My dad Harold E. Winters was born Jan 17, 1909 in Logan County, WV the third child of John H. Winters. When Nancy Virginia Hale was 17 years old, she lived in a two-story yellow and brown house in West Logan. Harold Winters was 19 years old and wanted to marry her, but she was afraid her mother would not approve. Her future sister-in-law Alberta came from Huntington and helped Virginia get dressed and pack her clothes to elope, while my uncle Eugene sat in the car. Alberta says that Virginia wore a princess style soft blue taffeta dress with short sleeves. Rev. Caverlee performed the ceremony at the First Christian Church in Logan on September 2, 1928. Eugene and Alberta stood up with them as witnesses. They then took them to the Winters home to spend their first night. Raymond and Bessie were home for the weekend also.

At this time the John Winters family lived on a small farm on the east side of the river just north of Pecks Mill, near the present location of the Highland Memory Gardens Cemetery. The road and railroad were across the river and there was not a bridge. To get from the road to their home they would use a john boat that would carry five or six people at the same time. Alberta, Virginia and some of the other women could not swim, so crossing the river was always a time of excitement. Grandma Addie would usually hold Ernest or any other young baby for the boat trip.

Eugene recalls that in 1927 Raymond was working in Huntington at Crabtree’s Market, and they had imported a shipment of grapes that had not sold and were about to go bad. Raymond and some of his friends proceeded to make up some wine from the grapes. Harold, age 18, and Raymond, age 23, both got “tanked up.” When the family could not find Harold, Eugene called for cousin Irvin Robinson, who ran a motel out by the Nickel Plant Road, to come and help find Harold. When Irvin came, he had a bottle of whiskey which he had underneath the window to keep Eugene from seeing it. They later found Harold in the City Jail.

Harold was a great guy and was always very helpful. He started to work as a young teenager at the drugstore and then at Schromann’s Bakery in Huntington. He soon started to work at the yard office in Peach Creek for the C&O Railroad. As a call boy he was responsible for notifying each crew members of the time they were to report for work on the trains. If it was dark, he would carry a lantern as he would walk to find them. There were few telephones at that time and some of the men would be at their homes, some at the Y.M.C.A., and some at the local taverns. Being a good guy, he would hunt them wherever they were to call them to work so they would not miss the call.

Because his slim body was like a bean pole without much hips, the railroaders nicknamed him “shape.” He was always known and called by the nickname. No automobile was provided and he was expected to walk to find the men. If the man being called for work was drinking, it was not unusual for them to offer Harold a drink. As a young man he yielded to the encouragement and was known to drink too much once he started. He told Eugene he never purchased a drink in those early days and did not really intend to drink, but the men would make him feel so at home and insist he have a drink with them.

Harold & Virginia had six children: Charles, Thomas, Donald Ray, Daniel, Edmond, Nancy Lou, Jack Eldon, and Mary Sue Winters. Eugene recalls that Tom Winters was quick to understand math. As a small child, if they would tell him how many hours his father Harold had worked he could calculate the amount of pay he was expecting. Virginia’s brother, Archie Hale, was also very quick with numbers. In grade school at Aracoma he could add any column of numbers more quickly than any other student.

About 1938, grandpa John Winters and his son Harold Winters purchased about 4 acres of hillside land six miles north of Logan in an area just south of Pecks Mill. They began to build each family a house on parcels of the land. Later Herbert Winters built his family a home on the parcel in between these two parcels.

Harold’s small four room house was situated on a hillside about one mile south of the Pecks Mill Bridge on the west side of Route 10. The house was constructed out of very rough saw mill lumber. The siding was 1” x 8” unfinished boards. There were cracks between them, so he nailed 1” x 3” strips over the cracks. On the inside of the house, the cracks were covered with cardboard from grocery store cartons. Later newspapers were pasted over the cardboard. When money would be available wallpaper would be purchased and pasted over the newspaper. Plain white paper was applied to the ceiling and designed paper was glued on the wall. A border paper would be pasted at the top of the wall where the ceiling and wall meet.

The house had one bedroom, a living room with a large pot belly coal stove, a dining room that contained a bed for the boys. The kitchen had a coal stove with an oven and warming closets.

There was a back porch where we kept the bowl to wash our hands. A front porch was later partially enclosed for a small bedroom for the boys. The outdoor toilet was about 30 feet behind the house and up the hill.

On the property they had a chicken house, a pig pen, and two large gardens to raise vegetables. They were both very hard workers and wanted better things for their children. They and their children worked at this new home. There was dirt to dig off the hillside behind the house to make room to walk around the house. The dirt would be loaded on a wheelbarrow, and then dumped at the front edge of the leveled area. Eventually they had a front yard that was level for an area of about 10 feet by 15 feet. They placed 55 gallon metal barrels at several places under the edge of the roof so the rain water from the roof would run into the barrels. This water was used for laundry, bathing, and watering the garden plants.

Herbert and Katherine built a house and moved between his father and Harold. Now there were three Winters families in a row on the hillside. The houses were about 150 feet apart. Harold and Herbert decided to dig their own well with pick and shovel between their houses. However, after digging a hole about 10 feet deep they came to a hard rock but found no water. While both men were in the hole, Herbert threw out a heavy rock and the rock rolled back into the well and crushed his foot. The men were discouraged because of the thick layers of rock and thus abandoned the well.

Drinking water was carried about 1000 feet from a spring owned by Mr. Stevens, a neighbor. Since his spring was inside his cow pasture, the cows sometimes messed up the drinking water. Harold’s children helped carry the water even as young as five years of age. A family of seven used quite a large amount of water for cooking and drinking. Before long, Grandpa Winters had a four inch well drilled next to his home. It was over 100 feet deep and had a long metal cylinder connected to a rope on a pulley. The cylinder was lowered into the well and then retrieved containing two gallons of water. The family was very excited that they were privileged to have good drinking water so conveniently located. The three families carried drinking water from Grandpa Winters’ new well.

Cooking and healing were by coal fuel. Harold would buy a truck load of coal and have it damped at the edge of the highway. This was Route 10, and it had a lot of traffic. The coal was right out to the edge of the highway so we needed to pick it up and carry it up to the house as soon as possible. The house was located about 125 feet up the hillside from the road and it was too steep for a road or driveway. Harold dug flat spots into this steep hillside and placed large flat rocks into the flat spot for steps. In spots where it was really steep, he would nail a long slender board or pole to the trees for a hand rail to assist in climbing the long stairs to the house.

Tom age 10, Donald age 8 and Dan age 6 would each have a bucket. Tom’s bucket was the largest and Dan’s was the smallest. Each would fill his bucket with coal and carry it up the steps to the house. They would then dump the bucket of coal onto the coal pile underneath the front porch. The children learned to work at a young age.

There was a lot of work every day; raising vegetables in the two gardens, something always needed to be planted, hoed, dug, or watered. Grass had to be cut with a hand sickle on the hilly front yard. The many large rocks and the many locust trees needed to be whitewashed. People would often comment about how nice the white washed trees and rocks looked on the green hillside.

When Harold moved to this home near Pecks Mill, his children began to attend the Mill Creek grade school. Herbert’s eldest son, Dicky, also attended school with them at Mill Creek when he was in the first grade. It was about a one mile walk to and from the school, which included crossing the narrow bridge over the river. Traffic consisted of big trucks and cars made this a dangerous walk for children. Grades one through six all met in one classroom in the Pecks Mill School. Each row of seats was for students of a different grade. The wooden seat was part of the desk of each person behind them. Each desk had an ink well and a grooved place for a pencil. When the person sitting in front of you shifted their position in the seat, it caused your desk to shake. Each students’ books were placed inside their desk directly above their knees.

Before many months the school bus began to come and carry us to and from the grade school in Justice Addition. It was a much larger school and each grade had a separate classroom. Ralph Winters’ daughter, Zetta Winters, also attended the school at Justice Addition. Zetta, Dicky, and Danny Winters were all in the same grade school.

Harold’s siblings Bill and Betty were in high school at that same time and rode the same school bus. The bus stopped at their house to Harold’s children walked over there to catch the bus. Many times the other children would be ready for school when grandma was still trying to hurry Bill out of bed before he missed the bus. If the children were running late, Virginia would put some jelly, or bacon, or egg on a fresh baked biscuit and rush us off with it in our hand to catch the bus. It was embarrassing to eat things like this in front of the other school children riding on the bus.

Harold worked for the C&O railroad in Peach Creek. He always had some kind of an old car to drive to work. Many times these old cars wouldn’t start until they were pushed. He would park his car at the top of 2 hill beside the road below our house. Most times some of his children would assist him and their mother in pushing the car out of the dirt parking space onto the paved road and down the hill. Once the car began to go down the paved hill, it would gain enough speed so he could force the engine to start. When the weather was real cold the road would be icy and the car was more difficult to start, but we pushed until it started or some other driver volunteered to push with his car.

There were happy days going to school, working in the garden, cutting grass, carrying coal or water and helping however we could. Harold and Virginia always loved their children. They worked together with their children to try and improve their living condition.

Harold built a place under our chicken house for some pigs. He fenced in an area for the pigs to live in. One weekend his family visited his wife’s parents’ farm at Salt Rock and returned home with many vegetables plus three little pigs. The car must have been full with all that plus his family of seven. After arriving home they put the three pigs in the new pig pen on the hillside behind their home place. The next day the little pigs routed out underneath the fence and were running loose on the hillside. Harold’s three sons had a great time chasing the pigs and catching them. They quickly learned how fast pigs can run.

Another time, Harold brought home a pair of goats so his family could have goat milk to drink. Each day they would stake the goats out in the front yard. The collars around their necks were tied to a chain that fastened to a tree in the front yard. They had plenty of grass to eat and the family had milk to drink. There was not enough land for a cow or other large farm animals on this hillside lot.

Harold and Virginia made a hotbed to grow lettuce and other plants from seeds. They missed cow manure, cut grass, chicken manure, fertilizer and other things with soil. They then put a large piece of glass over the bed to cause the sun’s rays to hear the rich soul. In a few days the seeds sprouted and began to grow into small green plants. In a few weeks the tomato, cabbage and pepper plants were large enough to transplant into their gardens. If the weather was expected to be cold, they would cover each plant with a glass jar for the night. The next morning they would remove the jar. They would water these young plants with water from the rain barrels that had caught the water from the roof of the house.

Water was scarce on the hillside. It had to be carried in or caught from the rooftop during rains. During long dry spells, little mosquito larvae would hatch in the stagnant water inside the rain barrels. When it would begin to rain, they would go outside and dump all the stagnant water with the “wiggetails” so the empty barrels would fill with the fresh rain water from the rooftop. We looked forward to summer rains filling up the rain barrels.

When Harold was about 30 years of age he pinched a nerve in his back while working for the railroad moving some freight. The C&O directors in Huntington operated and placed two silver screws as his spine. It helped make the pain more bearable, but he lived with pain the rest of his life. Before his death 40 years later he wrote that he had not been without pain for a single day. In spite of the pains, he worked for the C&O, plus raised a garden and farm animals. He was very industrious and taught his children to work and do their best to earn a good living. He would lift and carry things any time needed in spite of the pain he endured. He assured and directed his children in whatever needed to be done.

When Harold was in the hospital for the operation on his spine, the nurse came in and asked who was going to give blood. All five of his brothers volunteered. Each or all would give blood. She was very touched by their loving attitude and said, “Surely he will recover.” The Winters family was always known as a very loving and caring family. The members were concerned for each other and would try to help and assist those in need. Harold’s children would stay at home with others family members while his wife Virginia would travel by train to visit him in the hospital in Huntington.

Harold was unable to work much of the time after his operation. About 1945 be moved to an 84 acre farm on Crooked Creek. His wife and children assisted him in taking care of the farm animals and the gardens. Tom & Don went to work on the C&O railroad. Dan was entering his teens as he learned to plow and take care of the farm animals and do other chores on the farm. In 1952 the family moved to Winter Haven, Florida, where they lived at 1214 7^th Street S.W. until Virginia died on July 19, 1962.