Road to Berwind, W Va>

Children on the steps of the ROSE OF SHARON BAPTIST CHURCH
in 1954
Photo contributed by: Mae Frances Barton Moore

The following are believed to be - left to right: Row 5 - #11 Roberta Cook - #13 Jerry Robinson

                                                                                  Elsie Jackson

Note the sign in background - Dunlap or Dunlab Field - 1939
   Photo by Geneva Ellis - 1939

Photo taken in 1939 - in left field of the Baseball Diamond - looking toward the Grandstand
Photographer: Allen Burnett

Hunting Squirrels and Leaving Home

A Story for Father's Day

by Douglas Clyde Divens

Dad thought it was important that he teach me something before I grew up and left home. He was determined to teach me to mine coal or at least to hunt squirrels.

Douglas Clyde Divens grew up in Berwind
West Virginia. After teaching in McKenzie, Tennessee, and West Virginia, Mr. Divens
moved to California in 1956 to continue his profession as an educator and writer. Currently,
he is working on two short stories he expects to publish this year.

Some years ago in the coalfields of McDowell County, West Virginia, my father tried to teach me to hunt squirrels. It seemed important to him, for whatever reason, so I made a great effort. That is to say, I did my best. Dad was undoubtedly the finest squirrel hunter I've known, but not a very good teacher of squirrel hunters. On the other hand, to do him justice, he did not have a very good pupil in me. I was quick and alert to things of the forest, but not to their significance. I romanticized hunting, the forest, and all that went with it. I was the idealist. My father took a more serious involvement. He was a realist.

The rules were quite clear. "Pick out a hickory, beech, or oak tree and sit. Make no movement whatever, just sit, wait, look, and always listen. The squirrels will come." As a small boy, I remember falling asleep once while hunting with my dad and waking up to see squirrels on the ground all around us. They were everywhere, running across his lay and over his legs. He never moved an inch. He wanted me to see. I thought it amazing that he got off three shots. He was pleased that I had the lesson, but disappointed that he had only gotten off three shots. We picked up the three squirrels and went home.

Dad thought it was important that he teach me something before. I grew and left home. He was determined to teach me to mine coal or a least to hunt squirrels. As I grew older, it was evident that I would not do well at either of these vocations. However, during the summer just before going off to college I made my best effort in mining coal and hunting squirrels. At first, Dad was not keen about my going to college, but he took me into the mines to earn money for that first year at West Virginia State.

As that long, hot summer wore on, I focused more on college. Dad gave his attention to the coming hunting season. On paydays, when I had the money, I bought things for school: a footlocker, a suit, trousers, shirts, underclothes, socks, and shoes. Dad bought boxes of Remington Nitro Express shotgun shells, a. hunting coat, and boots. When we talked, however, I told him more about college and about what I would be doing. He listened and softened a bit. Realizing just how determined I was about school, he had gotten me a job working with him on the night shift in Number One mine. It was hard work and very dangerous. Most of Dad's time was spent watching me. Dad had worked all of his life in the mines or on the farm. He wasn't dead set against college, nor was he against my leaving home. He was just a bit apprehensive. Some college folks he trusted; others he did not. He had a particular dislike for scriptwriters and bookkeepers, especially those who worked for the coal company. He liked the teachers, especially Mr. Carroll and Miss Washington. He did remind me that Claude Honaker's boy had gone to college for two years and still said "haint't." We both had to admit, however, that Claude's boy was a good miner, and he could hunt squirrels. But "anyone who had gone to college for two years knows perfectly well the word is 'ain't' and not 'hain't'." That's the way Dad figured it.

In the weeks that followed, I got myself together and went off to State College. Dad bought me a new 20-gauge Savage just a few days before I left. Was the gun a going away present, something to entice me to stay home, or was it for my birthday in September? Only time would eventually assure my thoughts on that matter.

As it was, Dad became reconciled to the college idea and accepted my leaving. Maybe I could learn something just as important as what I could learn at home. I think he came to that conclusion during those last few days we worked together in the mines.

By the time Thanksgiving holidays rolled around, I had been away from home two months and two weeks. I now had four days at home to visit, relax, and eat all I could hold. I took the opportunity to go squirrel hunting and, at the same time, try the new 20 gauge that I had left behind in September. On Friday after Thanksgiving, when I should have been reading some assignments for Monday morning, I took a thermos of soup and my shotgun and headed for the hills. Dad had left long before I was out of bed. I had no idea where he was.

I climbed high above Berwind and after awhile the rise of coal smoke from chimneys gave the only indication that a mining community rested a few hundred yards below. The season was late autumn, but the leaves had not all left the trees. The colors in the hills, the odor of the forest and the noise of woodland creatures delighted me. My surroundings were familiar. I had been here before.

I picked out an area thick with hickory, oak, beech, and black gum. A fallen beech, more than a hundred feet long, offered a place to recline. In the shelter of new growth issuing from that decaying giant, I made myself comfortable and waited for squirrels.

Hunting squirrels can be one of the most relaxing kind of outdoor activity. As Dad has said, "All you have to do is wait and listen." You can even sleep if you like. College had taught me to be patient. After all, it would be at least four years before that chapter in my life was completed. I was prepared to wait for squirrels.

From my thermos I poured a cup of tomato soup. The aroma attracted every kind of pest, the least of these being ground squirrels. I was tempted to shoot one. After all, I had not shot this new gun. However, before I could make up my mind to do so I was assailed with another fury. Ants by the hundred were attacking my legs. After that, there were gnats, bees, flies, mosquitoes, and other bugs, I lit my pipe, a habit I had picked up to impress college mends. Since it had rained the night before and everything was still damp, lighting a match was not easy. When I did succeed, my pipe would not stay lit. I spent much time knocking the ashes out of the bowl and lighting up over and over.

Eventually, I made peace with my surroundings and settled in for a long, silent wait. As the brief November day drew to a slow twilight, I felt secure in myself as a hunter, as a student, and as a man. I was doing it right. I relaxed. Squirrels chattered. They started to appear. I never moved. They came with range, but I never moved. Squirrels came down the trees and ran on the ground before me. They ran over my lap and across my legs. I could have touched one. I never shot my gun. They appeared and reappeared for such a long time. There were gray squirrels, large ones and small ones, and even a few red squirrels. They ran up the trees and out of sight. Occasionally, one would run back down to check me out. Finally they all disappeared. I never shot my gun. I never intended to.

Evening was fast approaching. I would have to leave to get home before dark. Nightfall can descend so very fast in the hills during the fall of the year. Within minutes the whole country would be wrapped in obscurity. I tapped the ashes from my pipe and poured the remainder of the soup from my thermos. As I ejected the shells from my gun, a strange feeling came over me that I was not alone. Getting up from the log, I started to retrieve my shells from the ground before me and, on doing so, turned as if by instinct toward the end of that fallen tree on which I had been sitting for hours. Just beyond the thick cover of brush and leaves so rich in the colors of late autumn sat a hunter, the best I've ever known. Apparently, he had taken station earlier in the day and had been sitting there when I came up.

Dad got up and walked toward me. The expression on his face was strange, but satisfying in a peculiar sort of way. Underneath, a smile could be made out. As he stooped to pick up six Remington Nitro Express six-shot shells ejected from his own gun, he spoke without looking in my direction. "Boy, you must be doing pretty good in college. You've learned to sit and listen." Dropping the smile and taking on a more serious manner, he looked at me for a moment. "Hain't that what I've been trying to teach you all along?" Realizing that he already had his answer, he turned and headed down the hill to a village under the rising smoke from cook stoves where women cooked for men who, among other things, hunted squirrels, dug coal, and some of whom still said "hain't" instead of "ain't."

left to right
Frederick Hairston - Lawrence (Butch) Hairston - Clyde Divens

At the left is Faucett's house and between Frederick and Lawrence is the building which became Mr. Wither's shop/store, which the Toney family later moved their store to. At the far rear are the mountains between which Sawmill Hollow was situated, where the Pruit family lived.