News

June 22, 2008

A weekend to salute coal miners

Glory time for the industry comes to life at Patch Town Days at Eckley Miners’ Village

JANINE UNGVARSKY Times Leader Correspondent

FOSTER TWP. -- Margaret Kitlan looked around the visitors’ center at Eckley Miners’ Village. “This is where the school house stood,” she said. “And that house across the street — they sold penny candy in there,” Kitlan said, smiling as if she could still taste the sweets.

Kitlan was one of hundreds who came to see Patch Town Days at Eckley on Saturday, The event, which continues today, gives visitors a chance to tour the buildings that still stand in the old coal mining town and learn more about life among the immigrant coal miners who lived there in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

While many of those attending Patch Town Days came to visit and get a taste of life in the glory days of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal mining days, Kitlan was there to revisit those times. Kitlan —she was Margaret Soltis back then — was born in Eckley in 1929 and lived at Number 1 Backstreet near the breaker until she was 15. She recalled her time growing up as the grandchild of Austrian immigrants and a coal mining father as “wonderful,” and reminisced about running freely through the village with her two sisters and a gang of cousins who also lived there. She recalled picking blueberries and roller skating down Eckley’s wooden boardwalk sidewalks in the summer and sledding on pieces of cardboard in the winter. “Everybody had a garden and we would take whatever was in the garden and that was dinner,” she said.

Thanks to a wash house for the miners, her father was usually clean when he came home, Kitlan said. “I don’t remember him talking about what it was like in the mines,” she said, “but he was hurt in there because he had a black-and-blue scar on his head.”

Kitlan smiled frequently as she talked about her hometown. “I wish everyone could see what’s in my head, the way it was then, not the way it is now,” she said.

It might not be the same as it was when young Margaret Soltis roamed the town, but Eckley still offered plenty in the way of entertainment and education to those attending Patch Town Days. Janet Banks, Eckley tour guide, said more than 25,000 people visit Eckley each year, most during special events like Patch Town Days. “Here at Eckley, we honor the coal miner and his family,” Banks said. “People can see how they lived when they came to this country and get a greater appreciation for the ancestors. They didn’t have things handed to them; they worked hard for every dollar they had.”

Visitors could see riders on high-wheeled bicycles, listen to traditional Celtic music of the Irish and Scottish immigrants and learn about the part that coal mining and the miners themselves played in American history. The event also features ethnic foods and crafts representative of the immigrant coal miners’ home countries such as Lithuanian Easter eggs, Ukrainian folk art and Polish pottery.

In the Slovak heritage exhibit, Wilkes-Barre resident Bernadette Yencha displayed many intricately embroidered articles of clothing and household items, and described how one very elaborate ivory blouse was made by a woman who first grew the flax, then spun the fiber, wove it into cloth, sewed the garment and then embroidered it with brightly colored flowers and designs — in the woman’s spare time, after feeding a large family and scrubbing coal dust off every surface in the house. “How they did all this I’ll never know,” Yencha said, “except they worked very, very hard.”

Some of the younger visitors also got the message that life back in those days was hard. Ben Lloyd, 8, was visiting with parents Kevin and Stefanie Lloyd and sister Sofie, 5, along with Cub Scout Pack 650 from Freeland. As he watched the blacksmith working with hammer and anvil, Lloyd said he learned a lot. With a little prompting from mom, Lloyd reported, “Their beds were rope beds and for mattresses they used hay with bugs and grass and anything that was soft. And 12 or 14 or 15 people all lived in one house with two rooms,” he said, his voice rising in disbelief. “And when they were 12, they would have to go to work in the breakers and when they were littler than 12, they did a lot of chores in the house, like get water and they had to wash the clothes outside.”

While Margaret Kitlan carries fond memories of those days gone by in Eckley, young Lloyd saw things differently. Asked if he would have liked to live in Eckley during the coal mining times, he shook his head. “Uh-uh — it was too hard back then.”

If You Go

Eckley Miners’ Village Patch Town Days continue today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Scheduled events include recreations of a 19th century Irish and formal weddings, performances of coal mining and Celtic music and the commemoration of The Day of the Rope and the execution of 10 Molly Maguires on June 21, 1877. For information, call 570-636-2938 or visit www.eckleyminersvillage.org

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