Grieving and trying to move on

 A couple of years passed, work at the coal mine grew steadier now and a move was under way to form a union for the workers. Mom and Daddy continued to work hard to provide for their family, but they also enjoyed small pleasures, such as listening to the radio on Saturday nights. Daddy’s favorite was the Saturday night boxing matches. As he sat near the radio, listening through the static, the four kids crawled onto his lap to listen with him. Sunday nights they would pop corn on the wood stove, each took a turn shaking the corn popper. On rare occasions Mom would make divinity or fudge so everyone could have a treat.

 

On March 3, 1938, Daddy fell while riding coal down the chute in the coal mine and suffered broken vertebrae in his back. A full body cast kept him immobile for three months and when the doctor removed it, Daddy tried to stand but fell to the floor. The bones set improperly, had not healed. Arrangements were made for him to take the train back to the Mayo Brothers Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Daddy underwent another surgery while there, but was still in great pain when the hospital released him to return home. He started seeing Doctor Heather in Salt Lake City. Dr. Heather preformed another surgery; he removed a four-inch piece of bone from Daddy’s shin and fused it into his back to repair the broken vertebrae. The back injury caused him pain and suffering the rest of his life. But at least he could walk. Over a span of three years from the time of Daddy’s accident, he spent ninety-six days in hospitals underwent three operations and remained unable to work. All this time negotiations continued with the mine company for a settlement. The company said he was “just lazy”.  While Daddy was “laid up” with his back, Mom raised and sold fryers (frying chickens) to the local grocery store, with the help of her children. She also sold eggs and butter, to supplement the meager disability stipend they received. Three years passed before Daddy returned to full time work. 

Mom related the following story to me in 1992.  She and I sitting in the living room of her modest home in Elgin, Oregon, the smell of dinner cooking in the oven. I was fifty years old.  “Della. have I ever told you about the time Billy Ball came to our house in the middle of the night in Diamondville, Wyoming?” “No Mom, I’ve never heard the story. I know you’ve talked about him and know that you and Daddy both had a great deal of respect for him. But why would he come in the middle of the night?” 

 She began talking about her and Daddy’s early life, how he had been injured in the coal mine and how the company “dragged its feet” giving him a settlement. Her voice sounded far away and I sensed that she was back in a time, long before I was born.  “In the middle of the night before your dad was to have a meeting with company officials, we heard someone knocking on our bedroom window” she told me. “Daddy got up and saw Billy Ball, a company official motioning to let him in. Daddy quickly went to unlock the back door and asked him to come inside. We sat, in our nightclothes in the living room, with only a dim light, and listened to Billy.” 

She paused for a moment, remembering. “Billy talked in a hushed voice,” Mom told me. “He looked at your father and said, ‘Joe, you must tell no one about my being here tonight or neither of us will have a job. Tomorrow at the meeting, the company officials will ask you to sign papers so they can proceed with your claim, but if you sign you will get nothing from the company. The papers are worded in such a way that you will sign away all rights to a settlement. Also’ he continued, ‘they will try to get you to take a job, raking and picking up around the mine and they will insist that you start now, giving you a rake and watching what you can do. Do not touch the rake, simply refuse to do any of the things they ask.’  Then Billy looked at both your Dad and I and said,  ‘Do you understand?’” 

“So what did you and Daddy do?”  I asked. “Your Dad wasn’t sure at first. He looked at Billy. ‘Yes, I hear you,’ he told him. ‘But how do I know that you are telling me the truth?  Why would the company try to cheat me out of a settlement that I have every right too?  I can’t work, we will be out on the street and my family will starve.’  Billy shifted in his seat and tried to persuade your father. ‘Joe, you must believe me,’ he said. ‘I have risked my own job by coming here tonight. Why do you think I came here under the cover of darkness?  Please believe what I am telling you or you will have nothing.’

“Then your Dad looked right at me and said, ‘Blanche, what do you think?”’ I sat forward, now on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear what my mother did. “I took a deep breath and said,  ‘Joe, I think we have to do what Billy says. The company has been stringing you along for many months now and I think Billy is telling us the truth.’  Billy breathed a sigh of relief and thanked me. Then he looked at Daddy and said, please listen to your wife. Don’t you see?  I had to come here tonight, because you are a good man and a hard worker and I can’t let the company do this to you and your family.’”  

 “Your Dad looked at me and then at Billy, and then said. ‘You must be telling me the truth to risk your own job. Okay I will do as you say, when I meet with the company officials tomorrow.’”  Mom exhaled a long breath. I wondered how long it had been since she’d told that story.

“What happened next?” I asked.

“Billy stood, shook hands with both of us, and left by the back door. Your dad and I watched from the window and he was quickly swallowed up in the darkness.”