History of the Weathers Family & Coal Hill Coal Hill, Johnson County, Arkansas

1940's in Coal Hill, Arkansas This picture was taken in the front yard of the house that Hub bought in 1924.  From left to right: Elizabeth, Celia, Hub, and Jean.

In 1940, people still used horses to farm with. In fact there were very few tractors in town. There were two blacksmith shops in town. Dan Allen ran one on Main Street and Mr. Haddaball ran one over next to the old bank. You could take your horses to them and have new shoes nailed on them. You could also get your plow points sharpened there.   Covered Wagon   One fall day in 1940, when I, Lee Roy, was 3 years old, I went to the bottoms with my mother. She was picking cotton for Earl Yates. I played under a big cottonwood tree while she picked cotton. Under the tree was a pump and horse trough. You could pump water straight into the trough that was made of boards. This was to keep the horses watered.   They were weighing cotton and dumping it into a wagon. A big black cloud came up from the west and everybody came to the wagon. They hitched up the horses and everybody got in the wagon. We started up out of the bottoms, but about the time we were half way up slew hill, the wind and rain hit. The Yates boys took out some big wooden horseshoe shaped bands and placed them over the wagon. Then they stretched a tarp over the bands. This was all done without the wagon stopping. We were now riding in a covered wagon for real. This is the only time I remember riding in one.

The man on the left is Roy Hawkins, Harold’s best friend and the man on the right is Harold Weathers. The gas station in back of them was run by Roy in 1940. The gas would have to be pumped up by hand into the glass and by gravity flow, it would be drained into the cars. The marks on the glass would tell you how many gallons you were getting. This station set on the highway where Dizzy Moore lived for years. Roy and Harold ran around together for years until Roy moved to Ozark about 1943.

When World War II broke out, Harold tried to join the service but due to his hearing, he was turned down. Harold’s hearing was so bad, he had to wear a hearing aid. Harold was also 35 years of age and this might have had a bearing on them turning him down. Ted and Lora’s son, Charles was playing Jr. High Basketball for Coal Hill in 1940. Charles must have been a pretty good ball handler and player. I read a couple of write-ups in the newspaper about him and in one of them they called him "Dead Eye Weathers". After Charles finished the 9th grade, he took it on himself to join the CC Camp. This was a project the government had going for boys to go to and learn a trade. They Would receive a check every month and Charles sent his home to help feed his family.

This is a picture of Charles William Weathers. It was taken in 1943 when he was home on leave.

Charles was sent to Bosing Idaho at first, but later on, he went to Marshing, Idaho. While he was there he learned to weld. Afterwards he went to Seattle, Washington and got a job welding. While he was in Washington, he saved some money, and when he came home, he and Ted paid $250.00 each for a 1936 Ford car. In 1942, Ted and Lora had to sign papers for Charles to join the Navy. The U.S. was in World War II at this time. Charles joined the Navy at the age of 17 and Woodrow joined the Navy at the age of 33. The Weathers family had two of it’s members in the war. When Charles was in the war, he was on board the battleship USS O’Kill No. 7. One time on board this ship, they were cut off from their supply ship. They didn’t have fresh fruits or vegetables. The bread got so old it had worms in it. When they got hungry enough they would pick out the worms and eat the bread. The suicide planes of the japs were fighting for 3 days straight against the ship. Charles and the other men on the ship had to stay awake for 72 hours at one time. The suicide planes were planes with Japs chained in them and were not  meant to return to their airfield. They would dive at the ship trying to hit it with the plane. Charles was a gunner and would keep firing at the plane, holding it up until it passed over the ship. One time in 1943, the river flooded the bottoms. Ted, Lora, and I went to the bottoms to see the river. When we reached the railroad track, we seen the water was up to the tracks. A man had a boat tied up to one of the ties. I asked dad if we might take a ride in the boat. Ted talked to him and we got in the boat. He oared us  toward the slew and just before we reached the trees, at the slew, the boat tipped and let in a little water. We returned real quick.

The girl in the front of this picture is Mary Claudine Weathers and the boy in the back is Lee Roy Weathers. The house is the house, Ted and Lora lived in from 1942 until 1974.

Right after the war started in 1942, Ted and Woodrow traded houses. Woodrow wasn’t living in Coal Hill and didn’t need the house. Ted and Lora needed more room in their house, as their family was larger. The house set on an acre of land and this enabled Ted to raise livestock, such as hogs and chickens. Ted was able to acquire three more one-acre lots on the hillside and this gave him room to have a milk cow. The house was not to far northeast of the schoolhouse. I am not sure but I think Ted gave Woodrow $500 difference between the two houses. Woodrow sold the little house that Ted built back to his dad. Charley then gave it to Celia when she needed it in 1950. I remember one time before we moved I slipped off and crossed the highway by myself. I went up the road toward the hill to visit Marvin. Marvin’s house had a big high front porch on it and we would get under it and play. Now to say the least, Mother didn’t like this and she threatened to tie me to the bed post. I acted like I was going to slip off again so she would. She tied me to the bed like she said she would. I think this hurt her more  than it did me, because I thought it was funny. Now that we lived on the side of the hill close to Pert, Edith, Charlene, and Marvin, I wouldn’t have to cross the highway to go see Marvin. During the 40’s, we didn’t have television, but we did have a radio. Some of the radio programs that come on Saturday morning were something like the cartoons that come on now. They were fairy tales that you had to use your imagination to see them. One of the programs was named "Let’s Pretend".

The picture on the left was taken in the back yard of the old Weathers house. From left to right: Charley, Nora, Celia, Ted, Woodrow, and Pert.

This photograph left to right: Marvin, Woody, and Lee Roy Weathers. The station  in the background is the one Charley built in 1929.

One time in 1943, Woodrow came home on leave from the Navy. The Weathers family gathered at Charley’s house and ate dinner one Sunday. After dinner, the men went into the front room to talk while the women washed the dishes. Marvin and I were hoping to hear some war stories from our hero, Uncle Woodrow. Either he didn’t tell any or we missed them.   After the women had finished cleaning the kitchen, we all went out in the back yard and made several pictures. Marvin and I wanted our pictures made with big Uncle Woody.   In 1944, Lora’s sister, Lois, wrote her a letter and told her Charles would come in to port often. His ship would stay 2 or 3 days and he would visit them while he was there. Ted and Lora decided to go to California, on the chance, they would get to see Charles.   Three families made the trip to California together. The Bowman family, Ed and his wife, Henryetta, his sons, Kenneth, Edmond, Will Ralp, and his daughter, Anita.   Homer and Greta Roberson, their son, Myers "Dittle", and their daughter Great Jean. The Ted Weathers family drove the 36 Ford car. Gas was rationed because of the war and so were tires. The Weathers family cut themselves short on gas ration stamps and helped Ted get enough stamps to get to Richmond, California.   The trip was made in May right after school was out. All of these children were in school and Greta was a schoolteacher in the Coal Hill School. This is the reason we left at that time of the year. After reaching Richmond, Ted, Lora, and Claudine got a job working in the Kaiser Shipyard. We stayed all summer but only got to see Charles once. Late in August we returned to Coal Hill, still driving the blue 36 Ford. Upon returning from California, Ted went back to work in the strip mine.   In 1945, the war was nearing the end and still people in town were getting letters from the war department saying their boys were missing or killed in action. Pearl and Inez received word that Steven had been killed. I remember Steve playing the trumpet. You didn’t have to be close to hear him, in fact you could hear him all over town, and he was real good on it.   The night the war came to an end, Ted, Lora, and I went out for a walk. The sky was clear and I could see lots of shooting stars. I thought the reason the stars were shooting was because the war was over. This took some of the worries off of my parents over Charles, but still some people were still getting letters from the war department. When they found out that Charles and Woodrow were all right and would be soon coming home, they set down and cried tears of joy.

This is a picture of the John Deere tractor that Ted bought in 1945. Claudine is sitting in the driver’s seat.

In 1945, they decided to shut down the strip mine and Ted bought a new B model John Deere tractor for 1200 dollars. He rented some land in the bottoms near the Franklin county line. You can’t raise much in the winter, but you can raise spinach. So that’s what we raised. Ted was loading a disk on a trailer and the disk went to  far. It cracked two of Ted’s ribs.   I had been begging dad to let me drive the tractor every time we went to the bottoms. One day after the accident we went to the bottoms and Ted’s ribs were hurting him. I started begging him to let me drive. He was hurting so bad that big tears would come in his eyes whenever we hit a rough place. He got off the tractor and told me to drive it. I drove a few rounds disking the land and got it so crooked that I could follow the line. Ted got back on the tractor and straightened it up for me. After this, he got back off of the tractor and I did my own straightening up. From then on, I drove the tractor. I was 8 years old at this time.   Every Saturday night Earl Coats would show a movie in this high school building. He showed it in the study hall, this was the upstairs part of the northern half of the school building. The price of admission was 10 cents for the children and twenty-five cents for the adults. The wall was painted white on the stage and that was used for the screen. He had a portable speaker that usually set on the stage.   Some of the movies he showed were "The Three Musketeers". There was a western series with a ventriloquist, named Aliby. Aliby had a talking doll, of course. Flash Gordon was a serial he showed at one one time. Flash had a rocket ship just like the ones they have today. He also had a ray gun and they are not to far from having  one invented today   Charley and Pert Weathers started building all along the highway frontage of the school land addition block 10. They built the grocery store that Pert and Edith run for 4 years out of wood. They build the next 5 buildings out of cement blocks. They had a cement mixer and lots of cement block molds. They would make up a lot of cement blocks then start laying them. When they run out of blocks, they would make more.   They built a washateria and gas station. Harold Weathers run these for the first few years. The pool hall was started by Roy Hook, but Walter Self bought Roy out and run it for years.  They built a barbershop that was run by a Mr. Marvel for a few years. Robb Bowman rented the grocery store that Charley built in 1929, until the buildings burnt in 1963.   The cafe Woodrow built in the early 30’s was rented by a lot of different people over the years. Pert and Charley ran the Movie Theater they built. When they started on January 1, 1947, Earl Coats quit showing movies. There weren’t enough people around here for the 2 theaters and Charlie had the best movie projectors, sound system, theater, and seats. The movies were of better quality with the 100-millimeter projectors. The name of the first movie they showed was "Northwest Passage". They showed such movies as Abbott and Costella, Dean Martin, and Jerry Lewis, "The Egg and I" and all of the follow-ups (Pa and Ma Kettle), "The Wizard of Oz", "Gone with the Wind". All of these were great movies, but I think "Gone with the Wind" was the best. They named the theater "Rex".   In 1948, Pert built a house where the weining house had stood. Pert and Edith also started operating a grocery on the northeast corner of block 10. They run this grocery store until 1952. With this new house, they were closer to the theater and their store.   Most of the years between 1945 and 1954, we had a picnic. This picnic took place on the 4th of July. Ted would always buy 5 gallons of ice cream and ice it down with dry ice so it wouldn’t melt out on the creek. We went to Bray Ford most of these years, but not always. Different years would mean different people and some of the people were Charley, Nora, Pert, Edith, Ted, Lora, Claudine, Alvin, Charles, Betty and all of their children. All of us kids liked to go swimming and would get to all day, excepts for one hour after the meal. All the women would prepare food to take along on the picnic.   "A Hog Killing in 1948" One Saturday morning in 1948, Lora awoke me. She said, "You dad wants you to help hill hogs today". I got up and staggered to the kitchen, not yet awake. I looked out the window to find it still dark. I wondered why we had to get up so early and mother assured me it was necessary. She told me we had to get the water hot so  we could scald the hogs.   After breakfast, I went out back of the house where Ted was keeping a fire under two kettles of water. These were big black kettles that held about 15 kettles of water each. It then became my job to keep the fire going while Ted when to get help.   After a while Ted came back with Joyce Hurst, Harold Weathers, and Charles, my brother. Ted went into the house and returned with a 22 rifle. He shot the first hog between the eyes. Harold jumped over into the pen with a big knife and stuck the hog in the neck. We were all in the pen by this time and we pulled the tail end of the hog uphill, so the blood would drain good. We tore down part of the fence and pulled the hog over to the hot water. We replaced the fence good enough so the other hog wouldn’t get out.   We dipped the hot water out of the kettles into a 55 gallon barrel that had the end cut out and was leaning  at a 45 degree angle. We placed the hog on a set of boards in front of the barrel. Now we tried to dip the 350-pound hog in the barrel. We would push the hog down in the barrel and then pull it back out a little bit. After a while we pulled it out of the barrel, turned it around, and put the other end of the hot in the barrel. We then pulled the hog out of the barrel, after dipping it for a while. We started scraping it with sharp knives. We did not get a good scald on the middle part of the hog, so we place some tow sacks over it and poured hot scalding water on the sack. After this set a few minutes, it made the hair scrape off good.   After the hog was scraped, Joyce cut some long slits in the back part of the back legs. Joyce pulled out some long white ligaments and Ted placed the hooks of a single tree (One on each foot) on the ligaments. We then tied a rope to the single tree and used a block and tackle to hand the hog head down. Joyce then cut the hog open and washed it down. When Joyce got through cutting on the hog, we had carried most of it into the house and there was only two hams and two back feet left hanging to the single tree.   We had a deep freeze at this time, and most of the meat was frozen that day. For their pay, the men took some of the hog meat home with them. The next day or so, we would grind sausage after the meat got cold enough to cut up. We went back and shot the other hog and repeated the process.   My grandpa, Charley, was running a theater in Coal Hill and was showing the "Wizard of Oz" that night. Ted, my dad, gave me a dollar and told me to get a haircut before the show that night.   I got cleaned up and eat supper that evening. Mother wanted me to go to the grocery store for her before going to the show. I went to Pert’s grocery store and bought a six-carton of cokes for .25 cents. This sure was handy now that they had started coming out with these six packs. Bread was up to .12 cents and pet milk was .10 cents a can.  I took these groceries back home to my mother.   I went back to town and bought myself a cold soda pop at Bowman’s grocery store. Then I went next door to the barbershop and got a haircut. With the soda pop I had bought a candy bar and they were .5 cents a piece. The haircut cost .50 cents and it cost me .14 cents to get in the theater. I still had .26 cents left and bought a sack of popcorn for .5 cents.   Bill Motti and I were coming out of the theater when someone said lets go watch some fun. We hid behind some weeds and waited, not knowing what was going to happen.   Horton Crabtree was a man, who must have had 14 children and 10 of them with him at the movie. He had a real old A model truck that the windows and back windshield had been broken for a long time. The truck didn’t have a good battery, and it had to be cranked by hand.   Horton came out and put the children in the truck. He walked around to the front with a crank in hand. He gave the truck one turn and the smoke started boiling. A whistling sound and lots of smoke was coming from under the hood. Horton yelled "Get out kids, its gonna blow up". Kids came out of the windows, the back windshield, and everywhere but simply opening the doors. Now why they didn’t open the doors, I don’t know. This was the best smoke bomb I’ve ever seen. When the whistling stopped, it blew up, and the hood blew open. By this time the children had evacuated the truck. I didn’t realize there was so many watching until it was over and they all came out laughing. I went back to the cafe and bought a cold drink and a candy bar, then  walked home.   I didn’t go to a movie every night. I would stay at home and listen to the radio. Some of my favorite programs were: Fibber McGee and Molly, Gang Busters, Inner Sanctom, Al Jolson Show, Judy Canova, Henry Aldridge, George Burns and Gracey Allen, Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and the Lone Ranger. Charley drove an A model Ford Coupe for years. Charley named the car "Lula Belle". Whenever he talked about the car , he would call it Lula Belle. He would drive it anywhere he wanted to go, across pastures, through fields,  and sometimes even on the highway. Charley made a truck out of it by taking the rumble seat out of it and used  at strawberry picking time. Charley always had strawberries.

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