Valentine's Day Story

A VALENTINE'S DAY STORY IN SERIAL FORM BEGINNING TODAY AND ENDING ON VALENTINE'S DAY.

My grandmother wrote more, much more, about the family history, gathered between baking loaves of bread and hanging wash and wondering, herself, as the mine whistle blew at the end of each workday, if she would see her own husband come through the door at night. Such were the dangers of coal mining-and still are! This story is about the childhood friendship between Grandma’s mother and father that burgeoned into a great love affair that lasted seventy years!

You see, Great-grandma and Great-grandpa were valentines to each other even from the time they were good friends as small children. The seed of their great love for each other was sown amid the character forming events, the daily trials and triumphs of life in a coal mining town in northeast Pennsylvania as the Twentieth Century appeared on the horizon. As told in my grandmother’s own words.

THIS STORY WILL APPEAR DAILY TILL VALENTINE DAY, AND YOUR AUTHOR WILL BE ADDING A LITTLE EACH DAY TILL THEN.(excerpted from ‘Tales From The Red Chest’, part of“Historical Collection Anthology:Sweet” by Victory Tales Press.

A long time ago, when my mother was a little girl, she lived in the hills of Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region. The people who live in this region are known as Coal Crackers. The name of her town was and is Carbondale, named because it was the home of the first deep coal mine in the United States. During Grandma's childhood, it was made up mainly of miners, like her father, Mike Gilroy.

It's been a long time since my mother, Madelyn, was a girl of eight years old, on the steep snow-covered hills of Carbondale.. It was the year 1889. These hills are so incredibly steep that, to illustrate, Grandma and her brothers and sisters rode down the hill from their house to school each winter morning on their sleds. It was a snowy period in Pennsylvania history, and so the hills were mostly covered with white fluff all winter.

This February day, Madelyn and her brother, Fran, and her sister, Marie, had just come down the hill and were pulling their sleds toward St. Rose School, where she was in third grade. Pa had left the house as usual, at 5:30 a.m. and by now, was two hours into his hour shift, digging coal with a pick in the blackness of the mine, and loading the mule carts to carry to the coal cars, and then up the shaft via rail.

Just as they arrived at the foot of the hill, the mine warning whistle blew. The whole town heard it, and everyone knew exactly what it meant!.........another excerpt tomorrow!

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A collapse somewhere in the mine! The three kids ran toward the edge of town where the mine was, to watch the inevitable rescue operation. The hook & ladder company raced by, horses' manes flying in the wind, determined looks on the faces of firefighters, who were neighbors of the miners stuck below ground.

Her father was down there! And all the fathers of her friends were, too. In some cases, young sons of fathers previously killed in the mines were down there, acting in the role of doorkeeper for the mules, in order to earn a salary to support their families. These tiny coal boys were only six or seven years old. They were affectionately called 'Little Nippers'. Their compact size enabled managers to station them in chairs in the dark of the mines, to open the doors for the mules when they carried their carts filled with coal to the coal trains. Sometimes, these small boys fell asleep at their posts, and were run over by the mules when the animals came through the doors on their own.

Madelyn thought of Jack Barrett, her friend from across the street, who worked everyday down there and had since his father had died there the year before. That terrible day, the coal company wagon called by miners by the name 'Black Maria', carried his father's dead body to their home, and left it on the front porch for the family to wake him and bury him. His thick, copper-colored hair had lost its sheen, and his ruddy skin took on a dreary, pale look from being down there. She hoped he'd come through........another excerpt tomorrow!

His circumstances had forced him to mature fast for an eight year old. He acted brave about it, though, and showed alot of spirit despite the sad turn of events in the Barrett home. His mother took in wash and did housecleaning for the business people in Carbondale now. Madelyn wondered if Mrs. Barrett would be able to free herself from her work to come to the mine.

No need to wonder, anymore. Here she came, her winter coat opened and whipping in the wind. The crowd gathered in a huddle around a metal storage can lit with fire. The impatient wait began.

Oh, God! Madelyn cried to herself.Let Pa come out alive. And save Jack, too. He's one of my best friends. If you do, I promise to give up sweets for a year. I promise to help the other kids with their homework everyday. I'll never lose my temper again, Lord. I'll be nice to everybody I meet forever and ever. And a swelling of love and goodwill welled up in the little girl who was to be my mother. I observed her steady kindness toward others from the time I was very small, and surely she practiced it from that day forward. At that young age, Madelyn realized that, when she wanted something from God, she sent Him her love and kindest thoughts in order to get it. And she carried that attitude over to people, too, not only when she was trying to get something, but all the time she spent in giving, too......another excerpt tomorrow.

Within a few hours, many of the miners found their way to the coal yard from the mines. Others still were below and it would become a waiting game till families knew the outcome of today’s disaster.

No thanks were due to the mine supervisors, who ran to tend to their mules, leaving the miners to save themselves as company men pulled and pushed the panicked animals up to the coal yard. You see, things haven't changed so much for miners, even to this day.

And Jack kept his wits about him-when a frantic mule galloped through a mine door, he grabbed its reins and soothed it till it stood still long enough for Jack to do what needed to be done-Ed Kelly had been overcome by fumes and lay limp on the coal cart tracks.

Soon he was leading the frightened mule out of the labyrinth tunnel. Following the cart tracks, he walked in the dim light provided by the taper on his helmet, now tripping over piles of avalanched coal, now sliding in sludge water that had forced its way onto the tunnel floor.

Ah! Jack breathed with relief for a moment. Above was daylight. He called to the rescue workers and pulled on the pulley wire. "It's Jack…Jack Barrett! Send down the platform. I'm coming up!"

The crowd roared its approval at sight of little Jack emerging from the smoking mine shaft and pulling a mule that carried Ed across its back to safety. Madelyn joined hands with Marie and Fran and danced with the group around the fire.

People hugged their husbands and brothers who had come up from under the earth alive and shed tears of joy. Mrs. Barrett held her Jack so tight against her apron that he had to pull away just to get some air. Madelyn, watching, brushed away a teardrop or two of her own.

Just then, Marie nudged her and whispered with urgency in her tone. "But, where is our Pa?!"…….another excerpt and the rest of the story tomorrow, Valentine's Day.

CONCLUSION

Madelyn was wondering all the way along where her pa was, she tried to keep her brother and sister calm by acting as if she knew pa was safe!

A spokesman for the mine company, Al Yarnes, was speaking in the center of the families. Holding up his palm for quiet, he waited for all to give him their undivided attention. His spectacles were fogged over from the cold, giving him a rather comical appearance. It belied the seriousness of his communication to the workers and their families.

“We here at Carbondale Coal Works want to express our happiness that many of our workers have escaped from the mine today. Look around you, though, and you will see that not everybody came up from underground.”

Quickly, the miners and their relatives scanned the crowd.

“Tom Mullaney ain’t here!” A weary middle-aged miner was agitated.

“My Andrew didn’t come up!” A pregnant mother with two youngsters in tow was on the verge of tears.

“Pa…..my pa….he’s still down there! We have to go down and get him….Mike Gilroy!” That was Fran shouting. He began to run toward the  mine opening.

Two miners pulled the ten year old back as he tried to forge ahead by pulling himself away from them. “No, you don’t, Fran! If you go down there, might be you won’t come up! But your pa, Mike, he will. We know it! Now you just stay put. We’ll be the ones to go down if anybody has to!

Jack made as if to follow after Fran.

“You, too, Jack Barrett, you stay here and hold onto Fran. Your ma counts on you. You’ve saved yourself today, and Ed Kelly, too. That’s enough chancing for one day. You hear me?” So spoke Mrs. Barrett, her great chest heaving with sobs as she held her arms out to Jack, needing him to give her the comfort of hugging her after his close brush with death.

Jack looked briefly down at the ground, kicking at the coal-covered snow. “Ok, Ma.”

Now those miners still able, gathered round the opening to the mine as the firefighters began to go down to the depths. They stood staunchly alongside the firemen to lead the rescuers through the maze that made up the byzantine tunnels in the mountain’s underbelly. During their descent, the earth belched loudly, and threw up blinding black smoke that choked them. The mine didn’t collapse, though. Not yet, anyway! While it held, they wouldn’t come up without trying their best to save the others.

Old Dan Hegerty held a magnified lantern over the mine opening and called out what news he had to the families. He was quiet for half an hour. Then, “I hear ‘em!....What do you say?.....Wait!.....Men, come over, they’ve got Mike and the others……we’ve got to act fast!....there’s a fire in the mine and they’re running for their lives!......At the ready! We’ll haul them up, all of them, fast as we can, ‘fore the fire swallows ‘em!”

Every man and boy ran to the opening of the mine. Meanwhile, the women and girls hauled water from the well pump to feed the hand-operated fire hose pump as the fire company dragged the hose and stood ready at the mine opening to wet down the mine shaft and base so the fire wouldn’t get their neighbors. Every moment counted.

Two fire fighters operated the water pump on the fire truck, squeezing out gallons of lifesaving water as quick as the women and children could feed it. Four husky fireman joined their efforts at the mine opening to aim the powerful stream down the shaft.

“All right now,” Dan spoke with authority. “All together now, we have to be quick…..one, two, three……pull hard on the wire.” As one, every available miner lent his hands to the Herculean task of pulling up twenty men.

“Heave. Ho! Keep it up, men.” They pulled with all their might. At one point, the platform tipped sideways, threatening throw the men off its side. Above, the miners shifted their weight to the weak side and pulled the wire to balance the platform. Onlookers breathed a quick sigh of relief as the platform became horizontal again.

A few seconds more, and they saw the tapers of light on the miner’s caps. Now the platform was at ground level.

“Pa, pa!” Marie and Madelyn ran with arms outstretched to greet their pa.

Fran was already beside him. Mike Gilroy gathered his children into his arms. He shook hands with his rescuers and they clapped him on his back. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

“Aye, and that!” Mike was quick to reply.

“Where’s your ma?” Pa looked around.

“The baby was sick this morning, Pa. Ma would stay home with him rather than to bring him down to the mines in this weather.

“We’d better get home now.  She’s heard the news and she’ll be worried about me.” They trudged home through the snow, holding onto the tail of Pa’s jacket.

Ma was waiting at the front door and held it open as they came up the steps. She hugged Pa affectionately, wiping away a tear lest it destroy the beauty of having her husband back home with her, safe and sound despite the terror of this day’s events. “You’re home, Mike! I’ve got lunch ready! Come now, all of you, take off those wet coats and gather round the stove. I’ll bring in tea.”

They gathered round the pot belly stove.  It was only then that Madelyn reached into her satchel that, by now, was wet with snow from being outside during all the chaos. She took out her cutout hearts, all carefully addressed to each of her thirteen classmates. Oh! Well, these weren't presentable.  All her work gone to waste. Never mind! Madelyn had the best and most memorable Valentine's Day– the day Pa and her good friend, Jack, were saved during a mine explosion-THE END.