Samuel Crockett Dingus

Earl’s father, Samuel Crockett Dingus, (10/29/07 – 10/31/1954) passed away at 47 years old. He had a third grade education and was an excellent carpenter but later became a coal miner.  This was in the country about nine miles from Appalachia, in Virginia and during the time of the depression.

After the depression, Samuel got a job in a coal mine.   They moved to Jenkins, KY. The time was spring, probably around April or May.  Every year, they would call a strike.  John L. Lewis, (he hated that name) called it.  Strike could last 2-3 months.  During that time his family received sometimes as much as $3 a week but usually $1 per week of "script," which was put out by Consolidated Coal Company to be used only in the coal town area.  This would buy necessities for the family of six at the time.

Once a month he bought a 25 pound bag of flour.   Out of that bag of flour, mother would sometimes make biscuits and gravy every day and sometimes that’s all they had to eat for the week. This was their diet in the winter time.  In the spring it would change a bit.  In spring,  they could go out in the yard and find different plants that Mom knew, and so she would cook these and they would eat from the local plants. 

Changing the tone … the evenings were spent quite differently.  Usually a question and answer period with the entire family came to be.  Sometimes a story had been told to the children and they had to rehearse it.  They had to recount the details of the story, and then spent about an hour in a spelling bee.  The children would have to make up a story and this is what was rehearsed in their minds and then they re-told it back to mom and dad.  That was a typical evening anytime of the year.  Before the children went to bed then was, of course, a time of prayer.  Mom would at first lead the prayer because Dad did not become a Christian until he was 14.   Dad loved the book of Daniel and would tell stories and say “Now isn’t that something.”                     Dictated to Greg Ohly, 2013