Christmas Misadventure

Don’s Christmas Misadventure

A Better Christmas Tree, Over the Next Mountain

In early December of 1940 the boys of Miss Irene Justice’s fifth grade class were determined to find a Christmas tree worthy of her beauty; we thought that she was Boone County’s Snow White. It only required a bright, but brisk, early December Saturday, with a few flakes of snow in the air, to set off a tribe of eleven year old boys into the hills in search of a class Christmas tree.

The seemingly endless woodlands of the Fork Creek basin, just west of Nellis, was a Company owned Shangrila that beckoned to adventurous boys in search of everything from camp rocks to Indian mounds; from golden azaleas to succulent blackberries. We started up the mountain, crossing over the huge slow burning  “slate dump”; smoldering coal and sulfur still recall old memories; the sharp acrid smell wasn’t all that bad to us; having been born into it.

We always paused to visit the operator in the hoist house at the peak of this man-made mountain of mine refuse; fascinated by the sight and sound of the huge cable drum; feeling both awe, and envy, as we watched him control the rise and decent of the big “monitor” with large arcing electric breakers; and a long wooden pole as a brake lever, polished smooth by years of use in slowing the monster rig before it wrecked havoc at the tipple around the curve at the bottom of the hill; the huge brake bands often issued screeching complaints. The “hoist man” warned, “we might be in for a storm.”

The climb out of the Nellis cradle, through gaps in the rim of hills surrounding it, is about 600 feet vertically (Washington Monument height is 555 feet); enough to get one puffing. After hiking down into Dave Fork of the Fork Creek basin, this merry band of Christmas tree hunters hopped on the tail end of the slow moving narrow gauge “timber train” pulled by a “dinkey”- thus leaving our tracks behind us in a newly fallen snow.

Ralph “Sonny Boy” Evans, “John R” Brunfield, Andrew Hubisak, myself,  and probably Eugene Dunlap huddled on this rickety little train as it clanked along; crossing numerous log bridges as it moved down Fork Creek toward the saw mill.  About a mile down the creek, we jumped off the train, still out of the engineer’s sight because of the trees tightly hugging the track. We had decided to get off near the Indian mound on Wilderness Fork because it led to a favorite camp rock (an overhanging ledge) under which some of us had endured a miserably cold night in March (“but Mom March is the first month of spring”). We had remembered that there were more pine trees up that hollow; and we did find one worth keeping while continuing the search.

Finding ourselves well up the camp rock hollow before discovering a good pine grove, with an ominous sky getting darker, we made a fateful decision to climb over the divide into what we thought would be another branch of Fork Creek; with the eternal hope that an even prettier tree would be just over the ridge, and that we could simply hike down that branch to the main trunk, were we could turn right up toward home along the “dinky” track. Unfortunately for us, we were making a classical error in mountaineering —we had crossed over a major divide into an interlocking branch of Big Hewitt Creek leading down to the Little Coal River far from our home on the Big Coal River. The needles were wearing away from our latest Christmas tree after trudging several miles down a hollow that seemed strangely different than Fork Creek.

We came upon an abandoned farm that we had never seen before; this finally convinced us that we were lost. This burst of reality suddenly made us more aware that we were also getting very cold and hungry!   It was early December so our frantic search of an old apple orchard, and shed, was quite literally fruitless; but one of us did notice a little green showing through the snow announcing a turnip patch. Turnips are an amazing root crop- they must have anti-freeze in them – some may think they taste like antifreeze, but to us, they were more like manna from heaven.  It required our Christmas ax to break them from the hard frozen earth.  I have never since tasted a sweeter turnip.

With renewed energy from the turnip break, and hope that we would eventually reach civilization by doggedly following the stream flow, we proceeded several miles down an old trail that was frequently interrupted by the creek – presenting a wider and more challenging crossing each time – forcing us to search for fallen trees as bridges when it became too wide to jump.   At one log crossing “Sonny-boy” Evans slipped and dropped into the frigid water up to his waist; he climbed out (with no complaint that I can remember) and we continued our march as both the snowfall, and the darkness intensified. A short while later he dropped to the ground and insisted that he was tired and had to sleep for awhile; somehow we managed to get him up and moving, somehow instinctively realizing that he would quickly freeze if allowed to sleep.

Trudging doggedly on down the gradually widening trail, one of us spotted a faint light shinning through the snow clad brush. As we came closer the soft glow of an oil lamp defined a window.  We marched up in a tight cluster to knock on the door of a very small- unpainted house.  A trim young woman shortly opened the door and invited us in without hesitation.  The warm radiance from a large coal burning range embraced us – slowly soaking through to our deeply chilled “innards”- until we were thawed enough to stammer out answers to her elderly father’s questioning as to “where on earth did you boys come from on such a bad night?” He was very patient as we explained that we were from Nellis; but he seemed to doubt that we had come so far. He explained that we were now on Big Hewitt Creek just a couple miles from Julian. We had never heard of Julian.

While the elderly gentleman was debriefing us; the wonderful young lady was preparing hot cocoa on the cook stove.  While we drank that marvelous elixir- she played hymns on a small organ that graced one end of the tiny room.  We were delighted to take turns pumping the lever that powered the organ. She was almost apologetic when informing us that they had neither a car, nor a telephone, to help us establish contact with our parents; but she told us of a tavern called the “White Kitchen” which had a pay phone that was on the “hard road” just a mile or so on down the hollow.

Warmed and recharged in less than an hour, we plunged back into the frigid darkness to continue on down the creek to the mouth of the Big Hewitt and the hard road.  I think we could see the lights of the White Kitchen just a short spell down the Little Coal River.  Five bedraggled boys must have created quite a stir as we trooped into the tavern around ten o’clock.  We were given food and coins for the pay phone to call our parents at Nellis.

Several of our fathers and neighbors were still over on Fork Creek searching for us in what had turned into a heavy winter frigid storm.

The hoist operator must have reported seeing us, so the search party traveled through the mine to the Fork Creek portal, hoping to pick up our trail; but our rapidly disappearing tracks in the snow only led to the point where we had hopped on the “dinky”. I do not know how they continued the search- they would have had mine safety lamps; but by the time they passed the Indian mound our tracks would have been deeply covered. They must have walked over five miles down to the saw mill before calling in to discover that we had phoned from Julian- about 20 miles from Nellis by highway.  A couple of cars were sent up Brush Creek and over the mountain to bring us home- without our barren Christmas tree (which might have served as a good switch with which to “thrash us within an inch of our lives”. There was no thrashing- only a mixture of relief, that we had been found “all in one piece”, and amazement, as to how we could have come out of the wilderness so far from home.

 

Some Sixty years later on Armco Day, at that same Nellis Elementary School, a splendidly dressed Mrs. Irene Justice Older appeared at this annual celebration on the last Saturday of June 2002, to honor and remember the wonderful little community that had been the nurturing cradle of our youth in a “model coal camp” that had produced high quality #2 gas coal for the production of American Rolling Mills (ARMCO) steel from 1920 to June of 1955. Even though she was in a wheel chair; “Miss Justice” was as strik- ing as ever in a lavender gown, complete with corsage, and a sharp wit. Her first words to me were “I – did – not – send – you – boys to get a Christmas tree”- and of course, she was correct; we had simply fallen victim to our own youthful exuberance. We just couldn’t find a tree on the Nellis side of the mountain that seemed in the “Snow White” class.

 

Donald R. Maxey

Tuesday, 9 Dec 2003