Alabama Gold
Page 13
When we first got married, we lived with Luveria’s brother Carey White. Then we moved to this farm about two and one-half miles from the Hog Mountain. George Brown was first superintendent of the operation, and Mr. Collins was the last assistant superintendent—mighty good men. Price McLeod and Bill Whiting worked in the shop with Roy Yates, Otis Peppers and Carey White.
Hayes Simpson helped to clear a throughway for the electric lines when they moved the heavy equipment up the mountain. Hayes, Buddy McGhennis and Theodore White were assistant electricians. J.P. Mooney and Howard Mooney both drilled in the mine.
Hog Mountain gold miner Jesse Lovelady worked with Elbert Padgett separating rocks and ore in the 1930s. They earned a one dollar a day for their labor. Courtesy of Lynn Lovelady Willis.
Some of the workers stayed in the old hotel that was still standing from the operation that closed in 1916. It was built before World War I, and it was a two-story structure built of heart pine. They just put a new roof on the hotel and used it for a bunkhouse. Just a place for them to sleep. But they ate at the mine. There was another bunkhouse with five or six rooms. There were four old houses on Chicken Row in a straight line, southwest from the mine. Buddy McGhennis lived in one of them and Hershel Peppers in another. They told us that we would be out of a job in a certain length of time. I had a mule, so I quit and started plowing the fifteenth of April. Later I got a job at Avondale Mills, where I worked for forty years and never missed a payday even when I lost my hand working on a big ole gear that had spokes in it that turned slow speed. It turned close to a big ole air duct with a little door on it that would come off.
Douglas Champion was the son of machinist Lynwood Champion and Luveria, whose father, Carey White, operated the machine shop in the 1930s operation. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
LUVERIA CHAMPION
I’d like to have a history of that place. I had two brothers, a daddy and a husband to work over there. We had an old ’28 or ’29 Chevrolet, but most of the miners walked. There were trails all over the mountain where people walked. Some of them talked about how scary it was coming through there at night. Plenty of holes to step into if you weren’t careful. There were bobcats that sounded like a woman screaming.
When the bridge fell in and that Negro man was killed, we were living with Carey and his wife, Freddy. The driver came running up to Carey’s house and straight in the door, didn’t even stop to knock. He was bloody. He said, “Somebody carry me to the mine, and somebody go stop the traffic. The bridge fell in, and it killed the black man.” Well, I couldn’t have drove the car. I told him, “I’ll give you the keys and you can drive our car.” And I ran all the way to stop the traffic. When I got there, the insurance man was standing in the bridge. He said, “I pumped the brake to stop.” He got right up to where the hole was: “I pumped the brake, and I pumped them again and stopped right just as I got to the hole.” Scared him so. So he stood on this side of the creek, and I was on the other side of the bridge when Mr. Hershel Peppers came flying. It wasn’t fast like you’d drive now but was fast at that time. And I was out there just a-flagging. His wife’s mother, Mrs. Self, got out, and she said, “Luveria, I’ll always love you. If you hadn’t been out there, we’d went right into that hole before we ever got stopped.” You couldn’t see from the outside of the covered bridge that the bottom was out. When they hauled that concentrate, it was heavy. That’s what made the bottom fall out. The water wasn’t deep, but I imagine something fell on him and killed him. It was a long time before they got the bridge repaired.
Benjamin Talmadge Jackson was a Hog Mountain gold miner in the 1930s. He worked as a mucker and operated tram cars. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
This picture of a miner’s helmet is used with permission of Pine Mountain Gold Museum, located in Villa Rica, Georgia. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
CHARLIE THOMAS SCOTT
I worked at Hog Mountain for a year, mostly timbering. When blasting was done, there was a lot of loose rocks that had to be timbered. My brothers Pres and Olan worked there for a while, too. Olan like to have blowed himself up when he was helping ole Charlie Worthy with the dynamite charges. You were supposed to fill them and then light them. Charlie was filling the charges, and Olan came alone behind him, lighting them with the light on his cap. Charlie turned around and saw what Olan was doing. He said, “What the hell are you doing? Get out!” and they run. You see, they would run wires out from the charges, and before those wires were touched, Charlie would get way down around the bend in them tunnels. But Olan had decided to help and come right along behind him lighting the fuses. They had to go quick! We worked five days a week and went back to the mine on Saturday to pick up our pay.
TALMADGE JACKSON
Charlie and I help[ed] build all the houses with Rob Bowens, the head timberman. His helpers were his son Aubrey, Joseph Cleveland, Ed Walls, Talmadge Jackson and me. Then I worked as a mucker inside the mine. I had a couple of accidents while I was working there. One was caused by the way those tram cars operated before they put mechanical brakes on them. Well, the brakes were nothing but planks pulled out there on the car, and you sat down on that plank and used your weight for the brake. When the tram car was loaded, I’d ride the car and the plank out. One time I was riding it, and it got to going so fast that it got away from me. I hit upside the rocks, and it knocked me off. Knocked me out for a little while. After my accident, Ed Walls installed mechanical brakes on the tram.
The other accident I had was a little more serious. A carbide can blowed up in my face and took all the skin from around my eyes. It had been raining that night, and this carbide had been sitting out and gotten damp. I walked too close to the can [and] the light on my cap set it off. There wasn’t a car at the mine that night, and Mr. Brown was gone in his. So we started out on a skidder to go to the doctor. It was pouring rain. We met Mr. Brown coming in and got out of his car and let us have it. They carried me on to the doctor. The next day, a lawyer tried to get me to sue the company for $40,000. He said it wouldn’t cost me a dime, that he would take the case for half of what we won. I told him I wouldn’t do it. Mr. Brown had been too good to me. He paid my doctor bill and expenses, paid me my regular time right on while I had to be out.
Miners and friends Talmadge Jackson and Charlie Scott worked together at Hog Mountain during the Depression. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
Kermit Jackson with Kate, one of the two mules that worked at the mine in the 1930s. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
When I was working as a mucker, a little German helped me. Some of the workers came from far off. They put air pipes in the mine while I was there. They didn’t have them to start with when my brother Kermit and some of the first ones went to work there. And when they blasted, they didn’t have no way of blowing smoke out of there. When they did put the air pipes in; it helped some, but they still had dust in there. That was why so many of the boys developed silicosis: Kermit, Marvin Dean, Johnny Coker, Cecil Osborn and the Watley twins. They all died young. I don’t know for sure when I got hard of hearing, whether it was while I was working in the mine or not. It just gradually come on me. I laid it to that racket in the weave shed when I worked at the mill. I had to wear ear plugs all the time in the mill.
Talmadge grew a variety of vegetables on his farm that he took to market in Alexander City. In season, he had watermelons, cantaloupes, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes and green peanuts. He and other truck farmers had an assigned area across from Avondale Mills where they could park their trucks in the shade to keep their products fresh. After millworkers finished their shift, they could pick up fresh vegetables as they started home, and the truck farmers could add a few dollars to their retirement fund.
EMRA ALLEN
Work had just started when I got a job digging drainage ditches with Thomas Daugherty [in] 1931. My next job was firing the boiler that operated air drills inside the mine ’til a gasoline engine was installed. It was used until lines were r
un from the Alabama Power plant in Alex City. Then, electricity was used to run the plant. My next job was firing the boiler. There were just six of us working the night shift. Thomas Daugherty run the hoisting machine; the driller, his helper and two muckers were working below. I didn’t work but seven shifts on top before I went to work underground as a mucker with George Dean. They paid a dollar a day for muckers then.
The Hog Mountain tailing pool was near the location of the old mill structure and the rock quarry. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
I worked as a mucker until they needed more drillers. Then I learned how to operate the drills, the Sullivan and the Jackhammer. Mr. Green would work half the night to get water running into that drill. The old-timers used to say, “Always get your water to running. Never drill with a dry drill.” A lot of the young fellars never worked in the mine before, and they didn’t pay no attention to what they said and used dry drills because they could drill a little faster. A lot of them are dead now from silicosis—Rhett McWright, Cecil Osborn…When Cecil would come out of the mine, he’d look like he come out of a powder box with dust all over him.
Sometimes, we would drill close to the old headings made in the last mining operation, and there would be a little drill hole. The old-timers Mr. Green and Mr. DeFord told me, “Never drill under that hole. Always drill to the side of it or above it. If they left a little powder that nitric glycerin would work right down, and you’re liable to drill in there and get killed.
The mine captain on my shift was Mr. Dye. I worked for Mr. Green and Mr. DeFord, too. Other workers were Travice Foster; he laid the track in the mine. My brother Warner worked with me as a driller. My other brother John worked in the mine one shift. He was down in the mine that morning when they got to shooting, and the whole mine shook. He said, “You’re crazy, boy. I wouldn’t work in that place.” He just worked that one shift.
When I worked at the mine, I boarded some at Mr. Jim Jones. When I stayed at the camp house, they took out of my pay for board and meals. The old cook and his wife, a young woman, cooked three meals a day on a wood stove. Now some of the men brought lunches with them and just ate in the mine ’cause there was always water to wash your hands with down there.
There wasn’t much time for recreation, but occasionally, we’d play cards in the camp house. Sometimes, we’d go to Alex City to see one of them westerns and that singing cowboy Roy Rogers. I left the mine in 1936 to join the army and went to the Panama Canal Zone.
Emra served in the army for four and a half years before returning home. He worked at “the cotton mill” in Alex City and then retired to his farm at Cowpens. Emra’s story is similar to other Hog Mountain gold miners who left the mine for a job in the mill and served their country during World War II. They had confidence that “Hog Mountain would run again” when gold prices were high and labor was cheap. It is likely they did not realize they were a part of a historic event, when in 1936, the mine yielded 4,726 ounces of gold, valued at $165,410, making Alabama the leading producer of gold in the Appalachian states.75
10
From the Mine to the Mill
J.P. Mooney
When I went to work at Hog Mountain, I stayed with the Claude Woodruff family at Cowpens. It took an hour and half each way to walk from Woodruff ’s place through the woods to the mine. My brother Howard and I worked cleaning out the old shaft before Simon and Cowen Construction Company lowered the shaft to below the two-hundredfoot level. That was in 1933. Before that, I worked on the top house, helping to unload rock and debris that came out of the mine. After that I worked as a mucker, making $1.25 for a nine-hour shift. That went up to $2.75 before the mine shut down. Believe me, that’s impressive work, a little backbreaking. Then I graduated to more skilled jobs. First, I became a drill helper [and] then a driller. For the last two years I worked there, I was head of the blasting crew on the third shift.
Hog Mountain miner J.P. Mooney later served on the national committee that set standards for mine safety. Courtesy of Peggy Jackson Walls.
While I was working there, I helped lead the work stop that resulted in the company’s giving us a five-cent-an-hour increase in pay, which amounted to a forty-five-cent raise for a nine-hour shift. Some of us approached management on a Friday with the request that the third shift would be rotated. We were told that they would make that decision and that we had nothing to do with it. So I got a lot of signatures on a petition and served as spokesman. When we presented it, we were told, “You’ll come to work when you’re told.” The entire nightshift didn’t go to work Saturday or Sunday. When we got there Monday, we were told the day shift was going to work. We took a stand and told them “Not if we have anything to do with it.” We went to the shaft and got some pieces of steel and told them, “Anybody works, we’re going to work. We’re going to have some rotations of shifts, or we’re going to have a fight.”
We were trying to deal with the underground superintendent, Mr. Beavers, a stubborn old gentleman. When they got Mr. Brown, the general manager, out, he agreed with us there should be some rotation so that no one would have to do all of the nightshifts. About two weekends later, they did change the shifts. We didn’t have a union, but we organized to get rotation of shifts and a wage increase. Mr. Brown had worked as a laborer at some time and was sympathetic with our requests. Some of the men I worked with in the mine were Rhett McWright, Luther Dye, Mon Woodruff, Albert Bence, Orville Bence, Fay Melton and my brother Howard. Most of them died with silicosis caused from inadequate ventilation. Precautions that were taken were to put some vents in to pipe air into the working areas. But this was done only on one level. There was no way to ventilate the second level. So many of those raises only had one way up, and workers had to come down the same way. It would have been expensive for the company to have a second entrance-exit. What resulted was if anybody got closed off, he was trapped. And one man did. The timbermen were putting up a scaffold for the driller to work off. A man fell and was buried up to his neck. He tore all of his fingernails off, trying to scratch his way out. They set some timbers in and put up chain blocks and tackles around a miner’s waist so he could go down and dig out around the trapped miner. Eventually, they were able to put some ropes under his arms and pull him out of the muck pile. That ended his mining career right there. And I became interested in mining safety and working conditions.
After the mine closed, I worked at Ramer mine near Bessemer. There was an effort being made to organize the workers in a union. In 1939, I joined the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter workers at the steel mills around Ensley and Fairfield. The last year I was there, I served as staff representative of the union. Then when Ramond mine closed in 1943, I went to work for the United Textile Workers of America.
MOONEY BECAME INVOLVED IN what proved to be an unsuccessful effort to unionize textile mills in southeast Alabama, in Alexander City, Sylacauga and Opelika. He eventually had the opportunity to work with the union for better safety and health conditions for workers in mines, smelters, refineries and mills. He was recognized for his work with two appointments to an advisory committee, established in 1967, to recommend proper standards for the enforcement of the 1966 Federal Metal and Nonmetal Mine Health Safety Act. As safety coordinator for fourteen western states, J.P. worked for the passage of the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act of 1977. After retiring, J.P. served on a nine-man Blue Ribbon committee to compile information on the research and development of communication systems by the US Bureau of Mines.
The closing of the Hog Mountain Mining and Milling operation in 1937 marked the end of major mining activity in Alabama in the twentieth century. But as recreational miners and descendants of the old-timers continue to dip their gold mining pans and look for “color” in the creeks of Hillabee, Enitachopco and Broken Arrow, the story and tradition of gold mining in Alabama will continue.
Appendix
An Incomplete List of Hog Mountain Gold Miners
Emra Allen mucker
&
nbsp; Warren Allen mucker
Lander Baker team of horses
Walter Neal Barfield driver
Mr. Beaver manager
Albert Bence mucker
George Biggs superintendent
Bennie H. Bonner carpenter
Hershel Bonner mucker
John Bonner carpenter
Marshal Bonner mucker
Aubrey Bowen carpenter
Marion Bowen stoper
Rob Bowen carpenter
Jim Britton boiler
Doc Brown driller
Frank Brown picker
George Brown manager
Thomas Brown hoist man
Walter Brown carpenter
Hardy Buckner driller
Clarence Butler watchman
Tucker Cash mucker
Lynwood Champion machine shop
Byron Cleveland carpenter
Heflin Cleveland carpenter
Joseph Cleveland carpenter
John Coker timberman
Mr. Colley foreman
Thomas Daugherty hoist man
Mr. Davis foreman
Cevial Dean picker
Clark Dean driller
Morgan Dean mucker
X Dean driller
Mr. DeFord shift captain
Frank Downs sand bed
Abner Duke mucker
Ace Duke picker
Mack Duke driller
Ronnie Duke timber
Mr. Luther Dye shift captain
Aber Earl stopper
Jimmy Farrow mucker