Much has been written about the lives of coal miners.   Has anyone remembered the women who packed the miners' dinner pails, washed their clothing, and waited to see the flicker of his carbide light in the dark night coming towards home?

A country coal miner's wife struggled to make ends meet with the threat of strikes and the fear of a mine explosion or cave in that might disable her husband and devastate the family.   If the mine was closed, his pay envelope was empty.  

After a breakfast of homemade sausage and biscuits she packed her husbands dinner pail with leftovers.   She worried about her husbands safety as she went about her daily life.    

A woman's day extended past midnight sewing clothes while the family slept.   A country coal miners wife, in addition to cleaning, caring for the children, sewing, planting a garden, harvesting and canning the crop, tended the cow pigs and chickens.   She canned fruits and vegetables from her garden for the winter.   She baked all her own bread.

She purchased her treadle sewing machine, ice box, living room furniture, iron bedsteads, cotton mattresses and silverware from a catalogue.   She made their clothing from feed and flour sacks then made quilts from the left over scraps.   She made sheets, pillow cases, and towels from muslin.   She knitted the children's socks, stockings, and gloves.   She passed clothing from older children to younger children until it was worn out.

Some women carried water from a well for washing clothes, bathing and cooking.   On washday, she boiled her family's clothes in a big wash pot and scrubbed them "on a rub board" with homemade lye soap.   She hung her wash outdoors to dry.   Even using lye soap a miner's work clothes were never clean.

She boiled a big pot of water on the stove each time a family member took a bath.

Women delivered their babies at home attended by a family member, neighbor or traveling doctor.   Soon her endless routine began again.   My grandmother carried her new born on her back while she hoed the garden.

Many a miners wife stood by with tears in her eyes as her eldest son, at a young age, with is father went off to the coal mine dragging his dinner bucket.