The Eckley Oral History Project

DM Interview Thomas & Mary Ferko Tape #6 8/7/72

DM: You tell me how tight it was with your expenses, your budget MF: When we got married how much were you making TF: About 41 cents an hour, $3.33 a day for 8 hours DM: And how much was for rent, how much rent did you pay, what year was this about TF: 1936, we got married in '38, when I was drivin' mules I got $4.62 DM: And $3.33 is what you started out as a patcher, and then it went up to $4.32 and what was the rent back then MF: Then we were livin' with my mother TF: and then we were payin' $15.00 DM: $15 with your mother TF: No in an apartment in Freeland DM: That was pretty high rent then MF: Three rooms and no bath, the toilet was just partitioned off, then we moved to Buck Mountain and we paid $10 TF: No that was no company house that was a house next to _______ DM: John up here MF: No that was up at #2 Buck Mountain, and we had no light and we had to wash clothes by hand on the washboard and scrub carpet on a bench TF: Down at the end of town and then we moved here DM: Were there pumps where you had to go and rinse your carpet off MF: They didn't have water in the house DM: I'm just making notes on this so I know what I'm talking about when I play the tape back, oh you were down by the _______ and what was the company rent then TF: What did we pay then, something like $8 MF: The water was there DM: And when did they raise it to $11.50 TF: Ever since we lived here, and we lived here 27 Years in October DM: and it's been $11.50 for 27 years now you guys can't talk about the high cost

DM Interview Mary & Tom Ferko -3- 8/7/72 Tape #6 DM I'll bet you did buy all your food at a market TF Yeh but then there were no markets like there is today we just had individual stores, we didn't have big markets like A & P like they do today, you could buy all your stuff in one place but it was individually owned just small stores MF __________ they used to have the meat and grocery store together TF And they used to come around here with trucks, they came around and everybody bought Joe Gallio would come in here on a pay day, we lived the house below here, he would come to our place about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, 2 trucks now imagine, full of groceries and everything and then he'd go out of here 3 or 4 o'clock the next morning DM Who'd buy food at 3 o'clock in the morning TF Everybody, they'd just wait for them guys DM Like the lady of the house would wait up because the man of the house would be sleeping, you were lucky that you lived down here so you could get them in the afternoon TF That's all the owner did, the one that owned 2 trucks, he take the checks back to the bank and get the cash his daddy was some hid of vice president in the bank and he made sure he got the money see you got paid by check and he couldn't carry that much money around so when he got so many checks off of this truck he's go back to Freeland and cash them checks in for cash so he would have enough for the rest to pay the people DM Boy oh boy things have changed a lot since then TF And then the bus used to come in almost every hour back and forth and it cost a nickel to go to Freeland DM How much would you say you got by with on your food bill, you were making how much a month, $3.33 a day to $4.62 TF That all depended how many days you worked sometimes you didn't work no 2 weeks in them days, pay days you were lucky to get two weeks

DM Interview Mary & Tom Ferko -4- 8/7/72 Tape 6 DM You mean because of dockage TF No, they didn't always have the orders for coal, every town has a breaker, DM You mean you'd walk in and they would say no work today TF No a whistle would blow, at 3:30 a whistle would blow if it blowed one there was work if it blowed 3 there wasn't any work tomorrow, at quittin' time a whistle would blow DM How's come we've been here 2 1/2 months and haven't found that out before, that's incredible MF That's true every day at 3:30 the whistle blew TF That's right if the whistle blew one there was work and if it blew 3 there was no work MF We always listened for that whistle DM If you got 8 days of work out of 10 you were doing well TF Yeh, you didn't get work too steady then DM I thought all they did was stock pile the coal, make you fellows work TF How many breakers here, they had #5 breaker, you know where #5 is and now over the top of the hill ------------ you had another breaker, Sandy Run had their own breaker, Hazlebrook had their own breaker, Eckley had their own breaker, #4 when you go towards Hazleton -------------------There was a breaker there, Harleigh had a breaker, -------------, had their own breaker, everyone had their own breaker DM How did they work it out as to who would work, like would it happen that Harleigh breaker would be down for a week and the rest of you guys would be working or what MF They didn't have strippins like they do now, it was all mined TF But after the coal started stackin up they wasn't getting their coal started to tear down one breaker and then Look now they can't get enough coal for the breakers, her uncle is over at Harleigh and he told me they have 100 gondolas to a shift to operate the breaker now you figure 100 gondolas---------- that's a lot of coal DM I had no idea I really didn't that things were like that TF Where did you for for your information around here did you go to the woman

DM inter. Mary & Tom Ferko -8- 8/7/72 Tape 6 DM Because I haven't heard anybody admit that they get free coal yet TF Well they wouldn't MF They wouldn't say it but there was quite a few women here gettin' it DM Well when you guys were, well when Piker was working in the mines did you guys buy your coal MF Yes and when we got a chance we picked it too and and when we could afford it we'd buy it, when we lived at the mountain we use to pick all our coal there because we were right close to the strippin there it was right across the road so we use to pick all our coal down there same thing down there we use to pick coal DM What about the Coal and Iron Police did they ever give you any trouble MF You would just have to watch or they'd catch you DM I don't blame you I'd be out there picking coal too, if I was a coal miner you couldn't get me to buy coal MF When I was home yet livin' up on the Back Street yet after school we always went down on the coal bank back of there and pick coal and take it home and as soon as you seen the cop we'd run and how many times he'd catch they kids and smash the buckets DM Is that how they did it they'd smash their coal buckets, I heard a couple people say and I don't know how true this is but on a couple tapes I heard they said that if you were caught continuously picking coal they would report you and you would either have to move or change your name TF They could put you out of your house if they wanted to because they woned the property DM And then you would have to move and change your name to avoid prosecution MF I don't know about changin' the name but they could put you out of the house if they caught you a couple times like that, but everybody picked coal around here DM Who were the Coal and Iron Police people from the town

DK inter. Mary & Tom Ferko -15- 8/7/72 Tape 6 boy would that be nice now she had a lot of old stuff TF Everybody had old stuff then MF They didn't have any rugs on the floor, in the parlor they had, the carpet was thin it wasn't carpet like that it was green or red and it was flowery designs the kind that she had in the parlor TF A lot of people used burlap bags for carpets DM Burlap bags the same ones they use to make dish towels out of TF They were potato bags then brown ones DM Did you guys ever go in for decorating with feed bags that were already printed up with designs on the, curtains and MF We made pillow cases Bruno's wife use to make all the underwear for her family TF Make shorts and stuff out of them, they had a lot of chicken they use to buy a lot of feed MF Same as with my mother she use to make all that DM I saw some stuff around her Eva Sulkosky stll has some curtains made out of it, Margaret Maloney has a whole bunch of dish towels she gave us one out of the feed bag and it's beautiful right out of, all you had to do was bleach it out, wash it out that's all MF Yeh I use to make my pillow cases and all out of that DM Did you guys get any extra money when you were first married you didn't take in any boarders did you, you just lived off your check TF No, but before that everybody use to have boarders DM You said everybody TF The people that come from Europe they almost all had boarders the people would come from Europe and stay with relations MF So they'd take them in TF Like if you pee on my fence you're my relations DM Is that what they use to say about it

If you're going to drink whiskey, that's pure the other stuff has to much dope in it MF Plain alcohol my mother use to put some water to it she use to get some kind of stuff from the drug store to flavor it TF and give it a color too you know if it was 100 proof you diluted it down to 90 or 80 or whatever you wanted TF Moonshine is pure white, that's just like alcohol, that's what it is when it comes out, and you gave it a coloring DM Wasn't that a caramel flavoring TF you gave it any kind you want MF Cherry flavor she used to get TF We use to get all kinds DM Incredible TF yeah but these were the good old days MF I wouldn't want to go back to them DM Now you have to pay all that tax on the liquor and it's really expensive, I started to talk about jobs but I got lost somewhere, I think I already talked to you about this but I would like to ask you some more about it if I could about how you moved to a higher position like from one position to another you atrted off as a mule patcher TF You had to follow in line DM Like the seniority system TF Yeh, then you went to two mules or if a job opened for laborer that paid 5.49 then you had to go for your minin' papers and then if a job opened for minin' well DM Now how did you get your mining papers TF You had to go and take an examination DM Up at Freeland

TF No to Hazleton DM How did you study for this or how did you work for this TF They asked you different questions about minin' what you should do and what you shouldn't do all different questions they'd ask you DM Which most people could answer is they worked in the mines TF Yeh if they worked in the mines they could answer them questions but the bigger part of the thing was crooked anyway if you slipped them 2 bucks you was alright DM That's what I heard, Bruno took an ICS course, correspondence course to get his foreman papers and he had to do that too probably, that was pay-off too TF Yeh pay-off, that's how everything was DM But that's how you went up and the biggest job, the best job other than a foreman even better than a foreman as far as money, was a contract mining wasn't it TF Yeh, that's providing you had a drag with the committee or boss to get a good job then you could makemoney like up here MF He's dead now DM What do you mean you're making reference to something I don't know about TF Yeh he was a regular suck-ass he had the best job in the mines DM Annie Yenshaw's husband TF Yeh he always made big money DM Well she still screams and hollers MF She always does TF She's a big mouth DM I don't like her very much, I shouldn't put that on tape either MF Nobody does TF Nobody in Eckley likes her, we just talk to her but as far as likin' her well there aint many people like her she has too big of a mouth DM Well she must have some relatives or something because she's mad because they didn't get a job with the work crew and all that she has a thorn in her rear end

DM inter Mary & Tom Ferko -20Tape 6 8/7/72

on account of that I guess TF Same as Holly Maguire she was supposed to get everthing just like[?] her husband but he didn't get it and was pissed up right away they were supposed to get everything and everybody else was supposed to get nuthin' that's the kind of people they are the sonofabitch he promised me a job that I was goin' to get a job up here at the breaker he told me about it and after I took it to the district office he denied it I should have grabbed him by the throat and threw him out the window MF He was an official in the union at the time and he went up to the district office with him first he told him he was goin' to get him a job and then when he took him up to the office he denied everything MF My own uncle did the same thing, don't worry you're goin' to get the job TF He said you're from Eckley you deserve the job he said I'll stick with you and we went up to the district office and he never opened his mouth and I told him about it MF They're both dead now DM Now was age a factor whether you got a job or not TF Yeh, you had to be 18 yrs. old to get a job in the mine because the insurance wouldn't cover you see if you were under 18 you wouldn't get a job DM But once you got the job it wasn't how old you were, if you were 19 or 20 could you get a job contract mining if you were good at it TF If you were good and providing you had the papers and if there was jobs open like say they opened another gangway well 10 or 12 jobs open, well if you wanted a job you got the job because the other guys had jobs there was always more jobs developin' all the time as they were goin' DM Well now say, not you in particular, but say somebody in town, if they had a low job and got advanced to a higher job would they try and move in to a different house or would there status in the community rise

DM inter. Mary & Tom Ferko -21- 8/7/72 Tape 6 TF No the people here mostly lived, some like on the Back Street where they had these small homes but the family got bigger they'd look for bigger homes DM Only if there was an opening would they try to move in because this used to be the high class section too TF Yeh DM All the way up to the office where we work TF All the foremans lived there DM Yes the foremen and the big shots MF Yeh that's what I thought. he had lots of money because he lived down here and I lived on the Back Street but he fooled me DM He fooled you huh, what kind of people lived on the Back Street when you were here people with lower paying jobs MF Oh yeh TF Not exactly lower paying jobs but that's where they live were no homes down her that time, it was hard to get a home DM But can you remember any stories or any experiences where they got a new job and he thought he was God's gift to everything and strutted around town and tried to move into a big house and all that TF No you couldn't do that DM The way the housing situation was TF It was always full MF Even when the people moved out of here we had a hard time gettin' this place DM Yes how do you got hold of another house TF We had to go up to Coxe's office in Hazleton the big shots were Coxe's up there MF And you had to have somebody to talk for you TF If you didn't have nobody to talk for you you could go up there early in the week MF And you wouldn't get it, maybe one of their friends, many people that we want to

Inter Mary & Tom Ferko -22- 8/7/72 Tape 6 see to get this place when we heard they were moving out TF It was just like everything else and then I finally told them either I get your house or I'll move to Freeland and the hell with your goddam house and I was workin' and came after me and he said come on we have to go up to Hazleton and sign up for the house I said either I get it or I don't get it I'm tired of that kind of stuff I told him right off DM Did you have to meet any requirements or just TF No we just moved in but what the hell it cost to take care of the home they fixed this window and the roof was leakin' and I got all new windows in my house here DM I was going to say you got beautiful windows MF Right before they quit they gave us all new windows TF And my cement porch they were always puttin' boards on and the boards would rotten and I said give me about 5 bags of cement and I'll put on my own porch in and I put my own porch in and I'm done with it don't have to worry about the boards all the time they'd give you the stuff but you had to help yourself but the biggest part of the people didn't want to help MF We painted almost every summer, you had to take care of them DM I figured that TF But you look across to these homes here they never touch them DM Look one of the worse houses in town we live in I want you to know that, our house you can pull nails out of the side of the house, I'm serious I don't think Emory ever touched the place TF He didn't