Growing Up Hard in Harlan County

Fifteen

__4 __ FIFTEEN ON DECEMBER 7,1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. All the young men were called to the different branches of the armed forces, leaving the older men to do the mining. There was a great demand for coal and the producing mines weren't meeting the demand. Thousands of small truck mines started opening up all over the coal fields, trucking their coal to the railheads for shipment to the eager steel mills and factories. Nearly everything you had to have was rationed by the government . Workers at most places were frozen to their jobs, if the companies they were working for requested it. I had been asked earlier by my superintendent to attend a mine foremen's school at nearby Lynch, and I was awarded with a mine foreman's certificate, giving me legal right to govern the work of any coal mine. This has always been the top ambition of all young miners. The superintendent put me in charge of production on the night shift, working the same places the day shift worked, using the same number of workers the day foreman used. I don't like to hear anyone boast of himself and I don't intend to brag on myself, but all the production foremen with the superintendents included gave me a big party for the effort I was doing to increase tonnage and for having no injuries to any of the workers under my supervision. And then it happened. I was riding from the face of a coal loader's place of work, hunkered down on my knees on the riding stirrup of a low-vein locomotive. A short piece of steel rail was lying alongside of the track. It caught my pants leg and tore on down, crushing my boot and nearly tearing my left foot off at the ankle. The company's head doctor wanted to take the foot off. His assistant disagreed. He went to work cleaning and placing the tendons together, removing chips of bone, wiring the bigger bones, and 144 replacing the heel string with some kind of fiber that would allow flesh to adhere to it! I had a hard time explaining the accident to the other foremen and the safety committee-me being the first to get hurt after having the best safety record of all the foremen. I was laid up in the hospital about six weeks. Before being released , my doctor handed me a pair of crutches and taught me how to use them. I hobbled around on these crutches for about two weeks, then the doctor fitted a steel brace around my ankle that would allow me to stand on it. I traded him the crutches for a good strong cane. Here I'd go, slinging that club foot and wobbling on my cane. I soon got my strength back, but was not able to go back to work. I got about half of what I had earned when working, so my family was about to come up short on a few things we needed. A lot of miners would plant big gardens up in the mountains, using a hoe to dig the soil loose. This kind of planting was slow and hard work, but they managed to raise a lot of vegetables, and corn to fatten a few hogs. I began thinking I could help ease their work and let them raise a lot more with less effort if they had a small mule to do the plowing and to sled the things they had grown off the mountains. It was forty miles from Benham to !som, Kentucky. Isom boasted of the lowest priced farm mules and the best ones in the state. I told some of the coal mining farmers I was going to ride a bus over the mountain and bring back a string of mules to sell to the men who were farming up in the mountains. Each man I talked to wanted me to bring him the smallest mule I could get. I contracted with four men for the sale of four small niules, buying them at a bargain price and being allowed to make a profit of $10 a head. I got to the stock pens early, waddling along, slinging my club foot and putting more weight on my cane than was necessary. I went from one stall of mules to another, just eyeing each mule and waiting for the auctioneer to start the bidding. I guess...