MaryAliceYates.txt

-n -n -n Interviewing Mary Alice Shates, Route 2, Box 725. Haysi, Virginia. HAYSI, 24256. 703-865-4212. This tape's being done for the Kentucky Historical Society. It is 1.35 May the 28th, Saturday, 1994. [AUDIO OUT] I'll just set that to you for getting a second minute. Like I said earlier, it just needs to get some biographical information where your grandparents are from and their names and how long they've been living in the mountains. Well, my mom's-- Mom and dad was Woodrow, Pears, and many Oakland Pears. My dad's dad was Hadley Edwards and his mom was Eva, Pears Edwards. And they-- as far as I know, they lived in the mountains all their life. And your mom and dad's there? Kelly Edwards and Violet, Pears Edwards. And what occupation is your grandparents following? Oh, yeah. Mom and dad. To start off with, my grandpa Pears worked farm. And then he got into Logan, greater, Logan company. And then I think he done some mining with just some small companies here and there. And then he ended up as a janitor with the school systems before he retired. The other grandpa? He was-- both my grandmothers were just housewives. They never worked outside the home. My other grandpa-- I don't really know what he did. When he died when I was five, and at that time he was a-- he was treasurer of Dixon County. And he was a preacher. Okay. So at what community did you grow up in? How many brothers and sisters did you have? I have two brothers. And their names are? Mark Edwards and Mike Edwards. Okay. They're both younger than me. One year younger and two years younger. Okay. And you grew up in Hazard. Yeah. Went to school in Hazard. Did you graduate from high school? Yes, I did. Then I came on over to Southwest and got an associate's degree in mining technology. So how-- let's see then. What year did you graduate from Hazard from high school? 1977. And you graduated from Southwest? In '79. '79. So you went right on through mining technology. So then what happened then? Well, then I had my degree over to Sink and I worked issues for a couple years. Well, I got married and my husband really didn't want me to work in the mines. Okay. Well, and then he sort of started coming around. I could work in the engineering department. Okay. But we stopped at Clinchfield one day to put my application in the engineering department. And they wasn't accepting applications for the engineering department. Okay. So they said, "We're taking applications for underground, just union worker." And I said, "Well, you know, I'll fill one out." And a week later, they called me and wanted to know that I wanted him to work. And I probably wouldn't have, except my husband was real bad at quit jobs, you know. He worked two or three months and he quit, you know. And he just quit one. We'd had a big fight. He told me what none of my business work worked. So when they called me, I told him what none of his business work worked. So. And so I went on to work, you know, sort of in a strange situation between us. But I was so scared. I was scared to death. If he just came and asked me one time to just quit, I would quit. But he didn't ask. And so it was, you know, they'll just have to carry me out here dead because I'm not giving up. So you kept on, what day was your first day in the mine? June 15th, 1981. And what, and you were, that one, so you were a red hat for 45. Well, yeah, I don't remember exactly how many they sent me to their train of mine. Cleansfield had a train of mine where they trained you to run equipment. Uh-huh. So all their new employees went to the train of mine. They had special licenses from state and federal so they could put you on equipment. To let you train. You're not supposed to normally go on equipment to buy your red hat. That was just to let you train. Yeah. So the first day they just show us through the mine. And the second day I started on a scoop. They put me on a scoop. The guy had been running it showed me what did what. And then the boss stood over in the break and told me to, you know, drive up and down the heady. Which is like, you know, connecting tunnels. Straight ahead tunnel was a heady. So I just drove backwards and forth. The driving part, it wasn't real different from a car. You had a tram or a gas in a break. Lights. You had a directional switch. You had to change whenever you wanted to go forward or reverse. Electric? Was it electric? A battery pad. Um, it seems. Um, so did you have anybody quit the first day when they showed you off through the mine? Anybody say, "Well, I can handle this." Everybody's. No, everybody. I started with three other women and three men. They were six that started the same day. We all stayed with it till we got laid off. I think both of the women I started with have been laid off a long time before I got laid off. I'm laid off now. So you're laid off now? Yes, I got laid off in January 29th of this year. And you've been working for how long? 12 and a half years. So you've been working 12 and a half years? What are some of the jobs you've done since you were in there? Are you like cleaning? You've done a little bit of everything? Yeah, belt line. Clean belt. Put it in. Run scoop. When I was at the train in mind, I did everything. I didn't stay on the mine or not the mine or the roof over but for a week. There was some real bad top and they was having to set jacks. 10 foot high jacks, I think. And they said I wasn't qualified and they'd been giving me a really hard time so I just signed a paper. You know, just get me out of here. I don't want to actually, it wasn't that I couldn't do the job. It's just I wasn't doing it as fast as they wanted it. And at the time, you know, I hadn't really developed a rebellious streak, I guess. You get that mostly when you get with the older miners and learn how it is. Because at the train in mind, everybody there was red hats except the trainers and the bosses which were campin' in. And they wasn't going to tell you anything, you know. You just went in there with the idea that you're going to work hard continuously. I mean, you weren't going to take any breaks or anything for the eight hours you were in there. And I'd say I worked harder at the train in mind than any time at Splash Dam. What was the first mine that they assigned you to? It was Splash Dam. So they only have one name Splash Dam. They got a lot of mines, but it's not like the VP mines. Yeah, it's Union. So when you got into Splash Dam, you say? When you got to work at Splash Dam, what was the first job that you worked as a? I went as a belt cleaner, which I did for about four and a half months. They started having people lay off that were in the bridge carriers, so they started putting me on that. It's a sort of thing on track. It's continuous haulage. It goes behind the mine or wherever it's at. So the coal just flows continuously. And that's what I did. And after I was there four and a half months, somebody, I forgot who was running it, got hurt. And they was going to be off for a while. They put me on the job all the time because I was the only genuine side person they had at the time. So the other people didn't really have a gripe, which if there had been more, they would have. The oldest person would have got it. And so I did that for a few months and then a bridge job came open and I signed it. And then I run the bridge. Now what's the bridge? The bridge carrier. It's a continuous haulage. It goes in behind the miner boom to keep the coal running. Oh, so you kind of follow it while we're at the quarry? I'm the bridge between the belt line and the miner. There's three of us that keep the coal going. And while the continuous miners up there digging coal, you're kind of following them around behind, sticking them behind you to make sure that they're catching all the coal. Catching all the coal. It just flows down the bridge to the back. And I learned a lot today about how the miners worked. Let's see. How did the other miners, were you the first woman in there or had there been a lot in there before you got there? No, there had been two in there before we got there. And they had got laid off while I worked with the girl at the train in mind. They sent both of us down there. So there was two women there then and there had been two before. And so they had most of them work with women before. It wasn't real bad, you know. Most of the older men didn't seem to have a problem with it. It was the younger men, more my own age, I guess, that had the macho problems with it. So it was more of a macho ego thing with the younger miners than it was with the older miners. Yes, it was. My mind. But you were saying most of the older miners treated you pretty well and tried to show you things. Yes, they did. I would imagine it would be everybody's advantage if you learned as quickly as possible so you wouldn't get everybody killed. And that's the way I'd look at it. Somebody's here we got to show them. I had some problems at Splashdam, but none of it's a matter of problems. I've heard a lot of women at the conferences we talk about our problems. And a lot of the places just won't let the women on the equipment at all, you know, keep them on the belt lines or out of the face, which we never had any problems like that at Splashdam. They always tried to train us to run the equipment. So how long did you work at Splashdam? 12 years. And just until you got laid off? Yeah. So you've been, now what kind of, as a laid off miner, what kind of unemployment would you be eligible for for six months or three months? Six months. And then is there any extended unemployment after that with the union or the government? Well, they've got some papers filed now. We lost our job, they shut our mind down, they said, because some foreign competition under a vehicle. And so the foreign competition got the jobs. And if they do that, if you lose your job to foreign competition, they have a retraining. 108 weeks of unemployment that you can get if they can prove that you lost your job because of that, which they've filed all the papers, but we won't know until October. And the company said that's why. Sort of have to prove that the company wasn't lying about it. Well, let's see. What was it like for you growing up in the coal fields? How many of your relatives were involved in the coal mines? Just about all of them. Or uncles. My brothers was younger than me. My younger brother became a coal miner for a while, but things just got so bad he moved North Carolina. My other brother never worked in a coal mine. But you have a lot of people in the family that did work in the mine. I never thought that I would when I was growing up. It was just... Obviously, since you went to... Now you're going to be in, I would think, you would be in better position in terms of getting rehired somewhere. You've got this associate's degree in mining technology and you've got 12 years of experience in the mines. I would think that at some point, some bright person would say, "Ah, let's give her a job over here doing this or that." Well, it's just that you'd have a better chance at the big mines. Now the big mines are cutting back. And the little mines won't harm you because you're a woman. They're so afraid to get sued or whatever. They just won't take your application. And you'll be in there harassing somebody without an application. But it's really hard to prove that kind of thing because you don't know the whole community. So what are your aspirations now as a laid-off miner? Are you still married? Yes. And you've got kids? Yes. And how old are your children? I have a daughter. She'll be 16 in August. And a son who's eight, he'll be nine in September. Okay. How do they feel about mom being a coal miner? Do they like that idea? Yeah. Is it something to feel comfortable with? Yes. I worked. I was five months pregnant with my son. And my daughter, she just got used to it. Both of them, it was just normal for them. So it was nothing on you to think her up with it. Did your husband, you're still married the same? Yes. Oh, and his name is? David Yates. And what kind of work is he in now? Well, he was a coal miner when we first got married. But then he started flying and he started working on airplanes. And now he's a flight instructor and an A&P, an airplane mechanic. So he just -- And where does he work at in the airport? Yeah, he works at Brandy Airport. That's a strange transition from coal miner to flight instructor. Yeah. Although in a way it makes a lot of sense when you think about it going from an area that's -- if being totally confined bothered him, I can see, you know, now he's a total freedom, you know, out flying all over the place. He probably looks down and says, "Ah, I used to be under that mountain." Yeah. So, okay, what I'm trying to get at is, so he's working now, he's got steady work and your own unemployment. So, so far right now you guys are going to be doing okay financially until your unemployment runs out. Yeah. And then what kind of wages do miners make now? Do they pay you by the hour, by the year? Yeah, by the hour. It's $16 to close $17 hour. So with overtime and everything, you're looking at like $35,000, $40,000 a year and that's the wood? Yes, yes. So it's a real change in your lifestyle. Yes. Have you saved any money? Have you put any money back? No. No? A grace offer. Do just -- this course is a general statement, but the other miners that you work with, do they tend to be pretty thrifty and save for rainy day or do they spend their money? Not as a general group. Most of them spend their money. You have a few -- Live payday to payday. Who say, you know, you might have 10 people out of 100 I worked with that managed to save. Everybody else -- But they're mostly older with their kids grown and stuff that managed to save much. But the younger ones they spend the bigger -- Most of us with families -- It all gets gone. So when -- how many -- whenever you're unemployment or whatever runs out, what are you going to start? Are you going to try and get back into the mines? I went to the job retraining, you know, for displaced workers. And I'm trying to get into nursing at Southwest now because, well, Southwest Virginia is my home and I hate to leave it. Coal mining is really -- I guess I feel most comfortable, but there just aren't coal mining jobs. So I'm just trying to face reality. So how did you feel while you were there? The only thing around here that pays comparable to coal mining is -- How did you feel while you were working every day? What kind of things did you think about? Well, most of the time I run a shuttle car. And which I went around, you know, looking for people, looking for bad top-up in my head and listening for it to work and stuff. A lot of times I just went along singing and she did all that, you know. But you have to -- when you run a shuttle car, you don't sit around for a lot. They're the movingest people on the section. They're always going something. It's constant motion. It's not that hard to work, but it's constant motion. Yeah, getting everything right. I would imagine doing that, that the shift would go pretty fast. Yeah, that's for me. You're paying attention to keeping up with this and making sure that's going back to the future. Yeah, because like Cosby said, it's never the same. It's a different road all the time. So you're always having to negotiate new terms and whatever. Well, how do you -- I guess if you want to sum everything all up in one big ball of wax. Well, first, let me ask you this. What do you see not just in the future for you, but what do you see in the future for Southwestern Virginia in the sense that, you know, you've got all these relatives that have worked in the mines and you've worked in the mines and now you're laid off. Do you see at some point in a different framework, a different economic framework, that mining is going to come back or do you see it as just kind of crippling along or is it on the way out and it's never going to come back? So what do you see out there? What do you see from the industry looking from the bottom up? I don't know. I just think, you know, they say they're saving this coal and I don't know what they're saving it for, but they're destroying the people that work it now. And I don't think that when they're ready to come back, they're going to have the workforce that they have now to choose from. Because the young people, they're going to get into something else because there isn't any coal mining and then they're not going to want to be coal miners when they're trained for something better. Is the idea, when you say they're saving the coal for some other time, so it's not then that the mines are necessarily played out. There's coal here, it's just that they're not wanting to mine it at this time. Is that what you see? Yes, I say it's worth more to them in the ground than it is mine. I wonder why. I wonder what their reasoning is for that. I don't know. I just wonder how much coal the other countries have that they're mining now. You know, they're expecting that to play out within a decade or so. I don't know, 20 years or whatever. I'd like to know what their time frame is. Okay, so what do you see then in the future down the road? You're going to put on your crystal ball here in front of you. I see this area declining a lot. I mean, people are going to stay for a while until their unemployment runs out. And then if they can't find jobs, I see a lot of people moving away. So you see out migration again like it was in the '50s. And the people that stay, I see it becoming a much poorer region here. So you see the economy, as the coal economy goes, you see the what's the term they use, downsizing? You see the whole community kind of downsizing. And you don't see anything coming into replace it. Or you don't have any idea of what the replace is. I do. It's just something like Kmart, Walmart, minimum wage jobs. Replacing these $16 an hour jobs. And we're never going to get back to the standard of living that we've had for the last 20, 30 years, whatever. Okay, very good. I guess we'll lock it up on it. I think we about got it was short, but I think we got some good stuff on there. [BLANK_AUDIO]