A Sweetwater Christmas

~(Written December, 2007... As told to me by my Uncle Charles when I was a child. This story took place when he was 10 years old. Uncle Charlie will be 80 next spring, so the setting is Sweetwater, Tennessee in December of 1938.)~

I was asleep in my bed when I heard someone banging on the front door. I figured it was about midnight. Pretty late for company. I laid there in my bed with the covers pulled up almost over my face to keep my nose warm, but made sure to leave my ears uncovered so I could hear what was going on.

I heard Daddy cussing then heard his heavy limp across the front room, then heard him open the door. Daddy had been laid up with his foot for a while, and had trouble getting around. All I could hear were muffled mens voices, then the sounds of several people coming into the house and the door shutting. I was dying to know what was going on, but I couldn't hear anything that was being said and after a while I started to drift back to sleep.

My Uncle Bug woke me up shaking my shoulder and saying "Get up and get dressed boy. Then grab the coal bucket and come on out front." I don't know how long I had been asleep but it didn't seem like long. I jumped out of bed, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and started getting dressed. As I made my way to the front room I couldn't help wonder what was going on and what it had to do with me. I tiptoed past Momma's room. I knew she was awake but she had baby Claude in bed with her and I didn't want to wake him.

(Interjection here...baby Claude is my father. He was born 2 1/2 months premature. In 1938 there wasn't much they could do for a baby born that early. I'm told he was so small that a man could hold him on the palm of his hand. The hospital sent him home telling the family not to get too attached to him because he probably wouldn't live a year. Baby Claude will be 70 next spring.)

I went out to the kitchen and grabbed the coal bucket. As I did, I noticed how low the coal in the bin was getting. It had been a cold winter already. And with Daddy out of work with his hurt foot there wasn't much money to buy more any time soon.

When I walked into the front room the men stopped talking. There was Daddy in his chair with his foot propped up, Uncle Bug was standing by the door, and Granddaddy was sitting on the couch with some other guy I had seen but didn't know his name. Daddy saw me walk in and said, "Come over here son." I walked over and him and Granddaddy just looked at me till I started feeling kind of funny. Uncle Bug made a little cough noise and then Granddaddy stood up. Daddy said, "You need to go help the men tonight. I can't go anywhere with this foot so you have to go in my place. Get your coat and go on now."

I still had no idea what was going on but I could tell it was important and I knew I had to be a man. Bundling up in my coat and hat, and carrying my empty coal bucket, I followed the other men out the door. I turned and looked back at Daddy and I could tell by the look on his face that he didn't like it one bit that he wasn't the one going. But there was nothing to do about it so he just waved at me and I closed the door behind me.

We walked all the way across town to where the railroad first came into the town proper. I had been listening as they talked on the walk over and I was starting to get an idea what was happening. As the trains approached Sweetwater they slowed down and went real slow through town, then picked back up speed as they exited on the other side. I could hear a train whistle in the distance and looked up at my Granddaddy. He gave me a grim little smile and said, "Get ready boy."

As the lights of the train came into view, I saw Uncle Bug start running down the tracks away from the rest of the men, toward the oncoming train. Everybody knew that he had spent time hobo'ing and nobody in town knew more about hopping trains than Bug Alexander. When the train got close and slow enough, Uncle Bug jumped on the train and proceeded to climb up on top of the cars and walked back to the coal car. There he was standing up on top of that big pile of coal that was coming slowly closer to us and I knew for sure what I was there to do.

Uncle Bug started kicking that coal as fast as he could and as it came falling down beside the tracks I picked it up and put it in the bucket. I looked down the tracks and couldn't believe I hadn't noticed that people were lined up all the way through town filling up their bags, buckets or whatever else they could find to hold coal. I filled my bucket as quick as I could. There was Bug up there just kicking coal like a madman, and he kept it up all the way to the other side of town where he finally jumped off as the train started to speed back up.

I looked around and saw the faces of all those people and I knew what that coal meant to them, just like I knew what it meant to my family. The poor people of Sweetwater would stay warm that winter thanks to the efforts of one man, my Uncle Bug.