page_0007

AV inter. GF & HF -5- 7/7/72 Tape 24

GF: you know that lady was murdered here recently have you been down to see that, that chalet type of building, well that one up along the creek, I was bornr there and when I was about 7 yrs. of age we moved to Sandy Valley on my father's farm and spent 2 years there and then when I was nice we came to Eckley and moved up and lived on the Back Street

HF: Yeh, in the house right below us

GF: Then I went to school and finished high school in 1918 then worked 2 yrs. at the colliery and then I went to school and then I left the community here in 1933 and made my home in (blank) when I was married

AV: Where did you work in the colliery, doing what

GF: Well you see I was employed in the car shop, now that means these cars that we use to bring the coal up out of the mines and to convey the coal to the breaker where it was prepared oft times needed repaired and that's what I was doing, it ddidn't require any skill, just a little bit of knowledge, the work was steady and the work was difficult then there was times understand when I was asked to leave the car shop when there was someone who was ill in the dump shanty where the coal was dumped into a pit before it was taken up to the breaker, understand, to be prepared, see the coal in the form that it was taken from the mines into the pit and then a drag-line took it up to the breaker where it would come down thru rollers broken up and into varying chutes and sized in those days there was a boy sitting by pickcing this slate out of the coal now of course today they don't do that they have a machinery to do that well if they were a man short because of illness then I was taken out of the car shop and would to down to the dump shanty to help dump these cars or if there was a man short up at the timber yard, do you know where that is, then I had to go up there and help, and so on, for 2 years

AV: You were paid by the hour then