TheBanyanTree: Yearly Celebration of Coal

[Sheri Baity]

Another news story explaining the way it was here in Blossburg, Pennsylvania for many many years.

Long History in King And Queen of Blossburg Coal Festival

By Sheri L. Baity

When the committee picks candidates for the honor of King and Queen of The Blossburg Coal Festival, they like to choose people with coal history in their background. That is just what they have found when it came to this years crowning of Tom & Mertella Smith as king and queen. "We were honored when the telephone call came a couple of weeks ago announcing the decision," Mertella said.

Mertella's parents were the first to be crowned in 1993. Dawned in their royal blue robes and crowns, Mertella tells of her father being 95 and her mother being 91 at their crowning, as she proudly displays a picture of their ceremony. "My Father worked from the time he was 15 to age 65 when he finally retired from the underground mines," Mertella said. Tom explains, "Back when her father worked the mines he only had to walk a short distance from his back door to get to the mine entrance. Where you see towns where the houses were grouped all together, that is where the coal was." It was more or less a convenience for the workers and families of the coal companies.

When an outsider looks at the coal industry, the automatic thought would be a dangerous life. But as Tom quickly pointed out, "There is danger in any job. There is even danger when driving your car." For the Smith's and most of the residents of Morris, that was indeed their way of life. They saw no difference.

"You didn't think of it other than a job. The soft coal mines were different from deep hard coal mines, they were not as dangerous. They went into the ground horizontally. Everybody's parents worked in company mines," Mertella added.

Anne Smith Wagner stated, "When I got up to go to school in the mornings, he was gone by then. When he came home for dinner, he was usually unrecognizable until he brushed the coal dust away from his face. I remember we used to heat the house with coal. 

When asked, "What Mrs. Wagner's thoughts were on the crowning?" She stated, "I think it's great. Who better fitting than them? There is not many left around to be able to talk about it first hand."

Tom started working the mines straight out of his tour of duty in the USMC. He put in about 30-40 years with the coal company as foreman, working at the strippings. Rules, regulations and guidelines were strict. Before the company could even disturb the ground, there was a $3500 dollar bond per acre that they had to put up front. This was a security deposit, so to speak. It was locked up for five years until it was seen that the grasses were growing in the replenished top soil and the trees were taking on healthy life after the mining was completed.

"We worked the veins that were not wide enough to be taken any other way. You needed 3-4 feet of coal and these only measured 12-14 inches deep. So we'd remove the top soil, take the vein of coal, remove another layer of rock and then another layer of coal. Some areas we went as far as 120 feet down. We found some places that had seven layers of coal to be stripped, Tom said.

"We found lots of fossils, one time we came across a petrified snake, fully in tact. I wish I would have kept that. Back then, I just through it aside and continued working," he added.

The Smith's rich history is seen from the moment you enter their driveway. A silver painted drag line bucket is the first piece of equipment to see. Mr. Smith goes on to tell how his back yard used to be the pasture for the mules that were used in the underground mines, before the buckets ran on motors. They have gathered a collection of tiny shoe's out of their yard to validate those facts. Stories have it that once the mules were sent into the mines, they were fed, watered and bedded up until there job was done.

As we moved throughout the house, it was evident, he wasn't about to forget his coal industry history, with his hand-made, wooden miniature coal mining equipment, displayed on shelves in Mertella's barber shop. 



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