Company Town Transcript
- Man, he's crazy. Does that mean it went okay ?
- Rick!
- [Rick] Look, look!
- Easy as hell, that boy's the devil.
- Come help up here, Don!
- Why?
- 'Cause there ain't no way you gonna make it up this right here! Heck yeah, baby.
- [Man] No way. There ain't no way up that.
- Right here.
- [Man] You'll drive him into the bank right there.
- [Richard] We had everything. We had the bank, we had our YMCA. We had our ice cream parlor and moving pictures and we had everything that a coal camp could expect.
- [Female Resident] We shared and that's one way we had more. As I said before, we didn't lock our doors because a neighbor may need a cup of sugar while we were down at the store. We didn't go out of town much, you know. As a matter of fact, I always wondered what the top of the hill looked like. Until I was about 15, I hadn't been to the top. I thought when I was a young girl, that I had two ambitions. One was to marry a cab driver. The other was to find a man who could buy me Del Monte peaches right off the shelf . I think of it now, how crazy but we had our dreams, the same as people in cities.
- [Richard] You don't find people like that. That was just back when everybody knew everybody else. It was just like one big family really is what it was and like I say, I know the one time when there was either three or four generations working there at one time. All them works was Mr. Bradley's job and we all made a living off of it and done well and thanked the Lord that we had a place to work and had money and made money. So when I went in the mines, they was paying 34 cents a ton and that was in the fall of 1933. You furnished your own carbide, your own powder and laid your own track.
- [Narrator] The Widen Mine steadily increased production. Bradley became a leader among independent coal operators and a powerful political influence throughout the state. By 1933, he paid union-scale wages and bitterly opposed the growing influence of the United Mine Workers.
- [Bradley] The reason I operate non-union is because my grandfather operated non-union. My great-grandfather operated non-union and I never learned the language of unionism. Decisions can't be made from the bottom. The captain must command the ship but the captain of a well-run ship has the confidence of his crew and so must the first class industrial leader.
- [Richard] They closed it down in 1960.
- [Mike] When did they close us down, '63 Randy?
- [Randy] Yeah boy, they knocked the can off on the road.
- Somewhere around there, about '63.
- [Randy] Now y'all goin' in or we're going?
- Yeah. That's a solid top, I'm on solid rock.
- Huh?
- We're talking about it. The old railroad schism laying there. Boy, they laid 'em.
- What do you need?
- Yeah, that's where, that's where it went to-
- [Randy] Right there's where they used to stick them out and jump them, that's where they switched.
- [Mike] Yeah, that's where they switched them and that's supposed to go into the head of a brush fence.
- [Randy] Now here's the spy hole.
- [Boy] What's in there?
- [Randy] They emptied it back here. This is the fly valve here where they emptied the cars and took the cars back in there and switched. They kept five tracks going.
- [Boy] Oh, that's where it goes.
- What's that in there?
- I was in a hurry, man.
- [Cameraman] What is that thing?
- Huh?
- What is that thing?
- This is a splice for your trolley wire where you a spice into your trolley wire on your main line.
- [Older Man] Who ran these?
- That's what that's for.
- That there's your souvenir there.
- Any cars over in there, Rick?
- Just this one pulling this here line.
- [Boy] There's one under-- there's probably a whole line under here. Yeah, that's where they dropped them.
- -When they shut her down. It's unreal.
- [Boy] Two of us, Chevy?
- [Richard] There was three fellas killed working with us. Patch's dad was one of them.
- Hal.
- Huh?
- Burt and Harris.
- [Mike] Burt and Harris got killed when the motor was on it.
- That's cold, right there.
- I said Mr. Burton wouldn't do it go into the wash house with his men and he'd just run around and talk to them, you know. And maybe his shirt would have two or three holes in it and his pants would have knees, maybe a hole in the knees of his pants.
- [Old Miner] It was generally sort of like a father-son relationship.
- [Older Resident] Well now, one man told me one time about him calling so-and-so in and he said, "I just wanted to talk to you about this son of yours. You know, you've got a new automobile, yes?" He says "He drove Boothy and Big Chimney the other day making about 50 miles an hour. That's dangerous, I want you to talk to him."
- [Interviewer] Did he run the County?
- [Female Resident] No, he just ran his end of it but he had a lot of control in the other part, in the other end, there wasn't much left really.
- [Older Resident] He loved to go to the fancy clubs in New York and Boston and where he traveled and sit around with these industrial people that were having labor troubles, "You oughta come down in West Virginia and let me show you how to run a successful operation."
- [Bradley] My efforts and activities have been devoted to serving corporations and trusts in which my own family and my wife's family had sufficient interest to need my services. This business started with an unbroken virgin forest, myself and a helper and has grown to be one of the best-known operations in the bituminous coal fields. I was brought up in the atmosphere of the Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian Churches and I'm a firm believer in the ethical principles I learned from them.
- [Woman] You're just like the full deck then.
- No wonder you get horns in your head. That's where I keep going with that.
- [Woman] I pulled one man out from it. He tried to buy me nice rings to make up for it.
♪ I don't want your greenback dollar ♪
♪ I don't want your rock and chain ♪
♪ All I want is your love, darling ♪
♪ Will you take me back again ♪
♪ Papa said you wouldn't never ♪
♪ Mama says that you always knew ♪
♪ All I know is that I love you ♪
♪ And I'd take you back again ♪
♪ I don't want your greenback dollar ♪
♪ I don't want your rock and chain ♪
♪ All I want is your love, darling ♪
♪ Will you take me back again ♪
- All right. I remember when the train used to come up here behind my house down there, you know and just let off steam and stuff like that and as kids, we thought that was something, you know what I mean? But it used to be a big place. I've never found a place like home, you know what I mean? Just Widen's Widen and that's where I growed up and that's where I'll probably end up being for 'til I'm an old feller and just can't get around. I've been a lot of places. Seen a lot of places I like. But wasn't none of them like home. I just ain't no city feller, I'm just a country boy. I can take a city but to a certain extent and when it gets time, I gotta go. I get the itchy feeling and I just gotta go, be gone. This place used to be, I can remember going in the store down here and they had the grill down there and they fixed hamburgers and stuff like that, you know? Run by the names of Hobo and Goose on it. That's what they called them. I never really did know what their names was or anything. I mean, I've known them, you know. Went down there, I can remember, boy, many, many, many times. Had the high school here in Widen, had the grade school here in Widen. A lot of people, a lot of two story-- Well this house, this holler here just about was all two story houses at one time. And sometimes two-
- This house, it was moved up here.
- Yeah, this house was moved up here.
- Grandpa built the most of it.
- It used to be all of them up through here was two story houses, you know.
- Built that bedroom-
- Sometimes two families to a house, even. You know what I mean? It was a big place. It was just Widen, that's what it's been. I watched it from when she was going good to where she went plumb down to what it is now and it's just a nice, quiet, peaceful town. You can't get a job. They tell you to go to that 80-hour class and you get your red hat card. Then you go to the mines and they laugh at you. That's just the way it is.
- [Female Resident] We did have the movies, if one could afford it. And we had a bowling alley if one could afford it and so forth to so on. But for the most part in the summer, we had a swimming hole up the hall. We had good schools, too. The teachers were supplemented by the company. The County paid them but the company paid supplemental wages. So we got good teachers.
- [Bradley] Decency makes a good community or a good town, so your behavior depended, your job and your behavior depended on your job and whether you kept your job or not, no question about that.
- [Older Resident] You growed up and that was your life. You, your parents usually worked for the company and they done as the company wanted yhem to do or they didn't work.
- You know, I mean now we see that. Over at the Villanova Church, they have about 115 to 20 comes out every Sunday morning. And on Sunday night, they'll have 50, 60, 75 people. At the prayer meeting, they had 50 and 60. Visitation comes up, usually it's just J.R., just one. See what I mean? So God has a purpose for all of us and our purpose is to, well, what is the church? He says "The church is like a body and each part is jointly fit together and we can be a living body." So part of us are legs and part of us are arms and some of us are heads, you see what I mean? And that way, we all fit in as one body with Christ, the living head of it.
- I was raised up in a Christian home. I was saved when I was 19 years old. I've never been, I'm not perfect. I've made a lot of mistakes but something always tells you, if you're Christian and you do something or say something, something whispers, that little sweet, small voice in your ear. "You shouldn't have said that" or "You shouldn't have done that." And that's what I have to go on today is because the Bible teaches us that and I'm thankful that we have this little church, we've got enough people to fill it if they'd come. But I pray that the Lord will work on their hearts that they will make up their mind and they'll come before it's too late. I ask an interest in all your prayers.
- Just like everybody else, I was away from the Lord and done everything dirty, rotten and low down and my kids was growing up and they seen it but I'm just glad I got the love of God in my heart now, that my kids can grow up and maybe they'll understand that there is a reality in serving God.
- Yes there is.
- Because that's the only thing in this world that really makes any sense. And I just hope that they grow up and-
- It's the only thing that will last.
- That's right.
- [Older Resident] Widen, was about four generations that worked at Widen when they quit. And it was a family of fathers, sons and grandsons working in the mines and the girls and the women was all just, it was just like one family.
- [Narrator] in 1952 and '53, Widen, one of a few non-union coal camps was polarized by a strike. Bradley fought it at a cost of nearly $2 million. The company was in a financial crisis. In 1959, beset by advancing age and illness, Bradley sold the company and its 93,000 acres to the Pittston Corporation of Greenwich, Connecticut. In 1963, Pittston closed the mine.
- [Bradley] I thought I was turning the properties over to a concern that would give my people maximum employment and so I felt I could not let that opportunity pass by.
- This here is "The Writing on the Wall for You," and it better be a lesson to us. It's got a good meaning if you know what to listen to.
♪ . . . . rule your heart and mind and will ♪
♪ To yourself and God to stay the line true ♪
♪ Yet the moment may be near ♪
♪ When the Savior shall appear ♪
♪ Is the writing on the wall for you ♪
♪ Is the writing on the wall for you ♪
♪ Will the Savior find you wanting too ♪
♪ Shall you try to hide away ♪
♪ From His presence on that day ♪
♪ Is the writing on the wall for you ♪
- Another song.
- Oh golly. You ready, sweetie?
- Yeah, let's go.
- Oh gosh.
- Come on, hurry up. Let's go.
- Ladies, you can take him. You can take him, I don't want him. You can have him, ladies.
- [Woman] That preacher knows that song.
- [Man] I'm sure he does.
- Don't you let them run away. They riding that limb rider, they'll get away from everybody else. Where they going to? This is . . . My hair blowing every way. They better get going.
- [Woman] I'll be back up in a little bit. That preacher down there had never heard this. That there proving man is the living by faith.
♪ I care not today what tomorrow may bring ♪
♪ If shadow or sunshine or rain ♪
♪ The Lord I know rules over everything ♪
♪ And all of our worry is vain ♪
♪ Living by faith in Jesus' birth ♪
♪ Confiding in his great love ♪
♪ Come all hearts saved in the sheltering arms ♪
♪ I'm living by faith and feel no alarm ♪
- Mom. You find one? Put your finger up. Here. You just take that, all right? You want that? Don't stick it in your mouth.
