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M/M John Kascak interviewed by Denis Mercier 8/22/72 Tape 12-2

DM: When you used to add on to other people's houses, did the company ever give you the lumber and the material, or did you have to go buy that yourself from a lumber dealer, or what?
JK: Oh, I never bought any of the lumber. The people who wanted the work done, they furnished the lumber.
DM: And they had to go buy it themselves, and then you did all the work with it?
JK: And most of the time they fixed.... , they generally got some from the company to start them out, at least, you know?
DM: The company would give a few boards...
JK: Yeh, to start them out, and they had to buy the roofing to make it waterproof and that, you know.
DM: But the regular mainteance of the house was by the company? In other words, you, as a company carpenter, would be called upon to...
JK: Yeh, but I wasn't hired, I wasn't doin' it for the company. The company wasn't doin' the work. I was doin' it for the people that lived in the house
MK: They paid him, and they paid him very little. He was a very, very generous carpenter!
JK: Heh, heh!
DM: I thought the company used to come and fix, you know, if your window fell out or something, the company would fix it.
JK: No, no.
MK: Well, yet they would do some, Dad.
JK: Some of the main part of the house, they would do some work on that. That, you were sent down from the colliery to do the work. But if the people want-ed an addition, like a garage, or if they wanted a, most of them only had a building of a two-by-four in the entranceinto the house, and they wanted to make it bigger so they'd have more room, like, most, a lot of them turned it into a kitchen, made it big enough that they had a kitchen into it. Well, they done that on themselves. You wasn't sent by the company to do that.
DM: Who built the kitchens, the summer kitchens? Were they built by the company a long time ago?
MK: They were with the homes, they were with the homes.
JK: Oh, the summer kitchens, they were, everybody had one of them. Everybody.
DM: They were with the homes when the homes were made, the kitchens were right there?
MK: Um-hmm.
DM: But none of the outbuildings. All of the other outbuildings were added by the people?
MK: Yeh.
DM: And then, like contract with you or somebody to build to build the...
JK: That's right.
DM: I see. That's very good. Umm, let's see. We've covered an awful lot of ground already. The outbuildings primarily were built at peoples whims, whenever people felt like putting one up, they's just do it? There were not, like, this year everybody got a chicken coop, or this year everybody got...
MK: No, no. Everybody went....listen, the coal houses the company built for the people.
JK: And the outside toilets, you know, the bathrooms. They took care of that.
DM: They always maintained the toilets, right?
MK: The companies did that. Um-hmm.
DM: And, let's see now, the additions onto any of these houses, the kitchen additions, you know, the third room --you know, there was the parlor, and the second room or the dining room, whatever, then the third room, didn't they all come at the same time, or do you remember that? That was probably