Bemis had a ball team in 1908. In my time it was just softball. We didn’t have enough room or flat land to have a really good ball diamond. We had teams even after I came back from the Army. We played Highland Park in Elkins, and we played the prisoners in Huttonsville, the medium security prison. We played them about every summer and got beat pretty bad ‘cause they had a really good ball team.

When we couldn’t play anyone else, we’d play Whitmer. We’d play ball awhile and fight awhile. I remember the last game I played over there turned into a donnybrook, over what I don’t remember. I was twenty or twenty-one. Before that we played Glady. They’d let school out and we’d play over there. Then next time it was our turn to go over to Glady and play. We’d play right below where the school building set. Back then there was always something going on.

In the summer, we all learned to swim in the Cheat River, as we called it. In fact, I didn’t know it was Shavers Fork till I come out of the Army. The “head of Cheat River” is what the residents in Bemis always called it. All the boys, girls too I guess, learned to swim almost as soon as we started to school. One way or another you’d learn or the big boys would pick you up and throw you out in there, making sure you’d swim back to the bank or they would help you. We ran around and built log cabins in the woods, swung on grapevines and fished, naturally. All the young boys in this area grew up with a fishing pole and a gun in their hands to fish and hunt.

Calvin and two of his brothers, Orual and Clarence in front of Calvin’s Bemis store.  The store opened in 1961 and still serves the small community today. 
Photo courtesy Calvin Shifflet.

 

Bemis Weathers Floods

They built the floodwall in Bemis in ‘08. I heard someone talk about it and was always wondering where it was. I was looking at this photo one day and I found that thing. Forty-two. I can remember very well. It rained all night at the head of Fishing Hawk, washed all the track out. It (water) was in that big brick building in Bemis—clear to the first floor—it was a full basement.

It shut the mines down. Walker Coal Company was running full blast then, and about all the people even at Glady was employed there. It washed all the track out; the mines were shut down. They had to rebuild the grade where they’d just cut it right along Fishing Hawk. It washed all that out.

In the mines, I remember, it drowned one pony. They had mine ponies. One of the ponies was trying to get over to the other side where the other ponies were. I remember us kids going to see where that pony was lodged in the trestle. No lives were lost, but we lost the one pony.

They were probably a good week getting that roadbed built back. All that coal from Hickory Lick and up at the head of Valley Head—Bethlehem Steel mines—all came through Bemis. The tannery, the lumberyards, pulp yards . . . they couldn’t haul nothing till they got all the track rebuilt at Bemis. I remember my Dad -- it seemed he was working day and night.

The water from Fishing Hawk came right through the middle of town. It was not in anybody’s houses. It came down the road, run down through the side and back into Cheat River at the lower end of town. There was a big culvert and ditch in the middle of town put in for the millpond. The railroad culverts carried a lot of the water as well as the culvert. I remember getting up that morning -- school went right on, kids walking through the water up to their ankles. But it was just a mess for a lot of people to clean up in their yard.

In the ‘85 flood, it tore at the bridge in Bemis and almost was ready to come down into town. The rain was more concentrated in the exact south so it affected the Shavers Fork more than it did Fishing Hawk. It didn’t come over into town like it did in ‘07 and ‘42. The trees—it washed gobs of trees out. And then they’d go through this superstructure: the old bridge would rattle and creak and bang. Everybody would think it’s gone and it held right on. They’d embedded it into the solid rock over here, and on this side it was just a cement abutment. It’ll be there for another hundred years till something moves it, if ever. The state road came in and repaired it. It messed all this up. It ruined the beach. Now it’s full of boulders and rocks.

They gave the [evacuation] order in ‘96. A guy called me and said the water at Cheat Bridge was now higher than it was in ’85, but the river started to go down. It was up in the cabins in Bemis, didn’t hurt anything, about like ‘85. All over the floors in two, three camps.

Here it is [in his diary]: “The National Weather Service notified people to evacuate. My brother and the Coopers refused.” It was on Friday January 19, 1996. “Water dropping fast. Tore up the field behind my store. Rolled my brother’s truck over into my property.”
 

Calvin’s Father Moves to Bemis

He come over in ‘16 and stayed until ‘18, then he went back to Virginia. Him and Mom got married in ‘19, and then he worked on the railroad over there on the Norfolk and Western Railroad. In ‘25 his brother was the boss foreman in Bemis, and he wrote him, and I don’t know if Dad expressed that he wanted to come back, but he wrote him and said they had an opening if he wanted it. So we come back in ‘25. I said we, but I wasn’t born yet. My three brothers were born in Virginia, and they come over in ‘25, and we stayed here. The three oldest were born in Virginia, and the other three were born in Bemis.

-          Joseph and Rosa Hansbrough Shifflett, Calvin’s Parents.  This picture was taken in Beldor, Virginia in 1919-20.  They later moved to Bemis in 1925 and lived there until their deaths in 1965 and 1983.  Photo courtesy Calvin Shifflet.

 My dad was always going back, going back. He’d get a little too much to drink, and he was like that song about that one crazy guy who made the songs . . . Daddy’d let out a big whoop—and I can’t remember how it goes now—he’d say, “I’m going back to old Virginia, getting out of West Virginia. I’m going back to old Virginia . . . ”

He’d thump his chest and say, “I’d whoop any son-of-a-bitch from West Virginia.” 

We’d say, “Dad, the three of us is from West Virginia.”

And he’d say, “Well I’d whoop any of you, too.”

He was a section hand through Bemis. Never went any farther than Bemis. Three of his brothers were foremen at one time, another one at Cheat Bridge and one other one somewhere else. They’d hire just about anybody, but you had to have a foreman who knew how to do everything.

There was six boys in our family, just three of us left.  Six boys and no girls. People used to ask Mom if she wished she had some girls around the house and she said no. ‘Course we grew up pretty rough in Bemis, you know. She just turned us loose and either you make it or you don’t. With the girls it was a different story.

All of us went into the service except the oldest—he was born crippled, badly crippled—and he lived twenty-four years before he died. He couldn’t talk. They never could figure it out. We took him to a couple different places but they never could figure it out. If it was today, I’m sure that there would be all sorts of scientists wanting to study him. But back then it was during the Depression, and Mom had to take care of him like a baby for twenty-four years.

Relief at Jewell’s Department Store

It was pretty rough living in these two towns. If it wasn’t for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the people up here would have starved. When they brought that relief in, they would stop in Bemis and then on to Glady. I still remember the place—in Bemis it was the Dahmer Store—that huge big brick building that they just tore down a couple months ago.

The name of it was Jewell’s Department Store and you could buy anything there. We had two years of high school, as we called it, and the teachers had to stay there during the winter. They had a couple rooms and medicine, restaurant, post office, store, hardware. That’s where you had to go to get your “relief.” They’d give you bags of flour, real rough coarse flour. It wasn’t really refined all that much back then.

 

  Calvin with his dog, as a boy in the 1940’s.  Photo courtesy Calvin Shifflet.

And powdered milk. I really liked that powdered milk because it was better than no milk I guess. We had good clean spring water. I can remember coming home from school, walking from school to the house, and I’d have a sandwich and some of that powdered milk. It wasn’t white looking like it is now; it was always green looking. But I really liked that old powdered milk. Now I won’t have nothing to do with powdered milk, powdered eggs, powdered mashed potatoes.

They’d give you bags of rice, cans of peanut butter. You had to mix the peanut butter. It’d be solid, and oil would be on top. It was just like that with margarine—you had a pack of red dye, orange dye—and you put it in there and mixed it with your hands. It wasn’t a thing except shortening, and you’d mix it up. I used to love to do that and Mom liked it because I’d be helping her too. I’d take that little packet of powder and sprinkle it on the margarine and turn it over and sprinkle the rest. You take your hands and knead it, and that was your margarine. The government stopped that because it wasn’t very sanitary. Even the restaurants were doing it that way. No more squeezing the margarine. Back then there was an open-topped pitcher with milk to put in your coffee but they put a stop to that too.

That relief truck saved the day in Bemis and Glady. The farm folks did all right, but in the city—everybody had a little garden—that wasn’t enough. We called it Roosevelt’s relief truck and boy when it come, it’d subsidize you. You could get by. They’d even give you clothes. I got a picture of me, in W.P.A. work suit. It was khakis, like army khakis, but it was one piece. I called it a relief suit. I’m about five and there’s a picture of me watching some folks playing volleyball. They had nowhere to go and no money to get there. Talk about hard times.

The Depression ended in ‘38–‘39—they say on the talk shows and radio and whatnot—but not in Bemis and Glady. That was ‘41–‘42.  All the eighteen to twenty-year-olds were heading for the service. It opened up jobs and made jobs getting ready for the war. Most everybody went to Baltimore and Cleveland.

Coal Mine in Bemis

World War I, according to the old timers, was when the first coal mine went in. I think it was Walker Coal Company. They had mines south of Bemis down at Flint. Then it started to peter out at Flint so they moved to Bemis in ‘39–‘40. They had a huge company store that is tore down now. The mines ran until November of ‘50.

There was still a lot of coal, but they had a hard time selling it because they had a hard time washing it. It [coal mine] supposedly was shut down until they put washers in and they never re-opened it. I don’t know what happened.

Walker’s mine was on Cheat Mountain and Billy Green’s was on Shavers, right above Bemis, at the top of the hill. They ran in the ‘30s and part of the ‘40s and they strip-mined until just a few years back. And they had a deep mine, but that ended the mining period then.

 

Auger holes: a series of auger holes going into the mountain after a strip mine job is finished.  Auger holes were used once the ‘overburden’ became too much and strip mining was no longer economical.  The height of the auger holes is determined by the size of the coal seam.  This mine was located near Fish Hatchery Run. 
Photo courtesy Monongahela National Forest.

 I was in a mine one time. My oldest brother, he was in day work, where what you loaded was what you got paid. So he’d go in on Sunday. Them days you had to drill your own holes and load, I think they called it Monabelle or something, like dynamite. They’d shoot down what coal was cut and you could load what cars were there—they’d hold about two tons—and you’d load it on up.  I went in on that Sunday . . . that hot wire was over your back all the time. The coal was never more than forty-some inches and everything was on your knees and crawling. We come through a water hole—that was at least 440 or 660-volt hot wire—if you touched that it probably would have fried you in that water hole.

            You just done your own shooting, you see. Back then you just got paid for what you loaded, so you loaded that car. If you had two cars you loaded two. Maybe you had four ton, and you’d like to have three cars. Well, some days you could get it, and some days you couldn’t. You had a little weight-check with your number, with a hole in it. You’d stick that in that nail and you’d stick that on the car—it was oak or locust, some real hard wood—and you’d drive a big nail in it and bend it. You’d carry your weigh-checks on you: it was like a safety pin but bigger, and it had your checks. You’d take it off and stick it on your nail. 

They had a sheet up in front for eight, nine, ten—and you was number eight, and they’d have one ton 1,200; one ton 1,400, and then you got credit. At the end of the day, they’d total it up and turn it in to the company store—it set across from where the brick building was. Everyday the supervisor, he would bring all those weigh-sheets down, and that’s what you got paid by. They took out some for light and for any dynamite—they’d charge you for that.

When you shoot the coal, you could see the dust in the air, and no masks. No one wore any masks. They had a little air circulating, which was required—the federal mines inspector made sure they had a little air circulating—but it helped very little. You’d shoot—you’d have those lights with the battery over your head—and you’d shoot and get back out of the way and touch it to the battery to shoot. Then you’d walk back over—the coal dust was still up in the air—you know you was breathing it, even way back over there.

Eventually you went in, putting the coal into the cars, pushing the track on up to the face and throwing the dust off to the side … That was my one day experience and I decided that wasn’t going to be my career. I know we went in and we loaded up what he shot down. And then we crawled out and washed up. The mine opening was right next to Fishing Hawk—the creek there that runs into Bemis—and we washed up.

That was my mining career. For one thing, I couldn’t stand it going back in under the mountain—three feet high with a hot wire going above you—working with that dust around you.

 Red and Black Lines at the Company Store

You went to the company store, and if you stayed in the red, they’d tell you what you could buy and what you couldn’t buy. Most of them sent the kid with a big list. If you were in the red lines, you got what they wanted to give. If you were in the black, more power to you, anything you ordered, that was fine.

            A lot of guys didn’t have the tonnage or maybe they missed a day, and that put them behind. I know lots of them there that never even had an envelope. They had a brown envelope: your time with deductions. They didn’t even ask for it; they knew they had it coming. They stayed in the red. But that was the way of life.

Boy that song . . . that fits the company store in Bemis. That, “Sixteen tons and what do you got?” Only thing is, you could never get sixteen tons because you could never get the cars. And the thing is, the guys that were in the red got the cars over you. They was in the red and the other guys were taking money and going to Elkins and spending a lot of it. So you might get two cars and that guy in the red got the third car because the superintendent, his mother-in-law owned the mines. His daughter took care of the time, and her and her husband run the company store.

 

Army Life at Fifteen

I already had my stuff fixed up to get into the military. I was fifteen, and I had it doctored up so I was eighteen. I washed that coal off and said, “Boy that’s the first and last trip into the mines for me. There has got to be a better way to do it.” But that was the way of life there. Your Dad take you in; your older brother take you in. They had to take you in until you got a miners card.

The next day I caught the school bus down to Elkins, and instead of going to school, I went to the recruiting office. That night I was in Fairmont, and I’d been accepted. The next day I was in Ft. Knox, Kentucky. There was a recruiting office in Elkins. It was at the post office. My brothers were in the Navy, but I didn’t like the water so I headed for the Army office.

I was born in 1933, and I took a little bleach and dropped on it with an eyedropper. This fellow was advising me and told me what to do. He told me to put some white vinegar to neutralize the bleach and he lined it up in the typewriter. He said all you have to do is hit that ‘0’ and that jumped me from fifteen to eighteen. And that put me in.

So I went down to the sheriff’s office and he said, “Looks like you’ve been doing some doctoring here.

I said, “Yeah.” 

And he said, “You want to get into the Army that bad huh?”

I said, “Things are pretty tough at home, and I’ve got to get into the service.”

When we got done he said, “Fifty cents.”

I said, “I ain’t got but a nickel.” 

There was a box where they put the money in for the Photostat. He reached into his pocket and put fifty cents from his pocket into the box.

He said, “Good luck to ya.”

Years and years later, we had a drink at the VFW [Veterans of Foreign Wars], and he had forgotten all about that. He had gotten pretty far in politics.

He said, “There was several boys that did that.”

Only bad thing was that my Mom and Dad didn’t know where I was. We didn’t have phones, and I couldn’t call them no way. But the first thing they made you do in the Army was to write our folks. And they would make sure that you sent that letter out. My Mom could have had me sent home in a heartbeat but she didn’t.

I cleared the issue out later on because I didn’t want to bamboozle the government by getting Social Security three years early. After I got out, they drafted me again, and I had to explain everything. They sent it over the draft board, let them know what was going on. I was walking a tightrope for a while there; I was thinking that I was going to have to go and pull another two years! Done pulled three.

I never heard no more about it. I was worried about it for a bit, about them withholding my veteran’s benefits, but it never did catch up with me.

 Hot and Cold in Baltimore

            Calvin served in the Army Signal Corps for three years, then worked in Baltimore for a couple of years before returning to Bemis.  He “couldn’t stand the cold out on those piers shifting those barges” in the winter, and after he went to work for Glen L. Martens, he couldn’t stand the heat:  “It [Baltimore] was the hottest place in the summer I ever was at.  It was the coldest place in the winter I was ever at either.  Just a different cold.  And the heat?  Just muggy.  You couldn’t hardly get your breath.”                

 

Matt: How’d you meet your wife?

Calvin: We started going together right after I went into service. I came back on furlough. She was still in high school. Her and her cousin and a girl who lived across the street in Bemis, they all went and lived with two aunts of hers in Baltimore. That’s where they would stay until they got situated.

I was working on the railroad, the B&O Railroad, and we got married. I still was working on the railroad. We stayed two years, and I come back because you could hardly get your breath.

They had just sent those big matador missiles to Cape Canaveral, Forida. We’d put them in big crates and fasten them down and cover them with tarps—we had these big grayish brown tarps.

One day it was so hot you couldn’t get your breath. I drug a box of tools and a fan around on a buggy. I come in that night, and we had our first child born, a girl. I come in and she said, “What do you think about going back to Bemis?”

I said, “I was ready the day I come out here.”  So I said, “Next week Monday I’m going to turn in my time.” And I turned in my two weeks notice.

Back Home: Dutch Oven Days, Bemis Store and the Night Club

Back home there were few jobs, but Calvin found work at Dutch Oven in Elkins, among other work, for a number of years.  But life in and near Bemis always pulled him back.  Eventually he opened a store in Bemis and became post master/storekeeper in nearby Glady.  Here’s how he describes it:

I built the store in Bemis in 1961 and still operate it. My wife and I took this store and [Glady] post office over in 1977. We’ve been here ever since. It was founded in 1886, one of the older Post Offices in West Virginia, I would say.

You’d be amazed at how many toothbrushes I sell over here at the store. They come all the way over here, and they forget their toothbrushes, especially the women. During those summer camps, they come in and they say, “Boy I hope you got toothbrushes and toothpaste.”

‘Course I sell as much of that as anything else you can think of. Or they run out of ketchup or mustard or they need some milk or coffee. I sell quite a bit of coffee. About everybody wants the real coffee, not the instant. They’ll come in and—especially the old timers—they’ll come in and ask if I got any boiled coffee; not the other stuff, the boiled coffee. That means that they don’t want the instant. A lot of the old timers, they just throwed coffee in the can. I used to do it when I was in the Army. It boils for four–five minutes and the grounds just settle on the bottom. It was pretty horrible coffee. There was no filters, and the coffee was almost always too strong but it was coffee. Boiled coffee, the old timers called it.

-          George Rowan was half Indian and was a bit of a drifter.  He did odd jobs in the community and lived there for a while.  Occasionally he would perform a bear dance.  Although he certainly was eccentric, he was a trusted member of the town. Cathy Phillips, Calvin’s daughter, remembers that he was like a surrogate grandpa to her.  

Bemis Returns to Camping

The town was almost completely dead until the hunting camps and fishing camps all started. Last count I had there were over 200 between Glady and Bemis, counting those in the town of Bemis. I counted along the road and places you can’t see then checked with Ron White. He has a big campground, and he had about fifty.

That rejuvenated Bemis. I probably wouldn’t be running my little store if it weren’t for the hunters, the fishermen, and camps like that. Lots just come in for the weekends and keep it going enough where I’m open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I used to be open seven days a week but there’s just not that many full time residents.

In fact, the last time I counted twenty-seven in Bemis and thirty-two in Glady fulltime who get their mail through this office. There wouldn’t be a Bemis there now except for the camps—hunting and fishing—tourists. Most of the tourists just want to get away. They come quite a bit even in the winter months if it’s not too bad.

 

-          Calvin’s grandson Chris Phillips in 1980. 
The right line went into a tunnel that came out the other side of Cheat Mountain
and headed up to Durbin, the left followed the Shavers Fork further upstream

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 Link to Chapter Eleven

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