West Virginia - Day 7 - Beckley - mines and arts

Camp Creek State Park
Sunday, 7 April 2019

today's route

I was tired after yesterday's driving, but they're predicting rain most of tomorrow, so I decided I'd better do my driving today.

Lots of robins in the campground, and they were singing like crazy early this morning.

My breakfast (left), courtesy of Michelle who gave me those fresh eggs.  I can tell you her chickens are happy: unhappy chickens produce eggs with thick shells.

There were some low clouds in the early morning and it was chilly until 10:00 or so, so when I went up the first serious hill on the highway, my outside mirrors fogged up completely.  I don't have a mirror-thawing option, and I needed to change lanes when the climbing lane gave out, so I trusted that everybody else had their headlights on - I could barely make even those out in my mirror.  The mirrors thawed just fine when I went back down the hill - I guess it was warmer at the lower elevation.  Or maybe it was warmer above and chilly below.  Whatever, it was weird trying to drive with no mirrors.

For the life of me I can't figure out why I've been seeing so many plates from Ontario, Canada.  I've noticed several every day I've been driving, and there were a couple in the KOA campground.  It's not like West Virginia's sitting on the Canadian border, or even all that close to it.  And it's not just one per day, either.  I see 3 or 4 or 5 every couple of hours.  City or highway driving.  So odd.

Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine
One of the things I wanted to learn about during my month in West Virginia is the coal mining profession, and this place is mentioned by almost everybody as THE place to go.  So I came.

water birch

For some weird reason, the computer mapping program told me it'd take me an hour to get here, though it's only about 20 miles away down an interstate.  But I decided to leave the campground 2 hours before the 10:00 opening time.  Turns out I had enough time to stop for groceries, walk the dogs, and talk for a long time to one of the coal miners about things to see in WV - and still had to wait a while.  And then the first tour wasn't until 10:30.  Oh, well.  It was a pleasant morning.

I took that photo of the tree because I didn't remember ever seeing one like it.  I guessed, from what the wood looked like under the peeling bark, that it was a birch, but I asked someone in the parking lot who was clearly a local.  He said he'd always heard it called a water birch, and that it was usually found near rivers.  There were a lot of them planted in this parking area.

Ed, our tour guide

The tour costs $16 for senior citizens, and it's absolutely worth the price if you want to know about coal mining.  The tour lasted about an hour and was packed with information.  Ed, the miner who led our group, said he'd worked in several other mines in that area from 1974 until 1985, and it was clear he loved the work.  He was not only interesting, he was kind: he drove us (there were about a dozen of us) into the mine on a tram that ran on RR tracks, and he stopped soon after we were in the mine to be sure everybody was comfortable being underground.  I'm sure those tours now and then turn up someone who's surprised to learn he or she has a fear of being under a mountain.

This area of West Virginia was especially productive for coal, with a seam 28"-34" wide of the kind of bituminous coal known then as "smokeless," very valuable.  www.wva-usa.com/history/mthope/smokeless  There's actually still coal in this mine, but the city's operating permit says no extraction of anything.

the cart towing us into the mine

The mine we were in was being worked from 1890 until 1910.  There wasn't any such thing as electricity in this area back then, and the miners all wore acetylene lamps on the front of their helmets.  Each lamp had a small container of carbide crystals (I think that's what he said), and the miner would drip a few drops of water on the crystals and then strike a spark that would ignite them, and that light would last an hour.  If the miner didn't replenish the lamp in time, once the light went out the miner would be in total darkness.

To demonstrate, Ed shut off all the electric lights, leaving only his own modern headlamp.  He shut that off when he lit the acetylene lamp so we could see how little light a miner would have.  And then he shut even that off so we could understand what a miner would experience if his lamp ran out.  The darkness was absolute.  We were 70' underground and there were no sources of light at all.  The darkness almost seemed thick.  Ed said the miner had to wait where he was until someone else came along to help him, because of course there were other miners working in other areas of the mine.

Today that mine has a ceiling in most places of about 6½', but when it was being mined the ceiling only went up to about 4'.  Neither the mine owners nor the miners wanted to use picks and shovels and black powder to carve out a hole any bigger than they had to.  A miner spent most of his 10-hour shift working on his stomach.  In near darkness.  And he was expected to produce 1 ton of coal each shift.  The coal couldn't have any rock mixed up in it, either, because the mine would dock the pay - sometimes by half - of any miner who brought out more than a very few pieces of rock with his 1 ton of coal.

a car that held 2 tons of coal

He was paid 20¢/ton of coal, and was paid only in company scrip that could be used only in the company store.  He had to buy his own shovel, pick, fuse and black powder; he had to buy his own canary to bring with him into the mine to tell him if poison gas was seeping in.  (They really did use canaries in the coal mines.)  He had to pay to have the coal car weighed.

The old Tennessee Ernie Ford song, "Sixteen Tons," wasn't so far off, apparently.  "St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go/I owe my soul to the company store."

I finally asked Ed the obvious question: why would someone want to do this job?  And he said it paid better than other work at the time and was a way for a man to support his family.  And even today, he said miners now make $37/hour, which ain't peanuts.

The photo on the right shows a machine in the rear that was used in later years to help a miner bore deeper into the rock, where he'd insert black powder, tamp it in with brass (so as not to ignite it), then tamp in mud, and finally tamp in a fuse.  He'd then yell, "Fire in the hole!" three times, and set off the fuse.  When the other miners in his area heard him yell, they'd stop what they were doing so they could listen.  They wanted to be sure that blast hadn't shifted the rock in their areas - they'd listen for creaks - because then they'd want to get out of the mine as fast as possible.  The blast was to help the miner get closer to the coal seam.

The ceiling here would have come only about as high as that machine - not much higher than the seam of coal.

I mostly took that photo, though, for the lunch pail in the foreground.  That pail has 3 sections.  The top layer was packed with the miner's dessert.  The middle layer was the main course.  The bottom layer was water - the miner had to bring his own water in for his 10-hour shift.  Once that water was gone, he was left with no water for the rest of his shift.

On occasion another miner might drink up his water while he was busy working his coal seam, so the miners put their false teeth into the water to discourage thieves.  If they didn't have false teeth of their own, they'd go buy a set from the local funeral home and clean them up. 

Ed said rats could lift the lid of the lunch bucket with their tails, but the miners appreciated the rats for their sense of self-preservation.  If they saw rats moving quickly toward the exit, the miners went too.  Nonetheless, miners began using lunch boxes with latches on them, like we used to use in elementary school.

The whole thing was a fascinating experience, and I wished we had more time because there was so much more to know about.  One thing I learned is that coal mining would not have been an occupation for me - I really didn't much like wondering if all that earth above us was going to keep standing until we got back out.

Tamarack
I kept hearing that this was a good place to go to find local crafts and learn more about WV culture.  Turns out that's not quite an accurate description.

This place uses a jury of art experts to decide which artists can display their work there - and the work is for sale.  It's true all the products were made in West Virginia, and that all manner of arts and crafts were displayed.  But it's not really a cultural experience but more of a shopper's paradise.  Still, there are some amazing things there.

these are all wooden

I really liked this one - but it was $70

these are all made of wood

a close-up of the Wilkinson display - it's all wooden

other Fiesta products

Fiesta's Halloween line

And there were many many other crafts: wines, herbs, jams, clothing, watercolors, sculptures, brooms, quilts, glassware - both decorative and functional.

These are only a sample of the beautiful basketry on display.

And of course there's a restaurant there, with WV cooks and food.  All very fancy and high-toned.

Sadly, my budget didn't allow me to buy any of the beautiful things I saw.  I found some maple syrup that's apparently from WV maples, and of course I bought some jam and a bottle of wine - all a little spendy but, hey, I'm only here for a month.

Tamarack exterior

As you might expect from what's basically an art gallery, there were windows and light everywhere.  It's built on the side of a hill (what else in West Virginia), and my photo is taken from a little way below.  But you can see the skylights and windows that almost surround the building.

That evening the clouds got lower - probably tomorrow's rain moving in.  You can see in this photo that they were moving down the hills surrounding the campground.  Not a problem in the evening; I'm just glad they weren't complicating our day trip.