Karen's Art Studio Dushore Pa Original Oil and Watercolor Paintings by Karen Black

Memoirs of the Nichols Family, Wilkes-Barre, Pa

To say memories fade over time would be a fallacy. Some memories stay hauntingly clear for an entire lifetime.

Sitting on the curb of Gardner Avenue with his best friend Butch the day his dad was killed in a mining accident, is a memory that even after 50 years is as clear as a photograph to Joe. The Parsons Section of Wilkes-Barre, PA was populated by the mining families of the Pine Ridge Colliery owned by the Hudson Coal Company. Most of the miners lived close enough to walk to work each day. Some would walk the D & H railroad tracks that ran up to the mines. In those days, cars were not as common as they are today. A family was lucky if they had just one car.

The steam whistle at Pine Ridge would blow once at each shift change for 10 seconds. The miners would ignore it because they worked piecemeal and worked until exhaustion each day, not by shifts. The whistle was for the office workers and colliery workers above ground. It had other meanings, too, more dreadful meanings.
Sometimes the whistle would blow repeatedly. Loud urgent blasts over and over again for what seemed an eternity. That second blast would stop everything. Everybody stopped to listen. Was it going to blow again? By the third blast everyone knew… there had been a major accident at the mines. People would rush to their porches to look in the direction of the breaker as if they didn’t want to believe their ears. They needed to see for themselves the steam escaping from the large whistle calling every able bodied man back to the mines, as well as the emergency crews. The whistle was the 911 system of its day.
It was a day like that when Butch’s dad died.
There was a vacant lot ahead of the culm piles where the kids played ball. The kids of the neighborhood shared what ever bats and gloves they had. They had one ball amongst them, old and covered in electricians tape. When the stitches went and the cover came off, it was taped back on because no one could afford a new ball.
At the sound of the first whistle blast – was it really time for a shift? The second blast - everyone stopped. By the third even the kids knew what dreaded news that whistle had become. Not a word was said. Just exchanged looks of unspoken fear were exchanged. They scurried to pick up their meager equipment and headed home. The ball that was going to be thrown to first base was now jammed in a pocket of dirty hand-me-down blue jeans and forgotten.
When the kids got to Austen Avenue they would split up and run down their own streets. The closer to home the faster they ran. There is no way to convey the feeling after bursting through the kitchen door at breakneck speed of seeing daddy’s mining hat and jacket hanging safely on the kitchen chair. Breath escaped loudly as if it had been held the whole way home. Now gleeful pants were used to catch breath once again.

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