by John Rushing

John Rushing

HARD TIMES COME AGAIN NO MORE     by John Rushing

Mama said it took years to pay off.  She remembers Granddaddy and Granny still making payments until after she entered school and first learned to read and write.  Mama told me that it was just a plain and simple child's wooden casket with a small headstone to mark the grave, but this was 1927 and $250.00 was a lot of money...

When my grandparents were born, the last battles of the Indian Wars were still being fought. Articles describing Wyatt Earp's gunfight at the OK Corral continued to appear in the newspapers.  The Spanish-American War was yet to come and the Klondike Gold Rush was soon to make history. Two brothers in an Ohio bicycle shop were working on one of their ideas while a Mexican revolutionary known as Pancho Villa was gaining hemispheric attention and a great ocean liner to be named the Titanic was on the engineers' and shipbuilders' drawing boards.                                                                                                      

Harrison Barrett, my maternal grandfather, was not unlike a lot of young men born in the last century, and yet, in many ways, he was very much unlike a lot of young men born at a time our country was about to realize significant changes.  As was the case with many rural families, Granddaddy was born into a large family of brothers and sisters.  He was, physically, a big man for his time. In his prime, he stood almost six feet tall and weighed a stocky 200 pounds.  He and his brothers were all stocky and strong as a bull yearling.  In those days, cash money was very difficult to obtain and large families were necessary just to be able to raise enough food to survive.  In the mountains around Copper Creek and Clinchport, Virginia, there is hardly any level land.  Corn fields and gardens were planted where many people would be surprised today to see cattle or sheep grazing.  Those families fortunate enough to own rich, bottom land along the Clinch River found their plowing and planting to be much easier and the crops more abundant than those of the majority of families who were left to work the mountain land.  Nature had a way of evening out the odds, though. When the Clinch River flooded, all those tobacco and corn crops were washed away to be deposited on the river bank, leaf by leaf, stalk by stalk from Clinchport, Virginia to Knoxville, Tennessee. A whole year's work and the entire harvest was gone in an instant.  Scratching a living from this rocky, mountainside land developed character and strong backs.  Only a select, few people knew there was something under the surface worth much more than all the tobacco and corn in Southwest Virginia.  These were hard times.

Rena Johnson, my maternal grandmother, also came from the same type of sturdy, hardworking people who first settled these mountains.  Granny came from a large family, too, and was just one of many children who suffered and endured the hardships of living and surviving in a time when you had to depend on what you could raise and make yourself, simply to survive. At the turn of the century, there were not a lot of options available to any woman who needed to earn money.  Usually the only choices were to do without or prostitute yourself.  Granny chose the first.  When she was still a child, and even after she became a young woman, Granny hoed corn on these hillsides for 25 cents a day.  In those days, a woman's work was to wash clothes, cook the meals, can the food, help harvest the food, and care for the children.  In her spare time, she was expected to mend and sew clothes, tend to the sick, and keep the house in order.  There was no appreciable wage work available for a woman.  These were hard times.

Although they lived several miles apart, Granny and Granddaddy could have been considered to be neighbors.  Their courtship consisted of the typical church social functions and any opportunity they could find to sneak off and enjoy each other's company without the prying eyes and ears of teasing, pesky brothers and sisters.  When they got married in 1912, the newspaper headlines were not of their marriage.  The stories being printed and read were of the tragic sinking of that great, unsinkable ship, Titanic. They eloped and rode the train from Clinchport to Bristol, Virginia to get married.  This was unheard of in those days.  For all the backbreaking work they had performed every day of their lives, they both finally had reason for joy.  This joy was to be shortlived, though, for these were hard times.

A newly married couple had to have a place to live and again, the options were very few.  As did most of the newlyweds in those days, they first moved in with relatives until they could get their own place.  As the head of the house, granddaddy now had assumed much more responsibility.  He had to earn an honest living in any manner that he could find.  Farming was always a part of their daily lives, but farming, alone, was not enough.  Around here, the old timers still talk about the January tide and the May tide.  That is when the river floods in the winter and spring.  During these river "tides", Granddaddy would join a group of men and float logs and timber down the Clinch River from Clinchport to Knoxville.  This was, at least, a two month journey and was not easy or safe by any stretch of the imagination. Fortunate, indeed, was the man who lived to return home alive.  Even more fortunate was the man who returned home alive and uninjured.  In just a few years, Granddaddy was in the next group of men to be drafted for The Great War, or World War I, as historians now call it.  As a married man, Granddaddy was given a deferment during the first call up, but that deferment was soon to be annulled.  Fortunately, an armistice was signed and the war was over. Even considering the tremendous casualties inflicted during World War I, another killer was soon turned loose upon an unsuspecting population.  The 1918 flu epidemic killed millions of people worldwide.  This same flu epidemic claimed the lives of many of their neighbors, but Granny and Granddaddy somehow escaped its wrath and awful vengeance.  An emerging automobile industry and European post war recovery spawned new industries which meant that finally, a glimmer of hope could be seen.  Representatives of Peabody Coal, Westmoreland coal, and many other coal companies bought the mineral rights from many of the landowners in Southwest Virginia, Southeast Kentucky, and West Virginia. The families who sold their mineral rights thought they had made a good deal and were happy with their newfound, but temporary wealth.  At the time, little did they realize the significance of what they had sold for less than a penny on the hundreds of dollars.  Nevertheless, the coal mining industry soon offered jobs that were previously nonexistent.  As did a lot of the miners, Granddaddy worked for a lot of different mining outfits.  Some of the mines were small mines owned by individuals and some of the mines were owned by the major coal corporations.  Appalachia, Inman, Osaka, Keokee, Carbo, Hazard, and Harland are just a few of the mine locations where he worked.  A man's life was worth less than a mule because a mule cost at least $20.00 and a man could be replaced for a dime.  Granddaddy mined coal for ten cents a ton.  This meant that he had to load at least three or four tons of coal/rocks in order to get that ten cents for just a ton of coal.  He told me about the huge rock that fell from the ceiling and crushed the man working right by his side.  They just continued to mine around the rock because it was too big to move and would cost too much money in lost production to dig the man out.  This was backbreaking and exhausting work in a 30 inch high seam for ten to twelve hours a day and ten cents a ton, but even with this "prosperity", these were still, hard times. 

Mama was one of three children.  She and her identical twin sister, Dellaray, were born in 1924 while Alfonso, her brother, was born shortly after the armistice was signed.  Years later, Alphonso, or Fonzie, as Granny called him, along with his wife and children suddenly and completely disappeared, never to be heard from again. Granny went to her grave hoping that Fonzie would someday come home.  Granddaddy was now a coal miner and they moved from one coal camp to another as the mines "played out", or the competition paid more or had better housing and "benefits".  There was also another trap that kept Granddaddy and many other miners in the coal mines.  All the miners and their families lived in company provided houses in the coal camps.  They were paid in company "script" and not cash money.  They had to buy their groceries, food, clothes, and other necessary items at the company provided store and these items were paid for with the "script" they were given at payday.  This arrangement amounted to indentured servitude since you could almost never come out from under the debt you incurred at the company store. Only until John L.  succeeded in organizing the miners with the United Mineworkers Union did this situation begin to improve.  Granddaddy was there when the miners were organized.  I cannot imagine the courage and fear he and his family exhibited and faced during this turbulent time.  One of the "benefits" of working for the big coal company was having a company doctor available for sickness and injury.  The coal company paid the doctor's salary and there was no charge for his services if you were a miner or immediate member of the miner's family.  Mama's twin sister, Dellaray, became sick and her condition continued to deteriorate.  Granddaddy and Granny sent for the company doctor, who was also the mortician, but he could not and would not come to treat her because he was drunk.  There was not another doctor available and if there had been, there was no money to pay him.  Other doctors would not accept the coal company's script as payment.  The company doctor remained drunk for several days and Dellaray's condition grew worse by the hour during a winter where the houses at best had no insulation and little heat.  When the company doctor finally sobered up, he came to examine Dellaray.  He told Granny that it was too late to save her and there was nothing he could do.  Because of the company doctor's drunkeness, Dellaray died in Granny's arms.  She had contracted diptheria, probably from the water supply.  Granny told me that she held her three year old baby in her arms as she drew her last breath and she could still remember the sound of her death rattle as she slipped away.  I do not know what kept Granddaddy from killing that doctor.  I believe he knew that if he did, Granny, Mama, and Fonzie would have had an even harder time trying to survive in what must have now seemed to be the hardest of hard times.  Granny dressed Mama and Dellaray in identical clothing.  After Dellaray died, Granny put away all those baby clothes, but she did not get rid of them.  Instead, she made all new clothes for Mama, but none of the original baby clothes were ever worn again.  After Granny died,  Mama found those clothes where Granny had saved them for over 60 years.  A child's funeral is the most difficult funeral of any I have ever attended and I cannot comprehend nor imagine the rage and anguish  Granddaddy and Granny must have felt.  Mama said it took years to pay off.  She remembers Granddaddy and Granny still making payments until after she entered school and first learned to read and write.  Mama told me that it was just a plain and simple child's wooden casket with a small headstone to mark the grave, but this was 1927 and $250.00 was a lot of money in these hard times. 

Granny was always a very devout and church going lady.  She was from the old school and believed that card playing, dancing, movies, drinking, and women wearing shorts or pants was wrong.and sinful.  She drove a car only one time in her life and that was in 1912, the year she and Granddaddy were married.  Because she had not learned how to use the brake, Granny suffered the misfortune of running over a woman in the middle of Clinchport's only street the very first time she tried to drive.  The unfortunate lady was unhurt because that 1912 motorcoach didn't weigh very much, but Granny never sat behind the steering wheel again for the rest of her life.  Granddaddy always drove everywhere they went.  I can still remember seeing him sitting in that black 1951 Chevy, parked under one particular shade tree, wearing that sweat stained Harry Truman style hat and waiting for Granny to get out of church.  Granddaddy's fingers were stained from years of rolling his own Prince Albert cigarettes.  He saucered his coffee and if I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still hear the sound of his gentle slurp as he sipped his coffee in that saucer.  But as much as I remember seeing Granny attending church, I cannot remember ever seeing Granddaddy in church anywhere.  He would drop Granny off and pick her up, but he would never attend.  I've often thought that maybe he was angry at God for allowing Dellaray to die the way she did, but I never did ask him. Knowing him as I did, I am sure he always questioned whether there was anything he could have done differently to prevent his baby's death. At the time, he did his best, but this time, his best was just not good enough. I believe he was haunted by this fact the rest of his life.  I do know that he would not talk about Dellaray's death and whenever Granny said something about it or was asked about it, he would tell her to hush and not talk about it anymore.  Granny and Granddaddy saved "stuff".  For instance, Granny would never throw away aluminum foil. She would neatly wrap it and put it in a drawer to be used again at a later time for something else.  Granny would also save wrapping paper.  She would, ever so gently, unwrap a gift package, taking great care to not destroy the gift paper. This, too, she also saved.  She always had a ball of string, to which she added string as she collected it and to which she used string when she needed it. Granddaddy always carried a small Case pocket knife.  The blades were almost worn away, but he would not part with that pocketknife. After he died, Mama found all the little pocket knives that I had given him through the years for his birthday and for Christmas.  He had kept them all, but had used none of them.   We finally managed to convince Granddaddy to apply for his black lung benefits.  This took a great deal of persuasion and talking on Mama's part.  Granddaddy was absolutely convinced that those black lung benefits were nothing but government charity and he absolutely would not accept any kind of charity.  When he did receive his black lung benefits, he and Granny bought the first house they had ever owned in their life.  They had always rented or lived in coal company housing. After almost 60 years of marriage, they finally had their own home.  But it took a lot of talking on Mama's part.  Granny liked "pretty things", as she called them.  She had a closet full of brand new washcloths, towels, and linens, but she would not use them.  She always used towels and washcloths that were almost threadbare.  After I was grown, I asked her why she did not use all those new towels and washcloths and bed linens.  She told me that she was saving them "... because times might get hard again.".

Only years after Granddaddy and Granny died have I come to understand a portion of THEIR reality. From my perspective, it seems as though their lives were shaped and formed like an indestructible pitcher on a potter's wheel, fired in a hot kiln fueled entirely by hard times.  They always longed and worked for prosperity, but after Granddaddy secured his black lung benefits, this new security also terrified them.  They had seen such difficulty, such hardship, and such sorrow during their lives, that they lived in constant fear this security would suddenly disappear and their lives would, once again, return to those hard times they had endured for 60 years.  When I see and hear our grandchildren playing, laughing, and sleeping, I am constantly reminded of the anguish and pain they continued to feel for the loss of Dellaray.  When I hold our three year old granddaughter, I know what Granddaddy and Granny felt.  But I hope to never feel the pain that he and Granny felt in 1927 and carried with them for the rest of their lives.  I suppose that we could all learn something from the courage and strength of their generation.  I do know that I have absolutely no idea of what it must be like to endure their "hard times".  I just wish that I could put my arms around them and tell them how sorry I am for everything they had to endure and how much I appreciate what they did for us.  Somehow, though, I think that they are looking down at me and they understand and... know.   For them, hard times will come again no more.

John Rushing..  for BluegrassRoad.com