Let us remember our heritage

by Thomas F. O’Neill

I grew up in the Coal Region of Pennsylvania and always enjoyed listening to the Mining legends and the stories of the Miners. I heard the stories mostly from my grandparents and the miners' widows. They told me about the various mining communities that once made up the coal region. The mining communities of yesteryear are what gave the region its rich character and history.

I graduated from Shenandoah Valley High School in 1981 and moved away from the area after college. I lived in various places over the years, primarily out of state, and I always ran into people who had relatives from the coal region or were good friends of someone from the area.

When I drive around my hometown, I remember the fun I had in my youth and how much different the town was back in the 1970s. I can also not forget West Coal Street, where my grandmother once lived, and the old Italians sitting on their porches watching over the children while they played on the street. I have noticed that many of the homes in Shenandoah have been boarded up.

There are also more vacant lots in town than when I was a teenager. I was shocked to see the dilapidated condition of my old High School (J. W. Cooper building). The building's windows are smashed out, and there are large holes in the outer walls. The old Library building next door has been torn down along with part of the town’s history. The Wilson building across the street from the old library has also been torn down. I was also shocked to see the horrendous condition of my old grade school (Jefferson building) only half the building is standing. My old Junior high school (Roosevelt building) is now an apartment building.

I can remember when I worked as a lifeguard at Sandy Beach. Sandy Beach was a dam near Shenandoah where in the summer months, a lot of the teenagers liked to go and swim. It was also a great place to park your cars and hang out in the evenings. Sandy Beach is no longer open, it was closed in the early 1990s, but during the summer months when I was in high school, I worked there as a lifeguard.

One day in the summer of 1980, when I was coming home from work, I noticed this little old lady pushing an ACME cart full of groceries. Something compelled me to give her a hand, so I stopped and told her I could help her. There was something familiar about her, and she was a little shocked when I began to push her cart. I asked her where she lived, and she told me South Jardin Street.

“That is pretty far,” I said to her.

“If it is too much for you,” she said, “I could take it the rest of the way.”

“It is pretty far for you to be pushing the cart,” I said to her, laughing.

“I have been pushing groceries for many, many years.” She said while looking at me with a smile on her face.

She told me then that she was 89 years old and had lived in town her whole life. We started a conversation, and she began to reminisce about the town. She pointed to a home on South Jardin Street and said, “You see that house? That was the first house on this block to get a telephone. Years ago, people could not just buy a phone. They had to lease it from the phone company.” She said, “everyone on the block, including myself, put our money together and leased one phone, which everyone shared. The woman in that house left her door unlocked all day and all night so that people could take turns using the phone. When the phone rang, the people in that home took messages and would deliver the messages to the people living on the block. There was a tablet next to the phone, and we would mark our name, the date and time, and who we called so that when the phone bill came, we could pay for the call.”

She pointed to another house on South Jardin Street and said, “You see that house? That was the first house on the block that had a television. People would bring food to that house every night, and everyone would share food and watch television. They would watch 15 minutes of news because that was how long the news was on back then. We would get updates on the Korean War. That family’s son and my son fought in the Korean War. My son was given a purple heart because he almost died after getting wounded by the Chinese who were helping the North Koreans fight the Americans. After the news, we would share food and homemade wine. We would then watch "Milton Berl," or the "I Love Lucy show," or the "Sid Caesar show," or the "Honeymooners," every night we were there.” She laughed and said, “We would sit and watch a blank screen and wait for the News to come on. The family who owned the television never had to cook because so many people brought food to share with everyone else.”

The old woman’s home was beautiful, and she had old-fashioned furniture I noticed an old Radio that was probably used back in the 1920s. I asked her if her radio still worked, and she said, “it sure does.” She had one of those old-fashioned Cast-iron sinks in the Kitchen. Everything in her home seemed to be from a different era, but you felt comfortable because you felt as if you were seeing a house preserved as a piece of history. She sat me down at her kitchen table, poured me a tall glass of orange juice, and put her groceries away. I got up and started looking at old photographs on the walls. She pointed to an old photo and told me that the people in the picture were her parents. She told me that her home had been in her family since the 1870s and that her parents came from Poland. She said she was the youngest of four, the baby in the family, and the only girl. She told me that her Father and three brothers once worked in the coal mines. The photographs reminded her of how hard her parents worked to provide for her and her brothers. She told me a story of how when she was a little girl, she couldn’t speak English, and her teachers thought that “I was so dumb in school,” she said.

She reminisced and told me how hard her Father and three brothers worked in the coal mines. She told me how her Mother worked in a factory, cooked and sold food, baked and sold bread, and made and sold homemade wine to get by and earn extra money so that “Me and my three brothers could have a better life,” she said. She showed me an old photograph from a photo album of her stomping grapes for the homemade wine in a large barrel. The photograph was taken when she was seven years old, and we laughed at the picture.

She told me how her Father was killed in the mines when she was nine years old and how the miners came to her home to tell her Mother about the terrible mining accident. She told me how her Mother collapsed to the floor upon hearing the news and the miners, with tears in their eyes, helping her Mother as she wept and sobbed uncontrollably. Her Father was laid out in the living room, and she explained how the miners dressed in their Sunday suits came to pay their last respects. Her Father only had one suit that he wore every Sunday to Mass at Saint Georges Church; that was the suit he was buried in and she remembered clinging to her Mother's arm at the cemetery the day her Father was buried.

Her earliest memory was her Father reading a book to her every night that was written in Polish. Her Father brought that book with him to America, and she remembered her Father told her that his Mother had asked him why he was bringing that book to America, and he told her in Polish, "for the Children, Momma."

She quickly began to tell me about the book, and I was glued to her every word. I sat and listened to her at her kitchen table and continued drinking her orange juice. She said the book was about a baker who baked bread for orphans at an orphanage in Poland. The baker in the story placed small loaves of bread next to the orphans’ beds at night, and in the morning, he would tell them that an angel placed them there because the angel was watching over them and making sure they never went hungry. In the same story, the baker tells the children that the angel is with them because they have a special mission in life and that they only have to believe in their angel, and everything will be all right. The baker also told the children the story of a donkey that complained about how hard his life is and that no one cares about how hard he works. He complained the whole time he carried this woman who was pregnant on his back along with her husband. At the time, the donkey didn’t know how important his mission in life was until he witnessed the birth of the baby Jesus.

She said that she searched for the book after her Father’s death and cried when she could not find it, and she remembers her Mother searching for it. Her Mother, with tears in her eyes, told her in Polish when she was a little girl, “it will show up you will see.” The old woman said to me that years later and a few days after her Mother died, the Book mysteriously showed up in a drawer in her old bedroom. She told me that her Mother, for years after her Father’s death, could hear her Father hanging up his mining equipment each evening except for Sundays. She said that her Mother heard him hanging up his mining equipment as if he was getting ready to wash up for a hot meal. Her Mother also told her family years after his death that she could still feel his presence in the house and him lying next to her at night.

She told me how her parents came to America and that during their voyage from Poland, they were not allowed to mingle with the second or first-class passengers, and they had to remain in the bottom section of the ship for the entire voyage. Her Mother was pregnant at the time with her first child, and she prayed that her child be born in America so that he or she could have a better life and future as an American.

In New York City, they were at the mercy of kind families from Poland that took them in and taught them the ways of large city life. The simple things we take for granted were difficult for them, such as getting on a bus, riding a trolley, and purchasing food. Her Mother would become confused with the American currency and, at times, was taken advantage of with purchases.

They lived in New York City for a short period, and having little educational skills and not knowing the English language made finding employment virtually impossible. Her Father heard about Pennsylvania's coal mines, so he and his wife and newborn son traveled to Shenandoah, where he obtained employment as a coal miner. He would rise in the morning six days a week before the sun would rise and enter the Coalmine, and in the evening after the sunset, he would leave the mine and ride the trolley for a single penny from the Maple Hill colliery to Shenandoah. He would hop off the trolley and wash the coal dust down with a cold mug of ice-cold beer at one of the numerous bars in Shenandoah. There were three or four bars on every block, and every ethnic community in the coal region had their own bars and Taverns. Many of the bars had old pianos, and the Miners sang the songs they learned in their native countries prior to immigrating to America. She told me that her Father would occasionally play an accordion for the patrons in the bars he frequented. He would entertain them covered in Coal dust and still wearing the mining equipment that was leased to him from the mining company. She told me that her Mother would not start cooking until her Father arrived home and washed up and the entire family, out of respect, ate with him.

She said that her parents had it tough financially because after the mining company made their deductions from his pay for leasing his equipment and for the other items, such as the blasting powder that he had to purchase from the company store. He was lucky if he cleared 50 cents a week. The Mining companies owned many of the Miners' homes and charged the Miners rent. If a Miner was killed in the Mine and his widow was unable to pay the rent, the Mining Company would evict her and her family. Many families took in boarders and washed the boarders' clothes and fed them. In every ethnic community throughout the coal region, many of the miners' wives turned their Kitchens into little restaurants. People came into their homes and paid the miners' wives to cook a meal for them. The miners' families did this to keep up with the rent and help make ends meet.

She said that her family looked forward to Sundays because they attended Saint Georges Church in Shenandoah, and after the Mass, the Miners and their families would gather at various homes where they shared food, played music, sang songs, played various games, and told mining stories to their children and what their lives were like in the old country prior to immigrating to America.

Being a miner was a dangerous occupation, and the miners quickly learned that the mules in the mines were more valuable to the mining companies than the miners. The Mining companies saw the Miners as expendable labor. The Miners dealt with cave-ins, gas explosions, mine flooding, and many miners died and suffered physical ailments from breathing in the coal dust. She told me her three brothers died from black lung and other complications from breathing in the coal dust.

I also learned that she was married twice, that her first husband died from Influenza, and that he was Italian. She said that she could remember when the Italians built Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Shenandoah in 1914. She said that on Sundays, the Italian Miners and their families would gather at the Glovers Hill Park on Coal Street, which was called the Little Italy of Shenandoah. On Sunday afternoons during the summer months, the families shared food, played music, sang songs, played various games, and told mining stories to their children about their lives in the old country before immigrating to America. She said she could remember the first Italian festival in Shenandoah, which has become a tradition. Every July since 1914, the Italians carry a statue of the Blessed Mother through the streets of Shenandoah, and the Italians pin money on it for good luck.

She told me that she used to work in the old Shenandoah library built in 1874 by civil war veterans. She explained to me that she was working there during WW 1, and that is where she met her second husband. Her future husband would write letters home from the war to his Polish Mother, and his Mother could not read or write and only understood Polish. Her future husband's Mother would bring the letters written to her in English to the Library.

She said, “My Mother could talk in Polish and English, and I would read the letters to her, and she would explain what the letters said in Polish to my then-future husband’s Mother. It was from reading his letters that made me fall in love with him. He looked forward to reading my letters back to him, and I couldn’t wait to receive his letters. When the war ended, he walked into the Library in his uniform, and I took one look at him in that uniform. We got married three weeks later. After the war, he worked for the Yuengling brewing company, and we had four children.”

She told me with tears in her eyes that her husband died in 1961 and that she outlived two of her daughters and three brothers. Her two sons are working and living in New Jersey as High School teachers. I told her that I am sure they are great teachers for having her as a Mother.

After receiving a hug from her, I simply left her home and returned the ACME cart to the grocery store. I never learned her name or when she passed away, but the memory of my experience with her will never fade. Her home is now boarded up like many other homes in the coal region. I wonder what happened to all those great antiques that filled her home. Perhaps her sons or grandchildren have them in safekeeping.

She reinforced just how many hardships the miners and their families faced. I also realize that they did not immigrate to our country to become coal miners. They became coal miners and made the sacrifice so that their families could have a better future. They made their living in life and what they gave to their families and communities made their life worth living. They also made little financial gains in life, and the less they made was less that they were able to save. The Miners' families, however implicitly understood that you could save anything in life but life itself, and they determined their life’s worth by what they gave to others.

Their highest reward in life did not come in material wealth, but rather their highest reward was achieved by how well they developed in life. They did not strive like fools for the possessions they did not have, but they wisely developed what they already possessed within themselves.

The miners and their families understood that it takes a village to raise a child, and they brought a part of their villages from their native countries to Shenandoah and the Pennsylvania coal region as a whole. It was also their ethnic values in the mining communities that were instilled in the children within those communities, and they, in turn, instilled those values in their children and their neighbor’s children. Those values are in the root of our family tree, and those same values are the nourishment that must continue to strengthen our family for future generations.

The miners and their families worked under immense pressures and just as diamonds are made under pressure so to have the pressures of the coal region strengthened their family bonds and made the individual characters within the mining communities shine like diamonds. You cannot judge a person's character in times of comfort and convenience. You can only see the true character of an individual in times of challenge and controversy. You can also gauge the true character of a person by how well they reach out to help those of the least influence. The miners helped those in need in their communities without the expectation of receiving anything in return because it was simply the right thing to do.

I learned such a valuable lesson from that woman in the summer of 1980. I learned that not all history is learned from history books. One of the greatest gifts we can give children is stories that instill a greater appreciation of their heritage and family history. They, in turn, will keep the coal miner’s history alive when they tell their children the same stories. The stories of how the miners immigrated to America and settled down in the Pennsylvania coal region so that their children, grandchildren, and their grandchildrens children can have a better life as Americans.

The miner’s greatest achievements in life were all the subtle altruistic acts of kindness that they bestowed on the people within their communities. Their greatest gifts were not of gems and flowers but of loving thoughts because the love they had for their families and community were the enlightening words of the soul more precious than the diamonds and gold of the world.

Always with love from Suzhou, China

Thomas F. O’Neill

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