Appalachian Memories: Saturdays with Papaw

My grandfather, Hugh Dingess, older man on the right in the glasses, along with Rev. Arthur Frye at my family reunion somewhere around 1974 or 1975.

By T.L. HEADLEY, MBA, MA, MAT, BA
When I was a boy … I remember spending Saturdays with my papaw.
He was a coal miner for Island Creek Coal Company in Logan and back then he would go to the company store at Yolyn to pick up his check… Every Saturday morning he would come get me and load me up in his pickup truck and away we would go to the store. For a boy growing up in the 1960s it was a dream world made out of wood and glass. Cabinets lined the entire store, filled with assorted goods, but my eye was always drawn to the ones with the toys – to the bicycles that were at the back of the store. I remember the little model railroads and toy cars.
But the thing I remember most – the thing my papaw and I shared every weekend was the hamburger and milkshake we got every week. It was the best hamburger and the best milkshake ever made. And sitting there on those stools with my papaw was a special time for a little boy.
My grandpa Hugh was a special man. I was the oldest grandson and my mom, dad and I lived with him and my grandma Margaret for a while when I was very little.
Once we finished our burgers and shakes, Papaw would always let me pick out some little toy. It was never much but to me it was the most special present in the world – a treasure. Then we would hop back in his truck and we would always head back to Logan to make a stop at the old Trailways Depot down by the railroad tracks that ran through town.
We would go out back and sit on the loading dock with my grandpa’s friends – almost all of them coal miners. One thing I remember was they were from everywhere – and there didn’t seem to be any racism or any of that stuff. He had friends who were black, Polish, Mexican, it didn’t matter. They were all miners and that was more important than anything else.
We would sit there I would be treated to some of the wildest stories you ever heard. One of the things they seemed to like to tell about was the legendary Whompcat. It was a big black cat that supposedly lived in the coal mines. It would steal the miner’s dinner buckets, eat all the food and leave the buckets lying around in the mine. They said it was as big as a man and jet black.
Now, Papaw’s dinner bucket was always there and it always had treasure in it – when he would get home in the evenings I would grab his dinner bucket and look for the candy bar that was always there. I would sneak behind the couch and eat the candy bar.
Papaw always used to smoke a pipe and Prince Albert tobacco was his favorite. Every now and then he would sneak me the pipe over the back of the couch and let me take a few puffs. He would always say you don’t inhale the smoke you just hold it in your mouth to get the taste.
Our weekends together would continue even after he got to sick from black lung to work. We got him a CB radio base station and he would sit on it for hours. We cut a right-of-way for his antenna that was about a mile back on the ridge behind his house. Every Saturday at about 8 am, he would call and tell me he “just couldn’t get out on his radio” and he was sure “something was on the line grounding it out.” I would drive over and up the hill I would go. My grandpa and grandma knew how long it took me to go up the hill and back. And while there was seldom ever anything wrong with the line, waiting on me when I got back was a hamburger (steamed buns), fries and a big glass of iced Coke. They would sit at the kitchen table with me while I ate and we would talk about nothing and everything.
My grandpa died in 1982. He was 64. I loved him. My grandma died in 2000. She was 84. They were special people to me and I will never forget them.