I had also been going to night school and obtained my deputy’s certificate and was sitting for an under managers. I had also a part–time insurance book, an agency with Freeman’s of London, sold bikes, watches, clothing, bedding – even gramaphones and was in fair demand for paper hanging. However I realised we could not continue apart for all time. I stayed on and left the coal-face and took a contract for widening and girdering, nine feet girders and eight feet props, an andy size. I had as a mate, a Bob Armsby of Loftus. This kind of work was known in the coal mines as board rooming and paid per yard. 
Fate intervened and made my mind up for me as to coming back. Schooling done and examination at hand, I had given satisfaction on airways, speed of ventilation through different sized airways and then the last and to me final, gas quantities and judging as to whether a certain amount of gas shown in the Davy lamp – permitted of that place being worked or otherwise unfit for working. The method employed for showing gas quantities to those sitting exams was as follows: 

The examiner stood against a wall with all curtains drawn, the trainee on a chalk mark, ten feet away. We had previously seen it in diagrams in book form, but when the examiner held the lamp in a gas chamber, stop watch in hand, took it out, it appeared different to the book. “Well” he said. “I don’t think there’s any gas in that lamp”, “you’re right”, he said. I answered correctly some four or five quantities and the next one I said “that’s terrible, the blue cap of gas over the yellow oil flame was equally as big or bigger than the flame. I said “I should turn my back on that lot, get to safety and report it”. You’d be luckily if you got away from that lot 50% air, 50%gas. He closed the book. Good I thought I’m through. Then he turned and surprised me by saying “just a moment I’ll take another and I would like you to cover your right eye and judge the gas-cap with the left” I had to tell him it was sightless. “Well I thought so” and have you been working below with just the one. You know to we employers that is too big a responsibility to carry, should anything have happened to the other eye we should have had to compensate for total blindness, for the rest of your life, you’re not to go down again until you’ve seen mister ???, labour agent for the companies". 
 

No Job

 

Climax – No Job – what now? 

I think I should drop back a couple of years and explain how I knew the eye was sightless. 
I had had eye trouble occasionally at all sorts of odd times after returning from France. Different doctors expressed it differently. One old type said “you’ve got a touch of pink-eye – cold tea leaf poultices, often spoken of as inflammation at N.O. Hospital, conjunctivitis, hot dry fomentations and eye drops". 
I suffered much pain over many years, I took a contract of which I have spoken, knowing it would always be night shift. We had got a nice house and my wife was always up just after six for me coming in, fire on and to wash my back. A bath was a continual necessity when working in the coal. This particular morning she said “my word you’re eyes a mess”, I replied, “yes, I’ve had a lot of pain all night, I’ll bathe it well after breakfast”. When I sat down to the table, Frances came round behind me, with some cold tea-leaves in a hanky, saying “put this on, it’ll soothe it a bit while you have breakfast”. Half laughing and maybe a little sharp and pushing the bandage up said “Damn it all, don’t cover ‘em both or I’ll get no breakfast”. We were both worried to find that the right eye, the badly inflamed one, when covered, left me completely in the dark.
As soon as it got to surgery hours we went to the Doctors together. He gave it a good look and said I had better go to Leeds Infirmary, he didn’t care to interfere with it. 
They kept me in, and the following morning and twice later was subjected to a good deal of punishment. The head surgeon Sir Blakeley Monihan, later Lord Monihan, came late evening and told me candidly the left eye was done and it needed a tricky op to save the other, “lacerations at the back of both eyes, caused by the movement of a foreign body”. Presumably shrapnel had caused severe haemorrhage and he needed my next of kins name and address for permission to operate. Asked if I had a war pension and told “no” his expression was “ye gods” and from then for over a period of more than two years, he Sir Howell Jones and others contested the authorities until I got one. 
I have mentioned before of the going to West Yorkshire to work was instrumental in the saving of my eyesight, and above that, the long hard fight of a Civil Tribunal at Leeds City Hall, helped by a Methodist Rev, who would not give up the claim for pension. 
At Becketts Park Military Hospital in Leeds an army surgeon wanted to take out the left eye to ease the pain in the right. The civilian surgeons had told me to object if asked, as the piece of shrapnel was my only evidence for a claim. The left eye eventually mortified in January, twenty seven. 
From then, until about a couple of years ago, I have had a wonderful eye sight, but lately has deteriorated. 
 

War Pension

 

Jobs I have worked at, many varied with only the one eye, but I learned my lesson at Hemsworth. Whenever asking for employment I never mentioned the disability, or I am afraid I should often have been without a job. 
Mother came and stayed with Frances now and again while I was in the Infirmary, visiting me as often as they could. After the first op it was not too bad, but after the second, which sister told me on the quiet was the serious one, with my eyes closed – bandaged for six weeks and not knowing what the outcome would be, I lost weight and got very depressed. However all turned out O.K. One good eye with good vision, but I was not completely clear, it appears that while waiting, that the injections I had been given were more of a guinea-pig nature, testing anti TB serum and I had to go to the IDA convalescent home for pick-up for three months, at Horseforth. 
It was instilled into me on my discharge "Now don’t let those butchers over the road, remove the blind one, until you are assured about a pension and again don’t part with this letter, they may read it but you want it back after every meeting". 
After I had returned to Brotton permanently, I travelled to the meetings at City Hall, Leeds three or four times until a pension was granted, small, but grown with inflation. 
I wrote thanking the authorities at the infirmary and got a personal answer from Mister Howell Jones saying they were very pleased, wishing me well – and stating I was just one of a large number they’d helped to put right. It’s not such a bad old world after all and there ARE some good people in it. 
I blamed my long spells away from home, in hospital etc. for Frances taking Rheumatic fever – due to the fact that she kept up my insurance and club collections all the time and getting some nasty soakings. However it is now well over fifty years since we returned and until her passing way in April last year (seventy seven) we had a grand partnership in both good times and difficult ones, completing almost sixty five years. 
 

The Years between

 

Now I shall drop back to where I left book two, of where I left Lumpsey mine as a fifteen year old boy, going down to Loftus mine and taking and doing a mans work and earning a mans wage – 
War Service - and what I shall call the years between. 

The term – the years between – is intended to make the connection – link – between the time of changing jobs up to the next book. 
 

Accidents

 

Starting in August, nineteen twenty one, my tramp thro’ Durham and the start in Coal mining… 

I learned timbering very rapidly, which stood me in good stead on the contract jobs at Hemsworth. In Cleveland, heavy Norwegian timber for the upright props and to as much as ten feet in length. The cross roof timbers (baucks in Cleveland) and up to as long as sixteen feet, beautiful, shiny, bright yellow larch from Riga, Estonia on the Black Sea coast. Props and baulks / legs and bars, is the same thing differently, med, large and smaller, but serving exactly the same purpose. It needed two fairly strong men to carry each separate piece of timber and stonework, whereas one normal man could carry a couple of the little legs under one arm and a bar under the other in coal, a bar was a split, timber sawn down the middle and erected, flat side to the roof, thus my meaning when I spoke of some time ago of finding the work much lighter in the coal pits. 
At sixteen I attended mining night schools or alternate mining classes for certificates and ambulance and Red Cross. My father could neither read nor write but was outstanding at first aid. I had been at Skinningrove (Loftus mine) a very short space of time, here I found out the use of first aid and bandaging. 
Accidents were every day occurrences in various stages, between cut heads, (no helmets in those days) cut hands, to the one that hurt we workers most (fatal). I had been very fortunate in the type of man I had been sent to work with, John Scoins (Jack) a tall raw-boned man of sixty eight, what he didn’t know of timbering wasn’t worth knowing, quietly spoken and good tempered even when things weren’t just so. He had taken the Skinningrove Silver Band to London twice and one occasion had brought back both trophies, for test piece and march. He had been conductor teacher and band leader and a beautiful cornet solo player. 
I weren't with him long before he threw his pick down from where we were working and said “Come on Dave, sharp, I have heard a voice call”, “Hurry Jack, number three”. We had not far to go before we came to a working place and a group of men standing round, others kneeling, then “here’s Jack, let him through”. I was following him through a gap in the men, when Mister Payne, the overman, pulled me back saying, “No honey, it’s a bad lot, no need for you to see, there’s plenty of older chaps”. 
About Jack Scoins, it seems was a first class ambulance man and took charge till a lead man Bill Mason arrived. Then a tub half full of stone was pushed back to where three or four lads like myself were standing and Tom Payne said “shove it out the road lad, make clear fort stretcher” and almost as he said it, Bill Mason, lead ambulance man and his mate John Ward carry the stretcher. A young man I didn’t know then but whom I worked with later, Bob Anderson of Staithes, a splendid workmate, when we took some shale contracts together. He was now carrying an armful of splints of various sizes, and the other young fellow a bag of bandages and lint. I asked one of the younger drivers who had got hurt. He answered old man Burdett, he was up on a stool (trestle) drilling a top hole an all bloody lots come down on him, looks bad. George Burdett, senior was an aged man whose mining experience went back to the middle of the previous century, his son George (Stockton) who worked with him was a steady working man and along with his father, were known to be reliable and careful miners. 
In those days when helmets and other protective gadgets were not known, also the poor lighting of the wax candle, necessitated the utmost care and caution. Of the accident just spoken of, I obtained full detail at the inquest given by the son. 
They had some stone down and unfilled the previous day and decided to fill some of it up before drilling and firing, it was a broken kind of seam, in which they were working requiring what were known to miners as props – little short holes of a foot or a little more, stopping just short of a break, a fissure or a kind of vein in the stone, spoken of as a miner. 
If by miscarriage a hole was drilled into one of these, charged and fired, all one got instead of and explosion was a fizzer, some bad language and a voice (blown away in a b. back, place full of smoke for an hour), burnt powder without exploding, left a heavy black smoke which lingered longest in poorly ventilated places. 
 

Inquest Evidence

 

Continuing 
Inquest Evidence 

After filling on tub, taken away and replaced, half filling the next and the father saying “We’ll push the wagon out a bit George and I’ll put a pop in that bit up there, I don’t care much for the look of it” the son brought from out-bye a deputy’s stool (trestle – four legged – three feet tall) set in firmly in front of the wagon. His father had brought the (ratchet) hand drilling machine, drill and set. The set is a strong square steel bar, with a chisel point to drive into the stone, a sliding slot to take the ratchet and a thumbscrew beneath to allow sitting at an angle or distance. The stone, the old man alluded to a pear shaped piece of from two to two and an estimated half tons hanging at the face in the top left side corner of the roof. The old man carefully chipped with a light pick, a starting hole about half way up the piece of stone and angles slightly towards the roof. 
George handed him the set to his left hand, the hammer to his right and steadied the trestle, whilst his father carefully tapped the set into position and firmly enough to take the weight of the ratchet. When drilling his father said “I think about nine inches and one pellet (two ounces) of powder’ll do that”. George set to bring the powder and charging gear, when his father gave an awful cry out. George was struck in the back, the quickly moving tub onto his hands and knees and partly trapped beneath the wagon. Their lights were extinguished, very black and dark. A driver lad Bobby Pearson, coming past the bottom of Burdett’s working place told next how he felt there were something up. 
When the coroner asked him why he replied “Dunno Sir, unless it were wen ah fun out the were it t’dark". He went on to tell how he saw George unconscious under the tub, fast by his calves under an axle, “Ah went to t’bottom an shouted like hell, when ah went back ‘n found t’auld man wi that b. stone on his chest and middle, ah’m afraid a’m fainted Sir”. “You did wonderfully well my boy” said the coroner. No-one could add anything further so the coroner summed up that what had occurred was as I have given here and added that after affixing the set and machine as told by the son, had started to drill ( about half an inch) when the stone followed by some roof rubbles came down knocking the old man and trestle, on which he was standing, the moving tub striking his son in the back and knocking him down. Verdict – accidental death. 
 

Accidents Cont'd

 

After a lot of wadding and padding for the staunching of blood had been used, he was placed on the stretcher and we set off on our two mile long carry and then down through the village to Skinningrove Hospital. I was carrying the back end (we all took turns), when I felt a most awful tremor. Mason with his hand on the old mans forehead said “he’s gone laddie” and poor silly me, I cried. 
Outward past the ironstone, past the big wooden chocks (crossed wood piles used for keeping the rubbely roof when driving the drifts towards the stone seam), at last the brick arch ways and out to daylight. A two wheeled trolley for the stretcher, like a light hand cart, into the hospital, Matron directs us to the mortuary. Bill Mason taking charge, shoulders, feet, middle, all steady, lift, over, down right on the far side, middle from the slab where he had directed me and placed my hands under what had been his waist line and I encountered a mess of blood and torn flesh. In war I came across more grissley and heavier quantities, but don’t think I was ever struck so sick as at that moment. Mason told me after, that the end of the railway metal had entered the small of his back “feeling sick lad” said Matron, wash your hands and arms and have some tea. We girls have to wash him you know". Urgh. 
Shortly after this accident, Bob Adamson and I went back-bye (away from the face) timbering together, Bob was twenty two and I was seventeen at that time. The daily wage rate was the same as when I was with Jack Scoins, but we occasionally took small shale moving contracts paid by the yard, which improved it still further. Father suggested that I could leave five shillings per week with the company, as after each fourth week a small addition was added to it, and he added “you never know how soon you may need a few pounds”. It didn’t come until some time afterwards to my mind as to whether he knew I had a girl friend, with whom in those days termed “I was walking out”. Frances, who later became my wife (nineteen hundred and twenty seven), quite a spell nearly sixty five years. 
My previous workmate Jack Scoins had a serious accident, shortly after we parted, breaking both legs and crushing his ribs by a large fall of both roof and stone, and two miners working near were both dead when extricated. Both young men with families, Bob Cooper and Steve Halliday. 
Jack Scoins recovered, but never able to go back to work. I only remember one other fatal accident at our side of the pit, before having to go to France. The far end of Loftus mine, going under towards Hummersea Bay and Boulby Cliff had a very treacherous roof, it was all rising ground, the further one travelled towards the sea, so that by the cliff was broken by the miners holing through to daylight and the ocean. There was only a matter of ten to twelve feet of rubble for roof. This necessitated boarded timbers to keep up the dangerous top. A father and son named 'Crawford' had dislodged some packing when blasting and on trying to replace had started a 'dun' which covered them both. It was some little time before their driver found the fall, and ran for aid, as many workers as possible came to the scene shovelling back to one another and more coming thro the break in the roof, till I heard Bill Mason say, “give me some packing there’s soil, so there’s no more stone fall”. It was late afternoon, near six when we got them to the hospital mortuary and I knew mother would be worried, but by the time I got home they knew what had happened. 
 

Meeting Family

 

Sarah, Hospital cook, sister to Frances had become friendly with the under gardener at the hospital, a Will Thoroughgood from Stanghow and whose father was coachman and gardener to Doctor Scarth. Later when Doctor Caldwell of Brotton lost his groom, (emigrated) he asked Will to come to him for a better wage. He did and later drove the first Brotton’s horseless carriage. Will and Ciss (Sarah) married, but she died while he was on War service in France. 
The two girls, Will and I had been through to North Ormesby to be introduced to the eldest sister Mary and her husband. I remember Will saying, coming back in the train from Cargo Fleet to Saltburn, “Well girls, we are accepted” Ciss said seriously, “Oh it hasn’t come to that yet”, “Hey” he said “but I’m serious, aren’t you David”, “I believe", I said "I think so". 
I know he was half angry, half laughing and said “I thought I might have asked you to marry me on the way home Sarah”, “No Will” she said seriously, “I want to see a home furnished and ready before I marry”, “right lass” he said, collared her and gave her a hug and a kiss and got his face slapped “forward thing” she said, “never mind” he said “you’ll see” and she did see. Just over a year later, next door to my home, live Mister and Mrs Will Thoroughgood. Ciss left the hospital to look after her home and husband, Frances left too and went as housemaid to Doctor and Mrs Caldwell, just at the top of the High Street. In those days girls didn’t get much time away from their situations, so I did see Frances the one evening in the week and Sunday evening a walk after church. 
 

Notes

 

August the fourth, nineteen fourteen, another chapter of this full life of mine opens, with its good times, its bad times, my good health, happiness and sorrows, lovely countries, beautiful scenery, nice people and the reverse, so much happiness, so much sadness, and memories of war scenes, and revolting to turn my tummy now or to give horrifying nightmare dreams more than sixty years later. 
 

Charlie

 

I haven’t added to this (my journal) for quite a time and dear me, of all the things I have thought of from the past, I question whether I shall be here long enough to tell of those which I would like to tell. 

I think I shall have to go back to Lumpsey for one that I don’t want to overlook.Reminiscences, Incidents, Coincidences 
In quiet moments over this none writing period the three words above have stood out so clearly in my mind that I realise that the things that have happened in and around my life, would in themselves fill a book. 

No 1. back to 1908 start of story and coincidence, 1978 still alive 6.am. 

Lumpsey pit head, I see a new boy standing about lonely, “hello” I said “who are you”, “Maurice Dewing” he said “I’ve come to lead a horse for a man called George Thompson”. 
He was taking over my present job. What’s this I thought, a change of job and a rise (I hope), “come on”, I said “light your lamp, we’ll go down to the bosses cabin", “new boy for George Thompson”, I called “What’s for me”. 
Mr Hudson said “go to the stables and ask Jos Lishman to put gears on old Charlie (a horse) for you, he’ll show you what to do”, “Who?” I said, “Jos Lishman”, they all laughed, three or four voices together “no Old Charlie, silly B”. 
How right they were, that poor old (twenty two) Cleveland Bay, who couldn’t speak a word told me how to drive to six or more miners in pairs. When leaving the stables, the horsekeeper said “you don’t hurry him round, hang him on, loose him off and leave it to Charlie”. 
What followed seemed almost unbelievable. I didn’t even know where the district was, to which we were going (third bank). Out of the stable, past the shoeing shop where Harry (pal of mine) striker roe for his dad called “Old Charlie, David, by god your honoured” I followed that horse, hold of his tail strap for nearly a mile of straight road, never saw anyone, then we came to electric lights, a double row of railway lines, turning left, me following, to the bank top, wire rope attached to the back end waiting for the signal from the bank bottom to set them moving, the full tubs going down, drawing twelve empties up, the rope running round a drum, with a simple brake strap for steadying or releasing. This arrangement is known as self acting incline. 
On reaching the bank head, Jim King, brakeman and Ed Fletcher, who looked after the drivers and leaders, and the movement of the full and empty tubs, were stood talking and greeted me, “hello David, you got old Charlie, his tail chain over there (a wooden piece with a link at each end to attach to the side chain, already along the horses side, two short pieces of chain adjoining a single piece ending with a large hook to hand on the tubs). 
I hung my coat and cap up and was talking to Jim and Ed when bump, bump, bump, “What’s that” I said, “go on he wants to be going” said Jim, and sure enough when I went into the siding, uncoupled two empties, here’s the old horse waiting to be hung on and now and then giving the tub a thump with a hind foot. I hung his hook on to the tub and away we went. I stepped on to a buffer and rope along holding up my lamp. He stopped for me to open a large door (ask check) and away we went again. Coming back with full tubs he pushed the door open with his nose. He took the empties up a short rise and stopped. Two men from Saltburn were working at the face – Coates and Rhodham. Coates is one side of the coincidence I am leading up to, leaving them Charlie turned round, walked back the way we had come and turned off through two lengths of old working places, came again to rails up a rise and came to two men who knew me. I am not going to talk any further of that clever horse, except to say I was still working Charlie when I was given more men to drive to, asked for a rise and changed pits. 
 

Coincidences

 

The coincidence by the elder of the last two men I spoke of – father and son, Ben and Joe Leeks. 
Coates and Leeks coincidence of seventy years and still in being. 
My home with my daughter since losing my wife is in Windsor Road and some time ago she sold the lower floor to a Mrs Gresty and her son Eric. Mrs Gresty’s maiden name was Hilda Coates, daughter of William Coates who was one of my miners at Lumpsey. Billy Coates married a young lady called Leeks from Brotton, daughter and sister to the two miners, father and son, Ben and Joe Leeks. – The coincidence – 70 years after driving to those men, below me now are living, a granddaughter and great grandson, to both those miners, A. Coates and Ben Leeks. 
I think another almost seemingly impossible is well worth the telling, in the relating of my bike ride to West Yorkshire, following my hike around Durham, I mentioned meeting a man standing on a railway bridge smoking his pipe and of his directing me to the bosses houses to find Mister Elliott to ask for work. Around one thousand eight hundred men and boys were employed in the Barnsley bed seam at Hemsworth colliery at that time, and out of that large number, the man I was first sent to work with was that very man I met on the bridge, Walter Langley. He willingly agreed with me “it’s a small world” and oft told it to other people and when he told it to George Garforth, our deputy overman, in my hearing (I was turning a full tub on the flat sheet to push it up the gate) he said “aye and tha’s got a good un, he neither drinks nor smokes, he’s come here to work and tha look after him Walt” I think I should mention here that points, as used on a railways were not used in face-work in coal pits. To turn directly a flat iron sheet, was left to right angular to the rails. I hope I have made it clear in my amateurish way of the manner of moving tubs. Each tub averaged five hundred weight of coal, they were kept well oiled and easy of movement. In pushing the tubs about, most fillers hung their lamp on their belt or carried in their mouths, I found however that I was able to carry my lamp in one hand and move the tub with the other, and less danger of the lamp getting a knock for the light was easily extinguished. 
Aged men were given the job of coming round with spare lamps and taking away the dark ones. 

Returning from West Yorkshire minus the sight of my left eye, but to all appearances of having two, I went back to Loftus, this time as deputies mate. They worked a district at that period with one certain man and a helper who was at a rate between deputies and back bye deputies figures. This time I had to use the Whitecliffe Drift, which when many left a right hand turn off to several, went under Loftus and Easington until adjoining Palmers Royalties at Grinkle Park. The boundary to our right and left, he met the Liverton Mines and Grinkle Mines respectively. Here in use were (compressed Air) not electric as at Lumpsey. The stone being filled by fillers alone and the ratchet (hand turning machine) by miners, in pairs who got and filled their own stone. This job necessitated three or four to walk from Brotton to Skinningrove to count our men in, a walk of a half a mile down the steep arched walled Whitecliffe drift, climb into empty tubs for rather more than a mile ride and then to different districts at various distances. The return journey was all walk, but instead of where the tubs ran, by what were called travelling roads, long winding ways, terminating at the bottom of the steep arched drift down which we had started out day. I have seen aged men have to sit down when they reached the top. If I crossed the field to Loftus Bank Bottom and was fortunate enough to catch the bus I was home by three. If I went as I was crossing the field it meant a walk as there wouldn’t be another for an hour. In between half past three and four o’clock, then dinner, didn’t leave a lot of time for the garden. I had got it nicely into order and was producing vegetables, later we kept about a dozen hens and an occasional bird for the table. This way of life ran on for a length of time and then another of those unavoidable changes which left cropping up. At the end of one shift, the overman Bob Forrest caught me as I was homeward bound and said “will you stop back David at the Bank bottom, and share out the tubs for the drivers. Jack Lethbridge is ill and sent word he can’t come, give me your drink bottle and I’ll have it filled, I’ll send it and some bait down for you. You’d better bring some extra tomorrow as I don’t know how long Jack’s likely to be off”. Things went on in this way for a long time, six till twos deputy’s mate, two til ten as wagon way man, at the bank and assisting drivers whose full tubs had left the rails. It was not a particularly hard job but important in the running of those Whitecliffe districts. The only snag (a big one) was the length of time away from home, roughly four am until eleven pm Monday to Friday, four a.m to twelve, Saturday. I asked Mr Forrest if he would see and ask Mr Seymour to make a change, nothing was done about it and after ten weeks I called at the office one Saturday noon and asked to see him. He made a lot of fussy talk about how smoothly things had run since I took over at the bank bottom and of the good tonnage output over the past six weeks – took some papers from a desk and started quoting figures. I interrupted, “Excuse me Mr Seymour. I’ve finished work for this week and I am on my way home. A place I haven’t seen much of for six weeks. Did Mr Forrest say anything to you of making a change” he replied “He did say something about it” I said “Well, please listen I’ll come again and continue for only one more week, after that I want one job or the other, failing that I’ll be in here again next Saturday to ask for my money and find another job” he bristled his chin stuck out, eyes flashing (a man well known for bad temper) “You’re a good man David and I don’t want to lose you, I can make you work your notice before letting you have your week in hand money”, “well anyway see you next Saturday Mr Seymour, good day”. 
When I told my wife she said “why didn’t you pack in then, all that walking and Mr Chapman said there would always be a job at Lumpsey for you”. 
The outcome was that the following Saturday Mr Seymour and I had a right warm half hour terminating in him saying, “Well David, who’s manager here” “yes” I said “I know” he said “and I’ll have my own way” I replied “yes and I’ll have mine, can I have my back weeks” “yes”. He said “Miss Eggleston”, as I followed the cashier through the door he said “If ever you need a job I’m here”. Miss Egglestone (cashie) spent a long lifetime in that office, gave to me my two weeks pay, saw me to the door and said “bye-bye ain’t he sweet, but his barks worse than his bite” “yes” I said, I saw that side of him when as a boy, he gave me a mans job and was always fair with contract prices.