Scaring the Devil: Growing Up in the Coal Patch

摘要

In the last installment, readers were introduced to Clarence "Mooch" Kashner, a legendary Pennsylvania State Mine Inspector who began his mining career of 52 years at age 13, selling bags of bootlegged coal out of the back of a car. Before his death at 87, Mooch was known throughout the anthracite coalfields for his heroic work saving trapped miners, recovering bodies of accident and murder victims, and investigating accidents. His encyclopedic memory of the hundreds of collieries and independent mines made Mooch the man to go to whenever help was needed. Mooch was raised in a small mining town or "patch" called Hickory Swamp just east of the town of Shamokin, PA, on the western edge of the Western Middle Anthracite Coal Field. He and his friends swam in stripping pits, climbed trees, rolled hoops and played "nips," a game where players tried to hit a six inch wooden "nip" with pencil point ends, into the air where it would be hit with a shaved down broom handle. On one summer evening, after a game of "nips," Mooch and his family watched the foundation of their home and a portion of their root cellar disappear into a deep mine breech, a not uncommon occurrence at the time.