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 Ruth (McNeil) Zemlock 1941 |
 Company Store and Post Office Circa 1960s |
 Company Store Circa 1960s |
March 6, 1908 Pittsburg Headlight mentions Manager of store as Harry Blair
Ruth (McNeil) Zemlock 1941 |
Company Store and Post Office Circa 1960s |
Company Store Circa 1960s |
| Memories of Western Coal Mining
Company Store |
| While I am not a coal miner,
I’ve
been married to a coal miner for 61+ years. I was hired in 1941
at
the age of 19 as a clerk at the Western Coal Mining Store in Franklin,
Ks.
Which is located at the corner of what is now known as 2nd and
Broadway.
I was hired as a “dry goods girl”, but of course, this job required you
to
work on the grocery side of the store, too. There were two
fellows,
Jack and John, who worked there as well as “Mr. Butch” who ran the meat
department.
Oh, what a sour outlook on life he had. The men would come in
from
the mines to buy soup bones and they would accuse “Mr. Butch” of
weighing
his thumb when charging for the soup bones. Cost of the bones was
10
cents per pound. The worst part of the job as dry goods girl was when customers wanted to buy carbide or coal oil for lamps or potatoes. You had to go into a dark, smelly, cold part of the building to get the items. The boys would not go for the things. On the dry goods side, we sold yard goods to women for the family’s clothing as well as yards and yards of off-white canvas which was used to repair and patch the knees of the miners’ pants. We had one lady every day who came in for a box of penny matches (she was a heavy smoker). On occasion she would buy coal oil for lamps. I was hired by the late Jules LaBenne, whose office was on the balcony of the company store and close to the big “pot bellied stove” that heated that area. You couldn’t get too far away from the stove in winter, as the company store was a “big barny old place to be”. Memories of Ruth (McNeil) Zemlock, wife of Anton “Tony” Zemlock |
| I can remember walking by the
old
company store and being so scared we all ran. Memory of Sherry
Pichler
Crepinsek |
| I can still see the old
"Company Store" filled with hay. Memory of Joe Lee
Maghe |
| The Company Store was as you
remember by the old post office and always full of hay (always a dark,
mysterious
and scary place for us boys to explore - at least until I got old
enough
to haul and stack hay in it for Cukatji's?? and then the mysterious
part
faded) Memory of Jim Thornton |
| The following poem was on the
back side of each page of the order book in the Western Coal Mining
Company Store. You need your money And I need mine If we both get ours It will sure be fine. But if you get yours And keep mine too What in the world Am I going to do? Memory of John Ziegler |
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E-mail memrylane@yahoo.com |