Hi Anna, Be careful what you wish for. Saw your post from July, asking for someone who lived in Lynch to write. Well, I lived in Lynch, KY. My daddy, Vivian (Slim) Harris also worked in those coal mines. The mines were owned by the U. S. Steel Coal and Coke Company. I was born in Roda, Happy Hollow, Wise, Va. & that is where he first started in about 1923. Then he got on at the Lynch Mines & Mama had two things to worry about, besides us six children; Daddy's safety in the mines (she lost her own father, Evin Parkey Bledsoe, in the Pennington Gap, VA Coal Mines, 1912) and Daddy going & coming home, winding around, up & down that narrow, treacherous Black Mountain road, in the fog. In the 1930's it was a real drop off down that mountain side, with nothing but the trees to stop you. He worked at Mine No 31 (I believe they call it a Portal) in Lynch, KY. We, first moved over to Hiram, KY, then up to Lynch on Y Street. We then lucked out by getting to move into one of the duplexes for supervisors on Main St. I believe Mr. Schubert, a Super. put in a good word for Daddy. Mama wrote her up until 1979. Their son, home on furlough, in the 1940's saved my life with a tourniquet, when I cut my arm to the bone on one of those glass milk jugs. Besides that Big Store that had everything, which was east of our house, we had that Little Store, west of our house, we could take some script & buy milk. I thought it'd be fun to wade in that slimy water trickling down off the mountain & running along the street. This two inch scar just above my wrist is still a vivid reminder, it was a bad idea. The Cheetums lived in the other side of our house, with 15 children & we honestly, all got along great. I didn't know there was such a thing as white socks, until we moved to Texas. Mama kept us scrubbed and clean, but that coal dust had a way of discoloring things. One night after Mama had got us all bathed & had us sitting in the living room by the fireplace, rolling our hair on those tin strips, she had somehow managed to keep & cover with paper, we heard someone coming through the door. We looked up, screamed and all ran behind Mama, as we saw this black man, we didn't know in our house. The power had gone off at the mines bath house, so the men had to go on home to bathe. Yes, I remember the outside toilet with the coal house in the other half. One night it was my turn to go fetch a bucket of coal, just after we had been sitting around telling spooky stories. I was getting coal as fast as I could, when someone jumped out of the other side & yelled "It's the Blue Man." I also remember The Lynch Baptist Church. It was a big beautiful church, but being a child then, I keep remembering how cold the little chairs were, as our Sunday School classes were in the basement. I still have my little Bible given to me in 1945, signed by Mrs. John Staley, Mrs. W. G. Pennington & Mrs. M. I. Davis. There was all nationalities there in that little mining town and we all got along well. We had lots of churches. The mining company provided the town with everything they needed, I guess. The mines, post office & hospital were all east of where we lived. I have lots of memories of playing around the hospital area. I guess we always knew someone in there. There were twenty & forty steps going up to the next level of a street with an iron railing. Then the next level the same. It started down on Main. The mines started below upon another level back into the mountains. You could walk the paved road in front of the mines & on one side would be the lamp house next to the mines & across the road to your right was the bath houses. There was also a window where the miners picked up their pay. They took lunch buckets to the mines, but at times, some of the men ate at a very small restaurant in front on Main St. We had a nice big grade school where one sister & I attended & right next door a sister & brother went to a nice big high school. Some families of kin there were Hodges & Cothern. One sister, Vivian Gertrude Harris, later married into the Summers family of Lynch. She died in the Lynch Hospital in 1950, when her son was born. He, Carl Frank Summers, grew up to go to Lynch Grade School, but graduated in West Virginia. My Aunt Birdie & Uncle Paul Hodges now live in Benham, KY. Daddy had to leave the mines after twenty-two years for health reasons. He & my brother went to Texas, in 1945 and sent for Mama when he had work. The war had just ended and she (Edith Gertrude Bledsoe Harris) got on the train with five little girls and brought us to Texas. She didn't mind leaving the coal mines, but she sure missed her people, her friends & her mountains of Kentucky & Virginia. Edith's mother was Victoria A. Sprinkle of Fairview, Scott County, VA. Hope you get lots of mail from former or present Lynch folks. My three sisters & I hope to visit Lynch, Ky & over Black Mountain into Virginia this next Spring or Summer. Mary Harris Carey, Houston, TX [email protected]