For many of us growing up in Kentucky, who were born into coal camps built by wealthy coal operators,from the East for the employee's of the coal mine.

There was nothing fancy about the camps. Camps were thrown together and contained 4 rooms with no running water no indoor plumbing and by all means no heat. Before my mom woke the kids for school, she had built the fire in the cook stove to make breakfast.A big skillet of brown gravy and homemade biscuits. Gravy was made using pet or carnation milk. No whole milk for a miners family, struggling to get food on the table.If the miners were on strike,the yukiest was water gravy.

We had a pot bellied stove for warmth if the miner could afford one or they depended on two open sided grates for heat. Grates were banked at night to assure the fire would remain lit when morning came and posed no danger of sparks jumping out and burning down the house. We kids would get so close to the open grate to warm our backside on a chilling cold morning. The grates were very dangerous and you learned very early in life to respect them. A home could be lost over night if they were not kept properly. Utensiles needed a poker and small shovel, the burnt ashes were used to bank the fire.

The bathroom, as it was known was the outhouse sitting in the back yard usually with other occupants spiders, bugs and very often snakes.the outhouse had two round holes cut into the board that ran across the back of the wall for sitting. Most were two seaters. The toilets were cleaned about ever two to three years. The workers would dig another hole beside the old one and used the dirt to to fill in the spot where the old toilet had sat. Many coal miners had large families and it was a task, going out after dark to pay a visit. A bucket or slope jar was kept inside at night for emergencies. One of the kids was assigned to dump it come morning. Toilet paper was unheard of catalogs were officially collected as wipe pages, you had to crunch it a few times to make it some what soft.

My parents had eight kids scrambling for a comfortable bed, pallets were were made by mom and the floor was your bed. Pallets were blankets, usually hand made and lined across the floor and privacy, was unheard of. We had two double beds in one room and the rest of my brothers slept on pallets. My parents had the other bedroom. My sister Liz and I had a bed and the youngest kids got a bed so it worked out the older and bigger you became, you slept on a pallet

Bathing was in a number 2 wash tub. The water was carried from a pump located in the camp, usually the camp consisted of two pumps and I mean the old fashion pump that had to be primed over and over before you gota drop of water. Filling up a number 2 tub and carrying it back home was no easy task. We kids all bathed in the same water after it was heated on the cook stove. My dads bath water was fresh every night. He worked the after noon shift so my brothers, Archie, Bob and Jack would carry the water in buckets back to the stove for heating every night. We had home made soap, made by grandma. Tooth paste, we used baking soda. Now that is a major ingredient for whitening teeth today. We gargled in salt water, a spoon full of salt cured everything from bad breath to the sore throat.

My brothers jobs as they got older was to cut kinling and keep the coal buckets full of coal and water supplied for cooking, cleaning and bathing. When we were small, my poor mom did most of the mans work. Dads were well respected and our moms never bothered them with trival things that happened when he came home from a long grueling shift. We must remember that before any machinery was used in the mines, the coal miner only had inches to work in. His job was spent on his knees,crawling and digging coal from the wall of the mines,in total darkness except for a carbide light attached to his hat. The tool of the coal miner was a pick and shovel.

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