My father had been laid off from his job as an electrician at Colgate-Palmolive in late December of 1955 and by the spring of 1956 still had not been able to secure employment in Louisville. He was starting to consider relocating his wife and young daughter (I had not yet been born) if necessary to secure employment. On Sunday, April 8, the Louisville Courier-Journal help wanted section carried a display advertisement by the Eastover Mining Company in eastern Kentucky. “Licensed electricians needed immediately. Excellent wages and full benefit package” the advertisement advised. My father knew that this job probably involved a mix of working in the mine’s shop on the electrical equipment such as electric shuttle cars and core drills as well as going underground to make electrical repairs. He was well aware of the dangers of working underground but he really needed to find work and wrote a letter of application in response to the ad which our neighbor Mrs. Harrison typed up for him using a typewriter at the law firm where she worked.
Less than a week later my mother took a call from a secretary at the Eastover Mining Company asking if my father could come in for an interview. The next day he packed a lunch, filled the tank in his DeSoto, and headed out at 5:00 a.m. to make the six hour drive down to Harlan County. This was before the four-lane had been built on the final leg of the journey and heavy logging and coal trucks that struggled up the mountains often made the trip a trying one.
My father provided his papers to the office manager and spoke briefly with the mine superintendant. “The first thing I want to do is to take you underground to show you what you are getting into”, the superintendant explained. They walked across the mine parking lot to the mine portal and took an elevator down about 1200 feet and then walked about two blocks to an underground shop. The superintendant showed my father pieces of equipment at various stages of rebuild and then took him on a ten minute ride via a shuttle car to the face where coal was being extracted.
After the tour, they returned to the elevator and rode up to the mine portal. As they left the elevator my father headed off to the left. The superintendant called out, “the office is over this way.” “I know”, my father replied, “I am headed for my car. Working underground is not for me.”
I wonder how different my life would have been had my father turned right instead of left that afternoon and if I would have been born and raised in the eastern Kentucky mountains instead of Louisville.
