3. How do you think Blakenship’s mining experiences compared to his experiences as a student? Document 1-Life for Children
“I told my dad I wasn’t going to school anymore. He said: Why, you just come on and go work with me. I went in the mines, and I went to work. From ’31 to about the last of ’32…We lived eight miles from the mine, and we had to ride it horseback…Many times I’d have to git off and hammer his feet out of the stirrups. They’d be froze in the stirrups…We got up at five in the mornin’, start at six. We got out at ten that night. We’d work about six hours a day, seventeen hours.”
–Buddy Blankenship, West Virginia miner