There was one part of the mine that was only 18 inches high! There was a little Italian guy that worked in there all by himself. You can't even put in timbers to stop the roof from coming down in a seam that high; there is just no room. There was barely enough room for him to move around in there. He worked by lying on his side and shoveling out the coal. We all got paid by how much coal we loaded and this poor guy couldn't mine coal very fast on his side. He would only make about $3 a day. Nobody else would do it, but, he needed the money, we all needed the money; and so sometimes we took jobs that just were not that safe. I worked hard.

I started as a pusher and it was all hard work. Most of the young guys, like me, would start as a pusher. If a guy started in the mine and didn't have muscles, he would have them after a week of being a pusher! I would bring the miners empty coal cars to fill and I would wheel out the full ones down the track. I had to be quick because if a miner had filled his car and I didn't have an empty one ready for him he would start yelling down the tunnels looking for me.

The miners were paid by how much coal they loaded during the day. If they had to wait for me, they would lose money for the time they were wasting. The empty ones were easy to push but the full ones were heavy and I sure worked up a sweat trying to move those out of the rooms. The coal cars were all on railroad tracks and so sometimes they would move easy, but if there was a part of the mine that was a little uphill, I would gasp and groan and put my back to the car to push it out.

I would push and pull and push and pull those cars all day and I had to do it while bending low so I didn't hit my head on the roof. I worked so hard and sweated so much that I would soak through my clothes. When I got out of the mine at the end of the day it took two other men to help me get my long underwear off! It would be frozen solid and stuck to my skin so one guy would pull the arm off the left and the other would pull off the right.

I would take my underwear into the showers with me and rinse them out. Then I would hang them on the basket to dry for the next day. When I came back in the morning, my underwear would have dried stiff as a board and I would hit it against the wall to soften it up enough to put it back on. Everybody had to do that; that just shows how hard we worked.

When World War II started, we all got to work regular hours. I could work as many shifts as I wanted because coal was suddenly in hot demand. It was a good time for coal miners because we all had money then. The mines started working 24 hours a day, seven days a week and they were always looking for new guys to work. Sometimes I would get up in the dark and go to the mine to work in the dark and leave the mine in the dark. I wouldn't see the sun all week. But, I had a pocket full of money and after living through the "hungry thirties" I wasn't going to complain!

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