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Index | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
Part 2
"There's Coal in Them Hills!"
Steve Dennie
March 1987
"Would you like to see some coal mines?" Titus asks me.
"Sure."
A couple minutes later, Titus and I were in his indispensable four-wheel pick-up heading across Greasy Creek to the road.
Laurel Mission primarily ministers along Greasy Creek. (pronounced with a z--"Greazy Creek"--by mountain people). You'll find both UB churches and most of the area's people along the road that parallels Greasy Creek.
Daniel Boone gets blamed for the name. According to the story, Boone killed a bear and dragged it onto a flat rock in the stream. He took the skin and everything else he wanted, and left rest on the rock. The decaying carcass sent grease floating down the creek.
There are only two directions here: up Greasy, and down Greasy. If you tell someone, "Go east on road 2008," he'll wonder what in the world you mean. But say "Go up Greasy"--ah, now that makes sense.
From the mission driveway, the road to Big Laurel--up Greasy--is paved. It's only three weeks old. Titus had challenged the state Secretary of Transportation to come see the road. He did. Titus gave him a bumpy ride, and afterwards the official promised one mile of blacktop. That mile ended right at the mission.
We drive the other way--down Greasy.
Titus points to a house on the left. "Uncle John Lewis lives in this house. He's not my uncle; that's just what everybody calls him. He's a bachelor, about 73 years old. He accepted Christ just three years ago. He only attends services occasionally, but we visit him."
Titus slows and points right to the rock hillside. "This is one of his old coal mines. The front's caved in now. It goes back about 300 feet. Dad and I used to push coal out of there for our house. It was $3.00 a ton back then." In the late 70's, Titus and his partner figured that eight big wheelbarrows made a ton, and every fourth shovel was worth 35 cents.
Oil companies have been buying up coal companies for several years now. Sun Oil owns Shamrock Coal Company, which runs the big mining operation at Abner's Branch.
We come to one of their mine entrances. Five dark tunnels disappear into the mountainside. It's Saturday, so nobody's working, but you can hear mammoth ventilation fans roaring, constantly pushing fresh air deep into the mine to keep bad air from building up.
"Felix Turner bought all this mountain land for about 50 cents an acre," Titus tells me as we continue down Greasy to another mine. "It was worthless back then. I hear his son sold all this to Sun Oil for $3 million."
He points up the ridge. "That's an illegal strip mine--a wildcat mine. Instead of putting dirt back to its original contour, they just push it over the side, letting it run down the hill and pollute the stream."
Wildcatters typically make a few grand quickly and shut down before anybody knows--and there's a lot of it going on right now.
"That guy was working at night and on weekends to keep from getting caught. State police and federal inspectors finally arrested him and another fellow, but his son got away. Saw them coming and ran."
Titus pulls into another mining area. "That orange machine there is the heart of the coal industry," he tells me. "It's called a continuous miner. That machine replaced a lot of men. You don't need dynamite, picks, and shovels. The machine does it all."
Titus looks to the huge coal pile on our right. "One fellow told me there's 150,000 tons of coal in that pile, all washed and ready to go, but nobody will buy it now that oil is so cheap. An oil embargo would help our coal industry."
The first car of coal left Harlan County in 1910. Before that, people mined coal just for personal use, or maybe to sell in the community. Now, coal is big business.
Coal rests in layers--seams, they call them. 10 or 12 seams on the mountain. The deeper you go, the better the quality of coal. And miners say deep coal is the safest to get, because the "top"--the rock roof--is more solid.
Workers ride low cars into the tunnels--sometimes less than three feet high-crouching under a steel canopy which protects their heads. They work lying down, kneeling, and crawling--all day long.
The workhorse machine is the continuous miner. A big roller with carbide teeth chews into the tunnel wall, eating up solid rock like Jello. Two rotating arms pull the loose rock underneath the machine onto a conveyor belt. It comes out the tailpiece and falls onto a waiting shuttle car.
Coals mines typically have 5 parallel tunnels, which are connected inside by cross tunnels every 50 feet (sort of like a city block grid). The continuous miner starts in number 5, drills 20 feet, moves over to number 4 and drills 20 feet, then to number 3, etc. Since the machine is 22 feet long and the operator sits at the back, he's always under supported top.
When the miner moves to the next tunnel, another crew moves in with the roof--bolting machine, pinning metal plates to the top. This is the most dangerous job--the only one requiring men to work under unsupported top.
Another crew runs the two shuttle cars, one dumping while the other loads. They dump rock onto a conveyor belt (always in tunnel 3) which hauls it outside.
Coal trucks take the rock to large "washing" facilities, which separate unburnable rock from coal by using a process involving water in huge tubs and centrifugal force. The rock settles, while the lighter coal floats away on conveyer belts.
Is coal mining dangerous? Not really, says Joe Miniard, who spent 15 accident-free years in the mines. He says it's quite safe, as long as you take the necessary precautions. Even roof-bolting. "If you set your safety jacks like you're supposed to, you're not in much danger."
However, most miners--Joe included--eventually get black lung disease. Coal dust settles in your lungs like a big weight, making breathing difficult. Once you get it, you keep it for life, and there's nothing you can do about it. Joe left mining 15 years ago, but still coughs up black gunk and takes pills to help him breathe.
Alvin Boggs remembers when Mt. Carmel let him and another student out of school for a couple weeks so they could blast enough coal out of the mountain to keep the school stocked for the winter. "I've worked in coal about seven feet high, and I've worked in coal 28 inches high--which is good coal," he says. "But you have to be an idiot to work in 28 inches. You crawl in with your lunchpail between your teeth, and can hardly get on your knees."
Buck Ward, the Sunday school superintendent at Little Laurel, doesn't like the idea of going into a tunnel no matter how high it is. "I've never been inside mines, and have no desire to. Several of my friends have been killed in mines in the last few years."
He prefers strip mining, and that's what he does fulltime. When several seams lie close to each other, it's more profitable to strip the earth away. "We'll take 200 feet off the mountain and get several seams of coal," Buck explains.
It's a living, either way you get it.
We drive back the way we came and stop at Abner's Branch. That's the name of a creek which runs into Greasy Creek. It's also the name of a small community--or what was a community.
While Luella Miller's work was concentrated around Big Laurel and further up Greasy, Miss Snyder found herself spending much of her time around Abner's Branch, about fives miles from Big Laurel. So in 1939, she moved to Abner's Branch.
Some of her new neighbors wanted a Sunday school. They didn't know anything about Sunday school, but wanted their children to attend one. She consented.
"Don't try it!" some of the local men warned her. "Our young men run out every preacher who comes here!"
But that couldn't stop Miss Snyder. One Sunday morning, she and Miss Miller opened Sunday school in the local schoolhouse. In came a half dozen young men carrying loaded pistols, ready to have some fun. She faced them down. "We're not going to have any foolishness!" she told them. "Miss Miller is here because she loves you and wants to teach you about Christ. Were not here to make trouble, and we don't need trouble from you." One by one, the pistol-packers got up and left--and never again caused trouble.
That was in the summer of 1939. By fall, the church was averaging in the 40's. The congregation met in a schoolhouse until 1951, when a couple donated a half-acre for a new church and parsonage.
Titus stops the truck along the road. "You should have seen this place five years ago." He begins pointing to different spots around us. "That field had a one-room schoolhouse and playground. Over there--a little community of about six homes and garden spots. Down there, we had our church and parsonage. As many as 12 or 15 families were active at one time."
That was before Shamrock bought out everything. Including our property. "The mine officials warned us that if we didn't sell, they would run a conveyor belt over the church yard and operate on Sunday. They said they would make it too uncomfortable to hold services, with all the noise and dust pollution."
A local bootlegger spoke up for saving the church. He told Titus, "I don't go to church there, but I sure don't want to sell it. We need a church in the community."
But the WMA, which held the deed, sold the property. The oil company paid the WMA $35,000 for the half-acre and church. It's a good thing they sold, because there's simply nothing left at Abner's Branch.
The Abner's Branch land was originally a gift from someone in the community. "People were angry when they found out it was going to be sold," Titus recalls. "One man dumped a bucket of nails in Rev. Avery's driveway." He was the pastor then.
"I got things calmed down. But what really hurts is, people around here think Laurel Mission got the money. They think we're rich. But we didn't get a penny."
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