Tag: Kibler Elementary

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The Man Who Built a Mountain

Frank Manowski operates the hoisting drum that pulled coal cars up the slag pile, January 1973.
Frank Manowski and the Slag Pile in Black Diamond

The year was 1960. A small boy was in first grade at Kibler Elementary.  His teacher, Mrs. Lewis, distributed 12-by-18-inch sheets of light brown construction paper to her 35 students. She instructed them to draw a crayon picture of something they liked. Billy sketched a coal car climbing a steep incline, his dad, Jack Kombol operating a track loader, while a dump truck loaded with coal passed by. Little did that small boy know he would one day labor at that wash plant, working side by side with the man who built that mountain.

Billy Kombol’s first-grade drawing of the Mine 11 slag pile in Black Diamond, 1960.

Numerous old coal slag piles sit in and around Black Diamond, Ravensdale, and Franklin. Most are small, now swallowed by trees and wild blackberries. To many, they look like just another natural hill. The largest, however, contains over a million cubic yards of refuse and rises 140 feet above the surrounding landscape. It sits west of State Route 169, just behind Palmer Coking Coal’s mine office. This is the story of that mountain and the man most instrumental in building it—Frank Manowski.

Frank Manowski at Mine # 11 wash plant, January 1973.

During the era of underground mining, impurities such as shale, rock, and slack were inevitably hauled to the surface. Back then, old men and young boys toiled at picking tables, separating waste from clean coal by hand. Later, mechanical wash plants took over, cleaning the coal through a specific-gravity process using large tanks of pulsating water.

In both cases, the resulting refuse, called slag, had to go somewhere. Dumping the material downhill into a gully or low spot was always the first option, but even that method eventually required rail tracks once the ravines filled up. A mine located on flat ground needed a different solution for its waste dilemma. The most straightforward method was to build a stockpile utilizing the very same equipment found underground—coal cars on rail tracks.

A 1971 view of the slag pile looking west by McDonald & Lenggenhager from “The Look of Old Time Washington.”
Morgan Slope / Mine 11 – America’s deepest underground coal mine

In 1896, a new mine opened in Black Diamond. Named Morgan Slope in honor of the Black Diamond Coal Mining Company’s superintendent, Morgan Morgans, it was destined to become the largest and most successful operation in western Washington.

The Pacific Coast Coal Company purchased the mine and its accompanying company town in 1904. After 1913, Morgan Slope was renamed Mine 11, tracking the section of land where it sat. It eventually earned fame as the deepest underground coal mine in the United States. Before closing in 1927, Morgan Slope / Mine 11 produced nearly 7 million tons of coal over 31 years of operation, averaging an impressive 225,000 tons per year.

One of the most famous photos of Mine 11, July 15, 1917.

Morgan Slope tapped into the McKay seam, one of the state’s finest coal grades. This same rich vein was extracted in Ravensdale, Lawson, and Franklin. Geologists described the McKay coal as “pitch black with a vitreous luster, which compared very favorably with the better grades of bituminous coal obtained in the Eastern States.” Yet, like every coal seam, the McKay was laced with inferior coal plus bone mixed with clays and shale, particularly within the stubborn layer known as parting rock.

Workers separated mine-run coal into market-bound product, while the combined waste of coal, clays, and shale were destined for slag piles. Ignited by spontaneous combustion from the McKay seam’s high BTU content, the Morgan Slope slag pile smoldered for decades at temperatures approaching 2,000°F. The intense heat from burning heap fused the shale, sandstone, clay, and silt together, while iron pyrites turned the burned slag to shades of red.  The pile functioned like a giant kiln, which some likened it to ‘nature’s brick.

The October 11, 1923, issue of the Pacific Coast Coal Co. Bulletin described the Mine 11 rock dump at Black Diamond as a growing mountain whose constant nocturnal fires resembled a “biblical Pillar of Fire”

“Thirteen years ago the present rock dump of Mine 11, at Black Diamond, was begun. Though the mine had been in operation for many years prior to 1910, it was then that the present dump was started when the old dump caught fire. This dump is today an imposing pile of rock and waste material brought out of the mine, and it is constantly growing.

Like a small mountain, it rises out of the wide expanse of the valley and is visible for a considerable distance. At night, the numerous fires which blaze constantly from its base to its summit makes it loom up much after the manner of the biblical Pillar of Fire.”

The future red cinder slag pile from the Pacific Coast Bulletin, October 11, 1923.

After the available fuel within the stockpile was spent, the towering heap of rocky material cooled, leaving behind a colored rock that locals naturally called “red cinders.” What was once discarded as useless waste found an unexpected second life as a surfacing material. The original Black Diamond–Ravensdale Road was paved with this very material, affectionately dubbed the “Red Top” road.

Finely crushed cinder was also laid down for high school running tracks; it proved to be an ideal surface, though generations of athletes remembered how a sudden spill left knees and elbows raw and bloodied. This striking red rock also found its way into countless Pacific Northwest landscape designs. To this very day, cinders from that historic stockpile are still being sold. Judging by sales figures spanning the past 70 years, the imposing landmark described in the 1923 Bulletin likely contained well over one million cubic yards of material.

The McNally-Norton Wash Plant

Though Mine 11 closed in 1927, the surrounding rail yard and preparation plant survived to support a new era of coal processing. In the following years, raw coal from nearby mines was brought to the Black Diamond facility, washed of impurities, and shipped to market. In 1945, Pacific Coast Coal Company modernized operations by installing a McNally-Norton jig-style wash plant, and a new mountain of waste rock began to grow.

However, because this new wash plant cleaned coal with more efficiency—and because quality standards had relaxed over time—less valuable material ended up as slag. By maximizing coal recovery, the McNally-Norton plant left less easily combustible fuel in the new dump. As a result, the current slag heap never ignited like its predecessor; instead, it smoldered quietly through slow oxidation.

The slag pile grew upward using the coal mining industry’s time-tested method. Dozens of times each day, a steel cable pulled a loaded slag car up a steep grade to the apex of the hill, where waste material was discharged from side-dump doors. Over the decades, this relentless cycle expanded the slag pile to an estimated 1.2 million cubic yards.

View of a coal car climbing the slag pile, January 1973.

Throughout its growth, one man shaped this manufactured mountain than any other: Frank Manowski. He was closely tied to the coal-washing operations at the Mine 11 plant, becoming an almost permanent fixture of the facility. As underground coal mining entered its twilight years in the early 1970s, Frank’s rugged, weathered presence made him a favorite subject for newspaper photographers, eager to capture underground coal mining’s final chapter in the Pacific Northwest.

During repairs to the wash plant, this article’s author was pictured with two cousins. L-R: Tim Morris, Bob Morris, and Bill Kombol, then an unskilled laborer, January 1976.
Frank Manowski

Frank Manowski was born on March 18, 1913, to Cornell and Anna Manowski, Polish immigrants who emigrated to Black Diamond in 1900. Frank was the youngest of 11 children, five daughters and six sons. Demonstrating how deeply coal ran in the family, four Manowski boys, Max, Les, George, and Frank, followed their father’s footsteps into coal mining, and two sisters married coal miners. Frank grew up in Black Diamond, graduating from high school in 1932, then earned an athletic scholarship to play baseball at St. Martin’s College.

Black Diamond Baseball 1931 – That’s Frank Manowski standing on left.        Lying in front: Louie Zumek, catcher. Seated from L-R: John “Cut” Kravagna – catcher; Geno Paolucci – right field; Jack Mills – 2nd base; Steve Vernarelli – 1st base; Walt Sigmund – shortstop; Phil Sternig – 1st base; Frank Brennan – left field. Standing: Frank Manowski – pitcher and center field; Ed Winbeckler – pitcher and center field; Emilio “Meg” Pierotti – 3rd base; John Walsh – substitute; Tullio Fontana – substitute; J.K. Edson – coach

When his college days drew to an early close, Frank took his first job at a local sawmill. From 1934 to 1936, he toiled underground alongside his father for the West Coast Fuel Company at their Cedar Mountain coal mine. Frank soon gravitated towards surface work in preparation plants, first with Pacific Coast Coal, then Strain Coal Company, and finally Palmer Coking Coal Company. Over the next 42 years, Manowski labored tirelessly at preparation plants, spending the vast majority of his historic career at the Mine 11 yard in Black Diamond.

Yet Frank never lost his passion for sports. He continued playing baseball for 22 years, well into adulthood, and played 11 seasons as a soccer player. He mostly suited up for Black Diamond’s company-sponsored teams. In mining communities such as Ravensdale, Carbonado, Wilkeson, and Black Diamond, baseball was a large part of local entertainment. Weekends were made for sports, and baseball was the biggest draw.

At the old Black Diamond grandstands, near the present-day school field on Highway 169, Frank’s mother, Anna, held court in a special seat where unsuspecting fans were warned against sitting. After the final out, both teams, along with umpires and friends, routinely descended upon the Manowski home for an evening of shared food, camaraderie, and merriment.

In 1939, Frank married Helen Strom of Enumclaw. Two years later, they welcomed a son whom they named Frank. Though he shared his father’s name, young Frank was technically not a junior. In Black Diamond, the family lived on Lawson Street next to the Presbyterian Church. They relocated to Enumclaw in 1959 to a home on Wells Street, near the hospital. For 23 years, Helen worked as a claims secretary for the Mutual of Enumclaw.

The younger Frank Manowski carved his own lasting legacy in Enumclaw as the long-serving recreational coordinator for King County Parks. Based out of the historic Fieldhouse adjacent to Pete’s Pool, Frank championed youth sports for 33 years, from 1965 to 1997.

How a Wash Plant Works

At the Mine 11 preparation plant, the older Frank toiled day in and day out. Each day, dump trucks delivered raw coal to the plant for processing. Coal was first dumped in a hopper, where it passed over a vibrating screen. Material less than four inches fell through onto a conveyor belt. Larger chunks landed on the picking table. There, a laborer separated the large pieces of coal, which were sent to a crusher and joined the screened coal heading to the wash plant.

Jigging is an ancient mineral-processing method that uses specific gravity and water as a medium to separate materials by weight. The McNally-Norton washer was a Baum-style jig process in which pistons powered by compressed air produced the necessary pulsating motion. As the raw coal moved through the washer tub, air-driven pistons pushed plates up and down and agitated the mix of coal, slag, and water. Coal, being lighter than rock or shale, rose in the turbid river of water and was carried through a chute for further sorting.

Cut-away diagram of the McNally-Norton wash plant’s inner workings.

A bucket conveyor lifted the clean coal to the top of the bunkers where it was screened into separate bins of stoker, egg nut, and lump coal. The bins held hundreds of tons of coal ready for shipment by truck or train. Stoker coal made up the largest percentage of production and was used in large quantities by Washington state institutions such as schools and prisons. Homeowners typically used the slightly larger egg nut coal and lump coal for home heating.

Inside the McNally-Norton washer box, heavier impurities such as rock, sandstone, shale, and bony coal, collectively called slag, fell to the bottom, where a bucket conveyor carried them out of the wash box and into a hopper. Periodically, Manowski walked behind the plant and lifted a chute door, loading the waste slag into a 5-ton coal car. He then activated a hoist drum, which pulled a thick steel cable threaded through a bull wheel at the top of the pile, towing the coal car up the hill to its peak. There, two steel rails tripped the side doors, causing the slag to fall away.

The view from behind – Frank Manowski, to the right, as the coal car is pulled up the slag pile, January 1973.

A water pipeline parallel to the rail track hydraulically flushed the slag downhill. Introducing water also inhibited combustion of any carbon-rich material. After one section of the growing hill became too clogged with waste material, miners laid new ties and rails, extending the stockpile even higher. That’s how the stockpile eventually grew to a mammoth 1.2 million cubic yards. A nearby photo shows Archie Eltz, Charlie Falk, and Frank Merritt atop the waste dump working on the water pipeline that helped sluice waste down the stockpile.

Archie Eltz, Charlie Falk, and Frank Merritt atop the rock dump working on a water pipeline, August 1949.

Every mechanical plant is subject to breakdown, especially a processing mill that sorts coal from rock. Frank Manowski was practical and handy. He knew every belt and bolt in the plant, and had likely replaced every piece during his 33 years, coddling the machinery along. More than once, Frank noted that he’d repaired and reconfigured the wash plant more times than he cared to remember.

Frank Manowski can be seen in the upper center of the photo, climbing stairs to the top of the bunkers. The bucket conveyor to his right, carried the cleaned washed coal to the to storage bins above, January 1973.
The End of an Era

When Manowski turned 65 in 1978, it was his turn to retire. Bill McLoughry, another lifelong Black Diamond coal miner, stepped into the operator’s position until handing off the reins in 1981. Chris Kroha of Lake 12 next filled the vacancy, running the plant until the John Henry surface coal mine launched operations in 1986.  At that point, Black Diamond local Doug Sikes took control. Doug earned his place in local history as the facility’s very last operator, keeping the historic gears turning until the washing plant finally fell silent in November 1990.

That year the McNally-Norton wash plant was decommissioned after 45 years of continuous operation. Once the surrounding bunkers, bins, corrugated sheet metal, and conveying equipment were dismantled and hauled away, only the large iron hull of the old wash tub remained.

In April 1991, five months after the Mine 11 wash plant fell silent, Frank Manowski passed away at the age of 78.  His life neatly mirrored the machinery he so faithfully maintained. His wife, Helen, survived him by 22 years, passing away in Enumclaw in November 2013 at the age of 94. Their son, Frank, carries on the family name at his home in Bonney Lake.

Larry Abele captured many of the striking historic photos that accompany this essay in January 1973. Several of his images appeared in a feature story about coal mining in the Sunday, January 14, 1973, supplement, “Now,” distributed by the Renton Record-Chronicle, Kent News-Journal, and Auburn Globe newspapers.

By Bill Kombol

Bill Kombol standing at all that remains of Mine 11 wash plant, the McNally-Norton wash tub. April 2021 – photo by Bob Dobson.

 

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Come Saturday Morning

The 8,000-sf home built by Axel Hanson in 1922 was owned by the Coppin family for many years and stands at 1610 Griffin Ave. in Enumclaw.

One’s 15th year of life is particularly fraught with change.  Childhood dreams give way to adult realities.  Adolescent collections such as baseball cards, coins, and comics sadly fall out of style – better left to tweens and those still trapped by out-of-fashion obsessions.  Jobs and college take center stage.  College prep means growing loads of homework and a heightened seriousness about school.  Grades play a more prominent, but still minor role in high school hierarchies.

If you’re of average athletic ability, competitive sports are increasingly past tense.  Pickup games with friends are fading options as those holding driver’s licenses abandon the glory of sporting fields for cruising in cars.  In Enumclaw, they called it posing – driving up and down Griffin Ave, from east to west and back again waiting for something to happen.  That September, we were sophomores all without driver’s licenses.  Without a license or car, we principally relied on parents, friends, or sometimes a special older sibling.

Girls grew progressively more attractive, though self-doubts played havoc with one’s desirability.  Acne pops up at all the wrong times and in all the wrong places. Growth spurts (or lack thereof) pit short boys against tall men, who share the same birth year.  Somerset Maugham didn’t miss the mark by much when noting the world is an entirely different place for a man of 5’7” to one of 6’2”.

In 1968, Chris Coppin had just moved back to Enumclaw following a five-year absence.  I’d first met Chris eight years earlier at Kibler Elementary.  There we’d shared a second-grade teacher, Mrs. Stobbs. But an earlier introduction came through his younger brother, Ed whose pet turtles inhabited a two-gallon glass jar with rocks, and a skiff of water.  I made repeated turtle visits to the Coppin home.  Chris and I were friends until 4th grade when their family moved to the Bay Area, where Mr. Coppin, a flight engineer for Pan Am was transferred.

Chris Coppin, left and Bill Kombol, right from our 2nd grade class photo. This collage is an optical illusion as Chris was (and still is) a half a foot taller than me.

At that young age, it isn’t long before friendships are forgotten.  In junior high, out of sight means out of mind.  In short order, Chris was a faded memory.  But like so many mysteries of youth, the Coppins moved back and Chris resurfaced.  We were soon again fast friends, meeting at their stately white house at Griffin and Franklin, built in 1922 by a local timber baron, Axel Hanson of the White River Lumber Company.  It was the biggest home in Enumclaw and had a front parlor, fashioned as a billiards room where we played pool after school.  The Coppin digs were ground zero during our high years.

With twelve kids, their household was a beehive of activity.  Mrs. Coppin was unflappable, often in the kitchen but always ready for a short chat that included a kind word and light-hearted banter.  When home, Mr. Coppin was typically puttering away with something.  His was of a quieter manner, still willing to engage in probing conversation, the better to pry us from our shells.  As for the cluster of Chris’ younger siblings, mostly girls, it was a constant case of asking, “Which one is that?”

The Coppin family in their stately home at 1610 Griffin Ave., circa 1968.  Chris is lower right.  Dan is the top row, right holding his sister, Alice.

His four older brothers were different, distinctive, and spirited.  Dan was the most inviting.  He was four or five years older than us.  And during that magical year, Dan was our ticket to ride to the movies.  I’m not talking about the Enumclaw Roxy, and later the Chalet.  Dan packed us in his car and off we’d drive to Seattle, destined most often for the UA-70 and UA-150 theaters at 6th and Lenora.

In 1969, they were brand new, state-of-the-art movie houses for the masses – their massive screens nearly outdone by amazing sound systems.  The Cinema 70 screen was equipped for 70mm films and UA-150 once showcased “Star Wars” for an entire year.  On occasion, we’d go to the Cinerama, another theater capable of projecting 70-millimeter films on its huge curved screen.

The UA-70 and UA-150 were located at 6th & Lenora in the Denny Regrade area of downtown Seattle.

Each was magnificent.  And for a bunch of teenagers from Enumclaw, they were a taste of sophistication – plus exposure us to films that wouldn’t play back home for another six months, if ever.

The outings were usually spontaneous.  We’d be hanging around the pool table Saturday afternoon listening to records, when Dan wandered in asking, “You guys want to see a movie?”  He normally had one in mind.  Phone calls were made and a couple of hours later we piled into Dan’s car for the trip to Seattle.

How I wish our conversations had been recorded – the shouts, giggles, chitchat, and nonsense.  We purchased our $1.50 tickets, double the price at the Roxy.  Someone bought popcorn.  I have no idea how many times Dan took us, but these movies jump to mind: “2001, A Space Odyssey,” “True Grit,” “Midnight Cowboy,” “The Sterile Cukoo,” and “If.”

Some of the movies Dan took us to, as best we can remember. “If” was a personal favorite (collage by Oliver Kombol).

It was truly a golden age, not just for movies but being alive to changes experienced during a time when fashion and culture were turned upside down.  Most discrete memories of the specific movie outings are gone, and only formless feelings remain.  But what I remember well were the books we read and movies we saw those years.

There . . . caught in the rye of Holden Caulfield’s world of phonies, with a growing awareness that we were living under the suspicious eye of George Orwell’s Big Brother.  All the while, transfixed within gorgeous romances like Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” seen weeks after reading the play in Mrs. Galvin and Ms. Thompson’s joint English class.

And equally enthralled by all-night showings at the just-opened, Big E drive-in of Sergio Leone’s trilogy of Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns: “Fistful of Dollars,” “For a Few Dollars More,” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.”  Or sometimes down to Auburn for the Valley 6 Drive-in.

The novel, “Wuthering Heights” was difficult to absorb.  Perhaps just as well, for it was the ‘best of times and the worst of times,’ the opening line we memorized from Dicken’s “Tale of Two Cities.” Our senior year with Mr. Bill Hawk (who every girl loved and every boy envied) was pure joy as he read out loud to us the entirety of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and “Macbeth.”

Mr. Hawk, left, in Senior English lit before a class of admiring students gathered around his desks as he smiles approvingly.

And what to make of the curious worlds described in “A Separate Peace” and “Lord of the Flies,” for there was something in that youth-filled air.  Change was everywhere, within us and without us.  One summer night Dad and I walked to see, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”  It was one of the few times I remember going to the movies with Dad.

“The Sterile Cukoo” starred Liza Minnelli and featured the song, “Come Saturday Morning” in a 1969 tale of love between college freshmen.

To this day, I remain ever thankful to Dan Coppin, Chris’ older brother who asked us if we wanted to see a movie.  For, he was our chauffeur through a tiny part of those precious high school years.  And more than 50 years later, the lyrics from one of the movie songs still play in my head:

“Come Saturday morning, just I and my friends,
We’ll travel for miles in our Saturday smiles,
And then we’ll move on.
But we will remember, long after Saturday’s gone.”

 “Come Saturday Morning” was the soundtrack theme song from “The Sterile Cukoo” and a minor hit single for the Sandpipers.

 

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Epistle for Mr. McGreen

Wallace McGreen signs his picture in my 1967 Ka-Te-Kan yearbook.

Have you ever wished you’d said “thank you” but never did?  For me, it wasn’t too late.  This essay was adapted from a letter* sent to my favorite teacher.  I just learned Mr. Wally McGreen passed away on March 19, 2022 at age 83, so share this essay as my parting tribute. 

Dear Mr. McGreen:  It’s a funny thing about life.  It takes time to realize how thankful one should be.  And so it is with me, as this letter is long overdue.  I’ve thought about writing it over the years, but always found more pressing needs to consume the moment.  Today seemed perfect: St. Patrick’s Day, snowing, my children off to events, with an unengaged afternoon.

It was a very long time ago, September 1962.  I left the K–3 world of Byron Kibler elementary and began a fresh journey at a new destination, J.J. Smith.  I was one of the fortunate 4th graders to experience our first male teacher, a young man fresh out of college named Mr. McGreen. The other five classes were taught by women, as had been every teacher at Kibler.  Plus, my new best friend, Jeff Eldridge, was by my side.  Surprisingly, this new teacher lived on my street in a boarding house of sorts, just a stone’s throw from our home.

Fresh out of college and a newly minted elementary teacher, Mr. McGreen, made a mark on our 4th Grade class at J.J. Smith, Spring 1963.

That fall, Mr. McGreen organized the boys of our class into a football team.  Sorry girls, you were stuck playing four-square or jumping rope.  He drilled us daily through simple plays at recess.  Over and over we practiced those few calls.  Mr. McGreen entrusted me with the role of quarterback and Tim Thomasson as halfback.  Most plays were similar––I took the snap and handed the ball to Tim while linemen pulled left or right.  Mr. McGreen then scheduled a series of football games between ours and the other 4th-grade classes. Though we lacked the pure talent of other teams, our tightly choreographed snaps and daily drilling resulted in clockwork plays. We crushed every opponent in that ad hoc 4th-grade league.

One day, Mr. McGreen invited me to stay after school.  He pulled out a deck of cards and taught me to play cribbage.  It was a great game for improving arithmetic skills and understanding odds.  For weeks, we’d play most days after school.  Soon, I was good enough to play with my grandpa, who also loved the game.  Decades later, I taught my own children just as he’d taught me.

The annual 4th-grade field trip in spring took us to the Museum of History & Industry, Ballard locks, and Ye Olde Curiosity Shop. What a delight to see a real hydroplane up close and personal.  Or seeing huge gates open and close, watching boats magically rise and fall.  Mr. McGreen was our guide.  While eating sack lunches, he sat next to me.  Our last stop was the waterfront, where we examined curios in a store with a real mummy of a Wild West origin.  What a thrill for a young boy from Enumclaw, but more important was the affection I felt from my teacher.

Near the last days of school, Mr. McGreen announced a class auction with currency from credits students had earned. We each brought in our trinkets and collectibles for all to admire until the big day, when we bid in a real auction for the items we’d lately grown to cherish.  The excitement and anticipation were no doubt better than the real thing.  I don’t recall what I bought, but my best friend Jeff purchased comic books based on classic tales like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  They seemed so sophisticated compared to the Archie and Superboy comics I read.

4th Grade, J.J. Smith (1962-63) – Mr. McGreen’s Class.                                             Row 1 (L-R): Mark Myers, Joe Sharp, Billy Kombol, Tom R., Curtis Barber.
Row 2 (L-R): JoAnne Barret, Denise Alcorn, Gail Gardner, Loralyn Walden, Linda Ralston, Naomi Langsea, Sharlene Johnson. Row 3 (L-R): Danny Stanford, ??, Jack Person, Steve Rex, Sharon Peterson, Laurie Mitchell, Don Krueger, Ken Kurfurst, Karl Uhde. Row 4 (L-R): Cindy Nordyke, Tim Thomasson, Marsha Millarich, Pam Ziltner, Janie Whitbeck, unknown, Diane Jones, Tom DeBolt.

The 9th year of my life was not without its challenges.  On more than one occasion, I disrupted class and was banished to the hall for Mr. McGreen’s classic discipline, a primitive form of yoga––sitting with your back against the wall in the shape of a chair, but without one.  This was punishment with a purpose: to improve one’s posture, develop muscle strength, and test your ability to sit uncomfortably for long periods, all the time remembering what had brought you there. My behavior improved decidedly after a few trips to the hall.

I did well in most subjects, earning A’s in social studies, spelling, and arithmetic; B’s in most others, and a C in reading.  But Mr. McGreen delivered the only ‘D’ of my school career––in penmanship!  Still, he cared.  Mr. McGreen sent home writing lessons administered by Mom, where I spent hour after boring hour practicing better handwriting.  The exercise books contained pages of blank lines to be filled by copying and recopying illustrated samples.  I carefully inscribed print and cursive characters within tight parallel lines over and over––diligently trying to make my penmanship legible, or at least less awful.  Their dedication toward my self-improvement paid dividends a decade later during college finals when scripting readable answers in blue books.

The dreaded D in writing (penmanship), the only one I received during my school career.

That school year ended, and another began.  Again, I was blessed with the only male teacher, Mr. Noel Thornburg, in 5th grade.  He too, was fresh from college and lived a few blocks away in a garage apartment. It was another wonder-filled year, pierced by tragedy that November.  The assassination news came over the intercom that Friday morning, with students immediately sent home.

During the 1960 election, Mom supported Nixon while Dad voted for Kennedy.  Thinking the thoughts of a 10-year-old, I asked her, “Are you glad Kennedy was shot?”  She sat me down and gently explained, “Of course not.  Kennedy is our president, and after the election, he became my president too.”  I still had a lot to learn.  A few months later, the Beatles hit America.  I had a crush on a girl who showed me her Beatles cards and told me everything about four guys from Liverpool.  My affection for that beautiful girl never blossomed, yet never faded.

She had dozens of Beatles cards, which were almost as fun to admire as her.

A year and a half later, I entered 7th grade at an imposing, three-story brick building on Porter Street.  The first day brought good news: Mr. McGreen now taught junior high and would be my homeroom and social studies teacher.  Life with Mr. McGreen in junior high was a transforming experience.  He entertained us with stories of growing up in West Seattle, his college years, sorority panty raids––all of it filling me with dreams of one day attending college.  Each Saint Patrick’s Day, the very Irish Mr. McGreen came to school decked out in a bright green suit.  In my 7th-grade yearbook, he affectionately wrote, “To the little general – from Mr. Wallace McGreen.”  The next year, he scrawled, “To little Billy Kombol.”

Mr. McGreen signed my 1967 Ka-Te-Kan yearbook in Junior High.

In 7th grade, Coach McGreen guided us through flag football.  It was the last year many of us turned out for that fall sport.  It was also when I first realized my youthful sports prowess would soon be eclipsed by small size.  As I look back at the photo, all my friends were there, in one place. That winter, he coached our 7th-grade basketball team through drills and inter-squad games played in the girls’ gym. After practice, we took long showers under hot water that lasted forever, then walked home in winter air as steam rose from our still-damp hair.  Could life get any better than this?

7th Grade Football Enumclaw Junior High (Fall 1965) – Mr. McGreen, coach.
Front Row (L-R): unknown, Dale Troy, Gary Varney, Jeff Krull, Kevin Shannon, Billy Kombol, Bill Waldock, Kris Galvin, Bill Fawcett, Tryge Pohlman.
Inset: Lester Hall. Back Row (L-R) Scott Davies, Richard Babic, Rick Barry, Jim Partin, Tim Thomasson, Jim Ewalt, Jim Clem – Captain; Wayne Podolak, Del Sonneson, Jeff Eldridge, Steve McCarty.

The cleverest assignments he ever gave, but only to select students, were to create countries of our own imaginations, complete with maps, history, and customs.  No extra credit was given.  We worked on our projects for weeks. I regularly compared notes with Les Hall and Wayne Podolak, who were also in on the game.  What a brilliant and inspiring activity for cultivating fantasies.  It was a remarkable way for a teacher to challenge pet pupils.

One of our biggest thrills was the State “A” Basketball Tournaments.  Mr. McGreen invited a few of us (Jim Clem, Gary Varney, Les, and Wayne) to pack into his fastback Mustang, pure status for 12-year-old boys in Enumclaw.  After driving us to the UPS Field House, we experienced a menagerie of teams and colors competing for the state title.  Later, we stopped at Cubby’s on Auburn Way South for burgers and fries.  Back home, I swam in the glory of the evening just spent.  You can’t make this stuff up––an engaged and enthusiastic school teacher expanding his students’ horizons by offering new experiences.  It was an amazing way to grow up!

Mr. McGreen from my 1966 Ka-Te-Kan yearbook.

Time marched on.  I said goodbye to junior high and left Mr. McGreen behind.  New teachers, coaches, friends, and interests arose. High school beckoned and so did a driver’s license, after-game dances, chess team, Boys’ State, Hornet newspaper, Courier-Herald sports writer, summers selling popsicles, Saturdays working at the mine office, water skiing, movies, malls, graduation, then off to college.  Upon graduating in 1975, I received an unexpected congratulatory card from my 4th and 7th-grade mentor.  Mr. McGreen remembered me after all those years.  Being a foolish young man of long hair and little regard, I hadn’t the presence of mind to write a proper thank-you note.  Decades passed, and still, I hadn’t.

Many years later, I attended his retirement party where we exchanged pleasantries.  The next time I saw him was at my Mother’s funeral.  His kindly face had aged, but it touched me all the same.  I began to consider that I was but one of thousands of students he taught.  Yet he made me feel so important.  Did he know how profoundly he’d impacted my life?  A thank-you message was long overdue.  A year later, I sat down and finally wrote my rambling letter, much of which is replicated here.

Mr. McGreen was one of the best people in my life.  The seeds he sowed took root, and my life became richer for it.  Though eons ago, his mentorship was one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever received.  

So I’ll end where I began.  Perhaps there’s a Mr. McGreen in your life who never knew the extent of your gratitude.  Maybe this could be the day your letter is written and that gratefulness acknowledged.

* Adapted from a letter written to Mr. McGreen on Saint Patrick’s Day, 2012, from his former student, Bill Kombol.

 

 

Categories
Musings

Abraham, Martin and PCC

In the fall of 1968, Dion released a song that touched my soul.  About the same time, I started working Saturdays at a job that defined my life.  I still work there until March 2022.  This is the story of the song, that job, and a 15-year-old boy.

The Beatles’ single “Hey Jude” backed by “Revolution” dominated the airwaves. The Detroit Tigers, my favorite baseball team would soon play in the World Series. A presidential election heated up following a deadly political year culminating in riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

Kris Galvin and I were freshly minted sophomores. Each day after school we played a board game called Mr. President. Two players strategized their way to victory by assembling a majority of votes in the Electoral College.  In the real election, Nixon did just that, defeating Hubert Humphrey while George Wallace carried five states.

In late September, I began a new job at Palmer Coking Coal as their Saturday boy.  After a day of training, I was in charge of the Black Diamond office from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m., though typically worked longer.  I didn’t yet drive so Dad dropped me off each morning, picking me up a little after noon.

 

The mine office of Palmer Coking Coal on Highway 169, about the time I started working there.

The work consisted of sacking coal, answering phones, and operating a scale—but mostly selling nut and stoker coal to old guys driving pickup trucks.  It was quite a thrill to command an office, poke about in drawers, make change, and run the store.  I earned $1.00 per hour, paid with money drawn from the cash drawer and replaced with a handwritten receipt.

Dad signed for my wages and I’d take a $5 bill out of the drawer. Three years later when I left this job, I was earning $2 per hour. (I found this old receipt 40 years later in a box in the attic at the same mine office where I first started).

It wasn’t always busy so after reading the P-I, I tuned the radio to KJR-95.  My youth’s mind remembers where and what I was doing when certain songs played.  That October, I heard Dion DiMucci sing a gentle folk tribute to the assassinated heroes, “Abraham, Martin and John.”  The final lyrics delivered a stanza for Bobby Kennedy.

“Has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’ up over the hill

With Abraham, Martin and John.” – Dick Holler

Dion’s single next to Bill Kombol on his first day of high school, Sept. 3, 1968.

I was a fervent reader of newspapers and convinced Mom to buy a subscription to U.S. News & World Report.  On the last day of March 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced he wouldn’t seek re-election to the presidency.  Martin Luther King was shot dead in Memphis four days later.

On June 6th, the Kombol family checked into the Hotel Austria on Fleischmarkt Street in Vienna.  The tragic news of Robert Kennedy’s assassination splashed across the front pages of every paper on the newsstand.  The photo of 17-year-old, Juan Romero cradling the head of a fallen senator in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel has haunted me ever since.  An old Austrian woman draped in a black shawl stood in the lobby hissing, practically spitting the words out, “Johnson, Johnson!”

 Kombol family in Austria, L-R: Jeanmarie, Pauline, Bill, Barry, Dana. June 1968.

Dion’s song was poignant and melancholy.  It tugged at my heart while coaxing a tear.  Soon the three-minute radio broadcast was over.  It might be hours until it played.  I wanted to hear it time and again.

Work ended and I was home in the afternoon.  I usually fixed tomato soup and cheese-toast for lunch then listened to the Huskies on the radio.  Only the rarest of U.W. football games were broadcast on television.  Later friends and I might play a game of touch football at the Kibler school playground.  Time passes quickly in adolescence and evening came soon enough.  Dinner was promptly at 6 p.m.  Mom always made hamburgers on Saturday night.

While the song accompanied my introduction to the first months of high school, “Abraham, Martin and John,” made a cameo appearance shortly after graduation.  A collage by Tom Clay joined “What the World Needs Now Is Love” to live broadcasts of the assassinations introduced by snippets from Dion’s hit.  That summer of 1971, I worked long hours selling popsicles east of Kent and often drove home listening to the six-minute spoken word hymn.

I never really left Palmer Coking Coal.  During college, I spent summers as a laborer.  I worked the afternoon shift at the Rogers No. 3 my senior year.  It closed a few months later, the last underground coal mine in Washington.  After graduating, I joined Palmer for employment stints of two and three months when no other adventure called.

On of my  stints working for Palmer involved relocating parts of the Stergion cement plant in Enumclaw to Black Diamond  With money made from those three months, I traveled to Hawaii with my high school buddy, Wayne Podolak, Jan. 1976.

In August 1978, I began full-time employment at PCC, back on the picking table.  A decade of college, loafing, banking, odd jobs, and traveling landed me back where I’d begun 10 years earlier.  Four years later, I was appointed Manager of the company.  The following summer we celebrated Palmer Coking Coal’s 50th anniversary. I was 29-years-old.

In early 1979, I was brought into the office to learn how to run the business. I sat across my uncle Charlie Falk who snapped this picture.  I continued to sit at the same desk for the next 44 years, Summer 1979.

It’s now 40 years down the road.  I’ll soon be leaving full-time employment at PCC.  It’s where I’ve spent all but two years of my working career.  Of these things I’m certain––this job and that tune will forever remain in my heart, intertwined in a romantic ballad where the only constant is change.

I look back with nostalgia yet forward in anticipation.  How these next adventures unfold will be the continuing story of my life.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Post Script: Here’s the short story of Dion’s life and the song that changed mine.  Dion DiMucci was born in 1939 to Italian-American parents in the Bronx.  Teaming with friends from Belmont Avenue, Dion and the Belmonts scored their first hit in 1958 with “I Wonder Why.”

While on the 1959 winter concert tour with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper; the bus’s heating system gave out so Holly charted a plane to their next venue.  Dion balked at paying $36, his share for the flight because it was the rent amount his parents struggled to pay each month.  The plane crashed, killing all on board.

Dion split from the Belmonts in 1960, pursuing a solo career with hits like “Run-Around Sue” and “Donna.”  After continually humming Dion’s rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star,” from the Disney movie Pinocchio, Brian Wilson composed the Beach Boy’s ballad, “Surfer Girl,” in 1963   It was his very first composition.

Dion Now & Then is how I titled my Dion tribute CD compilation.

Dion was one of only two rock artists to appear on the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Bob Dylan was the other.  With changing tastes from the British Invasion and a growing heroin addiction, Dion started recording blues numbers in the mid-1960s.  His records failed to sell so he lost his contract.

In April 1968, Dion experienced a powerful religious awakening.  He gave up heroin and his label agreed to re-sign him if he’d record “Abraham, Martin and John.”  The single was released that August, reaching #4 on the charts in October.  It was written by Dick Holler, composer of the Royal Guardsman’s novelty hit, “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”

In the 1980s, Dion became a born-again Christian, releasing five albums highlighting his evangelical convictions.  In June 2020 at age 81, Dion released his most recent album, “Blues with Friends” featuring a range of artists including Jeff Beck, John Hammond, Van Morrison, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Coda: On a warm summer evening in the early 1960s, Billy Kombol stood at the door of the open-air dance pavilion at Barrett’s Lake Retreat resort, mesmerized by the sight of teenagers dancing to the jukebox sounds of Dion and the Belmonts.

Categories
Musings

Two Little Miners in Elk Coal

A child listens while pages turn.  He studies pictures as literacy begins on his mother’s knee.  He was three or four years old.  It wasn’t the first book read to him, for that happened well before memory.  And it wouldn’t be the last.  For little did he know that as he grew older, books would grow with him.

As for children’s books, I wasn’t fond of Br’er Rabbit stories, they didn’t make sense.  “Hansel and Gretel” rather frightened me—children left in a forest only to fall prey to the hands of a wretched old woman.  And really, Hansel, didn’t it occur that breadcrumbs trailed behind might get eaten? “Three Little Pigs” seemed too obvious on successive readings, but we read on.  I admired Goldilocks’ insistence on getting things just right.  She did after all get her fill of porridge, took a nap, and escaped unharmed.  “Old Mother Hubbard,” “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk” were all fun stories to hear. 

But the book I loved best was Two Little Miners.  It spoke to me—most likely since both grandfathers were coal miners, as were a bunch of uncles. And so was Dad.  He operated mobile equipment, like bulldozers, shovels, and loaders outside the mines.  On special occasions, Mom packed an extra lunch bucket when I went to work with him.  If the day was nice, I played in freshly bulldozed dirt.  If it rained, I stayed in his pickup watching droplets become streams that wiggled down the windshield. 

We lived in the remnant of a forgotten town called Elk Coal.  Most pronounced it El-ko.  Elk Coal, you ask?  It’s located halfway between Kanaskat and Kangley, pressed against the foothills of the Cascades.  The coal mine for which the town was named closed in 1953, the year I was born.  The shabby village fell further from grace when miners left.  Our family moved there from Selleck, one week before my first birthday.  The next day my sister, Jeanmarie, was born.  They called us Irish twins.

My earliest childhood memories belong to Elk Coal.  Further north was Hiawatha, where Dad was born in the same house where his parents still lived.  Sometimes my grandfather, Tony Kombol, babysat me.  An errant dynamite coal mine blast 30 years prior left him nearly blind with a face freckled purple from embedded coal dust.  Grandma Lulu taught school in nearby Selleck.  She was Barry’s first-grade teacher and beloved by every school kid she taught. 

Our home was a stone’s throw from Durham, where Mom was raised. It was once a company town.  Many of its residents were her uncles who worked in the coal mines, and aunts who performed the many mundane chores that make a small town livable.

Her Uncle Jonas and Aunt Maggie managed the large brick building called the Durham hotel. It was really a boarding house for single miners. Twenty or more homes, built in rows along the hillside, housed most of Durham’s 70 to 80 residents. Some even worked at the Elk Coal mines across the street.

Durham was fully deserted by the 1950s, but Elk Coal, situated on a county road, survived.  Durham’s impressive coal slag piles still dominated the landscape.  Its crumbling company houses were a source of lumber salvaged by Dad.  After he disassembled boards in the driveway, we scoured the gravel with horseshoe magnets picking up rusty nails. 

Our Elk Coal home still stands at 28603 Kanaskat-Kangley Road (April 1940 King County Assessor photo).

We lived in a four-room home my folks bought from Benj Whitehouse in late June 1954.  He’d been a coal miner in nearby Durham.  He built the house in 1930.  Its two bedrooms, one bath, and two porches spanned 952 square feet, and cost my folks $3,000.  Our yard bordered scrub woodlands on one side and a rundown farm on the other.  That’s where Anne Pearson, our babysitter, lived.

Rare was the day when kids our age visited, as none lived in Elk Coal.  Sometimes cousins would drop by, or maybe the Kahne boys—for their mother, Pat Hunt, had grown up nearby.  Two older kids, Billy and Dickie St. Clair, occasionally came by.  They lived next door to my Kombol grandparents half a mile up the road.  When Barry started school, Jeanmarie and I, a year and a day apart, became fast friends. 

Two hundred feet south of our home lay the Elk Coal gas station and grocery.  It was a tiny clue this village was once something more than a name.  Aileen (Pearson) Gregovich ran the store which served ice cream cones, had a penny candy counter, and carried basic canned and dry grocery goods.  Behind the cash register, one caught glimpse of a bedroom filled with musical instruments. A decade later, I learned the young man who studied music in that room was Aileen’s son, Bob Estby, Enumclaw’s choir director.  He too was a product of Selleck and Elk Coal.

The Elk Coal store and gas station. Our home was 200 yards beyond.

In my sophomore year at Enumclaw High, a chess team was established with Mr. Estby as coach.  Curiously, he didn’t play chess.  Practice was hosted in his classroom each day after school.  Every few weeks, he drove our five-boy team to matches played throughout the region.  For three years Bob was my mentor and coach.  Amazingly, he kept our chess team’s trophies for 40 years after we left school.  When Mr. Estby passed away, his daughter gave me those trophies.

The secluded nature of Elk Coal made for limited social lives.  The store was the brightest star on the horizon and a two-minute walk from home.  With pennies found atop the dryer, Jeanmarie and I walked there for candy.  We envied older kids who bought soda pop with nickels.  In that innocent time, Mom didn’t mind her three and four-year-olds, pennies in hand, wandering about unattended.  We napped together in separate cribs, those of a wooden-slat, jail-bar-style of the 1950s. When one awoke, we’d call across the tiny room to the other.  Soon we were chattering about.  Best of friends we were, for Barry was at school and Dana not yet born.

By May 1958,Jeanmarie (left) and I were too big for the old crib, as by now it belonged to Dana (right).

In the era before preschool, Jeanmarie and I played on our backyard swing set, hoping for visitors.  We sometimes saw an aunt or grandmother.  Desperate for excitement one day I hid on the back seat floorboard of Aunt Nola’s sedan after she visited with Mom.  I figured she was headed to Grandma’s and therein lay my escape.  Instead, she drove the opposite direction to Mariani’s Goat Ranch.  Nola parked and went to buy eggs and visit.  I emerged from her car surprised we weren’t at Grandma’s, so drifted down the road with a vague idea of waking home.  I was picked by an adult who recognized me and promptly delivered me the mile and a half back to Mom.  It was that kind of place.

A typical King County bookmobile, or mobile library during the 1950s. Patrons entered on the side and exited the rear.

Each month a novel source of entertainment arrived.  That’s when the King County mobile library made its round to our secluded hamlet. The Bookmobile parked on the gravel strip across from our house where the road was widest.  Stepping anxiously through the side door, one entered a bus filled with books, any of which you could pick up and take home.  With Mom or Grandma in tow, we examined colorful covers then checked out volumes at the rear exit.  Upon its returned, we exchanged our previous cache for new selections. Once checked out, Two Little Miners through purchase or gift became part of our family’s library. 

The Little Golden Book had a thin hard binding.  Its child-sized pages were treasured art to these young eyes.  The story by Margaret Wise Brown with pictures by Richard Scarry was published in 1949.  Earlier books like, Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny had a rhythm and style.  Nearly 70 years after Brown’s tragic death at age 42, they still sold by the thousands. 

The copy I bought online more than five decades after it was first read to me.

Two Little Miners was Richard Scarry’s first illustration.  In subsequent years he wrote or drew more than 300 stories.  His sales eventually soared to several hundred million copies worldwide.  Typical of Scarry’s drawings was their emphasis on action with precise detail in depicting everyday life.  Two Little Miners tells the tale of coal miners and their hard work underground.  The story’s happy ending was reason enough to have it read again and again.  Memories of the book are warmly juxtaposed with Sunday evenings watching the Wonderful World of Disney in our cozy living room. 

We moved to Enumclaw in December 1958.  Kindergarten wasn’t available in Elk Coal, so I joined Mrs. Todnem’s class in January, halfway through the school year.  Many of the classmates I met that first day of school graduated with me twelve years later. 

Mrs. Todnam’s kindergarten class photo on a spring day, 1959.

Enumclaw was The Land of Oz compared to Elk Coal.   My eyes were opened and the world brightened. We’d left the dreary sticks and arrived in a real town.  Our neighborhood had stately churches with steeples that reached towards the sky.  Paved streets, grass medians, and concrete sidewalks outlined blocks of well-kept homes.  Front yards boasted rhododendrons with flowers that bloomed in spring.   A thriving downtown with stores, cafes, and a movie theater was but a five-minute walk from home. 

Kids were everywhere—at school, in back yards, and throughout the neighborhood.  Our isolated existence in Elk Coal faded in memory. Enumclaw became my town and playing with kids my passion.

While Mom still read books to us at bedtime, my interests stretched well beyond fairy tales on printed pages.  There was football to be played and baseballs to be thrown; skates to be rolled and bicycles to ride.  There were streets to walk and alleys to explore.  But mostly there were boys everywhere. 

Jeanmarie was crushed when I dumped her for their companionship.  Oh, we still bathed together on Saturday night and stayed inside on rainy days playing board games or listening to records.  But once I stepped outside the backdoor my focus changed.  No longer was Jeannie my best friend and faithful companion with whom we would one day live together like two little miners.  My world was now all about messing around with other boys.  In some ways, I’m not entirely convinced she ever fully forgave me.

My walk to the clean brick school building was five blocks away.  At Byron Kibler Elementary we were taught to read under the “see Dick run – look, Jane, look” method.  It’s called sight-reading and its efficacy I’ll leave to others.  For me it was agonizingly slow, but apparently did the trick for learn to read I did. 

Billy and Barry walk to Kibler school, May 1960.

There was even a modern library four blocks from our Franklin Street home.  Alas, it was largely ignored as sporting fields beckoned.  Though I had a library card and could search index cards to find books, my dreams of being shortstop for the Detroit Tigers fixed reading firmly on the back burner.  However, reading the newspaper’s sports section and baseball box scores advanced my skills substantially.  Comic books, particularly the Archie and the Superman series became my primary sources of literature outside of school.

It wasn’t until junior high—when paperbacks like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Mysterious Island captured my imagination—that I was first drawn to printed pages without pictures or batting averages.  I also became an avid reader of magazines starting with Boys Life, migrating through MAD to Sports Illustrated, before graduating to Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report.  Mom’s purchase of a complete, multi-volume, Collier’s Encyclopedia provided free reign for our inquisitive spirits.  It also made school reports much easier to complete, with fewer trips to the library. 

More advanced volumes like All Quiet on the Western Front and Hiroshima followed.  High school introduced captivating novels like A Separate Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, plus Lord of the Flies, 1984, and several others.

I’ll be forever thankful to our senior English teacher, Bill Hawk.  That spring semester, he recited the entirety of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hamlet out loud to our class.  It was almost like being back on Mom’s knee.  College years were consumed with textbooks and assigned readings, so pleasure reading faded.  After graduation, the works of Steinbeck, Hemingway, Maugham, and Austen beckoned.  Eventually, my reading tastes evolved towards nonfiction particularly history, biography, politics, and culture. 

Mr. Bill Hawk (left) – his casual style and collegial manner inspired a love for literature, EHS spring 1971.

Decades passed, I married, and we raised three boys of our own.  Stories at bedtime became an evening ritual.  New children’s books were bought. Some of the old folk and fairy tale books were recycled from Mom to me.

One day I found our old, crayon-riddled, torn copy of Two Little Miners.  Foggy memories sifted back.  The old copy was beyond redemption, but the rise of online book-buying made finding a replacement a cinch.  The used copy arrived.  Fingering its worn pages released unexpected emotions.  The story endured: two little miners black as coal, scrubbed clean in wooden bathtubs, sit down to dinner.  Arising the next morning their lives of mining coal are told in exquisite detail, concluding with baths and supper on the table.  Though most pages were black and white, the ones in color are striking. 

It’s funny how childhood memories seize the mind of a fully grown man.  My thoughts turned to Elk Coal.  I toured the world’s vast web seeking evidence to confirm youthful recollections.  ‘Elk Coal’ was typed in the Google search box and up popped … nothing!  I tried Elko and Elco—still zilch.  I scoured all manner of keywords generating little better than Elk Plains, Elk River, or Big Elk. There were no links that even mentioned Elk Coal, Washington.  It seemed like an important part of my childhood didn’t exist outside of memories. 

“If it isn’t digital it didn’t happen,” is a fashionable view of today’s world. Following the French Revolution, a dramatist attributed to Napoleon the slogan, “If you want something done, do it yourself.”  I felt the same way. 

How could the curious people of Planet Earth enjoy full and fruitful lives knowing nothing of Elk Coal’s heritage?  Being an amateur historian, the answer was easy—I’d write its history.  Like any coal miner, I dug deep underground, excavated newspaper stories, and unearthed ancient mine reports.  I was in the fortunate position of having access to source documents allowing the narrative to be told. I submitted “Elk Coal: Forgotten Coal Mining Town,” to HistoryLink.org where it was published in May 2010.  Today, if you query Google regarding Elk Coal, several references now populate the list.  

The link below tells the story of that faded outpost where four of my first five years were lived.  For me it’s the place where literacy began … in Elk Coal with Two Little Miners.  

https://www.historylink.org/File/9419

Billy, the three-year-old future author, gazes intently at the camera, while Jeanmarie climbs and Barry swings, as Sugarloaf Mountain looms in the distance, July 1956.