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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,

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Speaker 1: your podcast about some of the best people in history.

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Speaker 1: I'm your host at Killjoy, and with me this week,

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Speaker 1: I'm super excited to have not one, but two guests.

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Speaker 1: I have Cam Collins and Steve Shell, who are best

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Speaker 1: known for their work on the Amazing Eldridge Horror podcast

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Speaker 1: Old Gods of Appalachia. How are you all doing? Oh

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Speaker 1: dooing doo it fine? Fine, thanks for having us. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: thank you, so excited. Yeah. I first rand across All

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Speaker 1: Gods of Appalachia because well, I write horror fiction, I

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Speaker 1: like horror fiction, and I live in Appalachia, and so

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Speaker 1: everyone kept telling me to listen to it, and I

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Speaker 1: finally gave in, and I'm hooked, but I'm not caught up,

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Speaker 1: so don't spoil anything. Okay, got you? Okay? Yeah? Good?

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Speaker 1: No good? And you all are? You all are from

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Speaker 1: Wise County, Virginia originally? Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, we

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Speaker 1: both we grew up there. I graduated from we graduated

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Speaker 1: high school in the nineties up there, and I've lived

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Speaker 1: in Asheville since two thousand four, two thousand three, two

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Speaker 1: thousand four, h and Cam has been in Bristol for um.

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Speaker 1: I've been in the Tri Cities since two thousand three,

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Speaker 1: but I moved to Bristol in like late two thousand four,

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Speaker 1: early two thousand five, so I've been here a long time.

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Speaker 1: The only time I've been in Wise County was actually

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Speaker 1: the first time I ever saw mountaintop removal coal mining,

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Speaker 1: where they blow up the mountain and then dump all

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Speaker 1: the stuff into the valley. You mean, but behind my

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Speaker 1: dad's house. Yeah. Yeah, there's a reason I'm bringing that up.

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Speaker 1: But first we're gonna introduce our producer, Sophie Lichterman. Hi, Sophie, Hi, Margaret,

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Speaker 1: and I want to have you all on today. While

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Speaker 1: I wand up Sophie on because Sophie is always on

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Speaker 1: the call I live here, yeah, on the microphone. I

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Speaker 1: want to have you two on because well, I've always

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Speaker 1: wanted to have you on because I like your work,

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Speaker 1: but also because I've got an Appalachian story and I

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Speaker 1: wanted to find some folks who would really appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: Because today we're going to talk about the largest labor

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Speaker 1: uprising in US history and the largest insurgency in the

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Speaker 1: US since the Civil War, and this time, the insurgents

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Speaker 1: like the good side which is cool. And so today

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Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about an unlikely coalition of ten thousand

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Speaker 1: or so Union coal miners, white and black US born,

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Speaker 1: an immigrant gathering up guns, marching into non Union territory

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Speaker 1: to bring the fight to the coal companies. Because today

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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Battle of Blair Mountain

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Speaker 1: and the coal wars of West Virginia, which is right

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Speaker 1: over the border from Wise County. If i'm if, I'm yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's there's the whole weird area. It's it's so strange, Camerda,

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Speaker 1: I've talked about this. Uh, we're in talking about the

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Speaker 1: region where we live in southwestern Virginia and Wise County,

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Speaker 1: West Virginia is maybe an hour and change away, but

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Speaker 1: east East Tennessee is a little bit less. So our

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Speaker 1: entire cultural lives. If you wanted to go to the

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Speaker 1: Orthodonist or the Good Mall or the mall there was

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Speaker 1: no mall, then we would just go south south and

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Speaker 1: hour and change to Tennessee because you had to go

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Speaker 1: over and around the mountains to West Virginia. So like

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Speaker 1: as we move into the season, we're riding right now,

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Speaker 1: which talks about cold wars and is set a lot

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Speaker 1: in with Virginia. We're having to do a hell of

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Speaker 1: a lot of research about a place that's an hour

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Speaker 1: or so from our old houses that we just it

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Speaker 1: just wasn't geographically part of where we where we went

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Speaker 1: as kids. It just you know, like Kentucky's right there,

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Speaker 1: why you know. But then again, there was no mall,

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Speaker 1: no mall in our south. But like the first hardcore

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Speaker 1: and punk shows I ever went to where in the

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Speaker 1: Tri Cities in East Tennessee and that part of southwest

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Speaker 1: Virginia and then later and those are here. Those were

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Speaker 1: here in Bristol, which is more east, Yeah, and then

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Speaker 1: and then others in eastern Kentucky and over in Whitesburg

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Speaker 1: in that area. But West Virginia is it's it's strange,

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Speaker 1: it's right there. And as I was writing, I was writing,

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Speaker 1: as we were writing a story arc about a family

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Speaker 1: traveling from the neck of Virginia up into West Virginia

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Speaker 1: and back and forth, we're like, it's right there. Like

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you're gonna talk about it or not,

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Speaker 1: but Ash Bottom in McDowell County was the largest red

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Speaker 1: light district in the history of Appalachia. Yeah, that makes sense.

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Speaker 1: It was. It was where all the minds were. But

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Speaker 1: it was there were there were parlor houses owned by

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Speaker 1: black folks, white folks, immigrants, and the sex work community

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Speaker 1: all kind of like minded their own business and took

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Speaker 1: care of each other, regardless of kind of And and

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Speaker 1: I hate, I hate painting a racial ideal in any

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Speaker 1: part of Appalachia because if you grew up here, you know,

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Speaker 1: race relations are not easy. They are not uncomplicated. Um,

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Speaker 1: even good Union folks. There's a lot of racist folks

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Speaker 1: in the Union just because of where we are. Um.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, but the largest red district in the history

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Speaker 1: of Appalachia was thirty minutes from like my family's house,

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Speaker 1: and and and and apparently that continued on into the

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Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, and uh, you know it was smaller,

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Speaker 1: but like that's still what that area was known for.

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Speaker 1: So like that's just the kind of stuff that can

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Speaker 1: be just over the mountain in Appalachia and you just

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Speaker 1: don't know it. Yeah, And this one seems like a

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Speaker 1: lot of what's going to come up and Appalachia is

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Speaker 1: that it's despite being geographically all of these things very

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Speaker 1: close to each other. The mountains and the cult sure

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Speaker 1: and the sort of lack of infrastructure keep things very separate,

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Speaker 1: and so a lot of what we're gonna be talking

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Speaker 1: about today is people trying to overcome those borders essentially

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Speaker 1: that are even inside a single state. So as background,

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Speaker 1: being a coal miner at the turn of the twentieth

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Speaker 1: century was not the best job that you could have.

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Speaker 1: It was, in fact, fucking terrible. If you were lucky,

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Speaker 1: you live long enough to die of black lung disease,

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Speaker 1: where coal builds up in your lungs and you know,

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Speaker 1: turns them black. That's the name black lung. It kills you,

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Speaker 1: and there's no cure for it. Still people still die

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Speaker 1: of it, and hey, fund facts, as I was looking

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Speaker 1: this up, the number of people dying from it is

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Speaker 1: going up, not down. Yeah, So that's if you're lucky,

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Speaker 1: If you're just as likely you die in some mining accident,

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Speaker 1: crushed by rock or killed in an explosion or something

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Speaker 1: like that, because basically likely as not, your boss is

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Speaker 1: going to treat you like your disposable, especially before the

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Speaker 1: Union came in, and coal mines are in these remote

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Speaker 1: parts of the country, a lot of them. Even though

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Speaker 1: you're only a couple hours, you know you'll be a

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Speaker 1: hundred miles by as the crow flies from somewhere, you know,

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Speaker 1: with large population centers or something, but you'll be completely

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Speaker 1: unreachable and often only by railway. So workers would live

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Speaker 1: in houses owned by the companies. Sometimes they were only

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Speaker 1: paid in script, which is basically monopoly dollars or chuck

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Speaker 1: E cheese tokens that can only be redeemed at the

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Speaker 1: company's store, so you're kind of trapped there. Sometimes people

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Speaker 1: will get paid cash, but they would take out script advances,

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Speaker 1: so you'd be further and further in debt. The company

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Speaker 1: stores were a little monopolies that sold all the ship

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Speaker 1: at inflated costs. Workers found themselves deeper and deeper in

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Speaker 1: debt to their employers, and I don't know, it was

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Speaker 1: not a good time. People were doing pretty badly. Wages

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Speaker 1: would ebb and flow constantly, depending on all kinds of

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Speaker 1: market stuff and depending on what the coal operators which

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Speaker 1: is the word for the people around the companies, the

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Speaker 1: bosses and all that ship whatever they figured that could

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Speaker 1: get away with. Basically, one report I from had minors

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Speaker 1: working eighteen hour shifts in a day for what amounted

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Speaker 1: to and I did the little like calculation to how

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Speaker 1: much it is in today's dollars, eighteen dollars, So you

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Speaker 1: would work for a dollar fucking hour is some of

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Speaker 1: the wages that people were dealing with. And sometimes you

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Speaker 1: only had a job a couple of days a week.

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Speaker 1: In company towns, the companies owned the churches, the schools,

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Speaker 1: the doctors, a lot of places. They own the law enforcement.

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Speaker 1: They picked what movies you could be shown in theaters,

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Speaker 1: hard and dangerous work. I don't know the closest example.

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Speaker 1: I'm curious what you all think of this. The closest

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Speaker 1: comparison I can come up with, and history has actually

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Speaker 1: serfdom because people were on some level like owned by

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Speaker 1: their landlords and they could live freely within certain constraints. Right,

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Speaker 1: It's not the same as like chattel slavery or whatever,

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Speaker 1: but a lot of places people literally weren't even free

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Speaker 1: to leave. Oh yeah, in a lot of the term

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Speaker 1: company town goes, you know, is a lot more loaded

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Speaker 1: than than you would even think. Like they literally own

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Speaker 1: a third gates and there would be guards and one

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Speaker 1: of the things, and I'm sure you'll get there with

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Speaker 1: Blair Mountain and some of these uprisings is like they

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Speaker 1: would turn the security forces on the miners if they

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Speaker 1: didn't like what you were doing, or suspected you were unionizing,

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Speaker 1: or suspected you were disloyal to the company. And it

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Speaker 1: it became like, yeah, it became certain I tapped my

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Speaker 1: nose as if someone could see me when you said

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Speaker 1: when you said, serve to margarets Um. But that's exactly

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Speaker 1: the closest thing we can we can, yeah, we can

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Speaker 1: get to yeah, very very similar. Yeah, And so you'll

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Speaker 1: be shocked to know that a bunch of miners decided

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Speaker 1: that they didn't actually like this particular setup that they

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Speaker 1: were living with. So in two other labor unions joined

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Speaker 1: forces and they formed the United Mine Workers of America

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Speaker 1: or the u m w A. And their goals were

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Speaker 1: really radical. They wanted eight hour work days, no child labor,

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Speaker 1: they wanted ventilation in the tunnels. They wanted to get

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Speaker 1: paid in US currency for the money that they were

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Speaker 1: doing in the US and ship like that, Like, how

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Speaker 1: dare they, I mean, it's the child labor alone. End

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Speaker 1: of things is yeah, that's that's a that's a research

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Speaker 1: rabbit hole. If you want to feel real bad about

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Speaker 1: the world, even worse than we do today, read about

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Speaker 1: coal mining, specifically young boys specifically in coal mines, and yeah,

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Speaker 1: you'll you'll want to burn something down, yeah, which is

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Speaker 1: the attitude that many of these miners came upon. And

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Speaker 1: so they led successful strikes across the Midwest, and they

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Speaker 1: earned wage increases and their ranks shot up from they

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Speaker 1: started with about ten thousand people in the um w A,

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Speaker 1: and after these strikes they went up to a hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand members and from there it just only spread. They

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Speaker 1: had significant black membership from the very beginning and start.

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Speaker 1: Contrast to the labor movement in general in the nineteenth century,

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Speaker 1: you actually weren't allowed to be in the KKK if

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Speaker 1: you remember the um w A, which feels like it

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Speaker 1: shouldn't be saying something, but is saying something, and it's

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Speaker 1: so far from perfect, like you are getting that, it's

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Speaker 1: so far from perfect that I wouldn't even know where

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Speaker 1: to begin talking about how unperfect it is. But black

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Speaker 1: folks did make it into some of the leadership positions

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Speaker 1: and the But the push to include black and immigrant

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Speaker 1: labor in the umw A didn't actually come from the top.

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Speaker 1: It came from the rank and file workers of every race,

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Speaker 1: and basically the white Union leadership was kind of dragged

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Speaker 1: along into being reasonable. As far as I can tell,

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Speaker 1: it was undeniable in southern West Virginia. I mean, at

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Speaker 1: one point in time, they were like six figures of

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Speaker 1: black miners, not counting their families, just black miners on

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Speaker 1: the world. They were doing the most dangerous, the lowest paying,

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Speaker 1: and the awfullest work that they could possibly be asked

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Speaker 1: to do, which is why the eventual migration north happened

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Speaker 1: with a lot of black folks in Appalachia, but West

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Speaker 1: Virginia Cole was, especially West Virginia Union Cole was built

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Speaker 1: by black miners. Like it was black miners who marched

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Speaker 1: across state lines just to their white counterparts and said, listen,

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Speaker 1: if we can do this, sure, you know, they might

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Speaker 1: even listen to y'all, you know, but yeah, But like

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Speaker 1: southern Appalachia especially was built on the backs of black

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Speaker 1: miners and their labor. Yeah, And the history books I

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Speaker 1: was looking at would say that a fifth to a

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Speaker 1: quarter of all the coal miners in West Virginia were

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Speaker 1: black at around the time. I'm talking about the teens

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Speaker 1: in the twenties, and the labor struggles involved black folks,

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Speaker 1: white folks and then immigrant Europeans, mostly Italians, all working together.

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Speaker 1: That was kind of fifty years ahead of its time

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Speaker 1: at least. And and a lot of people will talk

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Speaker 1: about basically like these Italian and Hungarian miners weren't white, right,

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Speaker 1: And to some degree that's true, but sometimes that gets

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Speaker 1: exaggerated because it's if an Italian immigrant wasn't white, it

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Speaker 1: did not make them black. Basically, they were like them

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Speaker 1: in the Irish and and some of the other European

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Speaker 1: immigrants were kind of their own class below white and

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Speaker 1: well above Asian, Black, indigenous, and a bunch of bunch

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Speaker 1: of other classes in terms of American society at least

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Speaker 1: again as far as I've been able to figure out,

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Speaker 1: but there was a different guy. It was a different

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Speaker 1: kind of mothering, especially if you were Catholic, because so

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Speaker 1: many folks in power were Protestant. Uh what would eventually

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Speaker 1: become the Evangelical churches. Because if you were a papist,

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Speaker 1: as they would say, then your loyalty wasn't even to America.

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Speaker 1: It was to a foreign power. It was to the pope.

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Speaker 1: All the way the Pope told you to do something,

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Speaker 1: then that's that. Then you believe that's God's authority and

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Speaker 1: that makes you less American, and therefore that makes you

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Speaker 1: less than white. So yeah, you're absolutely correct. That didn't

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Speaker 1: make them black, but they were definitely other. Yeah, my

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Speaker 1: granddad was a Scottish Catholic in the Midwest in the

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Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, like riding freight trains around looking for work,

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Speaker 1: and had a lot of anti Catholic sentiment presented his way. Um,

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Speaker 1: I won't take everything he said is like totally true

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Speaker 1: about how all that worked out. But so even in

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Speaker 1: the Union, black miners had to be careful to make

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Speaker 1: sure that they like didn't look like they were stealing

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Speaker 1: white workers jobs. And you know, as you were saying,

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Speaker 1: they got the dirtiest, the most dangerous jobs. They were

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Speaker 1: left to sleep in the worst parts of coal camps,

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Speaker 1: and even underground they were forced to piss in different

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Speaker 1: cans than the white miners. Writer Crystal Good explains that

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Speaker 1: in the early twentieth century, white elite sought to condemn

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Speaker 1: poor white people trash, hillbillies, et cetera, as part of

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Speaker 1: their broader project to protect the purity of the white

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Speaker 1: race against black migrants and immigrants, to explain class inequality

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Speaker 1: and defend capitalism. Poor white people threatened and still do

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Speaker 1: white supremacy because they're very existence questions a white racist

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Speaker 1: dominance and the ideology of racial capitalism. I just like

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Speaker 1: that quote to kind of sum up the way that, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it works, poor white people complicate this. But so the

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Speaker 1: union takes off, and with it the anti union movement

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Speaker 1: also takes off. Employees were forced into what are called

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Speaker 1: yellow dog contracts, saying I promise I won't join the

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Speaker 1: umw A or the IWW right there in the employment contract,

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Speaker 1: with the i w W being another more radical labor

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Speaker 1: union who wasn't fighting for day to our work day.

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Speaker 1: They were fighting for the abolition of capitalism. They don't

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Speaker 1: plate too much into the story today, all of them.

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Speaker 1: They'll come in here and there. You could get as

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Speaker 1: you were saying that the company guards you get fired

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Speaker 1: for talking about unions. That was the least of it.

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Speaker 1: You could get thrown out in the cold because you

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Speaker 1: lived in a company house. And that's just the legal

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Speaker 1: stuff they can do to you. They did a lot

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Speaker 1: more than that, which we'll get into Appalachia in general.

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Speaker 1: To kind of lay out the geography of what we're

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Speaker 1: gonna be talking about today, and West Virginia in particular

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Speaker 1: is defined by its geography. Folks talk about hollers, that is,

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Speaker 1: the nestled areas between mountain ridges. It's well you all

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Speaker 1: might know this part better, but it's it's spelled hollow,

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Speaker 1: not hollow, but the Appalachian accents, which is out the

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Speaker 1: own R. Yeah. Um, and I didn't know this, but

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Speaker 1: everything I'm very excited about anything that's with potatoes. And

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Speaker 1: the word tator also comes from this, because anything that

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Speaker 1: ends with um gets the e R and so you

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Speaker 1: get feller and tater from the same same route. This

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Speaker 1: is important to me. Yeah, no, No, linguistics are like

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Speaker 1: believe me, like uh, Caminda are we are the b

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Speaker 1: as we did initially uh at University of Virginia's College

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Speaker 1: at Wise within communications and like you could go down

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Speaker 1: you can go down a rabbit hole on Appalachian Accents

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Speaker 1: within one county just divided by um. Talking with a

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Speaker 1: friend of mine about Little Stony Mountain, which sits in

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Speaker 1: between the towns of Appalachia, Virginia and Big Stone Gap, Virginia.

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Speaker 1: And it's a mountain that on the inside is being

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Speaker 1: eaten away by water and it's got this huge cave

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Speaker 1: system in it. But literally it's like a where a

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Speaker 1: continental break happened. Because on one side, where the town

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Speaker 1: of Appalachia is is coal and mining and one of

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Speaker 1: the biggest boom towns that is now a dying town. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And on the other side zero cold like literally like

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Speaker 1: a like a piece of cake, zero cold, but rich, lush,

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Speaker 1: verdant farmland. So that area got rich stayed rich to

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Speaker 1: this day for pretty much while everybody on the coal

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Speaker 1: side of things has been living in a town where

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Speaker 1: they have things literally like local elections that were tainted

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Speaker 1: by the fact that one candidate gave out pork rinds

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Speaker 1: at the UM. I mean, that's how few people are

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Speaker 1: left the social scale we're dealing with, so like, so

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Speaker 1: the geography of all that stuff, and yeah and holler,

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Speaker 1: you're absolutely you know that the e r ending up

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Speaker 1: on there. What's really funny to me is when we

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Speaker 1: grew up there, I used to deliver pizza. There was

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Speaker 1: Sleepy Hollow Road, and the people who lived there said

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Speaker 1: sleepy Hollow wouldn't sleepy Holler. But in contrast geographic place,

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Speaker 1: hohodel Hollow, that would be that's who holler did the

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Speaker 1: person handing out pork grins win. Yes they did, and

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Speaker 1: uh and it was a big scandal and uh and

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Speaker 1: I think a city mass city manager, the town manager

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Speaker 1: had to resign over it. Uh. You can google Appalachia,

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Speaker 1: Virginia pork grinds election and I probably don't have the

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Speaker 1: facts completely legit, but they're there because you're dealing with

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Speaker 1: towns like Appalachia, Virginia. I I lived there. I lived

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Speaker 1: there with my mom the last two years I lived

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Speaker 1: in Southwest Virginia before I came here. It's like you

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Speaker 1: can still see the structure of the camp houses in

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Speaker 1: like the nice part of town down by the river,

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Speaker 1: and the railroad tracks that feed all the way through

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Speaker 1: town where the coal used to be, and like, but

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Speaker 1: there's nothing there. Like it's literally a place that's it's

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Speaker 1: like watching a town bleed to death over generations of people.

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Speaker 1: Just not like the high school that was built there

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Speaker 1: in the fifties was built for a thousand students. They

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Speaker 1: had to consolidate it when they had a graduated class

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Speaker 1: of eight a bunch of years, and they thought consolidation

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Speaker 1: for two decades. Because your identity is your town and

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people, your high school mascot and

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Speaker 1: your sports team. That's who you are. In Appalachi, Virginia

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Speaker 1: and Powe Valley, Virginia or Big Stone Gap as it's

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Speaker 1: also known produced NFL players Thomas and Julius Jones of

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Speaker 1: the National Football League came from came from Powe Valley

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Speaker 1: High School and Big Stone Gap there. Their forefather, who

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Speaker 1: I think was their great grandfather, was a legendary player

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Speaker 1: from Appalachia, Virginia. So, and they're also black folks, which

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Speaker 1: is also a commodity than on the ground left in

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Speaker 1: southwest Virginia. Like the number of the number of anyone

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Speaker 1: who's not white in Wise County, Virginia is in the

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Speaker 1: sub single digits. Like I'm betting, I'm betting less than

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Speaker 1: less than two percent. Yeah, I've been reading a lot

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Speaker 1: that there was a lot of basically like those areas

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Speaker 1: are just getting whiter and whiter, and that's like part

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Speaker 1: of why the black history of a lot of Appalachic

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Speaker 1: it's forgotten. Ye And thank god for groups like Black

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Speaker 1: and Appalachia who if you're not following them on Facebook

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Speaker 1: and Twitter and everywhere else, they are doing fantastic work

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Speaker 1: of documenting black history in Appalachia and now Harlan County

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Speaker 1: in Kentucky used to actually have quiet a sizeable black population.

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Speaker 1: But then you know, when the when the mines started

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Speaker 1: becoming more and more automated and eliminating jobs, Guess whose

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Speaker 1: jobs got eliminated first, And so they moved out went,

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Speaker 1: you know, find jobs in other places. And that's how

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Speaker 1: northern West Virginia got the Pepperoni role. Is all the

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Speaker 1: Italian immigrants went north and settled in the New Than

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Speaker 1: part of West Virginia, and we were robbed of the

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Speaker 1: Pepperoni role. And you're so mad about it. I'm very

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Speaker 1: mad if we have them, but they're not as good

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Speaker 1: like there are because those are families from West Virginia.

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Speaker 1: So to keep playing that that this is is actually

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Speaker 1: really good because you're you're sort of copying ahead on

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Speaker 1: my script. Because one of the things I'm talking about, No, No,

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Speaker 1: is that the coal fields are as important as any

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Speaker 1: political boundary in a lot of where we're talking about, right,

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Speaker 1: and so you'll have your county lines, but more important

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Speaker 1: than that for a lot of what we're talking about

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Speaker 1: are the coal fields. And the coal fields will sort

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Speaker 1: of map two counties, but not exactly. And so there's

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Speaker 1: there's three coal fields we're going to talk about, and

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Speaker 1: then we're gonna talk about the counties. They kind of

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Speaker 1: map too, because these are the three players in today's story.

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Speaker 1: In terms of geography, the politics of which ones a

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Speaker 1: reunion and which ones aren't is kind of what makes

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Speaker 1: up the tension. In central West Virginia, you've got the

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Speaker 1: Kanawa Coal Field, which is centered on Kanawa County, and

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Speaker 1: in ninet twenty, it's a union stronghold, it's affiliated with

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Speaker 1: the um w A, and it's where this week's heroes

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Speaker 1: are going to be marching out of. Just south of that,

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Speaker 1: you've got Logan County and it's coal Field, which is

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Speaker 1: also called Logan coal Field in the nineteen tens. In

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Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties is the least union thing that's ever happened.

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Speaker 1: People are getting fired, beat and killed for whispering words

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Speaker 1: like union, and the whole places it's kind of almost cartoonish.

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Speaker 1: The whole place is being ruled with an iron fist

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Speaker 1: by a sheriff named Don Chaffin, and he's he's a

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Speaker 1: cartoon villain. He's he's as much the Sheriff of Nottingham

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Speaker 1: as He is the sheriff of Logan County, and we'll

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Speaker 1: get to him more later. At the border between these

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Speaker 1: two coal fields, there's a mountain, Blair Mountain, where a

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Speaker 1: lot of the action is going to happen. Then third,

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Speaker 1: further south, you've got the Williamson coal Field, which is

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Speaker 1: mostly in Mingo County, West Virginia, And we're just going

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Speaker 1: to call this whole area of Mingo County so that

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Speaker 1: we don't have to keep track of the coal field

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Speaker 1: name and the county name. It's on the border with

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Speaker 1: Kentucky with the tug Fork River as the border. Mingo

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Speaker 1: County is contested to rain at the time that we're

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Speaker 1: talking about between the unions and the operators, and it's

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Speaker 1: where the first half of today's story is going to

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Speaker 1: take place. There's a town in Mingo County named mate One,

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Speaker 1: which has all of five people living in it today,

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Speaker 1: down from a bustling eight hundred people who lived at

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties. And these days the town is

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Speaker 1: a thirty foot tall wall around the entire city because

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Speaker 1: it's the most flooded town in America apparently. And the

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Speaker 1: wall has nothing to do with any of the stuff

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Speaker 1: that we're talking about, but it it's so ominous and cool,

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Speaker 1: even though it wasn't there during the times we're talking about.

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Speaker 1: I just have to point out the wall because it's

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Speaker 1: really cool. And I went there once when I was

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Speaker 1: doing a flood relief in Mingo County because strip Minds

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Speaker 1: had caused all this flooding and ruined all these people's

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00:21:50,359 --> 00:21:52,879
Speaker 1: homes and stuff. And we went to mate wand to

428
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:55,520
Speaker 1: get tetness shots, and I just thought the place was cool.

429
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:59,000
Speaker 1: There's now a museum They're dedicated to the mind Wars,

430
00:21:59,080 --> 00:22:01,480
Speaker 1: which if anyone is passing through to Southwest Virginia, is

431
00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:05,080
Speaker 1: worth stopping at. And people talk ship on Westbrita. I'm

432
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:06,679
Speaker 1: sure you all are not familiar with this, but a

433
00:22:06,680 --> 00:22:10,560
Speaker 1: lot of people talk shout on Appalachia, and specifically West

434
00:22:10,600 --> 00:22:13,600
Speaker 1: Virginia catches a lot of this as well. Even though

435
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:17,360
Speaker 1: West Virginia I live currently, I'm not from West Virginia.

436
00:22:17,359 --> 00:22:20,240
Speaker 1: I can't claim that, but I live here. We have

437
00:22:20,400 --> 00:22:22,680
Speaker 1: two of the most badass events in US history, John

438
00:22:22,680 --> 00:22:25,040
Speaker 1: Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the fucking Battle of

439
00:22:25,080 --> 00:22:28,720
Speaker 1: Blair Mountain Um. Plus the reason West Virginia exists is

440
00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:32,520
Speaker 1: that folks here refused to join the Confederacy, So I

441
00:22:32,600 --> 00:22:35,959
Speaker 1: don't know. I think it's cool, and people who are

442
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:37,919
Speaker 1: from here are allowed to hate West Virginia, but I

443
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:42,080
Speaker 1: think everyone else should stop. Knawa County wasn't always a

444
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:44,600
Speaker 1: Union stronghold first, it had to be a Union battleground.

445
00:22:45,440 --> 00:22:48,640
Speaker 1: So we're going to include the fight as a prelude,

446
00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:51,200
Speaker 1: and it's a shame because it's already it's fucking interesting

447
00:22:51,200 --> 00:22:53,159
Speaker 1: of its own right. There was a strike that lasted

448
00:22:53,240 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: over a year, from April nineteen twelve to May. At

449
00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: least fifty people died violently and uncounted more and starvation.

450
00:23:01,280 --> 00:23:03,359
Speaker 1: And that's how bad the mind wars are is that

451
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:05,879
Speaker 1: there's this strike that lasts a year that fifty people

452
00:23:05,880 --> 00:23:09,000
Speaker 1: die violently in and it's only the prelude. It's only

453
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:12,000
Speaker 1: the like the footnote. I mean, it's not a footnote.

454
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:14,800
Speaker 1: All these amazing things happen, but it often ends up

455
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,080
Speaker 1: the prelude to what we're most of what we're gonna

456
00:23:17,080 --> 00:23:20,119
Speaker 1: be talking about. And that strike was called the Paint

457
00:23:20,119 --> 00:23:23,280
Speaker 1: Creek Cabin Creek strike because I want you all to

458
00:23:23,320 --> 00:23:26,600
Speaker 1: guess where it took place. Could it be at Paint

459
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:30,040
Speaker 1: Creek or Cabin Creek or both. It was at both

460
00:23:30,119 --> 00:23:34,160
Speaker 1: of them, Yes, and it took place at the nineties

461
00:23:34,200 --> 00:23:37,720
Speaker 1: six mines that employed seven thousand people on Paint Creek

462
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: and Cabin Creek. And I want you to hear their

463
00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:45,040
Speaker 1: wild radical demands that got so many people killed. One

464
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:49,960
Speaker 1: that the operators accept and recognized the union. Two that

465
00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:53,200
Speaker 1: the miner's right to free speech and peaceable assembly be restored.

466
00:23:54,080 --> 00:23:59,640
Speaker 1: Three that blacklisting discharged workers be stopped. Four that compulsory

467
00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: trade in that company stores be ended, because you, like

468
00:24:02,160 --> 00:24:04,119
Speaker 1: literally weren't allowed to shop at other places and they

469
00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:07,399
Speaker 1: would prevent you from They would prevent other like peddlers

470
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:09,280
Speaker 1: from coming in and selling wares because they had the

471
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:13,640
Speaker 1: monopoly on all commerce in the town. Five that cribbing

472
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:16,720
Speaker 1: be discontinued, and that two thousand pounds of mind coal

473
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:20,800
Speaker 1: constitute a ton scales be installed to weigh the tonnage

474
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:23,600
Speaker 1: of the miners, like literally, one of their demands was that, like,

475
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: we think the system of measurement that everyone else agrees

476
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:28,200
Speaker 1: on should be the system of measurement that we use.

477
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 1: I mean, how, what why? I'm shocked, I'm shocked by

478
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 1: your own I'm shocked by that they can't accept innovative metrics. Yeah,

479
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:47,680
Speaker 1: like you know. Six that miners be allowed to employ

480
00:24:47,800 --> 00:24:50,960
Speaker 1: their own check wayman to check against the weights found

481
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: by the company check wayman as provided by law. So

482
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 1: number six was literally, please let us have the law

483
00:24:56,520 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 1: that is the law, and number seven that to wayman

484
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 1: determine all docking penalties. Three of these seven are literally

485
00:25:05,640 --> 00:25:11,199
Speaker 1: just about the weight of the coal. Wow. So they

486
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: pretty much had violence coming asking for this kind of

487
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: stuff if you ask me. Yeah, obviously because the mountain.

488
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: In the mountains, no one can hear your scream. Yeah, Unfortunately,

489
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:25,280
Speaker 1: they rely on that real heavily. Which is funny though,

490
00:25:25,280 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: because I live in the mountains and you could hear

491
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,800
Speaker 1: everyone's scream. But there's just not enough people who care.

492
00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, well, I mean the other people

493
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: who hear the screaming care, It's just that the people

494
00:25:37,000 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 1: who have power don't care. There you go. So the

495
00:25:40,320 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: mine operators immediately hire the best strike breakers in the business,

496
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:46,160
Speaker 1: which are the Baldwin Felts, which is a private detective agency.

497
00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 1: They're kind of like the Pinkerton's. Pinkerton's are more famous

498
00:25:48,520 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: in general for union strike breaking but the Baldwin Felts,

499
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:55,239
Speaker 1: they're the hired guns of capital. Most of them are

500
00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,359
Speaker 1: actually ex cops from around the country, so the Union too.

501
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: They go for the very best in their field. And

502
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: who shows up but motherfucking mother Jones. And I'm almost

503
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:09,879
Speaker 1: entirely certain she would be fine with being called motherfucking

504
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:14,119
Speaker 1: mother Jones, because every single Miners account I've read of

505
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:18,119
Speaker 1: meeting her, I'll talk about how much she cusses. Oh yeah,

506
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: basically like, oh, she don't talk like she's in church. Nice.

507
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:27,320
Speaker 1: Her best quote ever, which is actually on the back

508
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:29,760
Speaker 1: of the T shirts you can get from the Mine

509
00:26:29,800 --> 00:26:33,879
Speaker 1: Wars Museum, um say, I'll tell the truth wherever I please,

510
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,119
Speaker 1: mother Jones. And you know, there's like three fucks that

511
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 1: aren't that aren't on the back of that shirt. I'll

512
00:26:39,640 --> 00:26:42,800
Speaker 1: fucking tell the fucking truth wherever I fucking please, you

513
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 1: fucking assholes. That's what the shirt should be, but probably

514
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: wouldn't market that well amongst conservatives in West Virginia, which

515
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:52,560
Speaker 1: is a shame because as the more I learned about

516
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:54,600
Speaker 1: the history of West Virginia, I'm like, this is not

517
00:26:54,680 --> 00:26:58,520
Speaker 1: a conservative place, you know, and it's it's not a

518
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: like in its history. Yeah, yeah, no, totally so so.

519
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 1: Mary Harris Jones, motherfucking Mother Jones was born in seven

520
00:27:08,160 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 1: in Ireland, along with basically half of Ireland. In the

521
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:15,399
Speaker 1: mid nineteenth century, she fled the potato famine, which wasn't

522
00:27:15,440 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 1: really a potato famine. Potatoes have never done anyone any harm.

523
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,439
Speaker 1: The famine was caused by British imperialism, full stop. And

524
00:27:22,560 --> 00:27:26,880
Speaker 1: you know what else was caused by British imperialism, the advertisers.

525
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:29,160
Speaker 1: That it's no weight. No, I'm not supposed to say

526
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: it like that. We like advertisers because they feed us,

527
00:27:37,080 --> 00:27:42,440
Speaker 1: unlike the people who starved Ireland. So he did that work,

528
00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: You did that, you got there, here's some ads, and

529
00:27:52,280 --> 00:27:55,720
Speaker 1: we are back and we're talking about potatoes. Actually we're

530
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: talking about Mother Jones. So she moves to the US

531
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: because you know, everyone's starving. She loses four children and

532
00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: her husband to yellow fever in the US because the

533
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:07,639
Speaker 1: nineteenth century fucking sucked no matter where you were, And

534
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: then she lost her seamstress shop in the wow. I

535
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:14,760
Speaker 1: wrote down the eighteen six seven one Chicago fire in

536
00:28:14,800 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 1: my script. I'm so smart. I'm almost certain the Chicago

537
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:22,560
Speaker 1: fire was in eighteen seventy one, I wrote down multiple

538
00:28:22,600 --> 00:28:26,760
Speaker 1: options in my script. She spent okay, so so her

539
00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:29,200
Speaker 1: Seamsters shop burns down, and Sophie's shaking her head at me,

540
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: and Mother Jones spends the rest of her life rousing

541
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 1: up rabble and fighting for unions, and she just went

542
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:38,880
Speaker 1: fucking everywhere. She helped found the IWW with cool person

543
00:28:38,920 --> 00:28:43,400
Speaker 1: alumni Lucy Parsons, though she kind of couldn't stand the anarchists,

544
00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: including Lucy Parsons. Um. I think she didn't think the

545
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:50,600
Speaker 1: anarchists were very tactically sound. But she shows up in

546
00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: West Virginia old as fuck. I think in her mid seventies.

547
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,120
Speaker 1: She's wearing a long black dress, the trails behind her

548
00:28:56,120 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: on the ground. Basically, she's like the goth i Ish

549
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 1: cussing leftist icon. Sophie has informed me that it was

550
00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:07,960
Speaker 1: indeed eight seventy one that the Chicago fire has happened. Anyway,

551
00:29:08,160 --> 00:29:11,440
Speaker 1: Mother Jones always surrounded by armed and angry men who

552
00:29:11,560 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 1: she calls her boys. Her favorite way of rousing rebbel

553
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: was basically just I didn't I didn't realize this part. Especially,

554
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 1: she just insulted people, called people cowards. That was her thing.

555
00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: She was like, why are you putting up with this ship?

556
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: All in an in an Irish broke And so here's

557
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: from a speech she gave during the Cabin Creek strike.

558
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:35,080
Speaker 1: They wouldn't keep their dog where they keep you fellows.

559
00:29:35,120 --> 00:29:38,240
Speaker 1: You know that you fellows have stood it entirely too long.

560
00:29:38,320 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 1: It's time now to put a stop to it. We

561
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: will give the governor until tomorrow night to take them

562
00:29:42,960 --> 00:29:45,560
Speaker 1: guards out of Cabin Creek. Here on the steps of

563
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 1: the Capitol West Virginia, I say that if the governor

564
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:49,920
Speaker 1: won't make them go, then we will make them go.

565
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:53,440
Speaker 1: If you are too cowardly to fight, I will fight.

566
00:29:53,840 --> 00:29:56,240
Speaker 1: You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Actually to the Lord,

567
00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: you ought just to see one old woman who is

568
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 1: not afraid of all the bloodhounds. It is freedom or death,

569
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:04,120
Speaker 1: and your children will be free. We're not going to

570
00:30:04,200 --> 00:30:06,640
Speaker 1: leave a slave class to the coming generation. And I

571
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: want to say to you that the next generation will

572
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:10,880
Speaker 1: not charge us for what we have done. They will

573
00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 1: charge and condemn us for what we have left. Undone

574
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:18,840
Speaker 1: I like her nice. So everyone's getting evicted right because

575
00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:20,600
Speaker 1: you're striking and you live in a company house. So

576
00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:22,560
Speaker 1: they kick you out of the houses. Everyone ends up

577
00:30:22,600 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 1: living in the shanties down by the tracks. Basically, the

578
00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:29,240
Speaker 1: Union's rent land and help let people build shanty towns

579
00:30:29,280 --> 00:30:31,959
Speaker 1: on them. So they're all living down by the tracks.

580
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:35,080
Speaker 1: And what are the Baldwin Felts do. Well, they do

581
00:30:35,160 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: what any rational person would do, and they take an

582
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:41,720
Speaker 1: armored train and they fucking machine gunned into the camp

583
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:46,440
Speaker 1: road by and machine gunned. That's how No Fox the

584
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 1: Company was about breaking the union. The first time I

585
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: heard that, I didn't believe the person who told me

586
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 1: I was actually in I was. I think. I think

587
00:30:54,040 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 1: he took me to the place that happened. I was like,

588
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:57,640
Speaker 1: this is where the machine gunned into the tents, And

589
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:01,000
Speaker 1: I'm like, of course they did. I believe you. That's

590
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:03,280
Speaker 1: a thing that happened, as they just machine gunned into

591
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 1: random people campaign by this. They did, They absolutely did,

592
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:12,800
Speaker 1: because that's the history of labor. So three thousand armed

593
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:16,040
Speaker 1: union miners march on the state capitol and they read

594
00:31:16,080 --> 00:31:19,360
Speaker 1: a fucking declaration of war. Mother Jones gets arrested at

595
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: one point for inciting a riot, then later for conspiracy

596
00:31:22,120 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: to commit murder. She refuses to acknowledge the court and

597
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,720
Speaker 1: doesn't even enter a plea. They give her twenty years.

598
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: She's like seventy years old. And the quote I'm gonna

599
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say my favorite Mother Jones quote, which is

600
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 1: pray for the dead and fight like health for the living.

601
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 1: I have no idea if it came from this particular

602
00:31:40,400 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: struggle or not, but I really like it. But my

603
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: favorite version of this quote is one that was adopted

604
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: by the League of Anarchist Necromancers, which is raised the

605
00:31:48,800 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: dead to fight like health for the living. I mostly

606
00:31:51,640 --> 00:31:53,320
Speaker 1: just want to tell you all that in case you

607
00:31:53,320 --> 00:31:56,960
Speaker 1: want to steal your podcast. I've toyed with the idea

608
00:31:57,000 --> 00:31:59,480
Speaker 1: of a Mother Jones analog in our world, But like

609
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,520
Speaker 1: are certain things we leave alone, like we would never

610
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: we changed the names of places in our world, but

611
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:08,120
Speaker 1: we would never like have Bloody Arlan or the Battle

612
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: of the Battle of the Battle of bait One like

613
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:12,600
Speaker 1: we would never like those things are fixed points in

614
00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:14,960
Speaker 1: history that happened in our world as well as the

615
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:17,320
Speaker 1: real world. But Mother Jones has to be referenced at

616
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,440
Speaker 1: least at some point. Yeah, at some point as herself.

617
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:22,840
Speaker 1: I don't think I can make her a character exactly

618
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:25,920
Speaker 1: or co opt her to be something in our world.

619
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,560
Speaker 1: But her presence is the mind wars wouldn't have happened

620
00:32:29,600 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: without her. Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, I think that's

621
00:32:31,360 --> 00:32:36,440
Speaker 1: probably true. One woman, Grace Jackson, was interviewed, a participant

622
00:32:36,440 --> 00:32:38,480
Speaker 1: in all this, was interviewed about Mother Jones, like fifty

623
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: years later, and she tells this story about her Mother

624
00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:43,760
Speaker 1: Jones wasn't afraid of the devil and all his angels,

625
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 1: and she'd come up to the head of the creek

626
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:47,400
Speaker 1: here and call out for all the men that wanted

627
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: to be let out of slavery to follow her, and

628
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: they did, scores of them. At Leewood, the company knew

629
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 1: she was coming, and the machine guns waiting up there

630
00:32:55,440 --> 00:32:58,560
Speaker 1: for her. Now everybody was following her, women and children

631
00:32:58,560 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 1: and everyone. When they got to Leewood, they had a

632
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:03,920
Speaker 1: cannon mounted on top of the company's store and they

633
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:06,320
Speaker 1: sent word that the miners had better turned back because

634
00:33:06,360 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: they was planning to let loose on all the miners

635
00:33:08,280 --> 00:33:10,880
Speaker 1: and their families. Well, I was just a child then,

636
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: but I was in the March two with my three uncles,

637
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: my grandmother, my parents, and my five aunts. The children

638
00:33:16,360 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 1: went to because there were thugs all through them hills,

639
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:20,080
Speaker 1: and they used the word thugs to talk about the

640
00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts men. Basically, there was thugs all through them hills,

641
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:25,760
Speaker 1: and it wasn't safe to lead. To leave a child alone,

642
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:28,880
Speaker 1: he'd be shot in your absence if one was going

643
00:33:28,960 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 1: to die. They figured they might as well just all

644
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 1: die together, because they weren't making no living anyway. When

645
00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 1: they arrived in Leewood, Mother Jones stood up there and

646
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: called them operators everything but a gentleman, and told them

647
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: to damn well go ahead and fire that cannon if

648
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,160
Speaker 1: they had the guts to do it. She even climbed

649
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 1: up onto the roof of that store and put her

650
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:49,160
Speaker 1: hands on the cannon and called them everything in the book.

651
00:33:49,480 --> 00:33:52,520
Speaker 1: She didn't care nothing for Christian language, because she loved

652
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: the people and hated them operators. Oh, she was a

653
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:59,040
Speaker 1: female robin hood. If there ever was well, they didn't

654
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:01,440
Speaker 1: do a thing. And so then Grace goes on to

655
00:34:01,480 --> 00:34:04,520
Speaker 1: describe about how her aunt Nellie, who is small and pregnant,

656
00:34:04,760 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: confronts a scab who yelled at her. So she quote

657
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: with real high old timey boots all laced up at

658
00:34:11,600 --> 00:34:14,719
Speaker 1: the ankle. She stomped him in the face, ripped his

659
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:18,800
Speaker 1: ears half off, and knocked his teeth out. Nice aunt

660
00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:21,200
Speaker 1: Nellie gets arrested with twenty other women who are who

661
00:34:21,200 --> 00:34:24,600
Speaker 1: are fighting, and she almost gives birth in prison because

662
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: she's pregnant when she's doing this, but her mom stormed

663
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: into the governor's office, passed the secretary and yelled at

664
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:32,839
Speaker 1: the governor until he lets Nellie out to give birth

665
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:35,960
Speaker 1: in the hospital. I just really like all that stuff

666
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 1: makes me happy. I mean, it's terrible things that are happening,

667
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:42,239
Speaker 1: and maybe it's bad, but that kind of stuff makes

668
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:45,239
Speaker 1: me so happy. So the strike goes on for a year,

669
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,680
Speaker 1: violence all around, until new governor comes in and says,

670
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 1: all right, you've got a fucking stop to both sides,

671
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: and he releases Mother Jones out for medical treatment. He

672
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:57,919
Speaker 1: releases a bunch of miners who've been arrested during martial law,

673
00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: and gets both sides down to negotiating table, and the

674
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:04,520
Speaker 1: strike wins. It's not a clear cut, perfect victory, but

675
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: the new contract was an improvement. So then the next year,

676
00:35:07,960 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: the major players and all of this, the Baldwin felt,

677
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:12,320
Speaker 1: the um w A and Mother Jones, they all go

678
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:14,560
Speaker 1: over to Colorado where they did the whole thing over

679
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 1: again in what gets called the bloodiest strike in American history.

680
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,320
Speaker 1: And I'm going to call a story for another time

681
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: because we're gonna stick to West Virginia. So that's the

682
00:35:24,760 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: background we're coming from for the main two parts of

683
00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:29,399
Speaker 1: our story. The first part is center on may Wan

684
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,480
Speaker 1: in Mingo County down at the border with Kentucky. And

685
00:35:32,520 --> 00:35:35,840
Speaker 1: I want to introduce you to Smiling Sid two Guns

686
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: Sid sid Hatfield, or as I like to call him,

687
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 1: the only good cop in history with the with the

688
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:48,239
Speaker 1: most West Virginia name. Oh yeah, unless I mean, like

689
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:51,560
Speaker 1: like Sid Hatfield. You don't get much more West Virginia

690
00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:55,439
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, it's great. So Sid Hatfield was born

691
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:59,640
Speaker 1: in either depending on who you ask, and he he

692
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:01,719
Speaker 1: may be was the bastard son of his mom's extra

693
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 1: marital affair, again depending on who you ask. He's one

694
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:07,360
Speaker 1: of twelve fucking kids. And he grows up and he

695
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:10,360
Speaker 1: watches the railways come in, he watches coal mining start,

696
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:12,759
Speaker 1: he watches bodies start coming out of the minds. He

697
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,920
Speaker 1: watches his widows are evicted from company houses as soon

698
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:20,840
Speaker 1: as their husbands die, and he's noticing what's happening. He

699
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 1: notices what's happening up at Paint Creek and Kanawa. He

700
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:25,800
Speaker 1: knows what the funk is up, but he doesn't have

701
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: a lot of choices. He leaves school as a teenager

702
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: who goes directly into the mines. There didn't seem to

703
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:33,319
Speaker 1: be any hope for a union in Mingo County though

704
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:35,440
Speaker 1: all the all the owners had them locked down with

705
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: yellow dog contracts that said you're not allowed to organize. So,

706
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:41,720
Speaker 1: Mate one, as as you talked about a little bit earlier,

707
00:36:41,760 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 1: how all of southern West Virginia is the wild West

708
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,399
Speaker 1: without the West. Mate one is a town of eight

709
00:36:46,440 --> 00:36:49,680
Speaker 1: hundred people, and it's filled with saloons and sex workers

710
00:36:49,719 --> 00:36:52,600
Speaker 1: and fighting and drinking and gambling, and it's the kind

711
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:55,919
Speaker 1: of place where the mayor runs a jewelry shop. Sid

712
00:36:55,960 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: really likes the place. He gets his teeth Captain Gold.

713
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 1: People start calling him smiling Sid. He's a hundred fifty

714
00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: pounds and five ft six and he likes to drink

715
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:10,600
Speaker 1: and right, so a reasonably a reasonably sized human being

716
00:37:10,600 --> 00:37:13,719
Speaker 1: in terms of heights. What I'm saying two is five ft.

717
00:37:13,800 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: I'm not a hundred and fifty pounds but I am five.

718
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:18,640
Speaker 1: I am five ft seven of God loves me and

719
00:37:18,680 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: the doopters pretty much and shoes. Yeah, yeah, well I

720
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 1: actually lost an inch before I came out as trans

721
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:28,400
Speaker 1: I was five ft ten and going to the doctor

722
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:29,920
Speaker 1: and they measured me and i'd be five ft ten,

723
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:33,080
Speaker 1: but I haven't changed size. I'm five ft nine and

724
00:37:33,080 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 1: three quarters. As soon as I went in with like

725
00:37:36,200 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: as a girl. They measured me and they looked at me,

726
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:40,720
Speaker 1: and I'm five ft nine and three quarters and they said, okay,

727
00:37:40,760 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: five ft nine and they wrote down five ft nine

728
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:44,319
Speaker 1: on the chart, and I was like, I lost an

729
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:46,719
Speaker 1: inch and I haven't even started taking hormones yet. This

730
00:37:46,800 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 1: is that's going on? Yeah? Is that is that like

731
00:37:49,920 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: some fee like something like some heteronormative sisp. Okay, so

732
00:37:57,960 --> 00:37:59,759
Speaker 1: you get to be who you who you really are,

733
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:05,400
Speaker 1: but we're taking a fucking quarter and so smile and

734
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 1: said this gold cup teeth. He likes to drink and

735
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:10,719
Speaker 1: fuck and fight, and he likes mate one. And he's

736
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 1: a sharp shooter too, though more of the throw potatoes

737
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:15,120
Speaker 1: in the air and shoot them type than the like

738
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:18,879
Speaker 1: fancy do tricks for crowds type, because potatoes are good

739
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 1: for so many things. M Yeah, one time, as he

740
00:38:23,800 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: describes it, he got into a little shooting match in

741
00:38:26,560 --> 00:38:29,440
Speaker 1: one of the minds, which is to say, he murdered

742
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 1: a mind foreman. He was found innocent at trial, so

743
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:34,480
Speaker 1: it might have been self defense. The mind foreman might

744
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 1: have started the fight. I have no idea. And the mayor,

745
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,360
Speaker 1: Mayor Testaman, who I think was as hard drinking, hard gambling,

746
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 1: hard fucking as the rest of them, appoints said the

747
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 1: town's first chief of police in basically because the mayor

748
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: likes him, and he he wears the badge, and he

749
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,600
Speaker 1: wears two guns two revolvers is how he's two guns

750
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,480
Speaker 1: said or whatever, and no uniform. And as a cop,

751
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:02,799
Speaker 1: he breaks up fights between miners, he escorts people home,

752
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:05,040
Speaker 1: and he basically tries as hard as he can to

753
00:39:05,120 --> 00:39:08,080
Speaker 1: not lock anyone up. And he actually managed to get

754
00:39:08,120 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: himself arrested twice during the first few months that he's

755
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,960
Speaker 1: the chief of police, once for illegal whiskey because we're

756
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:17,920
Speaker 1: into prohibition period, and once for fighting, which everyone just

757
00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 1: loved him more right because of both of these things.

758
00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:21,880
Speaker 1: And the mayor is the one who posts bond when

759
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: he gets arrested for these things in the union. The

760
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:29,240
Speaker 1: United Mine Workers of America try to come into Mingo

761
00:39:29,280 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 1: and force. They've been unionizing the ship out of the

762
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 1: whole country and the wages are shooting up for workers,

763
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:38,160
Speaker 1: but southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky were holding out,

764
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:40,800
Speaker 1: and as long as these non union mines were running,

765
00:39:41,239 --> 00:39:43,880
Speaker 1: they could undercut the union mines and funk everything up

766
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 1: for everyone. And miners and MINGO wanted the fucking union

767
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: because they wanted to stop being treated like ship dying constantly.

768
00:39:51,680 --> 00:39:54,960
Speaker 1: So and union organizers have been like getting shot like

769
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:58,440
Speaker 1: I read one report about in nineteen nineteen before the

770
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:02,040
Speaker 1: UMWA even shows up. So one basically like he's caught

771
00:40:02,080 --> 00:40:04,680
Speaker 1: talking about a union, and they like show up at

772
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 1: his house. So he runs out the back door and

773
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: runs into the hills and they shoot both of his legs,

774
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:12,960
Speaker 1: um breaking his femur, and he he lives, and he

775
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:16,239
Speaker 1: continues to organize for the union because he's fucking cool.

776
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: I don't actually remember his name. So miners at a

777
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: place called Burnwell, which is three miles out of town.

778
00:40:21,920 --> 00:40:24,880
Speaker 1: They're the first to charter themselves a union, and they

779
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 1: meet at a Baptist church and sit Hatfield stands outside

780
00:40:28,080 --> 00:40:31,280
Speaker 1: armed to make sure that they aren't bothered. The union miners,

781
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:33,640
Speaker 1: of course, all get fired and evicted from company housing.

782
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:37,720
Speaker 1: The Baldwin Felts guys who everyone just calls thugs, starts

783
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:40,840
Speaker 1: showing up armed in town al Felts. One of the

784
00:40:40,840 --> 00:40:45,000
Speaker 1: Felts brothers tries to bribe the mayor and Hatfield. They

785
00:40:45,040 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 1: offers them each five dollars to put a machine gun

786
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:50,080
Speaker 1: nest in mate one, and the two of them are like,

787
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 1: what are you fucking talking about? Fuck you, and they

788
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: send them running. Tensions heat up. Our lady of the union,

789
00:40:56,280 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: motherfucking mother Jones, shows up in her long black dress.

790
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:02,239
Speaker 1: She's in her mid eighties. Now black workers and white

791
00:41:02,239 --> 00:41:04,319
Speaker 1: workers are signing up for the union. So many people

792
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 1: are evicted that the union starts renting land to let

793
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 1: them pitch tents, and Mingo County goes from zero union

794
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,440
Speaker 1: miners to three thousand union miners in a matter of months.

795
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 1: In these tense cities, they form communities and for the

796
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,920
Speaker 1: first time, white miners, black miners, and Italian miners are

797
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,840
Speaker 1: all living in the same community. And it's like the

798
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:28,080
Speaker 1: first non segregated housing. Basically that I think that probably

799
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: any of them ever experienced. And the solidarity that they

800
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:34,200
Speaker 1: start building in these communities pretty much is how they

801
00:41:34,239 --> 00:41:37,240
Speaker 1: get away with everything that they get away with. And

802
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:41,040
Speaker 1: they're starving, so they start gardening everywhere, all through the hills,

803
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 1: growing beans and corn and tomatoes. And you want to

804
00:41:43,800 --> 00:41:45,880
Speaker 1: know what else they were growing, SOPHIEA is what they

805
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:50,640
Speaker 1: were growing. They were growing God's perfect vegetable, the potato,

806
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:56,359
Speaker 1: of course. And this podcast is in fact now I've

807
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:58,840
Speaker 1: been saying, we're trying to get sponsored by the concept

808
00:41:58,840 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: of potatoes, because i only want to be sponsored by

809
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:02,920
Speaker 1: good things, and I'm very sad about my participation in

810
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:08,879
Speaker 1: capitalist society. So we actually have from Kyle and add

811
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:14,200
Speaker 1: for the concept of potatoes. Today's episode is brought to

812
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:17,160
Speaker 1: you by the concept of potatoes. Not only are these

813
00:42:17,160 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 1: tubers delicious, they are also nutritious, able to provide nearly

814
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:23,800
Speaker 1: all of the calories, vitamins, and minerals for a basic,

815
00:42:23,880 --> 00:42:28,320
Speaker 1: healthy human diet. First cultivated by indigenous people of South America,

816
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:31,640
Speaker 1: potatoes traveled north and south, up and down the elevation

817
00:42:31,680 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 1: of the Andes Mountains, making them very adaptable and easy

818
00:42:35,000 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 1: to grow. They can even be stored without refrigeration. Potatoes

819
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:41,800
Speaker 1: are perfect for mutual aid of all kinds, whether providing

820
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:46,280
Speaker 1: for your communities or feeding revolutionary forces and everything in between.

821
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,239
Speaker 1: So head on over to your nearest farmer or local

822
00:42:49,280 --> 00:42:52,319
Speaker 1: food provider to learn more about potatoes and acquire some

823
00:42:52,440 --> 00:42:57,160
Speaker 1: for yourself. The concept of potatoes literally the greatest concept ever.

824
00:43:03,400 --> 00:43:06,719
Speaker 1: We are back and we're talking about how potatoes got

825
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:09,719
Speaker 1: them through years long strikes, as well as being in

826
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:11,440
Speaker 1: corn and tomatoes, and I'm sure they grew lots of

827
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:13,600
Speaker 1: other stuff too, you know, you just you find a

828
00:43:13,640 --> 00:43:14,960
Speaker 1: bit and you stick with it. And I also really

829
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: like potatoes, okay. On May thirteen, anti labor thugs in

830
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,040
Speaker 1: suits roll off a train into mate Wan carrying rifles.

831
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:26,359
Speaker 1: Two of the three Felts brothers are with them. They

832
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,719
Speaker 1: hop into cars heading towards Stone Mountain Coal Company, where

833
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:32,719
Speaker 1: striking miners were still living in company houses. How dare

834
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:36,839
Speaker 1: they not move out? People weren't fucking having it this time.

835
00:43:37,160 --> 00:43:39,759
Speaker 1: Words spreads around town and armed folks start to gather.

836
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:43,360
Speaker 1: Mayor Testament and sit Hatfield decided to go have a

837
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 1: conversation with the Baldwin Felts men and them and a

838
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,600
Speaker 1: bunch of miners catch up with them as they they're

839
00:43:48,600 --> 00:43:51,200
Speaker 1: in the middle of Victia, family just throwing their furniture

840
00:43:51,200 --> 00:43:53,880
Speaker 1: out into the fucking road, and sins like, do you

841
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:55,920
Speaker 1: even have the right papers? And they're like, yeah, we

842
00:43:55,960 --> 00:43:57,480
Speaker 1: got the right fucking papers. If you want to go

843
00:43:57,480 --> 00:43:59,040
Speaker 1: to double check, you gotta go all the way back

844
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: to town to double check. And says like, God damn it,

845
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:04,040
Speaker 1: this is definitely me paraphrasing, and so he goes back

846
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:07,359
Speaker 1: to town. Any double checks, he calls the deputy over

847
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: in the next town over. The deputy is like, no,

848
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:11,719
Speaker 1: they don't have fucking papers to do that. What they're

849
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:13,759
Speaker 1: doing is completely illegal, and so it's like, you mean

850
00:44:13,800 --> 00:44:15,959
Speaker 1: I can arrest them, and deputy is like, yeah, they're

851
00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:18,080
Speaker 1: they're breaking the law. You can you can arrest them.

852
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, I'm so fucking stoked. Or to use

853
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: an actual quote that he said during that conversation which

854
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,839
Speaker 1: came up later in court, we'll kill the goddamn sons

855
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:28,920
Speaker 1: of bitches before they get out of mate one. That's

856
00:44:28,960 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 1: the way he phrased it. So the mayor rushes off

857
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:36,360
Speaker 1: to sort through some warrants for illegal carrying of firearms

858
00:44:36,400 --> 00:44:38,560
Speaker 1: just in case the illegal eviction warrants don't come in

859
00:44:38,600 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: time because they're going to come on the five o'clock train.

860
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 1: Stories are trickling into town about the days evictions. They

861
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:48,200
Speaker 1: just fucking evicted a woman with a newborn into the rain.

862
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:52,080
Speaker 1: Willard Smith, who was there, put it like this. When

863
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:54,320
Speaker 1: they come to her, why they just picked up the mattress,

864
00:44:54,320 --> 00:44:56,439
Speaker 1: the woman, and the baby and carried them all out

865
00:44:56,440 --> 00:44:59,200
Speaker 1: to a rock pile next to the creek. It was raining.

866
00:44:59,600 --> 00:45:02,120
Speaker 1: Everyone down in the town was a minor, and when

867
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: a fellow came down and told what happened, they just

868
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 1: looked like they went wild. So people are displeased. And

869
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: when I say displeased, I mean they set up like

870
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:14,720
Speaker 1: a Wild West movie up in second story windows, gathered

871
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 1: up in some shops, et cetera with their rifles. The

872
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:19,359
Speaker 1: detectives show back up in town at four pm. They're

873
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:21,719
Speaker 1: done evicting everyone. They eat dinner at the hotel the

874
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: Planning and catch the five o'clock train, which is the

875
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 1: one that's supposed to carry the warrants for their own arrest,

876
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:28,759
Speaker 1: which they don't know. Sid goes up and it's like,

877
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:31,239
Speaker 1: I got a warrant for you assholes, and They're like, yeah, well,

878
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:33,160
Speaker 1: we gotta warrant for you. And they pull out this

879
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:36,240
Speaker 1: warrant that they have and it says that Sid's under arrest,

880
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:38,799
Speaker 1: so they try and take him under arrest. The mayor

881
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:42,680
Speaker 1: looks at it and says, this warrant is bogus. This

882
00:45:42,760 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 1: is probably the last thing the mayor ever gets to say.

883
00:45:45,400 --> 00:45:47,600
Speaker 1: People like to argue about who fired the first shot.

884
00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:51,360
Speaker 1: Sid claims that al Felts shot the mayor, so that

885
00:45:51,560 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: Sid then turn and shot Al or maybe the miners

886
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 1: hold up in the hardware store fired first. The Felts

887
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: claimed Sid shot first. I think it was Han soul Low.

888
00:46:00,840 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 1: However it happened. Al Felts and testament fall. Sid pulls

889
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:07,919
Speaker 1: two guns because he's sucking two guns. Sid and goes

890
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 1: all full fucking action movie with a revolver in each

891
00:46:11,239 --> 00:46:13,760
Speaker 1: hand in the middle of the streets, surrounded by thirteen

892
00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:17,240
Speaker 1: people trying to kill him, and everyone just starts shooting everyone.

893
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:21,520
Speaker 1: One Baldwin Felt guy takes off running. He runs to

894
00:46:21,560 --> 00:46:23,839
Speaker 1: the river. He swims across and escapes into the hills.

895
00:46:24,600 --> 00:46:27,640
Speaker 1: Two others sneak away in the chaos and they sneak

896
00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:30,800
Speaker 1: onto a train. Another guy he had walked off before

897
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:32,879
Speaker 1: the fight to buy cigarettes, and when he comes back

898
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:35,600
Speaker 1: and he's seeing what's happening, he just walked calmly away,

899
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 1: like he had nothing to do with any of it,

900
00:46:36,840 --> 00:46:38,839
Speaker 1: and he walks up to the train station. He rips

901
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:40,440
Speaker 1: up his I D the one that says he's a

902
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:44,080
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts man. It's like, I'm mean with any of this,

903
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:46,759
Speaker 1: and he gets on a train and he leaves, and

904
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: another guy who's not a detective but just a hired

905
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 1: mover who came with them, he just fucks off and

906
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 1: runs and he hides in a barrel for hours. So

907
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:58,960
Speaker 1: in the end, both Felts brothers who were there two

908
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:02,560
Speaker 1: of the three Felts brothers total, and five other detectives

909
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:05,799
Speaker 1: as well as Mayor Testament and two miners who are

910
00:47:05,840 --> 00:47:10,080
Speaker 1: actually both unarmed just happened to be there, are killed.

911
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 1: And one of the on our miners who's killed had

912
00:47:13,680 --> 00:47:16,839
Speaker 1: just been fired for joining the union that morning and

913
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: still said Hatfield just standing out in the middle of

914
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:22,839
Speaker 1: this fucking carnage and he's unharmed. And then the next

915
00:47:22,880 --> 00:47:25,160
Speaker 1: part this feels to action movie to be true. I

916
00:47:25,200 --> 00:47:27,839
Speaker 1: feel like the more I read history, the more. I'm like,

917
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 1: y'all say you're not fiction writers, but I'm not entirely

918
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 1: certain I believe you. But maybe this happened. Historians write it.

919
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:37,759
Speaker 1: And who am I called him a liar? I'm a

920
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:40,960
Speaker 1: professional liar. I write fiction for a living. Sid Hatfield

921
00:47:41,000 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: reholsters his guns. He walks over to Alf Felts. He

922
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:46,719
Speaker 1: drops the warrant onto al felt his body and says, now, you,

923
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: son of a bitch, I'll serve it on you, and

924
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:58,959
Speaker 1: then the theme song plays made Flood. There's a great

925
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:01,680
Speaker 1: mate one movie if you've never watched it, that was

926
00:48:01,719 --> 00:48:05,239
Speaker 1: made like in the seventies early eighties. I want to

927
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:08,640
Speaker 1: think that's like I remember my dad being very reluctant

928
00:48:08,680 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 1: to let me watch it. My dad was a non

929
00:48:10,280 --> 00:48:14,920
Speaker 1: union diesel mechanic, but he was non union in a

930
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 1: time in the seventies when the um w A was

931
00:48:18,760 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: suspected of being very corrupt. They were so corrupt in

932
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:25,520
Speaker 1: the seventies. Yeah, they were totally mobbed up. So like,

933
00:48:25,560 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: I'm not painting my dad as a hero. And my

934
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:29,799
Speaker 1: dad's a really good hearted man who meant well, who

935
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:32,279
Speaker 1: sucks up a lot or has over time, and I

936
00:48:32,320 --> 00:48:35,359
Speaker 1: love him, but um it, yeahs we He and I've

937
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:37,560
Speaker 1: talked about why because I call him a lot to

938
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,080
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I'm looking at this history and you

939
00:48:40,160 --> 00:48:43,040
Speaker 1: were there for like the sixties and seventies stuff like

940
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:45,319
Speaker 1: what can you tell me you know when? And he

941
00:48:45,400 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: we talked about him not being union and he's like, yeah,

942
00:48:48,200 --> 00:48:50,279
Speaker 1: He's like, if you were union, you were in bed

943
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 1: with organized crime. He's like, you know, in nineteen seventy two,

944
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:55,360
Speaker 1: when I'm like coming out of high school and becoming

945
00:48:55,360 --> 00:48:58,920
Speaker 1: a contractor first or a contractor is like laborman, labor

946
00:48:58,960 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 1: person or whatever, then becoming a mechanic, He's like, if

947
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,160
Speaker 1: you were union, everybody knew you were crooked. So that's

948
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 1: like such a as somebody who is a leftist and

949
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 1: somebody who is pro union as you know, as you

950
00:49:09,520 --> 00:49:12,080
Speaker 1: can possibly be. It's so weird to me that, like

951
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 1: I look back at the time when I was you know,

952
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:16,400
Speaker 1: the money that fed me that came into our house

953
00:49:16,520 --> 00:49:18,600
Speaker 1: was like dads, Like, I didn't dare sign him with

954
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:21,040
Speaker 1: the union. He's like, then you get you really get hurt. Though.

955
00:49:21,120 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: Our house got jack rocked. If you know what a

956
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 1: jack rock is when they take two nails, you take

957
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 1: two nails. You sharpen both ends and then you bend

958
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:30,000
Speaker 1: them into what looks like a jack like you would

959
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:32,040
Speaker 1: play Jack's with as a little kid, and you throw

960
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:34,960
Speaker 1: those in non union workers driveways so when they try

961
00:49:34,960 --> 00:49:36,640
Speaker 1: to go with you where they blow out their tires.

962
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 1: Apparently our driveway was jack rocked. When I was a kid,

963
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 1: people tried to step to my dad in the grocery

964
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,560
Speaker 1: store and he's like, it was just intimidation. He's like,

965
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:47,880
Speaker 1: these weren't good people. Why would I sign on with him? Like,

966
00:49:47,920 --> 00:49:50,400
Speaker 1: but Dad, the union, And he's like, the union is

967
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:52,839
Speaker 1: not always the ambentent force of good that you think

968
00:49:52,920 --> 00:49:54,920
Speaker 1: it is. It's the it depends on who's running it,

969
00:49:55,160 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 1: who's in charge of the money, and where it's going.

970
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:00,960
Speaker 1: And I'm again pro union, pro pro super pro union,

971
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: pro labor, but like it's it's it's seldom in in

972
00:50:05,239 --> 00:50:09,400
Speaker 1: the era past this, it's so seldom black and white

973
00:50:09,719 --> 00:50:12,480
Speaker 1: that it gets. It's why the UMWA is mostly toothless now.

974
00:50:13,200 --> 00:50:17,280
Speaker 1: And you know, and is down to in what individual

975
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:22,399
Speaker 1: like region or even building like you work in. Um

976
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:25,960
Speaker 1: My partner is a union employee. Uh. For his privacy,

977
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:30,680
Speaker 1: I will not say which union, but they're current union

978
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:34,960
Speaker 1: rep for their district right now barely even shows up

979
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:40,400
Speaker 1: and isn't doing his job in terms of like educating

980
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:44,880
Speaker 1: and recruiting like young new employees you know, who don't know,

981
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:47,400
Speaker 1: who don't know why they should join, not doing the job,

982
00:50:47,960 --> 00:50:51,360
Speaker 1: which of course means you know, if they don't join,

983
00:50:51,760 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: they're still they still enjoy the benefits, all the benefits

984
00:50:56,200 --> 00:50:58,960
Speaker 1: of union membership and which you know, people who are

985
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:02,040
Speaker 1: dues paying them, ers who are participating in the system

986
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: and voting, are not happy about that. And you know,

987
00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:07,439
Speaker 1: I mean, it will go away if you're not they're

988
00:51:07,440 --> 00:51:10,239
Speaker 1: doing your job and telling in people who don't know

989
00:51:10,280 --> 00:51:13,640
Speaker 1: any better about it. And so it's and he's you know,

990
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: he is tweeted at at the union and and tried,

991
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,520
Speaker 1: you know to complain before and it's just not not

992
00:51:21,560 --> 00:51:23,799
Speaker 1: gone anywhere. And of course then people are like, well,

993
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 1: why don't you run, And he's like, no, I don't.

994
00:51:28,760 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: I don't want to be the union rep. I I

995
00:51:30,640 --> 00:51:32,719
Speaker 1: like my job. I like my job. The way to

996
00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:35,320
Speaker 1: thank you, but I mean it's yeah, it's it really

997
00:51:36,080 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: still today. It really depends on you know, who's who's

998
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:42,360
Speaker 1: in charge. He's running things and what's going on. Unfortunately,

999
00:51:42,960 --> 00:51:45,080
Speaker 1: I do love though, all the kind of new blood

1000
00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:47,319
Speaker 1: that's hit in the unions, and I feel like the

1001
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,800
Speaker 1: unions are having a moment again where where it's becoming

1002
00:51:51,840 --> 00:51:54,760
Speaker 1: what it originally was. And you know, eventually you build

1003
00:51:54,760 --> 00:51:57,160
Speaker 1: a power structure and that power structure sort of lumbers

1004
00:51:57,200 --> 00:52:00,239
Speaker 1: on for its own sake. And then I still kind

1005
00:52:00,239 --> 00:52:03,840
Speaker 1: of I'm like, well, even the old dinosauric labor unions,

1006
00:52:03,920 --> 00:52:07,080
Speaker 1: like a union job just pays half again or twice

1007
00:52:07,080 --> 00:52:09,439
Speaker 1: as as well as a non union job like buying

1008
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:12,840
Speaker 1: large you know. But the theme music has just rolled.

1009
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:16,279
Speaker 1: It was very excellent performance of that. And this gets

1010
00:52:16,360 --> 00:52:20,280
Speaker 1: called the Mate one Massacre, and I, frankly, I don't

1011
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:21,799
Speaker 1: think this is a good name for it, because when

1012
00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:24,200
Speaker 1: I think of a massacre, I think of unarmed people

1013
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,520
Speaker 1: getting mowed down by a government or whatever. And it's

1014
00:52:26,560 --> 00:52:29,680
Speaker 1: true that three unarmed people were killed in this, right,

1015
00:52:30,200 --> 00:52:33,640
Speaker 1: the mayor and two random miners who happened to be around.

1016
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:37,239
Speaker 1: But for the most part it was the fucking labor.

1017
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:40,160
Speaker 1: The anti labor thugs who showed up who had just

1018
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,799
Speaker 1: shot the mayor, all got fucking mowed down. And so

1019
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:46,879
Speaker 1: Battle of Mate One That's that's what I'm going with

1020
00:52:47,360 --> 00:52:50,799
Speaker 1: for what happened here. And everyone is fucking stoked, and

1021
00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:53,800
Speaker 1: by everyone I mean miners, not coal operators or the

1022
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:57,319
Speaker 1: Baldwin Felts. The one surviving Felts brother in particular, is

1023
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 1: not stoked, and he he gathers up a posse to

1024
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:04,000
Speaker 1: storm the town on the next train, which is a

1025
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:08,360
Speaker 1: night train, and sit Hatfield, the sheriff, and the sheriff

1026
00:53:08,360 --> 00:53:10,959
Speaker 1: of Mango County hat Feels the chief of police of

1027
00:53:10,960 --> 00:53:14,319
Speaker 1: of mate Wan itself. They deputize a hundred miners and

1028
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:17,279
Speaker 1: they wait for this posse to show up, and now

1029
00:53:17,280 --> 00:53:19,960
Speaker 1: it's going to be a blood bath. But the true

1030
00:53:20,080 --> 00:53:24,800
Speaker 1: hero of our story is the unnamed to history train conductor.

1031
00:53:25,360 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 1: As he's bringing in the posse, or rather as he's

1032
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 1: he's doing his fucking job driving the train, he's like, oh, funck, no,

1033
00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:35,160
Speaker 1: I'm not stopping. So he just speeds up and blows

1034
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:38,719
Speaker 1: right through Matejan just rolls right through all the arm

1035
00:53:38,800 --> 00:53:40,880
Speaker 1: posse is helpless. They can't get off the train, and

1036
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:44,080
Speaker 1: no massacre happens. And that's where we're going to leave

1037
00:53:44,080 --> 00:53:46,680
Speaker 1: the story for today, with the people of mate want safe.

1038
00:53:47,080 --> 00:53:49,719
Speaker 1: I mean, except for the mayor and the other two guys,

1039
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:54,080
Speaker 1: but and the dead private cops. But whatever. So, how

1040
00:53:54,080 --> 00:53:56,400
Speaker 1: are you all feeling so far about this opening salvo

1041
00:53:56,600 --> 00:54:01,160
Speaker 1: in in the Mine Wars. It's really acts, really interesting. Um,

1042
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:03,359
Speaker 1: I'm glad to learn a lot more, learn a lot

1043
00:54:03,400 --> 00:54:06,239
Speaker 1: more about it. Yeah, I mean, like you know, like

1044
00:54:06,280 --> 00:54:09,239
Speaker 1: Cam and I of course both being Appalachian from kind

1045
00:54:09,239 --> 00:54:11,399
Speaker 1: of the Virginia coal fields, and that the heart of

1046
00:54:11,880 --> 00:54:15,000
Speaker 1: that part of Appalachia, Like this is history we grew

1047
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: up with, and history that for the production of our show,

1048
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:21,360
Speaker 1: especially season three, because season three with us is dealing

1049
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 1: with villain stories and monster stories as the focus. So

1050
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:27,880
Speaker 1: naturally as we move into the nineteen thirties, that means

1051
00:54:28,239 --> 00:54:30,399
Speaker 1: we look at monsters who are union busters, We look

1052
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:34,400
Speaker 1: at folks who work who have chosen the side of darkness,

1053
00:54:34,800 --> 00:54:37,279
Speaker 1: both literal and metaphorical. So I've been neck deep in

1054
00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:40,520
Speaker 1: research for a lot of this actually cool side note,

1055
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: there's a website which I can send you latter. I

1056
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 1: don't want to give them free advertising that if you

1057
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:47,040
Speaker 1: have a town that exists within their atlas, they will

1058
00:54:47,080 --> 00:54:49,239
Speaker 1: make a T shirt that just has that town's name

1059
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 1: across the chest and there is a town called Appalachia, Virginia.

1060
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: So if you want a really nice T shirt or sweatshirt,

1061
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,120
Speaker 1: that just as Appalachia. But I also had one's met

1062
00:54:58,120 --> 00:55:01,360
Speaker 1: ones made that say mate one and one that says Harlem,

1063
00:55:01,400 --> 00:55:03,760
Speaker 1: and those are my when I need to write about

1064
00:55:03,840 --> 00:55:06,799
Speaker 1: those things. It's been may seem dorky, but I pull

1065
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:08,640
Speaker 1: those shirts. I pull the show. Wear those shirts today

1066
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:10,680
Speaker 1: on a writing and research day, and they kind of

1067
00:55:10,680 --> 00:55:12,879
Speaker 1: every time I look in the mirror, every time I

1068
00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:14,799
Speaker 1: look down at myself, I'm like, okay, yeah this is

1069
00:55:14,920 --> 00:55:17,399
Speaker 1: this is who and where, And it's kind of like, yeah,

1070
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:19,200
Speaker 1: that's a really cool. But there actually was a hardcore

1071
00:55:19,200 --> 00:55:22,520
Speaker 1: band from West Virginia called Mateo at one point in time.

1072
00:55:22,520 --> 00:55:26,040
Speaker 1: I don't know if they were any good that yeah,

1073
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:30,160
Speaker 1: yeah it's good no matter what. Yeah yeah yeah. But

1074
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:31,759
Speaker 1: uh but they were from West Virginia because there was

1075
00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:33,279
Speaker 1: an old message board and it was so much that

1076
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:36,759
Speaker 1: scene was centered around a lot of Appalachian uh, a

1077
00:55:36,760 --> 00:55:39,880
Speaker 1: lot of Appalachian hardcore. But um yeah. So but like

1078
00:55:40,360 --> 00:55:42,520
Speaker 1: Mate one is one that doesn't get talked about enough

1079
00:55:42,680 --> 00:55:45,920
Speaker 1: in my opinion, Like you know, Blair Mountain is huge,

1080
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:48,000
Speaker 1: and we'll get the Lair Mountain, but like mate one

1081
00:55:48,200 --> 00:55:51,400
Speaker 1: was like this little a little massacre blip, you know that,

1082
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:53,840
Speaker 1: Just I feel like it's overlooked. So thank you for

1083
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:59,120
Speaker 1: talking about movie. Well, where can people find out more

1084
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:02,279
Speaker 1: about what you do? Do you all do anything? Do

1085
00:56:02,320 --> 00:56:06,319
Speaker 1: you write any fiction podcasts that people might like that

1086
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,120
Speaker 1: you've already been talking about? Okay, I'm tell them about

1087
00:56:09,120 --> 00:56:15,359
Speaker 1: the show. Our show is an Eldridge horror fiction anthology podcasts.

1088
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:19,279
Speaker 1: You can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts and

1089
00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:22,719
Speaker 1: find out more about the show at www dot Old

1090
00:56:22,719 --> 00:56:26,040
Speaker 1: Gods of Appalachia dot com. Uh and from there you

1091
00:56:26,080 --> 00:56:30,120
Speaker 1: can connect to our Patreon all our socials all of a. Yeah,

1092
00:56:30,160 --> 00:56:33,600
Speaker 1: the hub is really www dot Old Gods of Appalachia

1093
00:56:33,640 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 1: dot com. If you like scary stories sitting Appalachia, we

1094
00:56:38,520 --> 00:56:40,799
Speaker 1: might be up your alley. Yeah, that's just if you

1095
00:56:40,840 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 1: like it being tied to Appalachian history, or as we

1096
00:56:43,520 --> 00:56:46,279
Speaker 1: call it, an alternate Appalachia. And we've had a lot

1097
00:56:46,320 --> 00:56:48,560
Speaker 1: of interesting discussions that people think we're gonna like change

1098
00:56:48,600 --> 00:56:50,879
Speaker 1: history or like, oh is that just your way of

1099
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:53,759
Speaker 1: saying like these people weren't here, this that no alternative

1100
00:56:53,760 --> 00:56:58,040
Speaker 1: Appalachia for us just means there's monsters. Yeah, it means

1101
00:56:58,080 --> 00:57:00,640
Speaker 1: there are monsters. And we made che uge the names

1102
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:02,839
Speaker 1: of some towns so that people don't go bother people

1103
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:04,920
Speaker 1: who actually live in those towns. If they still exist,

1104
00:57:04,960 --> 00:57:08,719
Speaker 1: then we may move some stuff around. Um. But yeah,

1105
00:57:08,840 --> 00:57:11,680
Speaker 1: when wherever you find podcasts, you can find us. We're

1106
00:57:11,760 --> 00:57:14,240
Speaker 1: we're we're pretty much everywhere. And if you're shy about

1107
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:16,240
Speaker 1: like I don't, I don't engage with It's funny because

1108
00:57:16,240 --> 00:57:19,040
Speaker 1: I write horror, but I actually don't engage with a

1109
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 1: lot of like I don't watch horror movies right by

1110
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:24,439
Speaker 1: and large, I don't watch some. But yeah, but both

1111
00:57:24,480 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 1: of you weirdos. But all gods of appalaches creepy. It's it, uh,

1112
00:57:31,760 --> 00:57:34,520
Speaker 1: it carries a I don't know. What I'm saying is

1113
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: that if you're if you're nervous about checking it out

1114
00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:40,440
Speaker 1: because it's a horror podcast, try it anyway. It's not

1115
00:57:40,480 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 1: going to drop you into like something that's gonna keep

1116
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:45,440
Speaker 1: you up on I don't know, Okay, I don't know,

1117
00:57:45,600 --> 00:57:48,840
Speaker 1: but you should listen to. We also include content warnings

1118
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:51,840
Speaker 1: in the in the show notes for every episode so

1119
00:57:51,880 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 1: that people can avoid the things that they might find

1120
00:57:55,960 --> 00:58:00,240
Speaker 1: a little upsetting. Uh. And for those who have three

1121
00:58:00,240 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 1: processing issues, are just like to read along. We also

1122
00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:07,000
Speaker 1: have transcripts every episode on our website. And we do

1123
00:58:07,040 --> 00:58:09,880
Speaker 1: have a strict policy of there's no animal death, uh,

1124
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:12,240
Speaker 1: not in the form of you know, the dog always lives,

1125
00:58:12,240 --> 00:58:15,160
Speaker 1: the cat always lives, there's mention of animal sacrifice. It's

1126
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:18,400
Speaker 1: strictly off screen. Uh. There will never, ever, ever, ever

1127
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: be a sexual assault scene depicted on screen. We don't

1128
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:24,520
Speaker 1: ignore and pretend that things don't exist. But that's not

1129
00:58:25,240 --> 00:58:29,800
Speaker 1: interest in making you sit through a description of that

1130
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:32,760
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah, And and just first statement of

1131
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:36,480
Speaker 1: values the show is is very left. It's we're very

1132
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 1: if it's on the left, we're pro, we're pro sects work,

1133
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 1: we're pro queer, pro trans Yeah. Yeah, there's it's it's

1134
00:58:43,600 --> 00:58:46,600
Speaker 1: just al Yeah, there's it's it's way way. Yeah, it's

1135
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:49,240
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. Are just like where people

1136
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:51,040
Speaker 1: have been an Appalachian since the beginning. We have been

1137
00:58:51,040 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 1: here since like and and for the for so many

1138
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:56,400
Speaker 1: people to say like strong Appalachian women built this, you

1139
00:58:56,440 --> 00:58:58,960
Speaker 1: cannot tell me there are that many strong Appalachian women

1140
00:58:59,040 --> 00:59:01,840
Speaker 1: who built this, built this region. And a whole lot

1141
00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:05,520
Speaker 1: of mark We you know, so like so as far

1142
00:59:05,600 --> 00:59:07,800
Speaker 1: as that goes, if your horror has a lot of

1143
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:12,240
Speaker 1: bad tropes, we do our dead level best to avoid them,

1144
00:59:12,240 --> 00:59:13,880
Speaker 1: so give us a try. A lot of people say

1145
00:59:13,920 --> 00:59:15,600
Speaker 1: I don't do horror, but I do do old Gods,

1146
00:59:16,080 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 1: So we're out there. If you have questions, you know,

1147
00:59:18,680 --> 00:59:20,880
Speaker 1: it's okay. There's still tropes. We just sort of we

1148
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:25,160
Speaker 1: now have our own trips. Yes, yeah, fair enough, and

1149
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:27,320
Speaker 1: we'll be back on let's do for far two of

1150
00:59:27,320 --> 00:59:33,120
Speaker 1: this episode, Yep, do All the Cool People Who Did

1151
00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:35,880
Speaker 1: Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. But

1152
00:59:36,000 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 1: more podcasts on cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool

1153
00:59:39,080 --> 00:59:41,440
Speaker 1: zone media dot com, or check us out on the

1154
00:59:41,600 --> 00:59:44,560
Speaker 1: I Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

1155
00:59:44,600 --> 00:59:45,400
Speaker 1: your podcasts.