October 12, 1924
The whistle at the double-band sawmill blew at five o’clock this morning, same as always. From our porch on Bohunk Hill, you can hear the whole town starting to move before the sun even clears Cheat Mountain.
Papa was already up, pulling on his heavy wool pants and caulked boots. His hands are always stained dark from the tanbark extract plant where he works processing hemlock and spruce bark. Mama gave him cold biscuits and salt pork wrapped in tin foil. Before he left down the hill, he reminded me in Italian to make sure the coal bucket was filled for the kitchen stove. Out here on Bohunk Hill, past the neat company rows, our house isn't built as fancy as the Class Three cottages on the slope, so when the mountain wind kicks up off the river, you feel every bit of it through the wallboards.
October 15, 1924
Walked down to the Cass School with my younger brother Stefan. The mud on the main road was up to our ankles today from yesterday’s rain, so everybody was crowding onto the raised plank walkways.
If you look up past the school and the company store, you can see "Big Bug Hill" where Superintendent Shaffer and the high executives live in those big houses. The Luke House sits right up at the top, looking down over the whole valley. Down here, the teacher spent half the morning trying to get us to pronounce our English words right. Sometimes she looks at us kids from Bohunk Hill like we came off another planet, just because we speak Italian or Hungarian at home. Stefan says he wants to stay in school through eighth grade, but I know how things go around here. Most of the boys from our end of town end up down at the mill yard or riding the log cars as soon as they turn fourteen or fifteen.
October 20, 1924
The C&O passenger train pulled into the depot right on time at four o’clock. Half the town ran down to watch it come in—it’s the best part of the afternoon. Mama sent me into the Pocahontas Supply Company store with the credit slip to pick up lard, flour, and a pound of coffee. The store clerk was writing down grocery lists to send out on the horse delivery wagons for the families living in the company houses.
On my way back, I saw one of the big Shay steam locomotives coming down the steep grade along Leatherbark Run. It was hauling twenty cars full of red spruce logs cut from high up on the mountain. The noise those geared engines make when they squeal down the mountain with a heavy load makes your chest shake. You could see the "wood hicks" sitting on top of the log piles, covered in pine resin and dirt, looking completely worn out after weeks in the mountain logging camps.
October 25, 1924
Saturday night in Cass means two totally different worlds. Inside the company boundary, everything is kept quiet and strict. No liquor, no gambling, and "Boss" Shaffer’s men keep a sharp eye out. But if you walk down past Leatherbark Creek and cross over the Greenbrier River to the East Side, it’s a whole different story.
Papa says the East Side is where the men go to forget the band saws and the skidder cables. You could hear fiddle music, shouting, and piano playing echoing across the water from the saloons and boarding houses clear until midnight. Mama hates when Papa or my uncle go over there, especially after what happened to old Marko last month when a runaway log car broke his leg up on Cheat Mountain. She says the mill takes enough from a man without the East Side taking the rest of his pay envelope.
I sat on the front steps before bed listening to the sawmill. It never stops—it runs twenty-four hours a day, buzzing and humming down by the river like a giant iron beast that never goes to sleep.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE POCAHONTAS DISPATCH
Special Dispatch from the Greenbrier Valley
LIFE ATOP "BIG BUG HILL": INSIDE CASS’S HIGH-ALTITUDE EXECUTIVE ENCLAVE
CASS, W. VA. — High above the roaring double-band sawmills, the black coal smoke of Shay locomotives, and the muddy footpaths of the valley floor, sits Uptown North—known throughout Pocahontas County by its informal moniker, "Big Bug Hill". Here, elevated literally and socially above the industrial bustle along the Greenbrier River, resides the corporate hierarchy of the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company (WVP&P).
While the day laborers and mill hands navigate the uniform rows of Class Three cottages and the dense enclaves of Bohunk Hill, the residents of Big Bug Hill enjoy a lifestyle reminiscent of a private mountain retreat. Perched on the highest knoll stands the grandest residence in town: the lavish Luke House. Erected in 1918 for the family that co-founded WVP&P, the multi-story home overlooks the entire expanse of the company’s timber kingdom. Below it, Class One frame residences—equipped with running water, spacious porches, and manicured yards—line the crest, housing mill superintendents, senior clerks, and chief engineers.
Daily life on the hill moves at a pace remarkably detached from the 24-hour shift cycles of the sawmill below. Under the oversight of General Superintendent Richard B. "Boss" Shaffer, who resides in one of the premier executive homes on the slope, the neighborhood functions with quiet order. Every morning, while horse-drawn delivery wagons from the Pocahontas Supply Company make their rounds delivering grocery orders directly to kitchen doors, executive families tend to private gardens or prepare for social calls. Near the top of the ridge, the company doctor's residence and office sit nestled alongside horse barns, reinforcing the enclave's status as a self-contained sanctuary.
Recreation on Big Bug Hill further underlines the clear social distinctions within the company town. On clear afternoons, the laughter of managers' children can be heard echoing from the hilltop tennis court—a civic addition built high on the ridge. From these elevated grounds, residents enjoy sweeping views across the river, watching the C&O passenger trains roll into the depot or spotting the heavy log trains descending Cheat Mountain along Leatherbark Run.
Yet, even atop Big Bug Hill, daily existence remains tied to the forest. The distant, continuous hum of the band saws and the echo of locomotive whistles serve as a steady reminder of the source of the hill's comfort. While the wood hicks and sawyers labor in the high mountain camps and processing plants, the families of Uptown North enjoy the highest standard of living available in the Allegheny Highlands.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE POCAHONTAS DISPATCH
Special Dispatch from the Greenbrier Valley
BEYOND THE COMPANY GRID: LIFE ON THE FRINGES IN BOHUNK HILL, SLABTOWN, AND RALSTON HILL
CASS, W. VA. — Beyond the neatly ordered rows of white-painted company cottages and the elevated oversight of "Big Bug Hill," a different Cass exists along the outer margins of the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company’s corporate domain. In peripheral enclaves known as Bohunk Hill, Slabtown, and Ralston Hill, foreign-born immigrant families and day laborers have established a community defined by dense living quarters, hard physical labor, and distinct cultural traditions.
To the north of the main company grid lies Bohunk Hill, a hillside settlement predominantly occupied by Italian, Hungarian, and Russian immigrants. Unlike the standardized Class Three houses built and maintained by the mill, Bohunk Hill developed as a cluster of approximately seventeen privately built or rudimentary dwellings situated on the boundary of corporate property. Here, multiple families and boarders often share narrow frame structures, filling the hillside with the sounds of eastern and southern European languages, traditional foodways, and closely spaced domestic gardens.
To the south, Slabtown and Ralston Hill house day laborers, track layers, and mill hands in similarly dense, basic conditions. Situated on the outer perimeter, these neighborhoods provide shelter for the manual workforce that performs some of the most physically demanding jobs in the lumber operation. From digging rail bed grades up the steep slopes of Leatherbark Run to sorting heavy timber in the mill yards, the residents of these southern outskirts provide essential labor for the town's primary industry.
Living on the corporate boundary carries distinct trade-offs. While residents in these enclaves operate outside the strict domestic layout of company-owned streets, physical amenities are sparse. Unpaved paths turn into thick mud during mountain rainstorms and thaws, while households depend on coal sheds, backyard outhouses, and shared wells.
Each morning at dawn, as the sawmill whistle echoes down the Greenbrier River, hundreds of men stream down from Bohunk Hill, Slabtown, and Ralston Hill to join the mill shifts and logging trains. Though geographically separated from the town center, these outer neighborhoods form the manual backbone powering the 24-hour timber processing operations of the Allegheny Highlands.
No comments:
Post a Comment