ALEX.: Cecil
Houchins. I've been told he's quite
elderly and knows a great deal about the general lumber
operation in this country at the time it was quite active. Just opened a
gate leading down a dirt lane heading over towards the side of the mountain probably a
quarter of a mile. Can see it in the distance an old
farm house. It's a very pleasant day. The temperature
must be about 65. A nice breeze here on the mountain. So
in the next few minutes we should be, if we're lucky
talking to Mr.
ALEX.: Your name
Houchins?
HOUCHINS: Houchins, yes sir.
ALEX.: My name is
Alexander. Bob Alexander.
HOUCHINS: Alexander?
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
HOUCHINS: Uh huh.
ALEX.: I'm a professor of management at
Marshall University in Huntington. I'm writing a business history of
Pocahontas County.
HOUCHINS: I see.
ALEX.: And I've been around over this county here
and people tell me you know a little bit about the days of the lumber industry around here and that I
should talk to you.
HOUCHINS: Yes, sir. Yes, I guess I've been here a
good while.
ALEX.: About how many years?
HOUCHINS: Ninety-three.
ALEX.: Ninety-three years. Still here.
HOUCHINS: Yeah. Been back on that mountain, too.
Been back in the woods when I was younger, but . . .
ALEX.: Yeah, you work in the woods?
HOUCHINS: Used to. I don't do nothing now. I worked
thirty years in the woods. I went in the saw pilin'
trade you know and I sawed. You know, cross cut saws.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: I liked that trade.
ALEX.: How many could you sharp in a day?
HOUCHINS: Well, I ____ on Cheat
Mountain back there, I had thirteen everyday.
ALEX.: Is that right? That's pretty good. From
what I read that's a pretty good day's work.
HOUCHINS: That's a good day's work.
ALEX.: I used to, I think I read where some people
talk about eleven being a pretty good day's work.
HOUCHINS: Thirteen I filed everyday, six days a week.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: A dollar seventy-five a day, that's the way
it was. Forward.
ALEX.: Yeah. Well, not too many people got paid
for more than that.
HOUCHINS: No, not, didn't get more than that.
Teachers, I mean, cutters you know, and teamsters, they got a
dollar and a half a day.
ALEX.: I see.
HOUCHINS: I got a dollar seventy-five. Six days a
week. And I could take that dollar seventy-five and buy
more with it than you could with ten dollars today.
That's the way that works.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Everything's high, high, high.
ALEX.: Gone out of sight hasn't it?
HOUCHINS: Still going.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: I don't know what's going to happen to it.
ALEX.: Yeah. When did you go to work back there?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: When did you go to work back there?
HOUCHINS: Uh, about 1907 or 8. Along there somewhere.
ALEX.: Seven or eight. Railroad was up about that
time, wasn't it?
HOUCHINS: About 1902 the railroad was up the river,
you know.
ALEX.: Yeah. What about back on the mountain?
HOUCHINS: Well, they built that road there and went to
loggin', you know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: About 1904 I reckon it was.
ALEX.: So you put in a good many days at Camp 5?
HOUCHINS: Yeah, Camp 4.
ALEX.: Camp 4.
HOUCHINS: Yeah. I worked one whole summer. Went to
work in May and quit in November. Yeah. It's been
thirty years in the woods. That's a good while.
ALEX.: Yes, it is.
HOUCHINS: Yes, sir. Where do you live at?
ALEX.: I live in
Huntington.
HOUCHINS: You live in
Huntington.
ALEX.: But I grew up . . . I'm a native West
Virginian.
HOUCHINS: You're a native West Virginian.
ALEX.: Yes, sir I am.
HOUCHINS: This your boy?
ALEX.: This is my boy here. He's twelve years old.
HOUCHINS: How many boys you got?
ALEX.: I've just got that one.
HOUCHINS: You didn't do much good.
ALEX.: I didn't do much good. I've got a girl,
too.
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: I've got a girl, too.
HOUCHINS: Got a girl?
ALEX.: Yeah, I got a girl older than he is.
HOUCHINS: I have ten children in my family.
ALEX.: Ten of you?
HOUCHINS: Two dead and eight a livin' yet. Four girls
and four boys.
ALEX.: Yeah. That's a nice family.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, nice family.
ALEX.: Yes, it is. Nice family. Can you tell me
about any of your experiences back there?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: Can you tell me about any of your
experiences back there in the woods? Do you have any favorite
stories you like to tell?
HOUCHINS: Oh, I don't know nothing. Only work's about
the main thing ____. Well, I might tell you about an
instance there, you know, a cousin of mine, we went
back over there in ____ peel bark, you know. Well,
the timber was nice. The food was no good. You couldn't get and didn't know much.
ALEX.: I see.
HOUCHINS: Well, he said, "Let's quit and go to
Cheat Mountain." I said, "Okay." Well, we got ready and went
on Cheat. Went to Camp 9. Well, me and him went to sawin', ____, and worked there a few days. Camp 4 is in
above up the river there, you know. Tim O'Brian, he was
the boss. He was a teamster, you know. He liked to
drive teams to get logs, you know. That was his
occupation. He was a good sawyer, but he didn't care too much
about that, you know. So we went up there, well, the old
Camp 4 didn't have no ____ that could ____ because it
would cut you. I said, "Reese," I said, "You see them two
rails goin' down there?" "Yeah." I said, "You're going
to see me get down there some morning or noon."
He said, "Don't go. We'll think of something better." I
said, "Fiddle, there ain't nothing better here that I can
see." Anyway, we finished one row of cuttin' and
the old saws just jigglered all night. Didn't cut. Buck
____ Tim O'Brian, he was a main boss. He took off on
vacation. So he took off and gone and Buck ____ called me down there from
a landing where they started a new road cuttin'. Called me down there I
think to give me a little time. I said, "Hoopdedoo." Sent me
down the road. Talked to ____ and he said why don't
you go in the file room. I said, "No, I'm not beggin'.
You got a file in there." I said, "You know there ain't no filin'." He said, "I understand you were
filer." Well, I studied and told him I'd go in
there. Well, I went in. Had no saws that were no good, no
files, no nothing. I told Buck ____ you ain't got
nothing to work with. Well, he said, "They got a big store
down at Cass." He said, "You put your order in,"
and I said, "Okay." I put an order in, you know, for
twelve new saws, you know, and bought five ____.
Three-cornered. And bought seven or six files, you know.
Well, I got this little thing going and the funny part
of it was, you know, the men came in, you know, there was a big crew coming
and going all the time, you know. They worked about a hundred men in that camp, you
know. And so, when Tim O'Brian made it back, every
time he wanted a man, you know, he asked him what he wanted to do, what his occupation was. Some say teamsters,
some say cut logs that away. Well, Tim said every man I
asked come in here before I went in there. He said
what I wanted to do. And I said I want to drive team,
drive team. Well, he said, "Houchins went to file and
come back and I says to the man what he wanted to do,
wanted in the cuttin' group. Saw, you know. The next
man wanted to saw. I calculate before
Houchins come and
everybody come in here said he wanted to drive team,
drive team. Now since
Houchins ____, everybody came down
wants to saw, saw, saw. That's all I hear.
ALEX.: Sharp saws.
HOUCHINS: Yes.
ALEX.: Lay some dipper down.
HOUCHINS: Yes, sir. He had no trouble keepin'
me on that assignment.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Had no trouble at all, you know.
ALEX.: I see.
HOUCHINS: Yeah.
ALEX.: How do you do?
*: Hello.
HOUCHINS: That's my daughter there and I don't
remember your last name?
ALEX.: Alexander's my name.
*: How are you?
ALEX.: It's a pleasure to meet you. This is my
boy, Bobby.
*: How do you do?
*: Fine.
*: You were wanting Dad to tell you some
experiences, you have a picture here I could show you.
HOUCHINS: Well, go and get it and show it to him.
*: Oh, yeah.
*: In our paper they had, I don't know where it
is, they had a big write-up about him that came out
in the paper.
ALEX.: Pocahontas Times?
*: This, uh, you explain this to him. This
picture.
HOUCHINS: Sittin' down
below here was a log that's 1,932 feet still.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: Cutting crew. That's your cutting crew,
huh?
HOUCHINS: Yeah, that's my cutting crew. That's the
largest log . . . This is me there, you know.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: And that's my, wait 'til I get to see, yeah,
that's me and that's my brother Ward.
ALEX.: Yes.
HOUCHINS: He was killed in World War I and that's, uh,
El Sheets, he's a sawyer. And that's Wallace Curry, he lived right over here.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: And that's Elmer, my brother there, you
know.
ALEX.: Oh, yes.
HOUCHINS: All gone now but me. But the point of it
is, what I was tryin' to point out, was that was the
largest log that was ever cut in West Virginia.
In West Virginia, that was ever cut.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: And you know Twitty Blackhurst, you've heard
of him from Cass?
ALEX.: Oh, yes. I've read all about him.
HOUCHINS: You know he was our schoolteacher. And uh,
this is one of his books and uh, he said if he would
have known when he wrote this book that he would have put
that in.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: But he didn't know that.
ALEX.: Well, I declare. Had, uh, one thousand nine
hundred and thirty-two feet of lumber in it.
HOUCHINS: Nineteen hundred and thirty-two feet.
Nineteen hundred.
*: Nineteen hundred feet of lumber.
HOUCHINS: That's the
scale rule now. Cut out more and that by saw.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Needs an even number, you know.
ALEX.: My, I'm telling you and that had a butt on
it more than six foot, didn't it, through diameter?
HOUCHINS: Yeah, way more than that.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Well, it's so
big, you know, you know the handles on saws, you know.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: And, it's so big that you couldn't use both
handles. One man had to do the, the sawing. Clear
across. Six foot saw.
ALEX.: Yeah, you couldn't pull.
HOUCHINS: Couldn't do nothin'.
ALEX.: No.
HOUCHINS: No, no. Get that there.
*: I have one here with you and your brother was a schoolteacher run a restaurant in Cass.
They run, they did the cookin' everything. They owned a
restaurant in Cass.
ALEX.: Your dad and his brother?
*: Yeah, Uncle Forrest. He was a
schoolteacher.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. Huh.
*: I came down when I heard you talkin'.
ALEX.: Yeah.
*: I, I just had not been out of the--I have to
go to the
Morgantown University Hospital so much.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
*: So I thought I'd help Dad, you know, along a
little bit to show that I care. Since he didn't know
where it was at, I'm holdin' on to that picture.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah. That's a fine picture.
*: And that's just your party. Your birthday
party.
That's not that big . . .
*: Yeah.
*: That's not the one I was referrin' to . . .
*: I don't know where the other is. I haven't got that one.
*: I've got it but it's over in there and I don't know where to find it.
HOUCHINS: That's my birthday.
*: Yeah. I read this someplace.
HOUCHINS: You did?
*: Yes, sir, I did. I remember this saying you
could read without a squint of the eye. Happy
ninety-third birthday. It said, "And then he added that
they sure think a lot of me. When someone remarked about this reading without glasses, he says nothin'
figurein'. I have no use for them things. Birdy
Sheets had a birthday on April 23. Miss Kopp present here with a lovely
necklace. Anyone wants to hear the gaiety of this evening, I will let you hear a tape.
Secretly I set the recorder back of Cecil's chair to
get his voice as he greeted friends and neighbors. I am 93 years young and feeling like a two-year-old. When
I hear the recording I wonder who was listening."
Well, that's a fine tribute there and downright . . . Yes,
it is.
*: There's another piece about it, but I don't
know where Helen put it.
*: It was put in the Pocahontas Times. Had his
picture in it. It was just really nice what they had written up about him.
*: Of course, they had included about that
picture there about the log. Well, they went through his
whole history of his life.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
*: What he did through the years.
ALEX.: Well, that's a nice write-up.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, I was down Cass and ran a restaurant
down there.
ALEX.: Thank you.
*: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: For a year.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: I went down there ____. That's when they
had nine or ten camps at
Cheat Mountain. A hundred men, you know, in each camp.
ALEX.: Oh, yes.
HOUCHINS: And we gained, you know, off of it. And
they had plenty of whiskey, whiskey stores down there.
ALEX.: Yeah. What did you serve them?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: What did you serve them in that restaurant?
What did they like?
HOUCHINS: Oh, short orders.
ALEX.: Short orders?
HOUCHINS: Beef and steak and eggs and pork chops and
everything like that. Short orders.
*: We have a picture here of him standing in
front of the restaurant. I don't know where it's at.
*: I don't know either.
*: And that was Uncle Forrest. That was the
one that was a schoolteacher, your brother that helped
you with it.
HOUCHINS: Huh?
*: Wasn't that Uncle Forrest?
HOUCHINS: Me, me and him.
Yes, I've been in a little bit of everything. Worked the carpenter trade a
whole lot. Farming a lot.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Run a thrashin' machine and thrash grain a
whole lot.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: Thirty years in that.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Every fall.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Oh, I've been around.
*: I can remember the old thrashing crews.
*: Huh?
*: I can remember the old thrashing crews.
*: Can you remember that?
*: Used to blindfold a horse and walk him
around.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, that was the first kind. Then they
got the steam engine you know, to run it next.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Then of course, the gasoline, you know, the
tractor.
ALEX.: Yeah. You did that for about thirty years.
HOUCHINS: Thirty years every fall. About three
months.
ALEX.: Did you make any money in that Cass
restaurant?
HOUCHINS: Oh, we done pretty good.
ALEX.: Did okay.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, done good.
ALEX.: Able to make a living out of it.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, I was.
ALEX.: Yeah. When did you operate that?
HOUCHINS: Nineteen-four. That was the year. Bought
it in 1904 and it lasted and sold it out in 1905. And
then I went to the woods and worked thirty years in
that.
ALEX.: Well, I declare.
HOUCHINS: Well, he don't
look and believe I'm ninety-three and glasses I don't have no use for them.
ALEX.: You read very well without them.
HOUCHINS: Read just as good now as I did when I was
young. Write and everything.
ALEX.: Working back there in the woods was good for
you.
HOUCHINS: Well, certainly.
ALEX.: Had they built a railroad at the top of
Cheat Mountain when you started working?
HOUCHINS: Yeah, they done had it going when I went up
there.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, they built that in 1904 I guess.
Three or four. Up in
Cheat Mountain.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: C & O ____ Cass, you know in 1902.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: When they got to running the railroad.
ALEX.: You remember them building the railroad at
the top of the mountain?
HOUCHINS: Oh, I worked on it.
ALEX.: Did you? Yeah.
HOUCHINS: I worked on the C & O when they was building
it. The rock crew.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Blasting crew.
Drilled rock, you know with a hand hammer, you know, you've seen that.
ALEX.: Like John Henry.
HOUCHINS: John Henry.
*: Don't you think it's remarkable that someone
that age can remember the years?
ALEX.: Oh, yes.
*: Like he does? Of course, he's my father.
ALEX.: It sure is. What kind of labor did they use
on the hill over there?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: What kind of labor did they use on that
railroad crew going up that mountain?
HOUCHINS: Uh, mostly Austrians.
ALEX.: Austrians, uh huh.
HOUCHINS: You know, Mack, you know, he wouldn't work
on a railroad. ____, no, no. He'd work in the woods or something that away, in a factory.
ALEX.: It was all hand labor, wasn't it?
HOUCHINS: All hand labor. No bulldozers or nothin'.
No graders or nothin'. Wheelbarrows and cotton pickin'
shovels.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: Of course, there was dynamite to do the
blastin'. And drill the rock, you know, ____.
ALEX.: Well, uh, I guess you've seen a lot of
lumber come off of that mountain.
HOUCHINS: Oh, a world of it, a world of it.
ALEX.: Can you tell me about spruce?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: What can you tell me about spruce?
HOUCHINS: Well, they had some of the finest spruce you
ever laid your eyes on. I'll tell you that right
now. Right up on
Cheat Mountain.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: All over Cheat. Thousands of acres of it.
I don't know how many thousands of acres was on
Cheat Mountain. It went down clear to ____, you know, on the Western Mountain Railroad, you know. And clear up
to Slaty Fork, I guess, too. How wide, I don't know just
how wide it was. They had about ten to twelve teams,
you know, of a hundred men. That's what works at a camp.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: Like the superintendent of the old work,
Shaffer's his name.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: Said I have three crews. Said every time I
change as much as eatin' I got a big crew on there
about twenty-five or thirty men coming to work. And then he said I've got one crew a workin'
and then he said I got another crew a going out. That ain't
right. You could always find twenty-five or thirty men. A
lot of them wasn't wantin' to work. They just get their
lodgin' and take off next morning. A lot of them went
to work and a world of them went out. About twenty-five
everyday.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: That's the way she was. Yes, I know for I
seen it with my own eyes. I know.
ALEX.: They just travel what they do. They just
travel to log camps or what?
HOUCHINS: Oh, just from one log camp to another.
Didn't want to work. Didn't work. So that was the way it
was. A lot of them come to work, you know. Aw, that Cheat Mountain.
They had some hard wood in there, but very little. It's all about spruce. Way up
yonder, fifty or sixty feet tall trees. No limbs 'til you
get right to the top. Three and four foot across the top. She's beautiful, I'll tell you.
ALEX.: They brought those off in railroad cars,
huh?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: They
hand load those in cars first before they got loaders?
HOUCHINS: Loaded them by hand first.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: And then, you know, they got the steam
loaders.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Got them you know after they run a few
years, you know.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: And of course, you've seen them I guess
yourself.
ALEX.: I've seen pictures, yeah.
HOUCHINS: That's the way they loaded them, you know.
Aw, it was a wonderful boomin' town in that part of the
world.
ALEX.: A lot of business activity then.
HOUCHINS: Aw, my goodness. Old Cass was a boomin'
town. Those old hicks would get on their drunk. One
time, I'll have to tell you about this. I run a restaurant
down there, you know. A young fellow come, I think he was about the size
of you. He was in his twenties. He'd been up there on Cheat a good while, you know, and
he wanted a feed and he come in my place there you know,
and he wanted three eggs, a cup of coffee, and bread and butter, you know. Well, I got them. He
went out and got a few drinks, I think, and come back and
he wanted three more the next time he came. Well, I
fixed them for him and he wasn't gone too long until
that fellow eat 27. Twenty-seven eggs.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: That's right. I cooked them. I know for a
fact. Boy, I got a lot of kicks out of that. I didn't
kid him much after that. He was a husky man. He
weighed about two and a quarter or something like that. It
always tickled me.
ALEX.: Twenty-seven eggs.
HOUCHINS: Twenty-seven eggs. Now I cooked them. I
know how many there was.
ALEX.: They must have not been feeding him too well
back in the hills.
HOUCHINS: Oh, they feed you. Doggone they had
everything.
ALEX: He was just a horse. Could eat a lot.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, my goodness they had everything. You
take a man to cook as a general rule, you know, and
he'll make gravy richer than a woman.
He got that up on there pretty good and he wanted a change, I reckon, but
____. He'd have a few drinks, you know, and that'd give
him more appetite, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah. I'll go and have another three eggs.
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: He'd say he'd have to have another three
eggs.
HOUCHINS: If I'd have ate them, I might have got up to
six, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, boy, I just a lot of kick out of that.
ALEX.: He must have been some fellow.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, he was. He was husky, too. A young
man somewhere in his twenties.
ALEX.: What did you sell three eggs for? What did
a breakfast or a meal like that cost you then? You
remember?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: What would a meal like that cost you then?
HOUCHINS: A quarter.
ALEX.: About twenty-five cents.
HOUCHINS: That's all. Six eggs for a quarter.
ALEX.: Six eggs for a quarter.
HOUCHINS: At a time.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: You can get them eight and ten cents a
dozen, you know, buy 'em.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: You could sell them cheap, you know, then.
Oh, boy that town was a boomin' when that loggin' was going on. That's when the West Virginia
Pulp and Paper Company owned it when I worked there.
ALEX.: You worked for West Virginia Paper and Pulp?
HOUCHINS: Well, that was their camp at Cheat that I
worked for, you know.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, 1905, I reckon it was when I filed
there.
ALEX.: When did you quit workin' back? What was
the year?
HOUCHINS: I quit that
year. Nineteen-five. I never went back to them. They sent for
me a time or two, but I get plenty of work not going that far. Way out in the
country. Went back there in the jungle where all you
could see was spruce trees and men.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Couldn't see nothin' else.
ALEX.: It must have been some forest back there.
HOUCHINS: Oh, it is wonderful. It is one of the most
beautiful timbers you've ever laid your eyes on.
Never seen nothing like it.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: I've been
around a whole lot in the woods, but I've never seen timber as nice as that was.
ALEX.: You raised ten children here?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: You've raised ten children back here on
Back Mountain.
HOUCHINS: Yeah,
Back Mountain. You wouldn't believe it, but right down there, see that garden down there?
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: We came here in 1896. Moved here from
Randolph County. Had a spruce timber there and back over there a Gray Tail. It doesn't look reasonable, does it?
ALEX.: No. It's clean now.
HOUCHINS: Uh, got corn in down there don't look
reasonable. But that's what she was.
ALEX.: Did you put them down?
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: Did you put the trees down?
HOUCHINS: No, I didn't bother with them. A company,
Smith & ____ had a sawmill down here at Whiting and they logged them. My dad worked for them I think.
Laurel and big rhododendron on that other side there of the
creek.
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: Way up yonder, you know. She's beautiful
timber, I'll tell the world.
ALEX.: Won't be back here for a long time, will it?
HOUCHINS: No, it will be quite a while. We won't see
it, I don't think.
ALEX.: No. No. I don't think we'll se it.
HOUCHINS: I don't think we'll see it. Well, sir . . .
ALEX.: You've been feeling well?
HOUCHINS: Feelin' better than a two year old.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: I feel fine.
I haven't missed a meal this . . . all winter. I got a birthday and then I'll be
on the ____ as a ____. Then Jud and Mac up here had a
birthday ramp supper. Ever eat ramps?
ALEX.: Oh, yes sir.
HOUCHINS: Like 'em?
ALEX.: Yes, sir.
HOUCHINS: There ain't nothin' better, is there?
*: Yeah, they tell me they're freezing them now
and putting them in a freezer.
*: Yeah.
*: Eating them year around now.
HOUCHINS: Up here at
Bonnie Moore's and Mary Moore got a whole ____. ____ and my boy--I'm going to
Pennsylvania next week.
ALEX.: You are?
HOUCHINS: Yeah. I
got four children up there and Waddell, he wanted a mess so bad and he said reckon
they'd be too tough and Bonnie said she'd give me a dish
full to take back. Oh, I got one boy that come in with
them. He's hurt his back. He was in the Japanese War,
you know.
ALEX.: Yes.
HOUCHINS: And hurt it. He's been operated on time and
again and he came in with them with his brother and
he's up there at Bartow now. He went to bed and says
they're comin' down tomorrow.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: I'm going back Monday. They're going back
Monday.
ALEX.: Oh, I see.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, I ain't been up there for quite a
while. While I got a chance. Then I'll get a chance the
fourth and got another daughter and her man come in about
the fourth I think. I'll come back with them.
ALEX.: Oh, yeah.
HOUCHINS: That will be long enough.
ALEX.: Yeah. And how long will that be?
HOUCHINS: A month.
ALEX.: You say that will be about a month.
HOUCHINS: That will be about a month, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Fourth of July, you see. This is the
twenty-fourth.
ALEX.: Twenty-fourth of May. It will give you
about a month.
HOUCHINS: About a month. That's long enough to . . .
ALEX.: Yeah. Well, I hope you have a nice trip up
there.
HOUCHINS: Well, they feed you good up there. There's
awful nice people up there. Wonderful people. They
treat you good.
ALEX.: Well, I don't want to take too much of your
time, I . . .
HOUCHINS: Well, I ain't got nothin' to do only set and
talk.
ALEX.: Is that right?
HOUCHINS: That's all I'm doin'. That's all I'm goin'
do.
ALEX.: Yeah. Well, you've worked long enough.
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: You've worked long enough.
HOUCHINS: I've done worked hard my time, and I've done
quit now everything.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: Yes, sir, I can
read and write just as good as I did when I was young.
ALEX.: That's wonderful.
HOUCHINS: My eyes did fail for a long time. About the
time I was filin' up there. I got a pair of glasses
and I don't know how long I did wear them. I would just
wear them when I was readin' or something, work.
ALEX.: I see.
HOUCHINS: But walkin' or doin'
anything rough, I never did use them. Now I don't, I carry them with me all
the time but I don't use 'em at all. Think about
it. It doesn't look ____, but it is.
ALEX.: Aw, that's wonderful, though, that your eyes
would be that good.
HOUCHINS: Aw, I got my second childhood eyes, I guess.
ALEX.: Well, we are going . . .
HOUCHINS: Where are you going today?
ALEX.: Well, we're going back over to Marlinton.
HOUCHINS: Back to Marlinton?
ALEX.: Yeah. There's somebody else over thee I
want to talk to. Let me see who it is here. I want to
talk to, oh, let me see, a fellow by the name of Bruce Crichart.
HOUCHINS: Over at, where at?
ALEX.: He's, I think he lives someplace . . .
HOUCHINS: Mill Creek's where he is.
ALEX.: Yes,
but he's going to be over in Marlinton though,
visiting with an Alice Waugh tonight, I
think.
HOUCHINS: Yeah.
ALEX.: And I
want to stop over there and talk to them for a little while.
HOUCHINS: Bruce, he's . . . he lives over here at Mill
Creek in Randolph County ____.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: I think he's a surveyor, ain't he?
ALEX.: That's right.
HOUCHINS: He surveyed for
this Spruce and Paper Company on the mountain.
ALEX.: Yeah, that's what I understand. He was a
surveyor and went back on that mountain.
HOUCHINS: He resigned.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: And then the Mower Lumber Company, I think he
surveyed for them for a while. You know, they got to
spruce land, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Well, do you know anything about the
Snowshoe?
ALEX.: Not much. Not much. Do you know anything
about it?
HOUCHINS: Well, they went bankrupt ____.
ALEX.: No, no. They bailed themselves out, I
think.
HOUCHINS: They come out.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: They're going to start in again. They're
getting their money.
ALEX.: Yeah, it looks like it. I was talking to .
. .
HOUCHINS: I hope they do.
ALEX.: Yeah, that would be a nice attraction.
HOUCHINS: With the labor and look at the tourists that
will come in.
ALEX.: Yeah, that's right.
HOUCHINS: There's going to be a lot of money spent up
there and that ain't no maybe. And once they get that
thing operating, there will be . . .
*: And keep it going . . .
HOUCHINS: There will be a steady stream of people in
here for the summertime for the Cass Railroad and the
wintertime for Snowshoe. That's no joke.
ALEX.: Yeah, it will help the area.
HOUCHINS: I was at
Morgantown University Hospital talking to some of my doctors . . .
ALEX.: Uh huh.
HOUCHINS: And they had been down here and rode the
train and they said that was the most beautiful scenery
that they had ever seen. When they rode that train.
ALEX.: That's something. We've ridden it several
times.
HOUCHINS: Huh?
ALEX.: We've ridden the train several times.
HOUCHINS: I've ridden the train. I've ridden it once
since Cass has been running it. But I've been up there
that away I've rode it before, you know, when it was loggin'. Of course,
it was nothing new to me, but I was ahead of people, you know, and I enjoyed the trip all
right. When they go ____ off, you know. ____ a
mile from Cass. That depot of Cass's burned down, didn't it?
ALEX.: Yeah, that's too bad. I was by there the
other day.
There had to be somebody who done that.
HOUCHINS: Now somebody done that.
ALEX.: Sure.
HOUCHINS: Ain't no maybe about that.
ALEX.: That's what Mr. Cassell said.
HOUCHINS: Yeah.
ALEX.: I was talking to him not too long ago.
HOUCHINS: Which one, Cassell?
ALEX.: Yes.
HOUCHINS: Odey?
ALEX.: Odey, yeah.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, I know Odey like a book.
ALEX.: Yeah, I talked to him a week or so ago.
HOUCHINS: He worked on
Cheat Mountain, too, you know.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: He can tell you a lot of bad stories, you
know.
ALEX.: He sure can. He tells them now.
HOUCHINS: Did he tell you about the bear that hit him?
ALEX.: No, no, he told me about getting into some
rattlesnakes one time coming down off the hill.
HOUCHINS: Did he? They said they had a bear and they
caught him in the trap, you know, and he got up a
little too close, you know, and the bear he swings and knocks
him twenty feet. I bet he can tell you a lot of
stories. He likes to tell stories. I bet he enjoyed it.
ALEX.: Yeah. He was having a bad day when I was
there. He wasn't feeling too bad, too well. H was, it
was, let's see, about a week ago.
HOUCHINS: Uh huh.
ALEX.: It
was a rainy day and it was awful damp and so he wasn't feeling too well.
HOUCHINS: Wasn't feeling too good.
ALEX.: He wasn't feeling too good that day but we
had a nice visit.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, I was up
there about a year ago, I reckon, and talked to him. Yes, Odey's . . . He's
gettin' up there, too, isn't he? Eighty something. I
don't know just what he is . . .
ALEX.: Eighty-nine.
HOUCHINS: Eighty-nine. He's gettin' close after me,
ain't he?
ALEX.: He's almost ninety. That's right. He's
almost . . .
(END OF THIS SIDE OF TAPE)
ALEX.: It saves me an awful lot of writing.
HOUCHINS: Saves you from writing.
ALEX.: I can just turn this over then to the
secretary and then she types up the notes from it, you see.
HOUCHINS: She does?
ALEX.: And not only that, but . . .
HOUCHINS: What are you aiming to do, take the history
of this?
ALEX.: Yeah, I'm going to write the business
history.
HOUCHINS: The business history.
ALEX.: Well, there have been three books written on
the history of
Pocahontas County, but I'm writing on the business history, you see. And I'm concentrating on
the lumber industry from about 19, well, 1880 to 19 and
let's say 35, 40, 50, someplace in there. Yeah. I don't know what
I'll do with it. I've been finding many interesting things, though. I've been over
to talk with Mr. Richardson over in Marlinton.
HOUCHINS: Did you?
ALEX.: Hardware man.
HOUCHINS: Yeah.
ALEX.: Down here and talked with Jim Wilson.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, Jim knows.
ALEX.: Yeah.
We had, we discovered some things over there today that he didn't know about.
HOUCHINS: Yeah, ____. We came here in 1896.
ALEX.: Yeah.
HOUCHINS: I remember when there wasn't but one
building in town when we came here.
ALEX.: Is that right? Which building was that?
HOUCHINS:
West End.
ALEX.: West End.
Well, I guess you remember the bank there then?
HOUCHINS: Yeah, I remember it when they built and
blowed up and everything. Yes, I remember all them
places. Now this book that Mr. Blackhurst wrote, I didn't
write it.
*: What has he written on? I mean, it was concerning
Pocahontas County, I guess.
ALEX.: Oh, what he's, what Mr. Blackhurst has done
is written about five books as you know, and most of them are factual although he makes them appear to be
fiction. And he has a lot of things that you could
pretty well date in there. I've read all of those
books. All of them. And have all of them, as a matter of
fact, ever his
Afterglow, the one his wife put together
after he died, you see. And we have a number of
other books. All of this is preliminary research that
we've done what we call in research a review of the literature about what people have written about before and
then we shift through pieces of things and then inspect
them a little more carefully, but there's no one who's written any business history of this county at all.
HOUCHINS: Now are you going to use people's real
names?
ALEX.: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'll use the
real names. As a matter of fact, this recording that's going on here, unless there's some serious objection
to it, may well be filed in the Marshall University
Library and so that students a hundred years from now will
hear you talking to you today. Let me give you a
little bit of what we got here. Just a moment.