Vol. 4-Interview-Zahay

AV inter. FZ -176/20/72 Tape 13

FZ Do you know what they used in those days, newspapers, people had no toilet paper then

AV Of course not, newspapers eh, I guess it paid to buy a newspaper. So that was your experience in carpenter work

FZ Yeh, oh I liked it I was always crazy after the railroad but I quit down there

AV So when did you stop the carpenter work

FZ When I went on the railroad, about '17 I would say

AV And then you went off the railroad and went back in mining after how many years

FZ About 4 years on the railroad and then back mining for about 46 years

AV What did you do down there when you went back

FZ Well first, I started off when I went back as a contract miner, I started 514 where I left off, I asked for that we call for hourly change work

AV Is that supposed to be a better job

FZ Yeh, not so hard well the best part was that you were not in that smoke, foul air that the miner's always had

AV So the miner's had a lot of smoke in the old days

FZ Yeh, lot of smoke, now they have fans, electric fans, then they didn't have no fans the ones that had fans would hire what they called a "fan boy" he would have to sit in what was called the gangway the place where the cars were and he'd sit and just keep on turnin' to make air for the miners and that was no good either and then they got the electric ones

AV How else did they get air in the mines to keep up the circulation of air

FZ Most of the mines have big fans on the outside

AV Run by steam

FZ Yeh in the early days by steam and now by electricity, big fans maybe, blade maybe 12 ft. in diameter, (????????????), had no fans there were so dam many openings, cave-ins, the miners would take the coal out and it would cave-in, well that was an opening well maybe somewhere else the same thing would happen well then you

AV inter. FZ -186/20/72'd Tape 13

would have current inside the cave-in and some places were man-made openings used for that purpose

AV And what did they call them

FZ Air ways then the tunnel that you were lookin' at and these airways is where you'd get your circulation

AV These airways were they built along the pitch of coal or straight

FZ Along the pitch

AV And out to the surface

FZ Yeh till you hit the surface

AV I read somewhere where they had doors to direct the flow of air

FZ Yeh they changed them every year we had at Buck Mountain, yeh at Buck Mountain but they were worked by a man

AV What was the man called

FZ Just a door man we use to call them a "door boy" young boys, at the owl hole we had 2 doors big automatic doors and the weight of the car or motor would open it

AV But in the old days you had "door boys"

FZ Yeh, they'd set and if the driver was at the mules, the driver would go in and would be at that side of the door and when he heard the driver comin' he' open the door when the driver went thru the door he'd be stayed at the other side of the door and wait till they came back to open the door

AV Do you know anyone who did that job

FZ No, that was too long ago

AV Was that a good job

FZ Yeh, that's was a good job

AV How was he paid, hourly

FZ Yeh, hourly I don't know how much

AV You figure it must be pretty cheap

FZ Yeh, they called them "door boys" then and I wasn't much more than a boy either

AV inter FZ -196/20/72 Tape 13

AV And then when you went back you asked to be changed hourly

FZ Hourly that's what we call company man see

AV And what did you do as a company man

FZ Well when you start as a company man you do anything whatever need repair work maybe timber, maybe road work

AV Railroad work

FZ Yeh railroad work but in the mines in that order and from that I asked for a change to pump repairman so I worked at that I guess 35, 40 years

AV Yes but tell me some more what this company man was supposed to do

FZ Let's start this way there is no pitch it is flat well the miner meets the coal the miner and the laborer they have to shovel this coal into the car and where there is pitch they build chutes above the gangway and they build what they call a battery, that's to hold the coal back, props as many props that were needed it all depended on the grade of the pitch, put props up and they put planks across or what they called, trees 5-6 inches in diameter, they'd put them across maybe the poles reached 3, 4 ft. abreast depended on how wide the breast was and then put these polls onto the props to hold the coal back or otherwise you'd go down the gangway, well in between 2 props you'd leave an opening and in this opening they'd build a chute, what they called a chute, maybe 3 ft. wide and maybe a foot - 16 inches high and the coal would run into the chute and at the end of the chute there was what we called a lever there was a hole on one side of the chute you put this lever in there that was a piece of what we call malaggin', it is a tree about 4 inches in diameter and about 5 ft. long and one side of the chute there was a hole and you put this lever in there and on the other side of the chute the plank, put a slit in there so the lever would sit down in there so the coal wouldn't push it out and in order to load the cars all you do is lift that lever up and the coal ran into the cars you had no shovelin' to do the coal came down from the pitch by itself

AV inter. FZ -206/20/72 Tape 13

AV That sounds good

FZ They were good jobs, you'd load a car in a coule of minutes

AV Who would push the car out of the way

FZ Well they had drivers, and say if you only had a car or two you could move them yourself with a sprag, put the sprag in between the spokes and press down on it you could move it yourself but if you had more than one the driver jerked them up

AV What's that

FZ Move the cars, with mules they chased the mules and they'd pull go so far and stop then in later years they got motors and the motors used to do that maybe you had 8, 10 cars and the motor was on one end and as you were loadin' what we called the "patcher" the brakeman would signal to the motor man and if you had one car loaded he'd give him a signal and he'd pull the other under the whole chute & so on was

AV So your job was to build these chutes

FZ Yeh these chutes and some places where you couldn't build a chute you'd build what they called a platform

AV Yeh what's that

FZ Instead of the coal goin' into the chute where you had no chute the coal would go on this platform and there you'd stand and lower it into the cars

AV Why would you build a platform and not a chute

FZ As soon as the miner got up a piece ways with whatever he was drivin'

AV What kind of formation would this be of the coal would it be a steeper pitch that you neede a platform for

FZ No hardly any pitch and if the pitch wasn't big enough for the coal to run onto the platform some p;aces maybe the miner had to shovel 3 or 4 times from pile to pile to get it down onto the platform but then in later years you built what they called a trough chute, the chute that I'm taLkin' about but the sides didn't come up straight it was built this shape, rounded, the idea for that was when

AV inter. FZ -216/20/72 Tape 13

Your chute would fill up there was pitch enough for a flat chute enough for it to push down on to the platform but this round formation of the chute that's what caused the coal to push down onto the platform

AV And then you'd shovel it off of the platform into the cars, and this was done when there was hardly any pitch in the coal vein at all

FZ That's right, where there wasn't much pitch, see, and places where you couldn't even have a trough chute they had, where the coal's flat, they had what they called "buggies", a small car, oh about a quarter of a ton, smaller gauge than the regular gauge. We would push that into where we were mining and you'd fill it and push it out and dump it, some places into the big car and some places onto a platform then you'd have to shovel it off the platform

AV And when the miner's would mine on a pitch did you have to put in some more timbering as they climbed up the pitch would they have to put in some more logs

FZ Yes you had to carry what we called a manway

AV Now what's that

FZ See you drive abreast 16 ft. wide and some were 24 ft. wide and on the one side was called the rib and that side maybe they'd put up a line of props as you were goin' up with the breast see, you put these up and on the inside you made a flank on there and you could fill this breast up with coal that your manway was always open that's the way you traveled up and down until you got up as far as you wanted to go

AV And did you blast from the manway

FZ No just from the breast, the purpose of the manway was just for safety and travel and in some places they had 2 manways one on each side

AV Why

FZ Well that was for air circulation

AV How did the air circulate from between

FZ Well it goes up one manway and to the other