It was really hard to keep down the coal dust, not just at the mine, but at home too. Mom was constantly dusting because the coal dust would blow off the slack piles and all through the valley. The slack piles were what they called “dirty coal” because it had too much dirt and clay in it to sell for burning. To get it out of the way, the mines just dumped it over the side of the hill.

I remember one time during a miner's strike, my dad wasn't getting any work. No money was coming in but we still had to eat, so dad took my brothers and I to the slack pile to pick scraps of coal. We would sift through the pile looking for the best of the scraps and put them in sacks to haul home. The mines didn't like people doing that, but they didn't stop them either. We usually snuck in on Sunday nights to the Brilliant Mine coal dump. We tried to be sneaky, but we didn’t really need to – everyone was doing it!

Once a week, mom would heat up water on the coal stove for our bath. She had a big metal tub that she would put in the middle of the kitchen floor and then she would heat pot after pot of water to fill it. All of us kids used the same water. I know that sounds crazy now, but back then it was such hard work to get clean – not like now when hot water appears magically out of a tap! Mom would put the cleanest kid through the water first and ending with the dirtiest. I always did my best to stay clean all week because I didn't want to be the last one in that soupy water!

After a while, dad would take some of us boys to the washhouse at the mine. The mines always had showers because the men would come out black from head to toe. All you could see when you looked at them were the whites of their eyes and their teeth when they smiled. It was easier on mom when we showered at the mine and, to be honest, I preferred that to the recycled water.

The heat that came from the coal fire was so nice. In the fall, however, the fire was always much too hot because that's when mom did her canning. Canning used a lot of coal to boil the jars and cook the fruit and meat. Some of the miner's wives had summer kitchens that were separate from the house to stop the heat from cooking everyone, but not us. My mom would can everything: apples and plums, rabbit and chicken, and every type of vegetable you can think of. This was the food that would have to last us all winter and literally hundreds of jars would line the shelves of the cellar. We even canned our own beans because we knew we too poor for store-bought beans!

Coal meant a lot to my family. My dad was a miner, I was a miner, so were my brothers. The best seat in the house was always the one closest to the stove. The heat from a coal stove is cozy and warm and you just don't feel heat like that anymore. I would never want to go back to burning coal - not for all the work, dirt, and hauling of ash buckets – but even still, there are some things I sure miss about it.

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