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WALN BROWN INTERVIEWING CLIFFORD FALATKO -3- 8/20/72
Tape 5-1
WB Would the boys take the girls or would the girls walk by themselves?
CF No, sometimes they had a lantern, a carbine latern, no oil lamp or
lantern there were 10 or 15 together, there was no oil like this. They
were farm roads, all mud, only in the daytime you could go right from the
store where the store is, right across over the mountain, it was a short cut,
you know, in the daytime it was nice to go too, in the night you couldn't
go the short cut it was too dark used to take the road used to go to church,
STATIONS of the cross or something you'd have to walk all the way around but
now the roads are good but whose goin' to walk, they wouldn't walk from here
to the
WB Well now you don't need to walk anymore there's cars and things like that.
CF Well I'm afraid to go by car to Freeland I don't like to ride. I don' t like
to ride honest to God you wouldn't believe it, there's so many accidents
you can never tell if something going to happen but it will happen no matter
where you're at.
WB Did you always work in the mines here at Eckley? How old were you when you
started working the mines?
CF Yes, well I'll tell you when I started to work first I started to work down
at Hazle Brook it's more than three miles from here over on top of the
mountain.
WB There's a Hazle Brook Road that still goes though there.
CF There is no Hazle Brook Road now.
WB There's an old path that goes through down here you can the whole way to
Hazle Brook.
CF Past ------ there was an old road you could take the railroad down and then
there was an old road that went over top, over the mountain, it's more than
3 miles.
WB You used to walk that each day?
CF Yeh, and walk day and night, sure.
WB How old were you then?
CF About 13.
WB What was you first job in the mines?
CF That wasn't in the mines, that was pickin slate on the breakers for 6 cents an
hour. 10 hours a day, pickin' slate, 6 cents an hour.
WB You were picking slate out of the coal, where was that at?
CF Hazle Brook
WB Oh you were a breaker boy?
CF Yeh, that's what I'm sayin', on a breaker.
WB Oh I see, you used to sit on one of those little things and pick the slate out
CF I just had a little bench and the coal was coming down a chute you just
take it out that's all, all day long.
WB That was pretty tough on your hands wasn't it?
CF Tough! your fingers were red, bleedin', but then we got some kinds of pads
they used to the company used to give us pads, rubber pads, not rubber but
might as well say rubber, anyhow that didn't hurt our hands too much - for
10 hours.
WB That must have been rough?
CF Yeh, 10 hours.
WB That's a long time to be sitting there, I'll bet that raised a lot of dust
didn't it?
CF No there wasn't too much dust on a breaker, mostly water because that coal
don't go dry, the coal was gettin' washed with water see? Soon as they dump
it from the coal mine on top and from the shakers goes to big rollers, it
cracks the coal chestnut, pea coal and rice coal, different sizes goes in