Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

I opened my March 24 issue of the Coal Valley News, the local newspaper from Madison, Boone County, WV. It's my home county in West Virginia.

Inside I found a picture of Ridgeview Coal Company Tipple. I was so happy to see a picture of it when it was active. I remember when I was a little girl, no more than four or five, until I left the mountains at the age of twelve, we would go on summer Sundays after church, in my aunt's 1953 aqua colored Ford car to Brush Creek, WV to visit Aunt Clayte. She was a sister to my grandmother, Susan Walker.

Aunt Clayte lived in the most beautiful large two-story house (a story for another day). The trip couldn't have been more than 20 miles, but to us it was a major trip. I so loved the words; "we are going to Aunt Clayte's house today." I have the fondest memories of going to her home. There, on Brush Creek, my dad Sidney Walker grew up and before him, my grandfather Lummie Walker, and before him, three back lines of his ancestors.

So, into the Ford car we went on a hot day in the summer, with the fragrance of the wild yellow honeysuckle coming through the open car windows. Aunt Doe, my dad's sister, would drive. Grandpa sat in the front seat by her, grandma with her Sunday black straw hat and I in the back seat. We drove down Joe's creek road to Route 3, and on down to Racine, and up and over into the head of Brush Creek. We went up and down the narrow roads of the 1950's to Aunt Clayte's tree shaded yard.

In those days, people of the mountains painted lime on their shade trees to get rid of bugs. Their yards looked so perfect with white lime painted about three foot up from the base of each tree. Around one of the trees was a settee that rounded the whole tree. It was white in my memory. The green grass of her yard felt cool on my bare feet. I enjoyed going off by myself to sit on the settee under the tree, and I was quite sure they were rich for having such a wonderful house and grounds.

Uncle Jesse, Aunt Clayte's husband, would take my grandpa up the mountain road behind the house to the sawmill after Sunday dinner. My ancestors of Brush Creek were loggers. I regret to this day I didn't go along to see the sawmill. I can see the road up there today in my mind and I wonder how far it was up the road to the mill. Then, some of us would go for a ride down to Nellis, about four miles from Aunt Clayte's house. On the road to Nellis, we would go past Ridgeview, and under the Ridgeview Tipple.

You can see in the picture of late, the road went under the tipple (an apparatus by which loaded cars are emptied by tipping.)

The tipple began to be a landmark in my mind each time I returned to Brush Creek. It looked big to me in my little mind, in the back seat of the car with my arm hanging out the window catching the breeze, as I listened to my people talk of the old days on the creek. I knew it was rusted old tin, even at an early age. It was where the coal was loaded into rail cars to be taken out of the creek by the black steam engine.

I called my dad this evening to see if he had seen the picture. He is going to be 84 years old in April. He told me he used to work for the Ridgeview Coal Company when he was a young man. He said this was not the tipple that was there, when he worked there. In his early days, the tipple was made out of wood. I thought the tin one was old to me. He can remember far earlier to the wooden one. Hid memory goes back even farther. When he was very young, maybe 14 or 15, his dad Lummie had a pair of oxen. It was his job to pull the fresh cut timber off the hillside to make the supports for the Ridgeview Mine when they were first building it. I spent days this past fall with my dad writing down his memories. I came back to Nebraska with a full legal pad full of notes and stories For Another Day for you. As the sun began to set and with grandma and Aunt Clayte all talked out, we drove back to Joe's creek where we lived. Once again I was gathering memories and I didn't know it. All I was doing was growing up with old people and an aunt.

I was sorry to read in the Coal Valley News that the tipple no longer stands. I took a trip back there for the first time in 30 years in the early 1990's and it was still towering over the road to Nellis. The old landmark that I remembered as a child was even rustier and over on the hill, the trees had grown up over the entrance to the mine. They call that "reclaiming the area".

They still heavily mine coal in Boone County. Now it's called "mountain top mining" it a new way of mining that provides income for the people. Its also such a different method of mining than what my dad experienced. For as long as there is coal we will never be cold and sometimes on cold snowy days I can still smell the coal smoke from the chimneys and hear the noises from the mines on the hills.

"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." J. Howard Payne

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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