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August 4, 2025 17 mins

On this episode of Our American Stories, Harrison Mayes was born in the coalfields of Kentucky, where a life underground was all but guaranteed. But after surviving a near-fatal mine accident, he felt called to do something different. Using homemade concrete signs and backroad highways, Mayes dedicated the rest of his life to one mission: spreading the word of God. J.D. Phillips, also known as the Appalachian Storyteller, shares the quiet, determined legacy of a man who turned suffering into a lifelong message of faith.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
Up next, a story out of cold Country about a
miner who would take on a hefty second job. You
to tell the story is the Appalachian storyteller J. D. Phillips,
a YouTuber with a phenomenal channel. Let's get into the story.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
My name is Harrison Mays and I was born just
before the turn of the century, in eighteen ninety eight.
Our cabin was located on a place called Barren Creek,
just below the Kentucky Tennessee state line. Like most folks

(00:54):
back then, lawn Paul spent most days scratching out the
flinty soil on the rocky hillside farm, growing just enough
food to raise their eight children. Seems everyone had large
families back then. Heck, a man needed all the help
in hands he could get. How else were the chores
is going to get done? Like milking the cow and

(01:15):
collecting the chicken eggs, or the amlets tote of water
from the creek to the homestead. Not that us kids minded, though,
it seemed like a privilege to help out our Paul.
He was a hard working god fearing man. And what
I remember the most about him is it seemed he
always had a lot of worry written across his face

(01:36):
and behind his eyes, Not that he ever said any
of it out loud, but we all knew it was there.
He spent many a night standing on the porch studying
the position of the moon or the shapes of the clouds.
He always seemed to know exactly when he was going
to rain, and he could predict a bad winter coming

(01:56):
months in advance. In many ways, Paul would one of
the last truly free men, men that were part of
the wilderness itself. Just like his father and his grandfather
before him, Paul had never worked a day in his
life for money. He had never clocked in or out. Instead,
he lived as one with both the forest and the

(02:17):
wild beasts that inhabited it. The turn of the century
brought many changes to everyone who called these isolated mountains home,
including my family. You see, the coal industry was born
out of the ashes of the war between the States,
and for the first time, jobs found their way into

(02:38):
this remote region. Within a few short years, company towns
had sprung up all up and down the hollers, and
they needed all sorts of workers. Loggers to clear the land,
hands at the sawmill, carpenters to build the shack houses,
more men to build a new railroad. But most of all,
they needed men willing to work in total darkness for

(03:02):
twelve hours a day, deep inside a hole, dug for
more than a mile deep into the side of a mountain,
armed with little more than a pick axe. What they
needed was men to dig the coal. One by one,
men moved their families out of their ancestral cabins and

(03:22):
away from their illside farms that they had worked all
their lives, and they moved them into these coal camps.
And by the time I was five years old, my
Paul traded his life as a mountain man for a
lifetime of coal dust. Paul moved us all a few
miles outside of Hillsboro, Kentucky, where he was hired on

(03:43):
at the Fort Mountain coal Camp. For the next several years,
I spent most of my days attending the company school
and helping maul around the house. Most of my siblings
were old enough to work in the mine with Paul,
but me no. I love school. Bible study was my

(04:03):
favorite part of the day, and our teacher. Miss Sally
would even let me take home a few sheets of
scratch paper each day for me to practice writing Bible verses.
I hoped i'd grow up and become a preacher. I
spent most nights after supper using small pieces of coal
that Paul had brought home, drawing pictures with Bible verses
underneath them to show Miss Sally the next morning. One day,

(04:28):
on my fourteenth birthday, Miss Sally made cookies for me
at school, and she gave me a big hug. She
told me she would miss me. Oh, Miss Sally, I
ain't going nowhere, I replied, But Harrison, don't you know
you're fourteen now a voice. Schooling is done when he
turns that age. Well, what will I do now, I asked? Why?

(04:52):
You'll work in the coal mine. Of course, you don't
need no more school into work in the mine. But
Miss Sally, all my life I've been aiming on the cocome.
I'm a preacher, not a miner. The young teacher paused
for a moment of reflection, and then she spoke, Son,
you don't have to be a preacher in a church
to spread God's message. Just trust in the Lord and

(05:15):
He'll show you the way, And just like that, in
that moment, my school days were over, and in many
ways so was my childhood. And I didn't know it
at the time, but I would spend the rest of
my life working in the darkness of a cold, damp
coal mine. So there it was just barely a teenager

(05:42):
put somehow a man at the same time, working twelve
hours a day for the same coal company as my father.
They called me a coupler boy. You see, electricity had
come to the coal mine, and no longer did mules
carry the coal carts out of the mind. Instead, there
was a metal cable pulley system pulled an endless train
of coal carts, each full with over a ton of coal,

(06:04):
up to the mouth of the mine. Each of these
carts were coupled together with a pen that had to
be removed at exactly the precise moment to separate the
cart from the cable pulley system. The cart would continue
down the tracks, and the pulley would roll up and
back into the mine and start the process over again.
Removing that pen and precisely the right moment was risky business,

(06:28):
to say the least. My friend Tommy and I. We
saw many boys lose fingers, and even one boy lost
an arm when he got caught between the carts. It
seemed it wasn't a matter of if you would get hurt.
The only question was when I still remember that Friday
morning like it was yesterday. My pall and all my
brothers and me, we set out for the mine in

(06:49):
a light mountain rain. As we all entered the mine,
my Paul looked back at me as he grabbed his
coal tags and his lunch bucket. Be careful today. That
rain is going to make everything slippery, and we can't
afford for you to get hurt, Yes, sir Paul, I replied.
And slippery it was that entire morning. All us boys

(07:10):
were slipping back and forth, and the muck and the
mud uncoupling those cars. My buddy Tommy suddenly yelled out, Harrison,
help me. My overalls are caught in a pinch.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
When we come back, what happens next in that mine?
Here on our American Stories. This is Lee Hbib and
this is our American stories, and all of our history
stories are brought to us by our generous sponsors, including
Hillsdale College, where students go to learn all the things

(07:45):
that are beautiful in life and all the things that
matter in life. If you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu. That's Hillsdale dot edu. And

(08:09):
we returned to our American stories and the story of
Harrison Mays. When we last left off, Harrison, who wanted
to become a preacher before becoming a miner, found himself
in a dangerous situation with his friend Tommy in the
mind they both worked in. Tommy's overalls were stuck in
a pulley cart system. Let's get back to the story.

(08:33):
I looked up.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
He was being drug alongside a fully loaded cart that
he had uncoupled. Both the cart and Tommy were barreling
full speed down the track right at me. However, Tommy
was holding on tight to the side of the cart
to keep from getting ran over, while screaming the entire time.
His weight made the cart unsteady, and it looked as
if the cart was gonna tip over just enough to

(08:57):
make the cold jump the tracks. I stood frozen for
a split second. I didn't know whether to run helped
Tommy or get out of the way. In the blink
of an eye, I heard the crashing sound of the
cart jumping the track, tearing up the side of the
wall as it raced towards me. I took one step
in the mud and I slipped and fail. There was

(09:20):
no time to escape. I kicked my legs frantically trying
to move out of the way. By now Tommy had
freed himself and he had jumped off the coal cart
and he was yelling, Harrison, get out of there quick.
I had nowhere to turn, and the entire cart barreled
into my chest. I broke nearly every bone in my body,

(09:40):
and folks who saw it said my eyes popping right
out of their sockets, and desperately the miners began to
dig me out of the rubble. As the company doctor
arrived on the scene of the accident, I had lost
consciousness and I was just laying there a heap of
broken bones. When they pulled my body out of the mine.
The doctor shout his head and he told my Paul, well,

(10:01):
I'm sorry, but there ain't near a chance that he'll
make it through the night. Ain't no sense in trying
to get him to a hospital in this weather, he'll
never make it. Best thing to do is to take
him home, call the family in and say you're goodbyes.
As I laid there, lifeless on that bed, I could
feel my family all around me, but I couldn't make

(10:24):
out what any one of them were saying. I just
remember my Mama's tears stricken face. And then I turned
my head and I realized I was looking down on
my lifeless body from up above. I was caught somewhere
in between this world and the next one that instant
when a soul separates from its body. I didn't feel

(10:44):
any pain, but I felt like I wasn't done. My
life hadn't even begun yet. God, please, please don't let
me die. I promise, if you'll let me live, I'll
spend all of my days telling the world about you.
I promise, I'll tell the entire world far beyond those
mountain ridges. Just let me live, and everyone will know
your name. Now I need to pause here for just

(11:07):
a moment. You see, there was no way Harrison Mays
should have ever survived that accident. No man could have
lived through it, much less a young boy. But sometimes
when we least expect it even when there's no other
possible explanation. God can do the impossible. That's right. Harrison
did survive, and within three days he climbed off his

(11:30):
death bed, and he dedicated the rest of his life
to telling everyone he could about God. Once Harrison returned
to the coal mines, he was a changed man in
his mind. He had to get busy in a hurry
telling the world about God. Now, back in those days,
one of the biggest events to happen in rule Appolachia

(11:51):
was when a tent revival came to your town. Everyone
and their brother would go to these events to see
and hear everything from preaching, singing, ake hamlon, dancing, and
everything in between. Harrison figured the Lord said to make
a joyful noise, so he first tried his hand at singing.
The only problem was, well, he couldn't sing a lick,

(12:12):
and though he was making a joyful noise, well, it
was just noise that most folks could do without. When
the next tent revival came to town, he tried his
hand at preaching, but his combined fear of public speaking
and the blank looks on the faces of the church
goers told him that preaching wasn't exactly his call in either.

(12:35):
One day, the up and coming preacher was sitting on
the front porch asking the Lord for a sign on
what to do, when a new idea came to him.
Literally there standing right in front of him was his
pet hog, Isaac, just standing there looking at him. Harrison
quickly ran to the lean to shed, and within a

(12:57):
minute he re emerged with a bucket of white paint
and a paint brush. He dipped his brush into the
paint and began painting sin not down each side of
the black pig, since pigs were freely back then fattening
up on chestnuts. Within a few days, everybody in the
mining camp had read those words sin not. Harrison knew

(13:20):
he was onto something, and he began painting his simple
message on the sides of mountains, rocks, trees, barns, and
even on coal cars bound for far away places. He
soon resorted to making signs out of wood, cardboard, an oilcloth,
carrying messages such as get right with God and Jesus

(13:41):
is coming. To fund his ministry, he began working double
shifts in the coal mines, one for his family and
one for the Lord. All the miners knew of his signs,
and some would laugh, while others would shake their heads
in disbelief. However, they admired his effort, and every now
and then they would donate a load of coil towards

(14:01):
Harrison's ministry. Heck, even the mining company let him use
an abandoned building on the property as his workshop. By
nineteen forty, Harrison's father had passed away from the dreaded
black lung. As was a common practice back then, the
loving son made his father's tombstone out of concrete right
in the backyard. He was in that moment that Harrison

(14:24):
had another Aha moment. He began making concrete crosses and hearts,
weighing as much as fifteen hundred pounds and placing them
on the side of highways for all to see. He
first began by placing them in nearby states Kentucky and
Tennessee and Virginia, and within a decade he had signs
in nearly every state on the East Coast. He'd work

(14:45):
in the coal mines all night and build crosses in
his backyard all day. Once he had five or six ready,
he would rent a truck and a driver, and together
the two would strike out until he found a spot
that looked good to him. He would simply pull up
and dig a hole, and using a the pulley system
that he had built on the truck, he would lower
the fifteen hundred pound cross into place. Many times property

(15:07):
owners would run out and yell what are you doing.
You can't leave that here, get off my property. Harrison
would simply load up in the truck and make his getaway.
Nearly every week he would get a legal notice demanding
that he come back and remove a cross, but he
never would. He had the most trouble in Virginia. Lawmakers

(15:29):
there were fed up with its religious signs, and they
passed the law stating that all roadside signs must be
licensed and taxed by the state. Once the new law
was passed, the Virginia Highway Department dug up thirty nine
of its crosses, drove them to the Tennessee side of
the Cumberland Gap, and dumped them right on the side
of the road. For their trouble, they sent Harrison a

(15:50):
bill of thirty nine dollars. During the years in nineteen
twenty through the nineteen eighties, Harrison planted thousands of crosses
and forty four states across the America. He created signs
on the side of mountains near airports stating prepared to
meet God. He mailed and estimated fifty eight thousand empty
whiskey bottles containing scripture and fourteen different languages the whole

(16:13):
over the world. His bottles have been found in the Philippines,
the Netherlands, and even Africa. It's estimated that Harrison Mays
spent one hundred thousand dollars of his own money funding
his ministry during his lifetime. As he would say, every
penny I ever made its gods anyway, I'm just one
hundred and twenty six pounds of mud. Harrison Mays never

(16:37):
drove during his life, and he walked and rode a
bike everywhere he went. He even walked to and from
his marriage to his wife Lily, who supported him his
entire life and supported his ministry. Harrison was at home
at any church, and he spent his entire life telling
anyone he met about the Lord. Harrison Mays went on
to Glory and met his maker in nineteen eighty six.

(17:00):
Three months later his wife Lily joined him there. However, today,
if you look hard enough, you can still find many
of his roadside crosses and hearts dotted throughout the South.
There's even a permanent collection of his work at the
Museum of Appalachia and Tennessee. Till next time, my friends,
in the words of Harrison Mays, get right with God

(17:21):
because Jesus is common.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
A beautiful piece of storytelling by J. D. Phillips, known
as the Appalachian Storyteller. He is a YouTube channel that's phenomenal,
such respect and regard for this part of the country.
Not enough stories on this show told about this part
of the country, and we're fixing that. The story of
Harrison Mays a classic American story about faith and so

(17:51):
much more here on our American Stories
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Host

Lee Habeeb

Lee Habeeb

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