I grew up in the Ages and Brookside communities. My dad worked in the mines at Brookside and we lived in the coal camp there, which is now a baseball field. Everytime I go by that field, I think of the time we spent there until I was about 7 years old. The houses were drafty, all the same, and we got our water from the neighborhood pump. I remember walking out there with mom to get water in metal pails and hefting it back to the house. We also had one of them outside toilets. I didn’t care much for that thing, as it was hot as heck in the summer and cold as whatever in the winter. My pawpaw would always tell us the doodymonkeys would get us if we went in there, so me and that outside toilet didn’t get along too well.

I remember well watching TV in the living room, next to the stokermatic and watching the Ed Sullivan show. I even remember seeing the Beatles for the first time in America on Ed Sullivan and even at my young age, thinking, hey, these guys are good. I also remember coming home from school one day to the news that John F. Kennedy had been shot. Lots of memories from those days in Brookside, almost all of them very fond memories.

My good friend, Little Bill Rainey, and the Stansbury boys, Joe and Jim, we were always running around the camp getting into stuff. If we weren’t playing, we were fighting with each other, only to come back the next day and do it again. I miss those times very much, as they were simpler and much more fun than being grown up. I didn’t have to worry about bills, or getting work done or anything serious — just having fun and making sure I didn’t get my clothes dirty or mom would bust my bottom.

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My mom and dad ran a grocery store in Ages for about 15 years. Dad bought the store business when he was injured in the mines in West Virginia and couldn’t work in them anymore. He spent 70 days in the hospital in West Virginia as we waited for him to return home. If Dad hadn’t become injured, we would have grown up in Oceana W.Va., but it seems that wasn’t in the cards.

He purchased the store business, which was at that time called Hudson Grocery, and changed it to Deaton Grocery. We had two gas pumps out front, a bench for the people to sit out front and plenty of stock inside. Dad always kept the store stocked, as a lot of the miners that worked at Brookside depended on that store to keep their families fed. Dad ran a credit business, and the miners would pay him at the end of the week. During Christmas, he would stock one of the back rooms with toys he bought wholesale so the miners and others could buy their kids toys and not have to travel to do so.

He tried to keep a little bit of everything in that store, and I can attest to the fact that he did, as he would have me help keep it stocked. I also had to keep the stokermatic full during winter and one in the back too, as my family lived in the back of the store for several years. I loved that store. It was hard for mom and dad to take care of it, as it was a seven day a week job, open at 5 a.m., close at 9 p.m. But I look back on those days as very happy times, and again, much simpler than today’s world. Even when I had to heave them hernia making 5-gallon buckets of coal to the stokermatic.

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The Skidmore family at Ages were always good friends with my family, let alone being part of our family. Green and Mary Skidmore were my dad’s uncle and aunt. They lived at the head of Gabes Branch in Ages, and we traveled many times up to their house to see them or deliver groceries and feed.

The Skidmore boys were snake hunters. Every year, the boys that lived in other states would come back and with the ones that lived here, Don and Wayne, and would go rattlesnake hunting. Dad would take us up there when they came back to see what they had caught, and it was always scary to go up there, cause I knew there were snakes there and me and snakes don’t jib.

We have old eight-millimeter movies of them snakes, big yellow ones and big black ones, all of them big. They would take balloons and big pieces of innertubes to try and get them to strike, and they did. I always stood up on something high so they couldn’t get to me if they got loose. I was always amazed at these men, going snake hunting and bringing them back alive and none of them getting hurt or bitten. They were really something.

I’m not sure, but I think one of the brothers would sell the snakes to zoos up north, or some other place that needed snakes. That was fine with me, as I knew as long as they caught em, they was going out of here and away from me. I had a lot of respect for those men for sure.

The Skidmore boys from Ages. Rattlesnake hunters. Today, that would make for a great reality show.

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A state trooper stopped me the other day while driving home. He asked me, "Got any ID?"And I said, "Boutwhat?"

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Be sure and attend this year’s Poke Sallet Festival, and I hope to see you there.

Always remember to pray for our troops, and keep your eyes out for child abuse. It’s up to us to keep them safe. Til next time…