/psychotherapist, in private practice for more than 23 years. We’re pleased to present this excerpt from Memory of a Miner:

Dad grew from child to adolescent while living in Draper. These were the years of the Great Depression (though Dad’s running joke was “I never could figure out what was so great about it!”). The Depression years were hard for Dad. He would often say, “The Democrats blamed Hoover and the Republicans blamed Roosevelt. I don’t know who it was, but somebody liked to starved me to death!”

Necessity brought creativity, and Dad found a way to get a little money in his pocket while a Depression-era boy in Draper. A neighbor woman would frequently give Dad money to go to the store and buy her fifty cents worth of new potatoes. Dad would pocket the fifty cents and go to a nearby potato patch a man owned and stealthily dig up roughly fifty cents worth of new potatoes.

He would clean them good, put them in a “poke” and take them to the neighbor, fifty cents the richer!

Dad caught and ate a lot of fish during the Depression. He didn’t need a fishing rod, he would just cut him a sapling for that, and make him a “fishin’ pole.” But tackle was costly and he either didn’t have or didn’t want to waste money on that. Ingenious, even when young, he would make a hook out of a safety pin and would plait sewing thread for line. Dad says:

Buddy, that was hard fishin’. Of course a safety pin don’t have a barb on it like a hook and wasn’t strong metal, and that sewin’ thread was easy to break. You had to really work a fish to get it in!

Nobe Farley was the night watchman at the mines. Me and him had us a deal. I’d catch him a mess of fish when I was a-catchin’ mine, and he’d give me enough grease [lard] to fry mine in. We’d trade fish for grease, you see. I was about twelve or fourteen at the time.

To his dying day Dad absolutely hated to wait in line for anything, and he simply would not do it at all if avoidable. Here’s why:

In the Depression we’d get commodities. Word would get out that they was a load of commodities comin’ in. They’d ship ’em to the depot in Harlan, you see. They’d come in maybe every two or three weeks, I think. I don’t remember now. Everybody down through there from Harlan to Evarts would take off to Harlan, buddy. We’d walk down there, walk from Draper to Harlan. It’s about eight miles.

You’d finally get there and Lord have mercy they’d be a big line. I’ve lined up from up past the New Harlan Theater [South Main Street] just to get in line. That line would go from there, down across the bridge, to that big building there on the right [Hackney Distributors] close to the railroad crossin’. That buildin’ is where they’d give out the commodities. I’d say that line would be about a quarter of a mile!

When you finally got in the building you’d get the allotment of whatever stuff they had. You didn’t pass on nothin’, buddy! I carried mine home in a grass [burlap] sack I’d bring with me. Once I got what I could, I’d take off a-walkin’ then, them eight miles back home. We walked the tracks most of the time, you see, for that was the shortest distance. It’d cut out all them hills and curves.

They’s been many a time I’ve got right up there near the door, buddy, and they’d be give out of stuff. See, they’d just have so much of this or that – fruit, rice, cheese, powdered milk, dried beans, sugar, flour, meal, stuff like that – and when they give out of each of what they had, well, that was that! They’d be run out. They’d say come back on such-and such a day and we’ll have more in. They’d just give out. You’ve walked all that way and pulled that long line for nothin’! That’s why I say, buddy, I ain’t standin’ in no more lines! I’ve pulled that shift! [In the last quarter of his life, Dad hated to go to a restaurant for lunch after church. There is usually a line to stand in.]

You could tell when they’d give out grapefruit. [He starts laughing as he tells this, recalling memories.] You’d see a few hulls scattered here and there as you walked back home. The further you got, the deeper them grapefruit hulls got along there. People’d get tempered to ’em, you see. We didn’t eat a lot of grapefruit up in there and it took ’em one or two to get tempered to ’em. Once they did, they’d just eat the whole bag! You could tell when they’d eat up all the grapefruit because the hulls would go to thinning out along the track or road again til they was plumb gone, buddy!

I asked what he would do if he got near the building and they had run out of everything? Dad laughingly says, “You’d just turn and walk sadly away.”

Following is another of those stories which shows the better angels of Dad’s nature. He was about thirteen at the time of its unfolding.

Later on they got to deliverin’ the commodities to the Evarts depot, so those of us that lived down that way didn’t have to make that long haul afoot into Harlan. When they come in, I’d walk to the depot from Draper [about a mile] and get mine. I’d bring it home in a grass sack just like I did when I’d go to Harlan.

Our neighbor was Paris Parr. He was in his mid-thirties and he was crippled and couldn’t walk. He couldn’t get out to get his commodities. Well, when I got back with mine, I’d then go get his identification card [required, or one could simply loop through the line two or three times] and then head back to the Evarts depot to pick his up for him.

More articles on books about the coal industry:

Author Gretchen Laskas discusses “The Miner’s Daughter”(Opens in a new browser tab)

US of Appalachia in paperback(Opens in a new browser tab)

Deborah Weiner discusses her book ‘Coalfield Jews’(Opens in a new browser tab)