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A. Varesano interviewing Anne Timko -2- 7/19/72 Tape 22-2

AV: How about your brothers? Did they have to get coal from the back shed?
AT: Oh, my brothers had to carry their coal from the banks.
AV: Oh, they went picking?
AT: After school, they always went picking. The time that we were talking, last time, you know, about my brothers, that was Vern, and he was only nine years old, and he went out to get this coal first, and his friends helped him to get the coal, because they wanted him to join their gang to go out with this powder, to burn it. So they helped him to bring in the coal, he has cans, I don't know, I guess they were about five-quart cans, it would amount to about half a bucket I guess, or something like that. And these boys went out with him, these firends went out with him and helped him pick the coal, so he'd get home sooner so he could go with them, and then it cost him his life. Then he went with them, and got burnt, and he died.
AV: Did you remember that?
AT: Oh, yes, I remembered that. I was seven years old. He was an older brother than myself. He was nine years old. Because I was telling you here, before then, my younger brother, another brother next to me, my younger brother, come in to tell me, you know, that my brother was burning there some place, and he jumped in the water. And he overheard one of the friends tell a man that was going up that way, and then we went lookin'. And it was getting late in the evening, and we didn't tell my mother. We were afraid that my mother will cry, and we didn't want to tell our mother, so we went - we were kids, he was five, I was seven - and we went up in the alley to look there, but by the time we come home he was in the house, and all the people were there already, this man brought him in, but he had come through the woods, you know, a path through the woods, come right up the back to the alley and that man brought him in. That was something.
AV: I'll bet it was. Did he die then?
AT: Oh, yes, he died the next night in the hospital then. He was burnt completely. Oh, that place stunk. Oh, everything stunk, just like, worse than burning meat or something. He was burnt terrible. The whole body, everything was burnt. The whole house smelled. It was terrible. The next morning - well, he stayed home overnight. The doctor wasn't in. He stayed home overnight. And the next morning, the doctor came and was flipping off that burnt skin from him, and then he sent him to the hospital, and one o'clock the next night he died at the hospital. Well the doctor at the hospital told my father, he said he didn't die from the burns. He said, I've seen worse burns than that. But he said, he died from the cold water. See, there was a water there about knee-deep or deeper, I guess, and thse boys were all kids, they didn't know what to do, so he jumped in the water to outen the fire. So he did, he jumped in the cold water. And the fire, you know, and the cold water, and that ended his life. It was terrible.
AV: Where were you living at the time?
AT: In my brother's place, where my brother lives now. That's where I was born and that's where I was living, until I got married. Even after I was married I lived there, til we got the house.
AV: Whereabouts was this place where he was burned?
AT: Where my brother is living, on Main Street, Gyurko's? In that house.
AV: I mean this water...
AT: Oh, that was down in the alley, that was down further, and they used to call that a cistern. Kids used to go down there and, you know, wasde through that water. I never went. I was afraid of water. I was afraid something was going to bite me on the feet if I'd get in the water! I was always afraid of water! But other children often did. They went in there. I got my friends