We were 'poor,' but I didn't care and still don't

By Dwight Williamson

I can honestly say that I do not desire to change much about any of my childhood, including most of those so-called “bad” things that I may have done while adjusting to my teenage years.

I grew up living in five different coal camp houses, plus three more after I became an adult. I regret nothing about my coal camp life. In fact, I rather cherish it. From the shiny linoleum floors to the doorless bedrooms, it was home.

The one thing that factored into every coal company-built house was the railroad track that cut right through the center of the communities. You simply got used to the sounds of a loaded coal train daily and you learned to adjust to the “what-nots” rattling on the living room shelves each time a train passed by.

With three sisters and three brothers in my life, no matter where my family relocated, life was never boring, to say the least. Even when my family moved to a farm in the middle of nowhere in Meigs County, Ohio, which was before two of my brothers were even born and my sister Margaret, 10 years older than me, my memories of bathing in a washtub, drinking all water from a well, eating my mother’s cooking from a wood-burning cook stove, and utilizing an outside toilet are not etched into my mind as anything having been so bad. Quite the contrary.

You simply do not forget things like when you awaken in the middle of a windy, cold and snowy night muttering the words, “Mommy, I need to pee.” And you sure don’t forget when she hands you a “pop” bottle and directs you to relieve yourself into the Pepsi container, thus avoiding the freezing walk to the toilet.

Once back to my original home of Verdunville in Logan County, after my father was called back to work in the coal mines, it was nice to have bathrooms and even real bathtubs, as well as running water.

That did not mean times were not difficult for my parents, despite my oldest sister having married and remaining in Ohio.

Coal mines did not always work full weeks back then, and too many times miners were striking for one reason or another. Still, the children of Carlos and Ethel Williamson never knew hunger or real hardship. Nearly every kid in the neighborhood was in “the same boat” so to speak and never thought much about a problem that we didn’t even know was a problem.

I do, however, remember once when a man I recognized as Archie Conley knocked on our kitchen door and told my mother that he was there to turn off our water supply because the bill had not been paid.

Archie had worked with my father on a government welfare program during the development of Chief Logan State Park in the 1960s, and I remember the words he said to my mother through the screened door that summer day while my dad was in the hills digging yellowroot.

“Now, Mrs. Williams (Williamson), I’m not going to turn it all the way off. I’m going to leave it running just enough for you to have water for them youngins.” Such was life sometimes in a coal camp.

Growing up among smoldering slate dumps and barefoot kids in coal camp alleys, I decided in elementary school that I never wanted to be a lawyer.

It was in Mrs. Marjorie Manley’s fifth grade class at Verdunville that during recess one school day an altercation occurred between a boy and a girl in which the girl claimed the male student had somehow got a ring from her finger and lost it. The boy denied getting the ring or losing it.

Mrs. Manley decided that she would give us a lesson in civics, I suppose, and assigned me to represent the accused, Gary Moore, while Ron Thompson was selected to be young Virginia Davis’s attorney. The rest of the class was to be the jury.

Having been a Perry Mason television fan, I somewhat relished the role of defense attorney and presented a rigorous defense. There were no witnesses or real proof to the matter, but even I felt deep down that Virginia had at least lost the ring she said belonged to her mother.

Ron, who many years later would become president, or administrator, I believe, of Southern West Virginia Community College, was a low-key person, while I aggressively defended my “client” and in my closing argument told the jury that if Virginia even had a ring it likely came from a box of crackerjacks.

For whatever reason, the student jury found Gary Moore innocent. And Virginia Davis cried, and cried, and cried.

It was that day I discovered I never would seek law school. Representing a client in a legal matter requires professionalism, regardless of personal opinions about the client’s guilt or innocence, whether the case is civil or criminal. Lawyers are obligated to perform their duties impartially.

Virginia Davis eventually moved away from Verdunville, and Ron and Gary have since both passed on, always remaining my friends. Understandably, Virginia became an ex-fifth grade girlfriend.

I wound up a long courthouse career in a real courtroom — just not as an attorney.

Dwight Williamson is a former writer for the Logan Banner and a retired magistrate for Logan County.

*Published with the author’s permission.

We were ‘poor,’ but I didn’t care and still don’t

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