A Coal Miner’s Son

By Dale Welch

I am a proud son of a coal miner. I am also the brother, cousin, nephew, grandson and for about a week, the brother-in-law of coal miners. My brother-in-law quickly saw the light at the end of the mine shaft and chose to be a brick and block mason. I have been in a coal mine, but never worked in one.

My daddy, Hershel Welch was born in Bill’s Branch, TN, a suburb of Lovejoy, in Southeastern Overton County.  He started coal mining when he was just nine years old.  Daddy’s mother had died and he was the second-oldest of her six remaining children, so he went to work to support his family, the youngest was just eight months old. Before his mother died, she split her children up between her mother, aunts and grandmother, knowing their father couldn’t properly care for them. They all still got to see each other every day, because they lived near one another.  

Throughout his career, Daddy worked at several mines from Wilder, Crawford and Monterey to Fork Mountain, in Morgan County; and one in Grassy Cove, in Cumberland County, that he and his brothers ran for a while. The last place he worked and for several years was Clear Creek Coal Company. It was where the current city-owned Meadow Creek Park is located, on the Clarkrange Hwy.

While he was still a young man, he had walked out to Wilder to get his check. He had on a brand new pair of overalls that he had bought at his great uncle’s store, in Lovejoy. On his way back, he caught a ride on the step board of a coal truck. Just up above Lovejoy, the truck was turning and Daddy stepped off to head in the direction of home. It surprised a drunk man in the road. The man grabbed Daddy and cut the galluses of his brand new overalls. He didn’t know this man. Defending himself, he straddled the man and commenced beating the man’s head with a rock. In just a short time, a man poked him on the shoulder. He thought to himself that he was really in trouble and thinking he would be robbed or killed. Instead, it was another man asking if he didn’t think the drunk man had enough.

Working at several mines, Daddy was in several mining accidents. Just before he married momma, Daisy Clark Welch, a large rock fell on him. A fellow miner pulled it off him. The next day, not even two men could move the same rock. My sister begged him not to go into work one morning. He should have taken her warning, because he was injured in another accident. There were many more to follow, but he survived them all. That’s not what finally killed him.

It was a treat when I searched his dinner bucket after he would get home from the mines. He would nearly always eat his honey bun, but another treat he would sometimes leave was a good old fried sweet potato in a biscuit or a fried apple pie. I can still remember how good it tasted yet today!

As parents will do, they love to embarrass their children.  Just after I started high school, Daddy and my brother would torment me by stopping to pick me up. When I would get out of school, there would be two coal miners sitting at the end of the school driveway where all the buse riders and walkers would pass. Now, it wasn’t because they were miners that was embarrassing. It was the super ugly work truck that they were in. It was a 1956 GMC pickup, painted a flat creamy lime color. It looked like snot. Yes, snot! One day, the police chief got behind us with his one blue light flashing, adding to the embarrassment. I thought Daddy was going to get a ticket for having the ugliest truck in the state. Turned out, the police chief had forgotten to turn off his blue light from working the school zone. Still, everybody saw.

Both my parent’s hobbies were “work.” When they got home from work, they worked in the yard, garden, barn or feeding chickens, cows, horses and hogs. Daddy did take time to ride horses; and moma sure loved her books.

Daddy died at the age of 60, on his oldest brother’s birthday—and 10 days before I turned 20, of complications of black lung. The family was informed that he would start getting his black lung checks on the day he died. Momma died three years later just one day after her beothers birthday and three months after her mother.

I miss those days of fried sweet potatoes in a biscuit and even snot-green colored pickup trucks loaded down with coal miners. They loved their children and oh my, those grandchildren. If they could have lived to see their great and great-great grandchildren, they would have eaten them up.