Edited interview with William Palmer (WP), son of Vance Palmer. Interview conducted by Joe Manning (JM) on December 6, 2007.

JM: What did you think of the photo of your father in the coal mine?

WP: I knew he had to work when he was young, but I didn't know he worked at the mine. I remember him telling me that he went down in the mines once and said he would never work there.

JM: He looked awfully bored in that picture.

WP: Well, he had to sit there all day and do nothing but open that door. But he still looked dirty like he had been in the mine.

JM: When were you born?

WP: 1930. I grew up on my family's farm.

JM: So your father had to go to work and then come home and work on the farm?

WP: Oh, yes. There was a lot of work to do. We even raised our own corn to feed the chickens.

JM: Where else did your father work?

WP: He worked for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, then Roland Glass Company, also called Fourco, and then back to PPG. With Fourco, you went down there each day and got in line to see if there was work. Dad has so many cuts and nicks on his hands, that he developed lots of calluses. He cut large sheets of glass, about 4' x 7'. They weighed 50 pounds. He cut them with pieces of 6-point diamonds, worth about $3.00 each.

JM: What kind of house did you live in?

WP: It was a nice house. It was two stories, with a kitchen, a living room and a dining room. We didn't have a bathroom, and we had no water, and no electricity. We had gas lights. We had an outside toilet. In the mid-1930s, the WPA came around the area and put new toilets in for a lot of people. So we got a brand new outside toilet. We thought we really had it made.

JM: When did you get electricity?

WP: About 1940. We had a pump on the back porch, so we pumped our own water. After we got electricity, we went up on the hill above our house and drilled a well and put in an electric pump. But we had a cistern that the birds would get into, so we really didn't drink from that. We'd use that for bathing or washing clothes, and drank the water from the old pump.

JM: When did your parents get married?

WP: 1920. My mother was from Ohio, right across the river from Wheeling (West Virginia). She was born in 1899. She graduated from high school about 1917. She had relatives that she visited in Clarksburg, and my daddy was renting a room from them. So that's how they met.

JM: I found some interesting information about your father. I found his WWI draft registration.

WP: He trained down in the Carolinas. He finished his training and was on the boat that was ready to leave to go overseas when they said the war was over. So he never went overseas.

JM: The 1920 census lists him living in Point Comfort.

WP: That was part of Clarksburg. There were a lot of coal mines in Point Comfort.

JM: Your father died in 1945.

WP: Yes, he was only 52.

JM: Was he still working for PPG then?

WP: Yes, he was. When he died, my brother George was only two years old, and I was just 15. At that time, my older brother was out to sea in the Merchant Marine, and my sister was working in Washington, DC, for the Army Map Service. When I was 16, I went to work at PPG. I was an apprentice glass cutter. I really didn't bring much money home. I graduated from high school in 1948. About that time, the factory had to repair the tanks, so they didn't have any work. They needed glass cutters in Henrietta, Oklahoma, so I went there to work.

JM: After your father died, how did your mother get by?

WP: The house was paid for. My mother was getting $37 per month from Social Security, and $18 a month for each of the children, until they reached 18. She got $5,000 life insurance that she put in savings bonds and divided it among the children. I sent some money home when I was working in Oklahoma. She had a little garden. We had 15 acres. My brother wanted to build a house on one acre, but he never finished it. About 10 years after my father died, someone bought the unfinished house and 13 more acres from my mother.

JM: How did you wind up in Texas?

WP: PPG Industries was going to shut down the factory. I was a supervisor there. Out of all the 50 or 60 supervisors they had, I was one of the ones they didn't lay off. They offered me a good job in Texas. That was 1974.

JM: Lewis Hine took your father's picture because he wanted to help get child labor laws passed so children wouldn't have to work. Do think it was wrong that your father had to work in the mine at such a young age?

WP: Yes, it probably was, but it wasn't unusual. During the war, we had a neighbor who couldn't get any help to get his hay put up. One day, my dad and I were hauling potatoes. I was just 12 years old then. So the neighbor walks over and asked us if we wanted to put his hay up. So my dad agreed, and we made 25 cents an hour. His wife cooked us supper. Boy, you talk about a supper. She put quite a supper on that table. We worked for several days over there, and the guy almost worked me to death. We got done, and he paid my dad, and my dad says, ‘Are you gonna pay my son the same?' And he said, ‘Sure, he worked as hard as anyone.' I had a bunch of money, probably about fifteen dollars, but I thought I was rich.

JM: Your father had to work in a coal mine when he was a boy, he had to struggle through the Depression, and then he died when you were just a teen. But you've apparently gone far in your life.

WP: That's because I was raised well. During the 1930s, things were tough. There were times I know my parents didn't have any money. But we always had plenty to eat, because we raised a lot of it. We had a cow. One time, the cow went dry. So my dad kept track of the money he had to spend for milk, while the cow was dry. He said, ‘I could've bought another cow with that money.' So he went to the stockyards. It was seven miles over the hill. He bought another cow, but he didn't have any way to haul it home. So this young boy had to walk it home. I put a rope around that cow's head and walked it back.