Part One: Blair Mountain: When Miners Went to Literal War Against Their Bosses

Margaret talks with the crew of the Old Gods of Appalachia podcast about the coal wars of West Virginia and the blood that bought miners their rights.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
your podcast about some of the best people in history.
I'm your host at Killjoy, and with me this week,
I'm super excited to have not one, but two guests.
I have Cam Collins and Steve Shell, who are best
known for their work on the Amazing Eldridge Horror podcast
Old Gods of Appalachia. How are you all doing? Oh
dooing doo it fine? Fine, thanks for having us. Yeah,

(00:22):
thank you, so excited. Yeah. I first rand across All
Gods of Appalachia because well, I write horror fiction, I
like horror fiction, and I live in Appalachia, and so
everyone kept telling me to listen to it, and I
finally gave in, and I'm hooked, but I'm not caught up,
so don't spoil anything. Okay, got you? Okay? Yeah? Good?
No good? And you all are? You all are from

(00:44):
Wise County, Virginia originally? Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, we
both we grew up there. I graduated from we graduated
high school in the nineties up there, and I've lived
in Asheville since two thousand four, two thousand three, two
thousand four, h and Cam has been in Bristol for um.
I've been in the Tri Cities since two thousand three,

(01:05):
but I moved to Bristol in like late two thousand four,
early two thousand five, so I've been here a long time.
The only time I've been in Wise County was actually
the first time I ever saw mountaintop removal coal mining,
where they blow up the mountain and then dump all
the stuff into the valley. You mean, but behind my
dad's house. Yeah. Yeah, there's a reason I'm bringing that up.

(01:26):
But first we're gonna introduce our producer, Sophie Lichterman. Hi, Sophie, Hi, Margaret,
and I want to have you all on today. While
I wand up Sophie on because Sophie is always on
the call I live here, yeah, on the microphone. I
want to have you two on because well, I've always
wanted to have you on because I like your work,
but also because I've got an Appalachian story and I

(01:47):
wanted to find some folks who would really appreciate it.
Because today we're going to talk about the largest labor
uprising in US history and the largest insurgency in the
US since the Civil War, and this time, the insurgents
like the good side which is cool. And so today
we're gonna talk about an unlikely coalition of ten thousand
or so Union coal miners, white and black US born,

(02:09):
an immigrant gathering up guns, marching into non Union territory
to bring the fight to the coal companies. Because today
we're going to talk about the Battle of Blair Mountain
and the coal wars of West Virginia, which is right
over the border from Wise County. If i'm if, I'm yeah,
there's there's the whole weird area. It's it's so strange, Camerda,
I've talked about this. Uh, we're in talking about the

(02:30):
region where we live in southwestern Virginia and Wise County,
West Virginia is maybe an hour and change away, but
east East Tennessee is a little bit less. So our
entire cultural lives. If you wanted to go to the
Orthodonist or the Good Mall or the mall there was
no mall, then we would just go south south and

(02:52):
hour and change to Tennessee because you had to go
over and around the mountains to West Virginia. So like
as we move into the season, we're riding right now,
which talks about cold wars and is set a lot
in with Virginia. We're having to do a hell of
a lot of research about a place that's an hour
or so from our old houses that we just it
just wasn't geographically part of where we where we went
as kids. It just you know, like Kentucky's right there,

(03:14):
why you know. But then again, there was no mall,
no mall in our south. But like the first hardcore
and punk shows I ever went to where in the
Tri Cities in East Tennessee and that part of southwest
Virginia and then later and those are here. Those were
here in Bristol, which is more east, Yeah, and then
and then others in eastern Kentucky and over in Whitesburg

(03:35):
in that area. But West Virginia is it's it's strange,
it's right there. And as I was writing, I was writing,
as we were writing a story arc about a family
traveling from the neck of Virginia up into West Virginia
and back and forth, we're like, it's right there. Like
I don't know if you're gonna talk about it or not,
but Ash Bottom in McDowell County was the largest red
light district in the history of Appalachia. Yeah, that makes sense.

(03:59):
It was. It was where all the minds were. But
it was there were there were parlor houses owned by
black folks, white folks, immigrants, and the sex work community
all kind of like minded their own business and took
care of each other, regardless of kind of And and
I hate, I hate painting a racial ideal in any
part of Appalachia because if you grew up here, you know,

(04:20):
race relations are not easy. They are not uncomplicated. Um,
even good Union folks. There's a lot of racist folks
in the Union just because of where we are. Um.
But yeah, but the largest red district in the history
of Appalachia was thirty minutes from like my family's house,
and and and and apparently that continued on into the

(04:41):
sixties and seventies, and uh, you know it was smaller,
but like that's still what that area was known for.
So like that's just the kind of stuff that can
be just over the mountain in Appalachia and you just
don't know it. Yeah, And this one seems like a
lot of what's going to come up and Appalachia is
that it's despite being geographically all of these things very
close to each other. The mountains and the cult sure
and the sort of lack of infrastructure keep things very separate,

(05:04):
and so a lot of what we're gonna be talking
about today is people trying to overcome those borders essentially
that are even inside a single state. So as background,
being a coal miner at the turn of the twentieth
century was not the best job that you could have.
It was, in fact, fucking terrible. If you were lucky,
you live long enough to die of black lung disease,

(05:26):
where coal builds up in your lungs and you know,
turns them black. That's the name black lung. It kills you,
and there's no cure for it. Still people still die
of it, and hey, fund facts, as I was looking
this up, the number of people dying from it is
going up, not down. Yeah, So that's if you're lucky,
If you're just as likely you die in some mining accident,

(05:48):
crushed by rock or killed in an explosion or something
like that, because basically likely as not, your boss is
going to treat you like your disposable, especially before the
Union came in, and coal mines are in these remote
parts of the country, a lot of them. Even though
you're only a couple hours, you know you'll be a
hundred miles by as the crow flies from somewhere, you know,

(06:08):
with large population centers or something, but you'll be completely
unreachable and often only by railway. So workers would live
in houses owned by the companies. Sometimes they were only
paid in script, which is basically monopoly dollars or chuck
E cheese tokens that can only be redeemed at the
company's store, so you're kind of trapped there. Sometimes people

(06:28):
will get paid cash, but they would take out script advances,
so you'd be further and further in debt. The company
stores were a little monopolies that sold all the ship
at inflated costs. Workers found themselves deeper and deeper in
debt to their employers, and I don't know, it was
not a good time. People were doing pretty badly. Wages
would ebb and flow constantly, depending on all kinds of

(06:50):
market stuff and depending on what the coal operators which
is the word for the people around the companies, the
bosses and all that ship whatever they figured that could
get away with. Basically, one report I from had minors
working eighteen hour shifts in a day for what amounted
to and I did the little like calculation to how
much it is in today's dollars, eighteen dollars, So you
would work for a dollar fucking hour is some of

(07:13):
the wages that people were dealing with. And sometimes you
only had a job a couple of days a week.
In company towns, the companies owned the churches, the schools,
the doctors, a lot of places. They own the law enforcement.
They picked what movies you could be shown in theaters,
hard and dangerous work. I don't know the closest example.
I'm curious what you all think of this. The closest

(07:35):
comparison I can come up with, and history has actually
serfdom because people were on some level like owned by
their landlords and they could live freely within certain constraints. Right,
It's not the same as like chattel slavery or whatever,
but a lot of places people literally weren't even free
to leave. Oh yeah, in a lot of the term
company town goes, you know, is a lot more loaded

(07:56):
than than you would even think. Like they literally own
a third gates and there would be guards and one
of the things, and I'm sure you'll get there with
Blair Mountain and some of these uprisings is like they
would turn the security forces on the miners if they
didn't like what you were doing, or suspected you were unionizing,
or suspected you were disloyal to the company. And it
it became like, yeah, it became certain I tapped my

(08:18):
nose as if someone could see me when you said
when you said, serve to margarets Um. But that's exactly
the closest thing we can we can, yeah, we can
get to yeah, very very similar. Yeah, And so you'll
be shocked to know that a bunch of miners decided
that they didn't actually like this particular setup that they
were living with. So in two other labor unions joined

(08:41):
forces and they formed the United Mine Workers of America
or the u m w A. And their goals were
really radical. They wanted eight hour work days, no child labor,
they wanted ventilation in the tunnels. They wanted to get
paid in US currency for the money that they were
doing in the US and ship like that, Like, how

(09:02):
dare they, I mean, it's the child labor alone. End
of things is yeah, that's that's a that's a research
rabbit hole. If you want to feel real bad about
the world, even worse than we do today, read about
coal mining, specifically young boys specifically in coal mines, and yeah,
you'll you'll want to burn something down, yeah, which is

(09:23):
the attitude that many of these miners came upon. And
so they led successful strikes across the Midwest, and they
earned wage increases and their ranks shot up from they
started with about ten thousand people in the um w A,
and after these strikes they went up to a hundred
thousand members and from there it just only spread. They
had significant black membership from the very beginning and start.

(09:44):
Contrast to the labor movement in general in the nineteenth century,
you actually weren't allowed to be in the KKK if
you remember the um w A, which feels like it
shouldn't be saying something, but is saying something, and it's
so far from perfect, like you are getting that, it's
so far from perfect that I wouldn't even know where
to begin talking about how unperfect it is. But black

(10:05):
folks did make it into some of the leadership positions
and the But the push to include black and immigrant
labor in the umw A didn't actually come from the top.
It came from the rank and file workers of every race,
and basically the white Union leadership was kind of dragged
along into being reasonable. As far as I can tell,
it was undeniable in southern West Virginia. I mean, at

(10:27):
one point in time, they were like six figures of
black miners, not counting their families, just black miners on
the world. They were doing the most dangerous, the lowest paying,
and the awfullest work that they could possibly be asked
to do, which is why the eventual migration north happened
with a lot of black folks in Appalachia, but West
Virginia Cole was, especially West Virginia Union Cole was built

(10:48):
by black miners. Like it was black miners who marched
across state lines just to their white counterparts and said, listen,
if we can do this, sure, you know, they might
even listen to y'all, you know, but yeah, But like
southern Appalachia especially was built on the backs of black
miners and their labor. Yeah, And the history books I
was looking at would say that a fifth to a

(11:09):
quarter of all the coal miners in West Virginia were
black at around the time. I'm talking about the teens
in the twenties, and the labor struggles involved black folks,
white folks and then immigrant Europeans, mostly Italians, all working together.
That was kind of fifty years ahead of its time
at least. And and a lot of people will talk
about basically like these Italian and Hungarian miners weren't white, right,

(11:30):
And to some degree that's true, but sometimes that gets
exaggerated because it's if an Italian immigrant wasn't white, it
did not make them black. Basically, they were like them
in the Irish and and some of the other European
immigrants were kind of their own class below white and
well above Asian, Black, indigenous, and a bunch of bunch
of other classes in terms of American society at least

(11:53):
again as far as I've been able to figure out,
but there was a different guy. It was a different
kind of mothering, especially if you were Catholic, because so
many folks in power were Protestant. Uh what would eventually
become the Evangelical churches. Because if you were a papist,
as they would say, then your loyalty wasn't even to America.
It was to a foreign power. It was to the pope.

(12:15):
All the way the Pope told you to do something,
then that's that. Then you believe that's God's authority and
that makes you less American, and therefore that makes you
less than white. So yeah, you're absolutely correct. That didn't
make them black, but they were definitely other. Yeah, my
granddad was a Scottish Catholic in the Midwest in the
twenties and thirties, like riding freight trains around looking for work,

(12:36):
and had a lot of anti Catholic sentiment presented his way. Um,
I won't take everything he said is like totally true
about how all that worked out. But so even in
the Union, black miners had to be careful to make
sure that they like didn't look like they were stealing
white workers jobs. And you know, as you were saying,
they got the dirtiest, the most dangerous jobs. They were

(12:58):
left to sleep in the worst parts of coal camps,
and even underground they were forced to piss in different
cans than the white miners. Writer Crystal Good explains that
in the early twentieth century, white elite sought to condemn
poor white people trash, hillbillies, et cetera, as part of
their broader project to protect the purity of the white
race against black migrants and immigrants, to explain class inequality

(13:21):
and defend capitalism. Poor white people threatened and still do
white supremacy because they're very existence questions a white racist
dominance and the ideology of racial capitalism. I just like
that quote to kind of sum up the way that, yeah,
it works, poor white people complicate this. But so the
union takes off, and with it the anti union movement
also takes off. Employees were forced into what are called

(13:44):
yellow dog contracts, saying I promise I won't join the
umw A or the IWW right there in the employment contract,
with the i w W being another more radical labor
union who wasn't fighting for day to our work day.
They were fighting for the abolition of capitalism. They don't
plate too much into the story today, all of them.
They'll come in here and there. You could get as

(14:04):
you were saying that the company guards you get fired
for talking about unions. That was the least of it.
You could get thrown out in the cold because you
lived in a company house. And that's just the legal
stuff they can do to you. They did a lot
more than that, which we'll get into Appalachia in general.
To kind of lay out the geography of what we're
gonna be talking about today, and West Virginia in particular
is defined by its geography. Folks talk about hollers, that is,

(14:27):
the nestled areas between mountain ridges. It's well you all
might know this part better, but it's it's spelled hollow,
not hollow, but the Appalachian accents, which is out the
own R. Yeah. Um, and I didn't know this, but
everything I'm very excited about anything that's with potatoes. And
the word tator also comes from this, because anything that
ends with um gets the e R and so you

(14:49):
get feller and tater from the same same route. This
is important to me. Yeah, no, No, linguistics are like
believe me, like uh, Caminda are we are the b
as we did initially uh at University of Virginia's College
at Wise within communications and like you could go down
you can go down a rabbit hole on Appalachian Accents
within one county just divided by um. Talking with a

(15:11):
friend of mine about Little Stony Mountain, which sits in
between the towns of Appalachia, Virginia and Big Stone Gap, Virginia.
And it's a mountain that on the inside is being
eaten away by water and it's got this huge cave
system in it. But literally it's like a where a
continental break happened. Because on one side, where the town
of Appalachia is is coal and mining and one of
the biggest boom towns that is now a dying town. Uh.

(15:33):
And on the other side zero cold like literally like
a like a piece of cake, zero cold, but rich, lush,
verdant farmland. So that area got rich stayed rich to
this day for pretty much while everybody on the coal
side of things has been living in a town where
they have things literally like local elections that were tainted
by the fact that one candidate gave out pork rinds

(15:55):
at the UM. I mean, that's how few people are
left the social scale we're dealing with, so like, so
the geography of all that stuff, and yeah and holler,
you're absolutely you know that the e r ending up
on there. What's really funny to me is when we
grew up there, I used to deliver pizza. There was
Sleepy Hollow Road, and the people who lived there said

(16:15):
sleepy Hollow wouldn't sleepy Holler. But in contrast geographic place,
hohodel Hollow, that would be that's who holler did the
person handing out pork grins win. Yes they did, and
uh and it was a big scandal and uh and

(16:36):
I think a city mass city manager, the town manager
had to resign over it. Uh. You can google Appalachia,
Virginia pork grinds election and I probably don't have the
facts completely legit, but they're there because you're dealing with
towns like Appalachia, Virginia. I I lived there. I lived
there with my mom the last two years I lived
in Southwest Virginia before I came here. It's like you

(16:57):
can still see the structure of the camp houses in
like the nice part of town down by the river,
and the railroad tracks that feed all the way through
town where the coal used to be, and like, but
there's nothing there. Like it's literally a place that's it's
like watching a town bleed to death over generations of people.
Just not like the high school that was built there

(17:19):
in the fifties was built for a thousand students. They
had to consolidate it when they had a graduated class
of eight a bunch of years, and they thought consolidation
for two decades. Because your identity is your town and
for a lot of people, your high school mascot and
your sports team. That's who you are. In Appalachi, Virginia

(17:40):
and Powe Valley, Virginia or Big Stone Gap as it's
also known produced NFL players Thomas and Julius Jones of
the National Football League came from came from Powe Valley
High School and Big Stone Gap there. Their forefather, who
I think was their great grandfather, was a legendary player
from Appalachia, Virginia. So, and they're also black folks, which
is also a commodity than on the ground left in

(18:01):
southwest Virginia. Like the number of the number of anyone
who's not white in Wise County, Virginia is in the
sub single digits. Like I'm betting, I'm betting less than
less than two percent. Yeah, I've been reading a lot
that there was a lot of basically like those areas
are just getting whiter and whiter, and that's like part
of why the black history of a lot of Appalachic

(18:22):
it's forgotten. Ye And thank god for groups like Black
and Appalachia who if you're not following them on Facebook
and Twitter and everywhere else, they are doing fantastic work
of documenting black history in Appalachia and now Harlan County
in Kentucky used to actually have quiet a sizeable black population.
But then you know, when the when the mines started

(18:43):
becoming more and more automated and eliminating jobs, Guess whose
jobs got eliminated first, And so they moved out went,
you know, find jobs in other places. And that's how
northern West Virginia got the Pepperoni role. Is all the
Italian immigrants went north and settled in the New Than
part of West Virginia, and we were robbed of the
Pepperoni role. And you're so mad about it. I'm very

(19:06):
mad if we have them, but they're not as good
like there are because those are families from West Virginia.
So to keep playing that that this is is actually
really good because you're you're sort of copying ahead on
my script. Because one of the things I'm talking about, No, No,
is that the coal fields are as important as any
political boundary in a lot of where we're talking about, right,

(19:29):
and so you'll have your county lines, but more important
than that for a lot of what we're talking about
are the coal fields. And the coal fields will sort
of map two counties, but not exactly. And so there's
there's three coal fields we're going to talk about, and
then we're gonna talk about the counties. They kind of
map too, because these are the three players in today's story.
In terms of geography, the politics of which ones a

(19:50):
reunion and which ones aren't is kind of what makes
up the tension. In central West Virginia, you've got the
Kanawa Coal Field, which is centered on Kanawa County, and
in ninet twenty, it's a union stronghold, it's affiliated with
the um w A, and it's where this week's heroes
are going to be marching out of. Just south of that,
you've got Logan County and it's coal Field, which is
also called Logan coal Field in the nineteen tens. In

(20:14):
the nineteen twenties is the least union thing that's ever happened.
People are getting fired, beat and killed for whispering words
like union, and the whole places it's kind of almost cartoonish.
The whole place is being ruled with an iron fist
by a sheriff named Don Chaffin, and he's he's a
cartoon villain. He's he's as much the Sheriff of Nottingham
as He is the sheriff of Logan County, and we'll

(20:35):
get to him more later. At the border between these
two coal fields, there's a mountain, Blair Mountain, where a
lot of the action is going to happen. Then third,
further south, you've got the Williamson coal Field, which is
mostly in Mingo County, West Virginia, And we're just going
to call this whole area of Mingo County so that
we don't have to keep track of the coal field
name and the county name. It's on the border with

(20:56):
Kentucky with the tug Fork River as the border. Mingo
County is contested to rain at the time that we're
talking about between the unions and the operators, and it's
where the first half of today's story is going to
take place. There's a town in Mingo County named mate One,
which has all of five people living in it today,
down from a bustling eight hundred people who lived at

(21:17):
in the nineteen twenties. And these days the town is
a thirty foot tall wall around the entire city because
it's the most flooded town in America apparently. And the
wall has nothing to do with any of the stuff
that we're talking about, but it it's so ominous and cool,
even though it wasn't there during the times we're talking about.

(21:38):
I just have to point out the wall because it's
really cool. And I went there once when I was
doing a flood relief in Mingo County because strip Minds
had caused all this flooding and ruined all these people's
homes and stuff. And we went to mate wand to
get tetness shots, and I just thought the place was cool.
There's now a museum They're dedicated to the mind Wars,

(21:59):
which if anyone is passing through to Southwest Virginia, is
worth stopping at. And people talk ship on Westbrita. I'm
sure you all are not familiar with this, but a
lot of people talk shout on Appalachia, and specifically West
Virginia catches a lot of this as well. Even though
West Virginia I live currently, I'm not from West Virginia.
I can't claim that, but I live here. We have

(22:20):
two of the most badass events in US history, John
Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry and the fucking Battle of
Blair Mountain Um. Plus the reason West Virginia exists is
that folks here refused to join the Confederacy, So I
don't know. I think it's cool, and people who are
from here are allowed to hate West Virginia, but I
think everyone else should stop. Knawa County wasn't always a

(22:42):
Union stronghold first, it had to be a Union battleground.
So we're going to include the fight as a prelude,
and it's a shame because it's already it's fucking interesting
of its own right. There was a strike that lasted
over a year, from April nineteen twelve to May. At
least fifty people died violently and uncounted more and starvation.
And that's how bad the mind wars are is that

(23:03):
there's this strike that lasts a year that fifty people
die violently in and it's only the prelude. It's only
the like the footnote. I mean, it's not a footnote.
All these amazing things happen, but it often ends up
the prelude to what we're most of what we're gonna
be talking about. And that strike was called the Paint
Creek Cabin Creek strike because I want you all to
guess where it took place. Could it be at Paint

(23:26):
Creek or Cabin Creek or both. It was at both
of them, Yes, and it took place at the nineties
six mines that employed seven thousand people on Paint Creek
and Cabin Creek. And I want you to hear their
wild radical demands that got so many people killed. One
that the operators accept and recognized the union. Two that

(23:50):
the miner's right to free speech and peaceable assembly be restored.
Three that blacklisting discharged workers be stopped. Four that compulsory
trade in that company stores be ended, because you, like
literally weren't allowed to shop at other places and they
would prevent you from They would prevent other like peddlers
from coming in and selling wares because they had the
monopoly on all commerce in the town. Five that cribbing

(24:13):
be discontinued, and that two thousand pounds of mind coal
constitute a ton scales be installed to weigh the tonnage
of the miners, like literally, one of their demands was that, like,
we think the system of measurement that everyone else agrees
on should be the system of measurement that we use.
I mean, how, what why? I'm shocked, I'm shocked by

(24:37):
your own I'm shocked by that they can't accept innovative metrics. Yeah,
like you know. Six that miners be allowed to employ
their own check wayman to check against the weights found
by the company check wayman as provided by law. So
number six was literally, please let us have the law
that is the law, and number seven that to wayman

(25:00):
determine all docking penalties. Three of these seven are literally
just about the weight of the coal. Wow. So they
pretty much had violence coming asking for this kind of
stuff if you ask me. Yeah, obviously because the mountain.
In the mountains, no one can hear your scream. Yeah, Unfortunately,

(25:21):
they rely on that real heavily. Which is funny though,
because I live in the mountains and you could hear
everyone's scream. But there's just not enough people who care.
There you go. Yeah, well, I mean the other people
who hear the screaming care, It's just that the people
who have power don't care. There you go. So the
mine operators immediately hire the best strike breakers in the business,

(25:43):
which are the Baldwin Felts, which is a private detective agency.
They're kind of like the Pinkerton's. Pinkerton's are more famous
in general for union strike breaking but the Baldwin Felts,
they're the hired guns of capital. Most of them are
actually ex cops from around the country, so the Union too.
They go for the very best in their field. And
who shows up but motherfucking mother Jones. And I'm almost

(26:07):
entirely certain she would be fine with being called motherfucking
mother Jones, because every single Miners account I've read of
meeting her, I'll talk about how much she cusses. Oh yeah,
basically like, oh, she don't talk like she's in church. Nice.
Her best quote ever, which is actually on the back

(26:27):
of the T shirts you can get from the Mine
Wars Museum, um say, I'll tell the truth wherever I please,
mother Jones. And you know, there's like three fucks that
aren't that aren't on the back of that shirt. I'll
fucking tell the fucking truth wherever I fucking please, you
fucking assholes. That's what the shirt should be, but probably
wouldn't market that well amongst conservatives in West Virginia, which

(26:50):
is a shame because as the more I learned about
the history of West Virginia, I'm like, this is not
a conservative place, you know, and it's it's not a
like in its history. Yeah, yeah, no, totally so so.
Mary Harris Jones, motherfucking Mother Jones was born in seven
in Ireland, along with basically half of Ireland. In the

(27:11):
mid nineteenth century, she fled the potato famine, which wasn't
really a potato famine. Potatoes have never done anyone any harm.
The famine was caused by British imperialism, full stop. And
you know what else was caused by British imperialism, the advertisers.
That it's no weight. No, I'm not supposed to say
it like that. We like advertisers because they feed us,

(27:37):
unlike the people who starved Ireland. So he did that work,
You did that, you got there, here's some ads, and
we are back and we're talking about potatoes. Actually we're
talking about Mother Jones. So she moves to the US

(27:59):
because you know, everyone's starving. She loses four children and
her husband to yellow fever in the US because the
nineteenth century fucking sucked no matter where you were, And
then she lost her seamstress shop in the wow. I
wrote down the eighteen six seven one Chicago fire in
my script. I'm so smart. I'm almost certain the Chicago
fire was in eighteen seventy one, I wrote down multiple

(28:22):
options in my script. She spent okay, so so her
Seamsters shop burns down, and Sophie's shaking her head at me,
and Mother Jones spends the rest of her life rousing
up rabble and fighting for unions, and she just went
fucking everywhere. She helped found the IWW with cool person
alumni Lucy Parsons, though she kind of couldn't stand the anarchists,

(28:43):
including Lucy Parsons. Um. I think she didn't think the
anarchists were very tactically sound. But she shows up in
West Virginia old as fuck. I think in her mid seventies.
She's wearing a long black dress, the trails behind her
on the ground. Basically, she's like the goth i Ish
cussing leftist icon. Sophie has informed me that it was

(29:03):
indeed eight seventy one that the Chicago fire has happened. Anyway,
Mother Jones always surrounded by armed and angry men who
she calls her boys. Her favorite way of rousing rebbel
was basically just I didn't I didn't realize this part. Especially,
she just insulted people, called people cowards. That was her thing.

(29:25):
She was like, why are you putting up with this ship?
All in an in an Irish broke And so here's
from a speech she gave during the Cabin Creek strike.
They wouldn't keep their dog where they keep you fellows.
You know that you fellows have stood it entirely too long.
It's time now to put a stop to it. We
will give the governor until tomorrow night to take them
guards out of Cabin Creek. Here on the steps of

(29:45):
the Capitol West Virginia, I say that if the governor
won't make them go, then we will make them go.
If you are too cowardly to fight, I will fight.
You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Actually to the Lord,
you ought just to see one old woman who is
not afraid of all the bloodhounds. It is freedom or death,
and your children will be free. We're not going to
leave a slave class to the coming generation. And I

(30:06):
want to say to you that the next generation will
not charge us for what we have done. They will
charge and condemn us for what we have left. Undone
I like her nice. So everyone's getting evicted right because
you're striking and you live in a company house. So
they kick you out of the houses. Everyone ends up
living in the shanties down by the tracks. Basically, the
Union's rent land and help let people build shanty towns

(30:29):
on them. So they're all living down by the tracks.
And what are the Baldwin Felts do. Well, they do
what any rational person would do, and they take an
armored train and they fucking machine gunned into the camp
road by and machine gunned. That's how No Fox the
Company was about breaking the union. The first time I
heard that, I didn't believe the person who told me

(30:51):
I was actually in I was. I think. I think
he took me to the place that happened. I was like,
this is where the machine gunned into the tents, And
I'm like, of course they did. I believe you. That's
a thing that happened, as they just machine gunned into
random people campaign by this. They did, They absolutely did,
because that's the history of labor. So three thousand armed

(31:12):
union miners march on the state capitol and they read
a fucking declaration of war. Mother Jones gets arrested at
one point for inciting a riot, then later for conspiracy
to commit murder. She refuses to acknowledge the court and
doesn't even enter a plea. They give her twenty years.
She's like seventy years old. And the quote I'm gonna

(31:33):
I'm gonna say my favorite Mother Jones quote, which is
pray for the dead and fight like health for the living.
I have no idea if it came from this particular
struggle or not, but I really like it. But my
favorite version of this quote is one that was adopted
by the League of Anarchist Necromancers, which is raised the
dead to fight like health for the living. I mostly
just want to tell you all that in case you

(31:53):
want to steal your podcast. I've toyed with the idea
of a Mother Jones analog in our world, But like
are certain things we leave alone, like we would never
we changed the names of places in our world, but
we would never like have Bloody Arlan or the Battle
of the Battle of the Battle of bait One like
we would never like those things are fixed points in
history that happened in our world as well as the

(32:14):
real world. But Mother Jones has to be referenced at
least at some point. Yeah, at some point as herself.
I don't think I can make her a character exactly
or co opt her to be something in our world.
But her presence is the mind wars wouldn't have happened
without her. Yeah, I don't think. Yeah, I think that's
probably true. One woman, Grace Jackson, was interviewed, a participant

(32:36):
in all this, was interviewed about Mother Jones, like fifty
years later, and she tells this story about her Mother
Jones wasn't afraid of the devil and all his angels,
and she'd come up to the head of the creek
here and call out for all the men that wanted
to be let out of slavery to follow her, and
they did, scores of them. At Leewood, the company knew
she was coming, and the machine guns waiting up there
for her. Now everybody was following her, women and children

(32:58):
and everyone. When they got to Leewood, they had a
cannon mounted on top of the company's store and they
sent word that the miners had better turned back because
they was planning to let loose on all the miners
and their families. Well, I was just a child then,
but I was in the March two with my three uncles,
my grandmother, my parents, and my five aunts. The children
went to because there were thugs all through them hills,

(33:18):
and they used the word thugs to talk about the
Baldwin Felts men. Basically, there was thugs all through them hills,
and it wasn't safe to lead. To leave a child alone,
he'd be shot in your absence if one was going
to die. They figured they might as well just all
die together, because they weren't making no living anyway. When
they arrived in Leewood, Mother Jones stood up there and
called them operators everything but a gentleman, and told them

(33:40):
to damn well go ahead and fire that cannon if
they had the guts to do it. She even climbed
up onto the roof of that store and put her
hands on the cannon and called them everything in the book.
She didn't care nothing for Christian language, because she loved
the people and hated them operators. Oh, she was a
female robin hood. If there ever was well, they didn't
do a thing. And so then Grace goes on to

(34:01):
describe about how her aunt Nellie, who is small and pregnant,
confronts a scab who yelled at her. So she quote
with real high old timey boots all laced up at
the ankle. She stomped him in the face, ripped his
ears half off, and knocked his teeth out. Nice aunt
Nellie gets arrested with twenty other women who are who
are fighting, and she almost gives birth in prison because

(34:24):
she's pregnant when she's doing this, but her mom stormed
into the governor's office, passed the secretary and yelled at
the governor until he lets Nellie out to give birth
in the hospital. I just really like all that stuff
makes me happy. I mean, it's terrible things that are happening,
and maybe it's bad, but that kind of stuff makes
me so happy. So the strike goes on for a year,

(34:46):
violence all around, until new governor comes in and says,
all right, you've got a fucking stop to both sides,
and he releases Mother Jones out for medical treatment. He
releases a bunch of miners who've been arrested during martial law,
and gets both sides down to negotiating table, and the
strike wins. It's not a clear cut, perfect victory, but
the new contract was an improvement. So then the next year,

(35:07):
the major players and all of this, the Baldwin felt,
the um w A and Mother Jones, they all go
over to Colorado where they did the whole thing over
again in what gets called the bloodiest strike in American history.
And I'm going to call a story for another time
because we're gonna stick to West Virginia. So that's the
background we're coming from for the main two parts of
our story. The first part is center on may Wan

(35:29):
in Mingo County down at the border with Kentucky. And
I want to introduce you to Smiling Sid two Guns
Sid sid Hatfield, or as I like to call him,
the only good cop in history with the with the
most West Virginia name. Oh yeah, unless I mean, like
like Sid Hatfield. You don't get much more West Virginia

(35:51):
than that. Yeah, it's great. So Sid Hatfield was born
in either depending on who you ask, and he he
may be was the bastard son of his mom's extra
marital affair, again depending on who you ask. He's one
of twelve fucking kids. And he grows up and he
watches the railways come in, he watches coal mining start,
he watches bodies start coming out of the minds. He

(36:12):
watches his widows are evicted from company houses as soon
as their husbands die, and he's noticing what's happening. He
notices what's happening up at Paint Creek and Kanawa. He
knows what the funk is up, but he doesn't have
a lot of choices. He leaves school as a teenager
who goes directly into the mines. There didn't seem to
be any hope for a union in Mingo County though

(36:33):
all the all the owners had them locked down with
yellow dog contracts that said you're not allowed to organize. So,
Mate one, as as you talked about a little bit earlier,
how all of southern West Virginia is the wild West
without the West. Mate one is a town of eight
hundred people, and it's filled with saloons and sex workers
and fighting and drinking and gambling, and it's the kind
of place where the mayor runs a jewelry shop. Sid

(36:55):
really likes the place. He gets his teeth Captain Gold.
People start calling him smiling Sid. He's a hundred fifty
pounds and five ft six and he likes to drink
and right, so a reasonably a reasonably sized human being
in terms of heights. What I'm saying two is five ft.
I'm not a hundred and fifty pounds but I am five.
I am five ft seven of God loves me and

(37:18):
the doopters pretty much and shoes. Yeah, yeah, well I
actually lost an inch before I came out as trans
I was five ft ten and going to the doctor
and they measured me and i'd be five ft ten,
but I haven't changed size. I'm five ft nine and
three quarters. As soon as I went in with like
as a girl. They measured me and they looked at me,
and I'm five ft nine and three quarters and they said, okay,

(37:40):
five ft nine and they wrote down five ft nine
on the chart, and I was like, I lost an
inch and I haven't even started taking hormones yet. This
is that's going on? Yeah? Is that is that like
some fee like something like some heteronormative sisp. Okay, so
you get to be who you who you really are,
but we're taking a fucking quarter and so smile and

(38:05):
said this gold cup teeth. He likes to drink and
fuck and fight, and he likes mate one. And he's
a sharp shooter too, though more of the throw potatoes
in the air and shoot them type than the like
fancy do tricks for crowds type, because potatoes are good
for so many things. M Yeah, one time, as he
describes it, he got into a little shooting match in

(38:26):
one of the minds, which is to say, he murdered
a mind foreman. He was found innocent at trial, so
it might have been self defense. The mind foreman might
have started the fight. I have no idea. And the mayor,
Mayor Testaman, who I think was as hard drinking, hard gambling,
hard fucking as the rest of them, appoints said the
town's first chief of police in basically because the mayor

(38:49):
likes him, and he he wears the badge, and he
wears two guns two revolvers is how he's two guns
said or whatever, and no uniform. And as a cop,
he breaks up fights between miners, he escorts people home,
and he basically tries as hard as he can to
not lock anyone up. And he actually managed to get
himself arrested twice during the first few months that he's

(39:11):
the chief of police, once for illegal whiskey because we're
into prohibition period, and once for fighting, which everyone just
loved him more right because of both of these things.
And the mayor is the one who posts bond when
he gets arrested for these things in the union. The
United Mine Workers of America try to come into Mingo
and force. They've been unionizing the ship out of the

(39:31):
whole country and the wages are shooting up for workers,
but southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky were holding out,
and as long as these non union mines were running,
they could undercut the union mines and funk everything up
for everyone. And miners and MINGO wanted the fucking union
because they wanted to stop being treated like ship dying constantly.
So and union organizers have been like getting shot like

(39:55):
I read one report about in nineteen nineteen before the
UMWA even shows up. So one basically like he's caught
talking about a union, and they like show up at
his house. So he runs out the back door and
runs into the hills and they shoot both of his legs,
um breaking his femur, and he he lives, and he
continues to organize for the union because he's fucking cool.

(40:16):
I don't actually remember his name. So miners at a
place called Burnwell, which is three miles out of town.
They're the first to charter themselves a union, and they
meet at a Baptist church and sit Hatfield stands outside
armed to make sure that they aren't bothered. The union miners,
of course, all get fired and evicted from company housing.
The Baldwin Felts guys who everyone just calls thugs, starts

(40:37):
showing up armed in town al Felts. One of the
Felts brothers tries to bribe the mayor and Hatfield. They
offers them each five dollars to put a machine gun
nest in mate one, and the two of them are like,
what are you fucking talking about? Fuck you, and they
send them running. Tensions heat up. Our lady of the union,
motherfucking mother Jones, shows up in her long black dress.

(40:59):
She's in her mid eighties. Now black workers and white
workers are signing up for the union. So many people
are evicted that the union starts renting land to let
them pitch tents, and Mingo County goes from zero union
miners to three thousand union miners in a matter of months.
In these tense cities, they form communities and for the
first time, white miners, black miners, and Italian miners are

(41:20):
all living in the same community. And it's like the
first non segregated housing. Basically that I think that probably
any of them ever experienced. And the solidarity that they
start building in these communities pretty much is how they
get away with everything that they get away with. And
they're starving, so they start gardening everywhere, all through the hills,

(41:41):
growing beans and corn and tomatoes. And you want to
know what else they were growing, SOPHIEA is what they
were growing. They were growing God's perfect vegetable, the potato,
of course. And this podcast is in fact now I've
been saying, we're trying to get sponsored by the concept
of potatoes, because i only want to be sponsored by
good things, and I'm very sad about my participation in

(42:02):
capitalist society. So we actually have from Kyle and add
for the concept of potatoes. Today's episode is brought to
you by the concept of potatoes. Not only are these
tubers delicious, they are also nutritious, able to provide nearly
all of the calories, vitamins, and minerals for a basic,

(42:23):
healthy human diet. First cultivated by indigenous people of South America,
potatoes traveled north and south, up and down the elevation
of the Andes Mountains, making them very adaptable and easy
to grow. They can even be stored without refrigeration. Potatoes
are perfect for mutual aid of all kinds, whether providing
for your communities or feeding revolutionary forces and everything in between.

(42:46):
So head on over to your nearest farmer or local
food provider to learn more about potatoes and acquire some
for yourself. The concept of potatoes literally the greatest concept ever.
We are back and we're talking about how potatoes got
them through years long strikes, as well as being in

(43:09):
corn and tomatoes, and I'm sure they grew lots of
other stuff too, you know, you just you find a
bit and you stick with it. And I also really
like potatoes, okay. On May thirteen, anti labor thugs in
suits roll off a train into mate Wan carrying rifles.
Two of the three Felts brothers are with them. They
hop into cars heading towards Stone Mountain Coal Company, where
striking miners were still living in company houses. How dare

(43:32):
they not move out? People weren't fucking having it this time.
Words spreads around town and armed folks start to gather.
Mayor Testament and sit Hatfield decided to go have a
conversation with the Baldwin Felts men and them and a
bunch of miners catch up with them as they they're
in the middle of Victia, family just throwing their furniture
out into the fucking road, and sins like, do you

(43:53):
even have the right papers? And they're like, yeah, we
got the right fucking papers. If you want to go
to double check, you gotta go all the way back
to town to double check. And says like, God damn it,
this is definitely me paraphrasing, and so he goes back
to town. Any double checks, he calls the deputy over
in the next town over. The deputy is like, no,
they don't have fucking papers to do that. What they're
doing is completely illegal, and so it's like, you mean
I can arrest them, and deputy is like, yeah, they're

(44:16):
they're breaking the law. You can you can arrest them.
He's like, oh, I'm so fucking stoked. Or to use
an actual quote that he said during that conversation which
came up later in court, we'll kill the goddamn sons
of bitches before they get out of mate one. That's
the way he phrased it. So the mayor rushes off
to sort through some warrants for illegal carrying of firearms

(44:36):
just in case the illegal eviction warrants don't come in
time because they're going to come on the five o'clock train.
Stories are trickling into town about the days evictions. They
just fucking evicted a woman with a newborn into the rain.
Willard Smith, who was there, put it like this. When
they come to her, why they just picked up the mattress,
the woman, and the baby and carried them all out

(44:56):
to a rock pile next to the creek. It was raining.
Everyone down in the town was a minor, and when
a fellow came down and told what happened, they just
looked like they went wild. So people are displeased. And
when I say displeased, I mean they set up like
a Wild West movie up in second story windows, gathered
up in some shops, et cetera with their rifles. The

(45:17):
detectives show back up in town at four pm. They're
done evicting everyone. They eat dinner at the hotel the
Planning and catch the five o'clock train, which is the
one that's supposed to carry the warrants for their own arrest,
which they don't know. Sid goes up and it's like,
I got a warrant for you assholes, and They're like, yeah, well,
we gotta warrant for you. And they pull out this
warrant that they have and it says that Sid's under arrest,
so they try and take him under arrest. The mayor

(45:39):
looks at it and says, this warrant is bogus. This
is probably the last thing the mayor ever gets to say.
People like to argue about who fired the first shot.
Sid claims that al Felts shot the mayor, so that
Sid then turn and shot Al or maybe the miners
hold up in the hardware store fired first. The Felts
claimed Sid shot first. I think it was Han soul Low.

(46:00):
However it happened. Al Felts and testament fall. Sid pulls
two guns because he's sucking two guns. Sid and goes
all full fucking action movie with a revolver in each
hand in the middle of the streets, surrounded by thirteen
people trying to kill him, and everyone just starts shooting everyone.
One Baldwin Felt guy takes off running. He runs to

(46:21):
the river. He swims across and escapes into the hills.
Two others sneak away in the chaos and they sneak
onto a train. Another guy he had walked off before
the fight to buy cigarettes, and when he comes back
and he's seeing what's happening, he just walked calmly away,
like he had nothing to do with any of it,
and he walks up to the train station. He rips
up his I D the one that says he's a
Baldwin Felts man. It's like, I'm mean with any of this,

(46:44):
and he gets on a train and he leaves, and
another guy who's not a detective but just a hired
mover who came with them, he just fucks off and
runs and he hides in a barrel for hours. So
in the end, both Felts brothers who were there two
of the three Felts brothers total, and five other detectives
as well as Mayor Testament and two miners who are

(47:05):
actually both unarmed just happened to be there, are killed.
And one of the on our miners who's killed had
just been fired for joining the union that morning and
still said Hatfield just standing out in the middle of
this fucking carnage and he's unharmed. And then the next
part this feels to action movie to be true. I
feel like the more I read history, the more. I'm like,

(47:28):
y'all say you're not fiction writers, but I'm not entirely
certain I believe you. But maybe this happened. Historians write it.
And who am I called him a liar? I'm a
professional liar. I write fiction for a living. Sid Hatfield
reholsters his guns. He walks over to Alf Felts. He
drops the warrant onto al felt his body and says, now, you,
son of a bitch, I'll serve it on you, and

(47:50):
then the theme song plays made Flood. There's a great
mate one movie if you've never watched it, that was
made like in the seventies early eighties. I want to
think that's like I remember my dad being very reluctant
to let me watch it. My dad was a non

(48:10):
union diesel mechanic, but he was non union in a
time in the seventies when the um w A was
suspected of being very corrupt. They were so corrupt in
the seventies. Yeah, they were totally mobbed up. So like,
I'm not painting my dad as a hero. And my
dad's a really good hearted man who meant well, who
sucks up a lot or has over time, and I

(48:32):
love him, but um it, yeahs we He and I've
talked about why because I call him a lot to
be like, hey, I'm looking at this history and you
were there for like the sixties and seventies stuff like
what can you tell me you know when? And he
we talked about him not being union and he's like, yeah,
He's like, if you were union, you were in bed
with organized crime. He's like, you know, in nineteen seventy two,

(48:53):
when I'm like coming out of high school and becoming
a contractor first or a contractor is like laborman, labor
person or whatever, then becoming a mechanic, He's like, if
you were union, everybody knew you were crooked. So that's
like such a as somebody who is a leftist and
somebody who is pro union as you know, as you
can possibly be. It's so weird to me that, like
I look back at the time when I was you know,

(49:14):
the money that fed me that came into our house
was like dads, Like, I didn't dare sign him with
the union. He's like, then you get you really get hurt. Though.
Our house got jack rocked. If you know what a
jack rock is when they take two nails, you take
two nails. You sharpen both ends and then you bend
them into what looks like a jack like you would
play Jack's with as a little kid, and you throw
those in non union workers driveways so when they try

(49:34):
to go with you where they blow out their tires.
Apparently our driveway was jack rocked. When I was a kid,
people tried to step to my dad in the grocery
store and he's like, it was just intimidation. He's like,
these weren't good people. Why would I sign on with him? Like,
but Dad, the union, And he's like, the union is
not always the ambentent force of good that you think
it is. It's the it depends on who's running it,

(49:55):
who's in charge of the money, and where it's going.
And I'm again pro union, pro pro super pro union,
pro labor, but like it's it's it's seldom in in
the era past this, it's so seldom black and white
that it gets. It's why the UMWA is mostly toothless now.
And you know, and is down to in what individual

(50:17):
like region or even building like you work in. Um
My partner is a union employee. Uh. For his privacy,
I will not say which union, but they're current union
rep for their district right now barely even shows up
and isn't doing his job in terms of like educating

(50:40):
and recruiting like young new employees you know, who don't know,
who don't know why they should join, not doing the job,
which of course means you know, if they don't join,
they're still they still enjoy the benefits, all the benefits
of union membership and which you know, people who are
dues paying them, ers who are participating in the system

(51:02):
and voting, are not happy about that. And you know,
I mean, it will go away if you're not they're
doing your job and telling in people who don't know
any better about it. And so it's and he's you know,
he is tweeted at at the union and and tried,
you know to complain before and it's just not not
gone anywhere. And of course then people are like, well,

(51:23):
why don't you run, And he's like, no, I don't.
I don't want to be the union rep. I I
like my job. I like my job. The way to
thank you, but I mean it's yeah, it's it really
still today. It really depends on you know, who's who's
in charge. He's running things and what's going on. Unfortunately,
I do love though, all the kind of new blood

(51:45):
that's hit in the unions, and I feel like the
unions are having a moment again where where it's becoming
what it originally was. And you know, eventually you build
a power structure and that power structure sort of lumbers
on for its own sake. And then I still kind
of I'm like, well, even the old dinosauric labor unions,
like a union job just pays half again or twice

(52:07):
as as well as a non union job like buying
large you know. But the theme music has just rolled.
It was very excellent performance of that. And this gets
called the Mate one Massacre, and I, frankly, I don't
think this is a good name for it, because when
I think of a massacre, I think of unarmed people
getting mowed down by a government or whatever. And it's
true that three unarmed people were killed in this, right,

(52:30):
the mayor and two random miners who happened to be around.
But for the most part it was the fucking labor.
The anti labor thugs who showed up who had just
shot the mayor, all got fucking mowed down. And so
Battle of Mate One That's that's what I'm going with
for what happened here. And everyone is fucking stoked, and

(52:50):
by everyone I mean miners, not coal operators or the
Baldwin Felts. The one surviving Felts brother in particular, is
not stoked, and he he gathers up a posse to
storm the town on the next train, which is a
night train, and sit Hatfield, the sheriff, and the sheriff
of Mango County hat Feels the chief of police of

(53:10):
of mate Wan itself. They deputize a hundred miners and
they wait for this posse to show up, and now
it's going to be a blood bath. But the true
hero of our story is the unnamed to history train conductor.
As he's bringing in the posse, or rather as he's
he's doing his fucking job driving the train, he's like, oh, funck, no,

(53:31):
I'm not stopping. So he just speeds up and blows
right through Matejan just rolls right through all the arm
posse is helpless. They can't get off the train, and
no massacre happens. And that's where we're going to leave
the story for today, with the people of mate want safe.
I mean, except for the mayor and the other two guys,
but and the dead private cops. But whatever. So, how

(53:54):
are you all feeling so far about this opening salvo
in in the Mine Wars. It's really acts, really interesting. Um,
I'm glad to learn a lot more, learn a lot
more about it. Yeah, I mean, like you know, like
Cam and I of course both being Appalachian from kind
of the Virginia coal fields, and that the heart of
that part of Appalachia, Like this is history we grew

(54:15):
up with, and history that for the production of our show,
especially season three, because season three with us is dealing
with villain stories and monster stories as the focus. So
naturally as we move into the nineteen thirties, that means
we look at monsters who are union busters, We look
at folks who work who have chosen the side of darkness,
both literal and metaphorical. So I've been neck deep in

(54:37):
research for a lot of this actually cool side note,
there's a website which I can send you latter. I
don't want to give them free advertising that if you
have a town that exists within their atlas, they will
make a T shirt that just has that town's name
across the chest and there is a town called Appalachia, Virginia.
So if you want a really nice T shirt or sweatshirt,
that just as Appalachia. But I also had one's met

(54:58):
ones made that say mate one and one that says Harlem,
and those are my when I need to write about
those things. It's been may seem dorky, but I pull
those shirts. I pull the show. Wear those shirts today
on a writing and research day, and they kind of
every time I look in the mirror, every time I
look down at myself, I'm like, okay, yeah this is
this is who and where, And it's kind of like, yeah,
that's a really cool. But there actually was a hardcore

(55:19):
band from West Virginia called Mateo at one point in time.
I don't know if they were any good that yeah,
yeah it's good no matter what. Yeah yeah yeah. But
uh but they were from West Virginia because there was
an old message board and it was so much that
scene was centered around a lot of Appalachian uh, a
lot of Appalachian hardcore. But um yeah. So but like

(55:40):
Mate one is one that doesn't get talked about enough
in my opinion, Like you know, Blair Mountain is huge,
and we'll get the Lair Mountain, but like mate one
was like this little a little massacre blip, you know that,
Just I feel like it's overlooked. So thank you for
talking about movie. Well, where can people find out more
about what you do? Do you all do anything? Do

(56:02):
you write any fiction podcasts that people might like that
you've already been talking about? Okay, I'm tell them about
the show. Our show is an Eldridge horror fiction anthology podcasts.
You can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts and
find out more about the show at www dot Old

(56:22):
Gods of Appalachia dot com. Uh and from there you
can connect to our Patreon all our socials all of a. Yeah,
the hub is really www dot Old Gods of Appalachia
dot com. If you like scary stories sitting Appalachia, we
might be up your alley. Yeah, that's just if you
like it being tied to Appalachian history, or as we

(56:43):
call it, an alternate Appalachia. And we've had a lot
of interesting discussions that people think we're gonna like change
history or like, oh is that just your way of
saying like these people weren't here, this that no alternative
Appalachia for us just means there's monsters. Yeah, it means
there are monsters. And we made che uge the names
of some towns so that people don't go bother people
who actually live in those towns. If they still exist,

(57:04):
then we may move some stuff around. Um. But yeah,
when wherever you find podcasts, you can find us. We're
we're we're pretty much everywhere. And if you're shy about
like I don't, I don't engage with It's funny because
I write horror, but I actually don't engage with a
lot of like I don't watch horror movies right by
and large, I don't watch some. But yeah, but both
of you weirdos. But all gods of appalaches creepy. It's it, uh,

(57:31):
it carries a I don't know. What I'm saying is
that if you're if you're nervous about checking it out
because it's a horror podcast, try it anyway. It's not
going to drop you into like something that's gonna keep
you up on I don't know, Okay, I don't know,
but you should listen to. We also include content warnings
in the in the show notes for every episode so

(57:51):
that people can avoid the things that they might find
a little upsetting. Uh. And for those who have three
processing issues, are just like to read along. We also
have transcripts every episode on our website. And we do
have a strict policy of there's no animal death, uh,
not in the form of you know, the dog always lives,

(58:12):
the cat always lives, there's mention of animal sacrifice. It's
strictly off screen. Uh. There will never, ever, ever, ever
be a sexual assault scene depicted on screen. We don't
ignore and pretend that things don't exist. But that's not
interest in making you sit through a description of that
sort of thing. Yeah, And and just first statement of

(58:32):
values the show is is very left. It's we're very
if it's on the left, we're pro, we're pro sects work,
we're pro queer, pro trans Yeah. Yeah, there's it's it's
just al Yeah, there's it's it's way way. Yeah, it's
it's one of those things. Are just like where people
have been an Appalachian since the beginning. We have been
here since like and and for the for so many

(58:53):
people to say like strong Appalachian women built this, you
cannot tell me there are that many strong Appalachian women
who built this, built this region. And a whole lot
of mark We you know, so like so as far
as that goes, if your horror has a lot of
bad tropes, we do our dead level best to avoid them,
so give us a try. A lot of people say

(59:13):
I don't do horror, but I do do old Gods,
So we're out there. If you have questions, you know,
it's okay. There's still tropes. We just sort of we
now have our own trips. Yes, yeah, fair enough, and
we'll be back on let's do for far two of
this episode, Yep, do All the Cool People Who Did
Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. But

(59:36):
more podcasts on cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
I Heard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.