Interesting family History email exchange with Dad

Dad sent this on May 31, 2008:

Here's something Betty sent me.  It's my daddy's registration card for WW!.  I'll also forward her email.  Mike, You might want to try and see where Jr. (Wayne's older brother) dug this stuff up.  Maybe you know already.  Love, Dad

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Then I sent this:

That is awesome!! It says "Arnold" worked at Mathieson Alkali Works in Saltville VA. (You guessed it... salt mines) Here is a link to more info about that place... Wow... More than interesting!

 

Google search : Museum of the Appalachias, Company Town for more info. 

 

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Then he sent this:

Thanks Michael.  It almost brought tears to my eyes looking at the location of those salt mines and thinking that my daddy actually worked in them.  I regret not having the sense to question him more on such subjects.  He spoke briefly of his work there, but through a flawed memory I thought he'd said "soda" - in retrospect, he probably said alkali mines. 

 

I do remember him saying that it turned the hair, on head and body orange.  There's a good chance that it was this, not cigarettes that caused his lung cancer.  Can you imagine in the very early nineteen hundreds - people digging salt out of a mountain tunnel...breathing the salt dust all day and having it caked on them from head to toe?  Dagummit...I'm even more proud of what he  accomplishment now than before. 

 

I recall when he completed his work for a high school equivalency diploma (via a correspondence course.   He took his tests through the Meridian school system).  He did that while I was attending Meridian high school.  He held the rank of master sergeant through the last fifteen years of his army career.  That's as high as an enlisted man can go in the army.  In at least two instances he was company first sergeant...which is one probably the very best rank in the army. 

 

Just think, my daddy dropped out of school when he was ten years old to work in the "step mines" (harvesting coal) as a water boy.  Then went on to achieve the highest enlisted man's grade in the army.  A favorite story he'd tell while working as a "water boy," was how the workers would yell for a drink and he'd have to climb up to where they were working...give them the metal dipper and wait while they dipped water from bucket.  Then, he'd hear someone else cry out, "Water boy!"  He would have to determine the location of the person and immediately go to that spot.  I remember asking him how many men were working in the area he had to serve and he said, "Oh, I don't remember exactly, maybe 50 to 75."  He said he'd be so tired when he got off - he could hardly walk. 

 

Mike, just imagine....he would have been the same age of the students you teach in school.  Remember this story the next time you hear a kid complain, "I can't get this computer to work right,"  while sitting in an air conditioned house and not doing a single thing they don't want to. Or even this, "Why can't we get a new car, I'm ashamed of this one."  While they're sitting in a relatively new conveyance. Hell bells, remember kids don't change...parent's do.    

 

Daddy's hard and difficult work history was what probably motivated him to walk outside and tell a friend of mine, Barry Robinson, "Sammy won't be working with you any more," when they came by at six in the morning to pick me up to work. That was one summer when I worked with three other boys picking up and hauling grain and hay from the area farms. I had walked into the kitchen to eat breakfast, that daddy has prepared for me, and he took one look at my face and said, "Boy!  That job is going to make you sick!" 

 

I'll always be disappointed that my mother was proud of the "slave owners" on my maternal grandaddy's side, but hopelessly ashamed of the humble beginnings of her husband's family.  I'm not...

 

I was and still am proud of my daddy, my hero.   Love, daddy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While holding the rank of sergeant, 7th rank, (or Master Sergeant) daddy taught military science (R.O.T.C) at two colleges. Tarleton State College (now, Tarleton State University), in Stephenville, TX. -  and Oklahoma A&M (now OSU, Oklahoma State University), in Stillwater, Ok.     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We visited my daddy one summer while he was stationed at Fort Gordon, near Augusta, GA...at that particular time he was the company first sergeant.  Along with that grade...came a lot of authority and power.  When Billy and myself visited daddy at work...we could just about go or do anything we wanted to.  I recall they'd call him "top!"   Example:  "Good morning "top" you have a couple of fine looking boys there."