The Wilder Davidson Story: The End of an Era; Part 4; The Legacy

You The following program has been made possible in part by a grant from the Tennessee Humanities Council, a not -for -profit corporation whose principal funding is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, by contributions from businesses and individuals in the upper Cumberland region of Tennessee, and by

WCTETV. When I got the Wilder, I thought I was in the city. Davidson used to be a pretty place and a nice place, and Wilder was too, and Highland was too down there, but it just all disappeared, the people just all gone out and left. I never dreamed that it would be like that always, and that I'd live out there all my life. I loved to live there, didn't you? I sure did back then. It was a good place to live. There was a lot of people in there too. For six months, it was just like a war going on in Wilder. You could hear shooting day and night, dynamite. Mining companies was king of the hell, buddy. You stooped and you bowed. They owned the mines, they owned the house, they owned the store, they owned everything. That Wilder's best

coals have been dug out in this country, they say. I know it's got a bad name, but they've never been no better people in the world. It's hard to talk about it. The Wilder Davidson story, the end of an era, is a community -based oral history project that tries, through the voices of those who lived there, to preserve the history of the five upper Cumberland coal mining communities of Wilder, Davidson, Twinton, Crawford and Highland, Tennessee. Part four, the legacy, examines mining in the area after the mid -1930s, the complete disappearance of the town of Wilder, and how the five communities still thrive today in the memories of former and current residents. A combination of the Great Depression and the catastrophic mine strike of

1932 -33 devastated the coal mining industry in the Wilder, Davidson complex. As we saw in part three, the young United Mine workers of America, local number 4467, was broken by a combination of a bitter winter, hunger, and the killing of Union President Barney Graham. Coal mining in the area never really recovered, even though there was a brief period of prosperity during World War II, and even though some significant deep mining continued into the 1950s, many miners started leaving Wilder soon after the strike was over. When, in your opinion, did the striking miners realize that it was all over, that hope indeed was gone? Well, miners, like other workers, or maybe unlike other workers, they have a tenacity that makes them

try the impossible to hold on after it's long, obvious to most people that it's over, and that was certainly true at Wilder. They just couldn't believe with all their struggle that had gone through and their feeling of injustice that it was over. When it seemed to some of the rest of us that no actor Barney was killed, and they turned loose the killers, we realized that they'd kill more people if they wanted to. But the miners, maybe for six months after that, they still thought there was some chance of getting settlement. Later on, the TVA was beginning, and they were recruiting people for the TVA, I'd been working closely with TV, Dr. Morgan was a

good friend of mine, I knew the other Morgan too, the chairman was a friend, he'd asked us to help get people. So I asked him to make an exception and hire a lot of these unemployed, of these black people, finally employed about 75 of them. Same time, they were starting to come in homesteads, and I got some of people in Wilder in touch with the people who run the common homesteads, who happened to be friends of mine, and half a dozen of those people went to the homesteads, as well as some of the stalkers in the hosiery mill in Harriman, some of those people are still there, and we were willing to stick our necks out and try to get them away, and we were able to help some people get jobs, and some of the young people we got in the

CCC camps, you know, so there were some government agencies that we were able to make use of in helping some of those people. During the depression years of the 1930s, many federal agencies and private groups, such as the Save the Children Fund, sent programs and workers into Appalachia. People who were children and teenagers in the mid -1930s remember Miss Margaret Layman, who came to Highland Junction to teach and train young people. She came, I think, it was from the northern states, some of the churches in the northern states, and when she came to our town, everyone was kind of fearful of her, because they thought that she was, a lot of them would quote, know, have been sent in as a spy on us, so we were kind of skittish about going to her house, you know, she wanted to get the younger people and work with the younger people. She was from that Presbyterian group, Save the Children's Fund. That's right, I'll never forget, because

I know the packages that they would ship in to her would come, we had a little, they called it the Y there in Highland Junction, and the train would come in on one track, and then it would do its switching, know, to pick up its railroad cars, and I know the freight would be dumped on this little, it was a little kind of a depot, but then it all tore down, but just a little ramp, and then they would, and I saw that many, many times, and it had New York Save the Children's Fund. I think her purpose for being in our little town was to get us acquainted with the outer world, because we were all confined in one little town, and didn't get out that much, so she wanted to have this little play, and it was an international, I think we had a, we all wore costumes, and we made our costumes, and they were all from different countries, I can't remember how many countries were represented, but it was real good, and everyone enjoyed that, and that made us aware of our

other people in other countries, and things like that. She would have the girls one afternoon, then she would have the boys one afternoon, and then she would take on the latter part of the week, maybe one day out of the week, or one day out of the month, I can't remember exact, but she would let us all get together, and she'd let the girls, she'd turn her kitchen over to us, and she would buy the food, and she would tell us how to prepare it, and we would prepare the dinner for her, and then we could invite a friend, and he would be one of the boys that had been in her group, and we would get to serve the boys, and then we'd eat the weather, and she told us many things about food, and different types of food that we hadn't been used to, and I never will forget, she was the first one that ever introduced me to spaghetti and meatballs, and we got to make spaghetti and meatballs in her kitchen, and it was delicious, but just thinking back, she was a dear person, I remember that she taught us many things. Others

remember such programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, and the Cumberland Homesteads Development in Crossville, Tennessee. I worked on telephone lines, now you were paid $25 a month, $20, and you got to keep five of it, and the rest of it went home. I got to keep eight, all 30, and all $30 a month, I kept eight and 22 went home. What did you think of the CCC? I loved it, I'd be good for the people right today, if the young boys, if they just had something else going like that. Ironically, just as the strike was ending in Wilder Davidson, the first of the New Deal labor reform initiatives was enacted into law. Through Section 7A of the National Industrial Recovery Act of June 1933, and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, the right to organize and select unions as bargaining agents became institutionalized in America. These

laws gave unions legal protection, but they would never have accomplished much without the groundswell of efforts by rank and file workers, such as those who suffered through the years 1931 to 1933 in the Wilder Davidson area, and the massive union drives of the rest of the 1930s. By the early 1940s, the labor union movement in America was secure. When they organized it was 100 percent, and then when the contractors up, now I'm talking about the 32, when the contractors up, see the company, the mind workers wasn't strong enough, they had nothing to fight with at that time. Well, it split up. Then part, they say we go back to work, see they kept us out the while until you know you get hungry and they know they've got you hooked, they say well now if you further want to go to work, well they start going to work. Part of us went to work and part of us didn't.

Then that started the problem, then they started the burning temples and blowing up railroad bridges and shooting people, and that brought the militia in there then. Anyway, they went on through that till they, you know, they just had the power and the union mind workers didn't have the money to fight it. But then we went blowing up into the forties and reorganized again, and that time they were strong enough that we couldn't get no help from the, from the united mind workers out of the, they were the same as we, they just broke out of all these then to have the money. But later years they got the money and that's, that's helpless. Spooner Stultz had helped unionize them after that. In other words, after about 1933 the minds were not unionized for several years and then Spooner and my cousin Billy Prater helped, helped organize them. The Fentress

Cole and Koch Company's horse pound mine continued operation until 1951. Cole was carried from the mine across a deep valley and a mountain by tram line to a railroad temple at Wilder. Fentress Cole and Koch Company moved its operations to the Monterey Tennessee area by the early 1950s. Large deep mines that worked several hundred men were replaced by small operations such as truck mines and later by strip mining. Went back loading coal at $2, I mean 40, 48 cents a ton. And I worked at that until they shut down. That was in 19 and 30, 38 I believe it was. They shut down. Davidson did. Then from there I went to the CCs and stayed there until

39. When Wilder went out, they moved to Monterey. The most of them left Wilder going, went to Monterey. Then when Davidson went out, they went to Wilder and stayed there until Wilder went out. Then they just went here in your honor, just went, they just went picking up any kind of jobs that they could find, any place, anywhere they had to. I help open horsepounds, yeah. They talked about putting the railroad down there and I guess it cost too much. they put a bucket line across that mountain, across that big holler down there. I don't remember exactly how much coal them buckets hold, about a ton I guess, or maybe I don't know. But they had them, and I don't even know how this faced, but they called it across that mountain and to the temple and the railroad. that's where all that coal come out of that mountain over there. And when was the last bucket load?

The first day of June, 1951. How much has changed in the mines as far as machinery is concerned and the way mining is done today, that's when you were started. Well whenever I started working in the mines, well they had ton cars and motors and things. Now mostly they've got belts, shuttle cars, and stuff like that to haul it out. Now then they're the drilling, steady -setting timbers, they're drilling the top and the bolting top. They just take and drill holes four foot, six foot up there and put them bolts up and tighten them up and just bolt them about four, five foot apart. And bolt the top up, they say it'll hold better than the timbers will, but I don't think so. Well the lights, back then we just had the carbot lights and things that used,

carbot lights. Now then they've got the electric battery lights and things. And they have to have the batteries charged up every night to come out. They'll last a day, 12 hours. A lot of this machinery, they don't drill and shoot it down and use the machines, like they did back when I worked, they just take and take out in there and just dig it out with cuts. With a big auger or something? Yeah, just big cutters, they just drill out so much of the time, they'll back out and then start drilling on the side and just going up and drilling on the side and just cut it up fine. They don't get out, rock, hold, lump, age and stuff like that. They don't shake it, they just run it all one grade, I reckon. They got these, they called them joy loaders and they had these machines and they put these pans up these cars, you know, to run it to the outside, maybe a five ton car, you know, and they put that up, that car and load it with that, you know, maybe just,

that pan goes way out the under, you know, me and back here at the base is the cold working, you know, and loading that pan, it's carrying on out there and putting it in the car, you see, and where that car gets pulled by, they just run another one, you know, do the same way, you know, and that's the difference they've made in the mining business. What a truck mine is, they build a temple out here, you know, the car runs out here and dumps it over in that temple and the trucks back sometimes get that cold out of that temple, know, they'll take it up here to ramp up here, you know, where there's a railroad car spotted, you know, and dumping that railroad car and that's what they call a truck mine. And the other kind, you know, the other mines, why that railroad car is under the temple, you put it right in it, you know. We were up at the mine the other day looking around and I know you were up there once before with us and you talked about how the strip mining had changed the terrain, you know, where it's almost unrecognizable. Why don't you talk about that? Oh yeah,

well back when I first moved over here, they come in stripping around all of this out carpets and things, they'd go back anywhere from, well from 40 to 60 feet back and strip. They'd shoot the high walls down and clean that off and then get the coal out and they'd just pull off and leave it. That's all it was. Now then, if they strip mines, they've got to come back and reclaim that. They've got to put it back just like it was around up here and around where they stripped, you can go around and see and things just like it was, they just left it. They just scooted down and filled in and rolled up. They just reclaimed it back then. One of the most painful legacies of the deep mining era in the Upper Cumberland is widespread black lung disease among former miners. Albert Sisko, who said that mining pay was the best money that could be made at the time, now says that the high wages were not worth losing his health to

black lung. No, no it ain't. I'd have to say that, not for me it wouldn't be. I'd rather have my health than anything else in the world. You see back, as I had my health, I could go fishing, I'd go hunting, and I could enjoy myself, but I can't do that no more, you see. I can't stand to walk, can't get my breath hardly, and I ain't allowed to climb these hills, I ain't supposed to climb these hills around. And you don't do much of that hunting and fishing unless you've got some hills to climb, you see. I can go down on that hill right there, hit steep, and by the time I get back to the house, and I'll stop four or five times before I get back maybe, I'm so sick I could farm it really before I get to the house here. And got a bad heart to go with that, you see. That caused a lot of things getting on with you. And if I'd have known it then, you couldn't have, I'd rather have worked out here and just half lived just to work in order to live good. Now I would. A once booming mining town that boasted a

population of perhaps 2 ,000, wilder declined rapidly through the 1940s and 1950s until not a single structure was left by the 1970s and virtually no trace of structures by the 1980s. Even the wilder post office was moved from company land in Wilder to Davidson in the late 1960s. In the late 70s it was moved to its current location in Highland where the mail is still canceled with the Wilder, Tennessee stamp. And this is the old remains of what's left, the old till place that they pulled the coal out of number three and number two mines at Wilder. They ain't much left, the old wilder place here, but just trees and their old remains and stuff. Possum holler turned right down below that creek Possum holler turned and they was going house it back up and beat the right as you go down. All the Possum holler was going in 1947. They just tore it down, the people left and they just tore

it down and used it in things because they wouldn't know how it's taller. They had just a few houses up Blackbottom whenever I was a hauling coal down there. What happened to the houses? They tore them down. Who did? Just anybody I reckoned wanted to come in there and get them. That's the only place I seen them leave. Even that store here was tore down. I was working. I didn't even know the store was tore down until it was gone and then to the schoolhouse. See, they filled in a lot of this stuff since they had been stripping things. Why, that's just one way up through there. Whenever we was hauling down through there, there was two roads. You could come up one and go back to the other. The creek run right down the middle. It was just like a cupboard down through there. I had to post office back up here and the store was just right down here in front of the road and then the office was down below the store. Like all mining towns, Wilder was just

one of these company -owned locations and it was established to start with to mine coal and when the coal ceased being economically feasible to mine, people started moving away and they just didn't have jobs and it was just like a mining village out in the west somewhere. People left and like there's no more Wilder. Wilder's just not there anymore. What's left is three or four houses over there in Davidson community but there's none around Wilder. The people who grew up and lived in the Wilder Davidson area treasure their memories of how the communities used to look and still come from across the country to get together once a year at the Wilder reunion. People when they go back over to visit that live there a long time, course they they live with their thoughts about where they lived. After all these years when you go back into that

area now and you look around, how do you feel? Well I go back twice a year. You mean over at the Fallen Junction? I try to go twice a year and well I just walk around and I can see everything that was sitting there just like it was before it was burned and tore down and it brings back many memories to me. I feast on it all year long. I felt sad. I said if I could cry I would just cry. It just broke my heart. I said this is my old stomping ground where I had the best years of my life. Oh we just had such good times and I said no it's nothing. Nothing here. Oh it hurt my feelings so bad I couldn't understand it. But you can't expect anything I reckon to last forever but and it sure didn't. It just seems like

something is just obliterated and taken out of your life when you go back and you just see y 'all there's trees where all the houses used to be. Sure I feel like I'm at home when I cross that river over here and well it is home. Eight years ago I stood there and it don't look like Wilder and the Moor. All the houses been tore down most all of them and old people died out and a lot of them left. I don't miss anything I just like you know I can just go back and you know I've people go right now they can't see what I see see I still see all that stuff it's all gone but I still know where you know and know where the wells and the springs and where the people live and this so and so live here and this and over here and that's you know it's just a good feeling I don't want to live over but I do like to go back. Of course when you're raised somewhere you miss

all the people that were there and in my mind I know where the houses were and who lived in them and and remember the people I ran around with. We had the good times and we had the bad times but I let the good times overcome the bad times and that's what I think about and and I try to remember the good times and they have and they've carried me through many years. After I got out of the Navy I went back over there through there and the trees were growing up where the houses used to be and it really looked awful to me. We went over with my mother one time and went up to what they called Joe Garm House and she said I never did live in anything like that didn't I said you sure did I said this is what this coal mine camp was all about and I said we all lived in the houses like that of course this house was in a state of uh falling apart but this time and they moved a lot of junk cars and everything in the yard but there's one of the last houses left down there in the world there's none left now the

trees have grown up you wouldn't know you'd went through the most thriving community in Fenton County when you went through there now they had all the money they had the political influence. I think there'll always be hard feelings I don't think we'll ever get over it the only way that you'll ever get over to this I said in the beginning that a person has got to know that there's a different way of life there comes a time in your life that you have to forgive you you don't have to forget you can't forget. To me it's surprising what the people that grew up in Wilder under the conditions they grew up how they advanced in the world they got up they were school teachers engineers doctors newspaper people that came out of that group that I went to high school they made their marks in the world and we if we run up on one another

yet we still know one another too we don't get too dirty and they're too black to shake hands with one another yeah that's the way these old people these old miners got along now like them days. If you're writing the history of this area of Wilder, Davidson, Twenton, Crawford what would be the most important thing that you would put in the history of this area? Most important thing is the people it's it's a common left here. The Wilder Davidson story the end of an era parts one two three and four will be repeated on Wednesday night July the first starting at 8 p .m. that's Wednesday night July the first from 8 until 10 p .m. right here on Channel 22 you

you