A Special Thanks To John G. Damron
The majority of Cordell L. Damron’s life was not without adventure and achievement. Most of what is preserved about Cordell’s life is only a small part of what made him widely known around the Shelby Creek and Pikeville area. What Pike Countians know today about Cordell Damron was written with fine details provided by his son, John G. Damron. John G. is one of two children born to the union of Cordell and Martha (Anderson) Damron. The couple’s first child was John G.’s older sister, besting him by four years. Her name was Billie Jane. Billie Jane provided earlier factual information when John G. Damron wrote his book, “First 15 Years.” The first chapter covers a good portion of Cordell Damron’s professional life with him earning a good wage, while providing food, shelter, and a whole lot of excitement for his family.
Damron’s bloodline passes through five generations of Damons that was the backbone which helped mold Pike County into what it is today. Cordell’s fourth great-grandfather was Pike County’s very first surveyor, appointed to that office by Governor John Adair on March 16, 1822.
Cordell Damron was born on January 4, 1909, near the mouth of Little Creek on Shelby Creek in Pike County, Kentucky, into the family of John L. and Jamie B. Damron. Cordell was most likely delivered by a midwife just a short distance from a mercantile business owned by the Call family at the in the Yeager community, just a rock throw from the mouth of Little Creek. In 1910 Pike County census records, Cordell was living with his parents in what was then listed as the Caney Precinct, but looking at neighbors in the census report one would notice it was Little Creek. Soon after the census, John L. Damron was in Boyd County, Kentucky. In 1920, Cordell’s family was living back at Little Creek. Four years later, on January 14,1924, Cordell’s father passed away in Boyd County. John L. Damron was interred in the Potter Cemetery at Yeager.
By the 1930 census, Cordell Damon had picked up the profession of photographer and owned a studio near Little Creek.
A special thanks to Jennifer Hopkins for this photo.
PIKE COUNTY GIVES BIRTH TO RADIO STATION
Inadequate communication spelled gloomy isolation to citizens in the Cumberland and Pine Mountain region until the early years of 1930’s. The citizens were literally cut-off from the outside world, as local imparting news was almost nil.
Available telephone service was limited due to insufficient telephone lines and exchanges which provided inadequate service to the masses of people. Otherwise the only local news that was available was published by the Pike County News in Pikeville once each week.
There were no radio broadcasting stations in Pike County, and the only other news that was available, was printed by far-away publishing companies listing practically no significant local news. Then the doors of future opportunity begin to open up bringing through the dark clouds a ray of hope and sunshine to new and exciting world. In 1933 with the combination of local news and ole’ time country music the first and only radio station WWCLD in Pike County owned and operated by the well known and respectable Cordell Damron, went on the air. His slogan was, “WWCLD broadcasting in ole’ Kentucky where the moon comes over the mountain in jugs, barrels, and fruit jars”.
Mr. Damron started with a frequency that extended as far out as fifty miles. The audible broadcast could be heard throughout Pike County, and in sections of Letcher County, Floyd County, and in the Western section of Virginia and West Virginia.
Cordell’s knowledge in electronics and radio broadcasting enabled him to build his own broadcasting transmitter. His broadcast was principally country music every Saturday night. Talented musical groups from four to six participants were always available to broadcast to approximately fifty thousand grateful listeners.
They previously met in country school houses each Friday before Christmas, meetings, where
last day of school, and at Literary Society the many antiquated school buildings were over
crowded. The only reason many of these talented musicians were not performing in Nashville, Tennessee on the Grand Ole Opera (and some did) was due to their lingering financial disadvantages.
The crowd rapidly increased at each performance, had to maneuver to be able to seat the anticipated crowd that and Cordell had gathered for the occasion.
Suddenly one Saturday night in the year of 1934 two unexpected strangers entered the studio during the broadcast were seated with the excited spectators.
“Who do you recon’ them “City Slickers’ might be?” asked a youngster whom they called Vern”, known also a cynical fistic bigot, apparently eager to test the skill of these two dignitaries.
“Why don”t ‘you go over and ask them?” Suggested Willard sitting nearby. “It’s your funeral!”
“I.. I…d… don’t know what you mean!” stuttered the meager and less determined Vern.
“They look like prizefighters,” added Willard, “and you know what?
They’re looking right at ye’ as if they’re ready far ye’!!
Vern slowly turned his head around, and was somewhat baffled seeing their contemptuous grin which he utterly despised.
“Let’s listen to this desiring to reverse tension. good music”, Willard the repetitive conversation and suggested, ease the tensions.
Old time tunes such as “John Henry” and “Chickens Crowing in Sourwood Mountain” dominated the delightful event.
The two apparent mysterious strangers slowly walked over Cordell, politely introduced themselves, and explained purpose of their unexpected arrival. to their
“You are doing a very good job broadcasting here Mr. Damron,” complimented one who apparently was the official spokesman of the two. “We’re from the Federal Communication Commission in Washington, and we want you to make the announcement over your radio station that this will be your last broadcast. Mr. Damron you have no legal license or permit to operate your station.
These two prudent dignitaries had authority beyond utmost expectation! This stunning news was like an unexpected blow from a sledge hammer striking furiously destroying all hope of any future communicative expansion.
When Cordell first installed the radio station, apparently there were no Federal Communication Commission to issue a radio broadcasting permit. Due to the many frequency complaints from competitive radio station operators concerning interference in their broadcasting, a Federal Communication Commission was established and Cordell resolved the unnecessary responsibility in securing a permit, and was, therefore, determined that no permit was needed from anyone regardless of size.
“We will suggest,” continued the discretionary spokesman from Washington, “that you file for a legal permit with the Federal Communication Commission in Washington, D. C. to operate your radio broadcasting station. You can if you prefer, file for a Ham Radio world. Operator’s Permit to broadcast throughout the whole world.
Cordell later conceded the seemingly prospective recommendations, and secured a “Ham Radio” operator’s permit. He purchased some operative equipment, and was later appointed as ore of the
Official Directors over ham radio broadcasting in his immediate area.
After his broadcasting station was abandoned, and the region was receptive to industrial expansion, a proclaimed coal gasification promoter, who was unknown to anyone in the immediate area, came into Pike County and called a special meeting. He explained the purpose of his arrival to an exciting and listening audience.
His plant description and financial arrangements was so camouflaged that the skeptical Cordell challenged his integrity. Cordell asked and answered more questions then the thwarted promoter could ever comprehend. This dejected stranger seemed baffled that these mountaineers were so knowledgeable on coal gasification that he decided it was time to close shop, and fled thither.
Cordell was disappointed at the integrity of so many deceptive so called “Experts” on coal gasification, being himself well trained in all phases of this particular industry. Such occurrence are very frequently when impersonators invade the mountain region.
In the 1940 census, his occupation was repairing radios. the threat of War was looming on the horizon, Cordell went to Pikeville to sign up for the draft, image shown below.
The First 15 Years
Four score minus seven years ago …No, even though I’m tempted, I’m not going to start that way.
I was born on a frigid cold Sunday morning February 4, 1940 in the small rural community of Yeager in Eastern Kentucky. My father, Cordell, was 31 years of age, and my mother, Martha, was just shy of 28.
My sister, Billie Jane, was a couple of months from turning 4. The weather was so cold that the ‘ole swimming hole in Shelby Creek under the railroad bridge was frozen solid. Children and adults alike were skating on the ice. I assume everyone was skating in their shoes for I doubt if anyone had ice skates. Billie Jane had spent Saturday night with her uncle Miles Damron and his wife Dixie.
When she got up that morning they told her to hurry and eat breakfast for they had a big surprise for her. After she ate her breakfast of corn flakes they told her that she had a new baby brother.
The building I was born in was a long narrow, two-story building with a dirt road on one side and a creek on the other. I call it a building instead of a house due to its construction and appearance. It was at the mouth of Little Creek about 300 feet from the highway, US 23 South. We lived upstairs in that building until I was about eighteen months old. My father was a hard-working wage earner and my mother was a dedicated meticulous housewife. In the summer of 1941 we moved to a new house about a mile up the middle fork of Little Creek.
Our new house was probably built by my oldest uncle, Bertram Damron who was a carpenter by trade as well as an Old Regular Baptist preacher. Bertram had a severe posture problem. He was extremely bent over and couldn’t stand straight but he was a very hard working man. I don’t know how much my father helped with the construction but he did the electrical wiring, even though electricity wasn’t yet available on Little Creek. We had no electricity and no indoor plumbing in our new house. There was a 28-foot-deep hand-dug water well just outside the kitchen door. We had a wooden well-box with a rope and pulley to “draw” water from the well. A few years later when the wooden well-box became rotten, it was replaced with one made of brick. We had a narrow path about 125 feet around the hillside to the outhouse. At that time, in that part of the country, no-one called it an outhouse. It was always called a toilet. Ours was a two-holer. It always seemed strange to me that girls or women always liked to go to the toilet together but boys or men never ever went together We used kerosene fueled oil lamps and sometimes candles for lighting. Many houses burned in that time era due to people dropping oil lamps of forgetting to extinguish a candle. Although we had flashlights, we seldom used them except for going to the toilet or walking to a neighbor’s house when it was too dark to navigate the road. Flashlight batteries were expensive and very short-lived in those days. Although my father was primarily a photographer, he was also an electrician, stunt pilot, public speaker, inventor or as he said “A jack of all trades and good at none.” The only thing wrong with that statement was that he was good at nearly everything he did. His accomplishments were incredible for a man with very little formal education. He had the foresight to wire the new house in anticipation of the utility company running power lines up Little Creek, which they did a few years later. There were no light fixtures, just bare bulbs screwed into sockets hanging from twisted-pair asbestos insulated wiring attached to white porcelain rosettes on the ceiling. He installed wall switches later, after public electricity was available. For a brief time we had 32 volt lighting using 25-watt 32-volt bulbs powered by a bank of glass-cased batteries under the house which were charged by a Delco generator. still own a gasoline powered 32 volt Deco generator which I acquired many years later as an antique.
Farther up Little Creek from our house there used to be a log house called the Newt House. It was probably named after the original resident. It was constructed of logs with mud to seal the cracks. It still existed when I was very young. I remember visiting my aunt Florence and her family when they lived there. It was one large room with a dirt floor. When my parents were married, they started housekeeping in the Newt House. When Florence and her family lived there, there was cardboard or something nailed to the inside of the house and it was “wallpapered” with old newspapers. There was a sheet of canvas or something hanging from the ceiling which served as a room divider. The house was built on a slight slope, so the dirt floor on the lower side of the house was built up to be level. At the upper side, there was a small log threshold under the door to keep water from flowing in during a rain. At the lower side, there was a porch and steps. Other than mud between the logs, there was no insulation and no weatherstripping. The house was probably very drafty and cold during the winter.
One thing I wish I had a better memory of but I was just too young: my father was an amateur radio operator before World War II when Kentucky was still located in the “9” call district. His callsign was W9TZR. He had built a battery powered transmitter using a pair of 6L6 vacuum tubes. I wish I could recall what type or brand of receiver he used. I only vaguely remember seeing the transmitter but I do remember the antenna. It was a duplet antenna for the 160-meter amateur band which was center fed with one-inch spaced 300 ohm ladder wire. The antenna was stretched between the hillsides on each side of the road and was approximately 200 feet high in the center. In the mind of such a young kid, the feedline to the antenna looked to me like a “ladder into the sky.”
Soon after the beginning of World War II, the United States banned all amateur radio operation for the duration of the war. Since the Kentucky Power Company was planning to install power lines up Little Creek and the antenna could not be above the power lines, my father removed the antenna. During the war his amateur radio license expired. He never renewed the W9TZR license.
Another incident I have vague memories of is falling from a moving car. I believe it was late 1944 or sometime in 1945. My mother, Billie Jane and I were riding with Jasper Justice in his car from Paintsville to Pikeville. It was a warm day and the car windows were down. Of course no cars back then had power windows. All windows were rolled up or down using window cranks. Most all cars then had an assist rope attached to the back of the front seats to assist passengers getting into and out of the back seats. Children liked to stand in the back floor and hold the rope so they could see out. I was no exception. As we were rounding the curve across the road from the large Davidson Memorial Gardens cemetery at Ivel, I remember someone in the front seat saying we should roll up the windows as there was a dust cloud ahead. The next thing I remember is sitting on the side of a small hospital bed or examining table in the hospital emergency room with someone wearing a white cloak standing over me and holding my shoulder. Although I don’t remember having any pain, I had a large knot and deep cut on the back of my head which had already been bandaged. They said I had reached for the window crank but had grabbed the door handle instead. The car’s back doors were what we call “suicide doors”, so when I pushed down on the door handle the wind forced the door open and I tumbled out. They said the car was going about 35 miles per hour, but since I only got a bad bump and cut I think the driver must have quickly hit the brake and slowed the car by the time I tumbled out. Billie Jane was in the seat beside me and says she started screaming when I fell out. She said Mother ran back to get me and wrapped my head in some sort of towel while they rushed me to the Pikeville hospital. I think the term “suicide doors” is appropriate for rearward opening doors. I have often wondered if my hearing/speech issues addressed in Chapter 2 were in any way related to my head injury.
In the summer of 1944, we moved to Paintsville and lived in a small apartment in the back of a photographic studio that we owned and running a radio transmitting studio from the Cumberland Lumber Company in September, 1946.
We were there for three years before we moved back to the house on little Creek which sat empty while we were away. The apartment in back of the studio was very small but at least it had indoor plumbing. I remember we did not have a refrigerator. My mother had a three-bushel washtub which sat on the kitchen floor. Every morning the iceman would bring a large block of ice to the back door which mother would put in the tub. She would dip out enough water from the previously melted ice to maintain two to three inches of water in the tub. Milk and other things that needed to be refrigerated sat in the tub which was covered with a blanket to help keep the cold air in and to keep the ice from melting too quickly. Our family made do with that arrangement and it worked well for us. I went to the first grade in the Paintsville City School. My teacher was Ms. Pack. She was a nice woman and an excellent teacher. We had two first grade rooms. Something I never thought was funny but our receptionist Neva thought was hilarious was that I forget and wore my houseshoes to school one day. It didn’t bother me and I didn’t change until I came home for lunch. Beside our studio was a furniture store. Behind the studio and furniture store was a narrow alley where the furniture store’s truck was sometimes parked. At times my father would park his car there. Some of the children who lived nearby liked to play in the alley. It was a good safe place away from traffic. I still remember the names of three of my playmates from the alley. They were Harold VanHoose, Josephine Dills and a crippled girl named Pansy. I can’t remember Pansy’s last name. I remember her having a wheelchair but also getting around on crutches. When we first moved to Paintsville my father had a 1934 Ford which was a large square-back, four-door car. Sometime during our stay in Paintsville he traded for a 1936 Ford. I was old enough by then to really have an interest in automobiles, and I really loved the 1936 Ford.
Usually on Saturdays we would go to the local movie theater. Most of the theaters at that time only had one projector so roughly half-way through the movie there would be an intermission during which time the projectionist would have to rewind the film and thread in a new one to start the second half of the movie. Usually there was a cartoon and a weekly “serial” which was a short 15 to 20 minute movie that continued week after week. It always had a cliffhanger at the end of each show to entice you to come back to see the following week’s show. Since my father was a professional photographer and we lived in the back of a photographic studio, needless to say there were a lot of pictures of Billie Jane and me. One picture I especially like was made on my seventh birthday. I am sitting cross-legged on a chair holding an old fiddle which was used as a prop in the studio. My father liked to collect antiques and although he had absolutely no musical ability, he had three old fiddles. He thought the one he used for a studio prop was the most worthless. After his death when I acquired all his antiques, I had the old fiddles appraised and discovered that the old studio prop was worth around $3,000 and the other two fiddles were worthless. I’m a hillbilly. Notice that I called them fiddles, not violins. I still have the old fiddle and have had it professionally restored. When I went to get the fiddle after having it restored a gentleman who had played fiddle for Ray Price happened to be there. I asked him if he would play something so I could hear my newly restored fiddle. He was glad to oblige me. The fiddle sounded awesome. Some investigation revealed that it was likely manufactured in the late 1890s.
One of several thousands of photos take by Cordell Damron, this particular photo just like many were hand colored postcards
In the summer of 1947 my family moved back to the house at Little Creek. At that time the utility company was running power lines up little Creek so not too long after that we had electricity. We still did not have indoor plumbing. In fact the house did not have indoor plumbing until I was grown, married and living in Texas. My parents had a well drilled and a water line run into the kitchen, but until the house was remodeled and enlarged a couple of years later, there was no place for a bathroom. When the new 1947-1948 school year started, there was a brand-new one room school house at Yeager on Little Creek, slightly over half a mile from our house. The school building was constructed of cinder block and had a row of windows down each side. Most of the kids did not like the fact that the windows were too high to see anything outside except treetops and sky. That was obviously intentional but the children didn’t understand the necessity of it.
There was a long skinny coatroom across the back of the building and one small sink. We did not have running water at the school but there was a hand-dug well behind the school. There was always a drum of water beside the sink so we could drink or wash our hands. There was a wooden rack with shelves and cubbyholes above the sink, and each student had a drinking cup which stayed in their cubby hole with their name on it. The school was heated with a cast-iron Buckeye stove. Someone would start the fire an hour or so before classtime. Often the fire was started by one of the fourth graders. Kindling and firewood were used to start the fire then coal would be used throughout the day. Our teacher was Mrs. Violet Rowe. She was an excellent teacher. I really owe a lot to her for working so well with me. By that time my severe speech impediment had become a real handicap and nearly every student was constantly poking fun at me. I leave that subject to Chapter 2 and will not elaborate on it here. Since I had completed the first grade at Paintsville, I started in the second grade at the Little Creek School. I was only in the second grade for about three weeks until Mrs. Rowe moved me to the third grade. She said my reading comprehension and arithmetic were already at a fourth grade level. Even though I could not read out loud I could read something and answer written questions proving that my comprehension of what I read was very good. I was doing fourth grade math with no difficulty. Mrs. Rowe would have moved me to fourth grade but skipping two grades at the same time was not permitted by the county school system. Besides, I was too young and immature. I finished the third and fourth grades at the Little Creek School. I still have my third-grade report card. Other than a “B” in writing, all the other grades were “A’s” for the year.
At that time my father was doing a lot of flying out of the Pikeville airport. The small airport had a grass landing strip which I think was only 1,100 feet in length. It was located a couple of miles from town and consisted of the runway, a windsock, a small office and three or four hangers. There was no tower, no radio equipment, etc. Dad never owned his own airplane. He just rented from the airport and his friends. He flew everything at the airport that could be rented. They had two bi-wing open cockpit airplanes. One was a yellow Waco. He loved doing stunts in it. It had a thrust-to-weight ratio over one which meant it could fly straight up without stalling. He liked to fly low over the airport upside down at full throttle, then push the stick forward to initiate an outside loop and exit by going straight up. The very thought of that still terrifies me. The only thing keeping him in the plane was the seatbelt. If the belt had broken or become unlatched during the very high negative-G forces, nothing could have held him in the aircraft. I think he was the only pilot at the Pikeville airport who liked doing outside loops, but that was his thing. My family spent a lot of time at the airport on weekends. Although I rode with some of my father’s friends, I never rode with him. There was a tradition at the airport that when a new pilot soloed they cut off his shirttail and attached it to the office wall. I was very proud to see my Dad’s shirttail on that wall. The instrumentation in those old planes consisted of an altimeter, a fuel gauge, an ammeter and an oil pressure gauge. Anything else was a luxury. Flying was strictly visual seat-of-the-pants flying. A few of the local pilots were pure drunks. My father lost some of his friends due to their flying drunk or flying into fog. Although my father drank some in his young days, luckily he saw the stupidity of it and quit. Since my dad was a photographer he filmed most of the local airshows instead of flying in them. I have a video of an airshow during the 1940s which he filmed using 16 millimeter color film. A 1939 LaSalle was slowly driving up and down the runway being bombed from above by an airplane dropping small bags of flour. On one pass, the pilot got much too close to the car. At the last second he quickly swerved to keep a wheel from hitting the car. That was very close to a disaster on film before a large audience. Another trick of my Dad’s was to throw out rolls of toilet paper, then turn and fly through them. Sometimes he would fly over our house, down between the hills barely clearing the power lines. I have always loved airplanes but I have always had a fear of flying or heights. I attribute that to some of the things I have seen at that airport and also to a childhood of bad dreams of falling from high places.
One more paragraph about aviation and then I will get off the subject. There is a kind of legend in Pike County, Kentucky about someone flying an airplane under the Shelly bridge. The bridge was 30 to 40 feet above the waters of Shelby Creek and the spacing between the concrete piers was sufficient for an airplane to fly under with roughly six feet clearance on each side. I have heard various stories but will never know the truth about what really happened. The most consistent story I have heard over the years is as follows: There was a man named Roy who lived fairly close to us at Yeager. He was an ex-military pilot who was a very heavy drinker. He was evidently an excellent pilot and flew quite a bit at the Pikeville airport. The word was out that Roy was going to fly under the Shelby Bridge at a specific time. Several people were there beside the bridge and some were on the bridge waiting to see Roy fly under the bridge. The plane was late and people were ready to leave when they heard a very loud airplane approaching. They expected the airplane to approach, swoop down under the bridge, then fly away. That’s not exactly what happened. When the plane arrived it was the yellow Waco biplane flying upside down barely above the waters of Shelby Creek. Since it was so low it was actually below the tree-tops on each side of the river. The plane had to negotiate turns to follow the curvature of the river. It flew under the bridge and up the river where the riverbed was straight, then negotiated half an outside loop to right the plane, then swooped down and flew under the bridge on the way back to the airport.
With all the photography that my father had done at airshows, I wondered why he had not been at the bridge. He knew about the fly-under but was not there to film it. He never wanted to talk about the incident except to deny it when he was questioned. It was the exact maneuver he would do over the airport but at full throttle and not under a bridge. I thought maybe he was embarrassed that he had been outdone by Roy. Not too long before Dad died I asked him why he had not filmed Roy flying under the bridge. He sheepishly looked around the room to make sure mother wasn’t listening then leaned forward and said “Roy Blair was too drunk to fly that day.” | don’t know for sure but I think that was his way of saying it was him. If so, he always denied it for Mother’s sake. I never told her what he said. If fact, I never told anyone until after her death. He had said previously that Roy did not like to fly upside down in an open cockpit plane and had probably never performed an outside loop, so I thought the whole story had been greatly exaggerated. Several times over the years I have asked people I know who are pilots if that stunt was even possible. The last person I asked was an experienced military pilot who was familiar with Waco aircraft. He said “Sure the aircraft can pull that maneuver, but a man would have to be crazy to do it.” Sounds like Cordell Damron to me.
When I was quite young, I don’t remember the age, Billie Jane and I were playing in the hollow (in Kentucky that is pronounced holler) up the hill behind our house. I was barefoot. At about the same time we both saw a medium-sized black snake. She started screaming and ran full speed down the hill to the house, leaving me with the snake. Being barefoot, it took me a bit longer to run down the hill to the house. To stay out of the briars I had to come down the rocky hollow. My feet were bleeding when I got to the house. (It was really nice to have a big sister to care for and protect me.) That’s okay, for a year or so later we got in an argument and I chased her to the neighbor’s house with a butcher knife. I remember I got into more trouble for that than she did for leaving me on the hill with the snake.
The closest house beside ours was an old frame house built on the hillside. I always thought of it as the house on stilts. The front of it was a porch on very high poles. The porch didn’t have banisters; instead it had chicken wire to protect anyone from falling off. There was a stairway under the house which led up to the porch. On the backside of the house was a set of steps which led into the house. There was a well box on the lower level but a rope and pulley to allow someone in the house to draw water from the well without going down to the well. At times the well at our house would go dry and we would get water from this well instead. The first people I can remember living in this house was the Manville Justice family. Manville and his wife Mint had two sons, Jimmy and Charles Edward. Jimmy was my age and was in class with me for several years. Charles Edward was a few years older. He later was the fiddler in George Jones’ band for many years. | still e-mail with Jimmy occasionally.
A few hundred yards down the road from us lived two elderly sisters, Jane and Mindy Hall. Mindy was crippled and sat all day in a straight-back wooden chair. By leaning back on the back chair legs she would maneuver the chair throughout the house. Jane basically ran the household, as Mindy seemed to be somewhat mentally challenged. They had chickens and a cow, and sold milk and eggs to supplement the very small government checks they received. For a while we bought from them. It would be fresh milk, still warm which they would pour from a bucket into a glass Mason jar which we would take. One day I took the milk jar and walked to their house after milking. Mindy said the milk would only be (I don’t remember the price she said, but it was much lower than usual) because the cat had gotten into it. I got the milk and carried it home. Needless to say, my mother was not very pleased. I never owned a new bicycle. My first bicycle was one someone had given my father without a front wheel. He found a tricycle front wheel and somehow mounted it on the front fork of the bicycle then sawed off the crank and petals. Although it looked funny it was functional. It had a pneumatic back tire with the solid rubber tricycle wheel on front. I learned to ride on that bicycle. The solid wheel was really rough and bumpy on our dirt road. I rode a bicycle a lot when I was growing up but I never rode on pavement until I was grown. In all those years of riding a bicycle I’ve only had one wreck. That was when I tried to go up a hillside that was so steep the bicycle flipped over backwards and threw me off. Chalk that up to stupidity rather than lack of skill. It didn’t hurt anything but my pride. 1 got my first 22 rifle when I was nine years old. It was a single shot Remington. I was very accurate with that old 22 rifle and could beat most any adult. We would sit on the front porch and shoot at metal cans across the road on the hillside. I liked to lay the cans on their side so only their ends would face me. That was more of a challenge. I got my first shotgun when I was eleven. It was an old Stevens 16 gauge with a plastic stock. I still own that shotgun. Several years later, Stevens recalled all the plastic stock shotguns. If I had sent it in they would have replaced the plastic stock with a new wood stock free of charge. I preferred the plastic stock and never sent it in. It is worth more now with the original plastic stock than it would have been if it had been modified. Turkey shoots were pretty common where I grew up but only adults could enter. As a result I never got to enter but my old Stevens 16 gauge sure did. The object was to shoot one shot at a paper target from some distance I don’t remember. The shooter with the most holes in the target won a turkey. Jasper Justice always wanted to borrow my shotgun for it was a full choke and he won every time he used it. The guys with their fancy expensive 12 gauge shotguns just couldn’t beat him.
I never carried a pocket knife until I was about fifteen. For some reason my mother was always terrified of me carrying a knife. I don’t know why. She had no problem with me going up in the hills with a shotgun when I was eleven. I had pocket knives which I used at home. That didn’t bother her. I honored her wish and did not carry a pocket knife. Her two greatest fears for me were the pocket knife and falling out of a tree. She was always frightened of someone falling from a tree and getting injured. Maybe these fears were due to something in her early life. We will never know. My early years through the fourth grade were very enjoyable and I am happy that I can still remember so much of my early childhood.
The year of 1949 was very traumatic for my entire family. When the year started my father’s photographic business was very successful with a number of studios in various small towns in the area. Cell phones and handheld electronic devices were several decades in the future. The “in” thing at that time was a portable camera. Although the studios made a profit from selling cameras and roll-film, the primary profits were from processing the film and printing pictures. There was a receptionist working at each studio to meet the people, take orders and schedule appointments for portraits. My dad would travel to the studios to process the film, print pictures and meet customers for scheduled portraits. At times some of the receptionists learned to process and print, but he still did the majority of all the darkroom work. Dad would often let me assist in the darkroom when he wasn’t too busy. By the time I was seven or eight I knew about all the equipment and processes used in the darkroom. Not many kids my age knew about developer, first rinse, hypo stabilizer, final rinse, drying, printing, etc. I really loved my “working” in Dad’s darkrooms.
World War II had ended four years earlier and the economy was good. Small movie theaters sprang up in several small communities in the tri-state area. A favorite weekend activity was for the whole family to go to the movie. Many of the theaters were using equipment purchased from my father. It was almost entirely Bell & Howell equipment. The theater owners were buying the equipment from my father on a time-payment plan, which was an early version of financing. In turn, my father was making payments to Bell & Howell for the equipment. The importance of including this much detail will become clear a bit later.
Things were going really well in the photographic business until disaster struck. There was a coalminers’ strike that lasted for about six months. Since most of the income in that part of the country was derived from coal mining, a strike of that duration shut down virtually everything. People quit spending for nearly all non-essential items. Many of the able-bodied men went to Ohio to work in the steel mills or to Detroit to work on the assembly lines at one of the automobile factories. Movie theaters, small grocery stores, service stations, drugstores, eating establishments, etc. were rapidly going out of business. I do want to make a note that purchasing of the most non-essential items of all was not curtailed in any way. Regardless of how difficult the economy was, people did not curtail the purchase or use of tobacco and liquor. Even if their families were barely fed or nearly barefoot, they never gave up their cigarettes or booze. To those people, their cigarettes were the most important things in their life. felt that way then, and now, decades later, I still feel that way.
When people quit attending movies, the owners could no longer make payments on the equipment to my father and he in turn could not afford to make the payment to Bell & Howell. There quickly became a surplus of used projectors, sound systems, etc. that no-one wanted. Bell and Howell agreed to take back some of the newer equipment but did not want most of it. My family’s situation was getting more serious by the day. Dad probably could have waited out the strike by closing all but the Pikeville studio, but there was a long term lease on the building which housed the Paintsville studio, which by then was losing money. The landlord of that building, Mrs.Rutrough, (not sure of the spelling) refused to waive the lease. My father’s attorney recommended that he file for bankruptcy as the only way to get out of the lease. Bankruptcy involved shutting down the business entirely and closing all studios. All the studio equipment was combined and sold as one lot at public auction. No one was interested or could afford that kind of equipment so it sold for a ridiculously low price. A friend of the family bought the equipment at auction and gave it back to my father. We were overwhelmed with equipment, supplies and file cabinets full of finished photographs and portraits which had never been picked up by the customers. We had photographic equipment everywhere it could be put. It was throughout the house, in the attic and everywhere there was an empty space. Some gentleman bought a small portion of it to open a photographic studio in a nearby town. I do not know how successful that venture was.
*Note at the time when this story was added to the pages of the Pike County Historical Society, research was furthered to find out who purchased Cordell’s photo equipment at the bankruptcy auction. It was determined that Paul B Mays was most likely the man that purchased camera equipment, various negatives and photos from Cordells Collection.
When I was seven or eight I had been given a Brownie Reflex camera. I wanted a flash attachment for the camera, but we didn’t have one for sale in the studio at that time. When the studios closed there was one new Brownie Reflex kit in stock, which consisted of a camera, carrying case, flash attachment and a small supply of flashbulbs. Even though I wanted it, my father gave it to my teenage cousin as payment for helping him in moving equipment from the auction site to our house. Two or three weeks later we learned that my cousin had traded the camera kit for a six-pack of beer. That was equivalent to trading a $100 camera for a six-pack of beer today. I was heartbroken. Many years later I found and purchased a flash attachment at a garage sale. It was an antique by then, so it became a part of my antique collection. Eventually I gave all my old cameras to my niece Jennifer who collects antique cameras. My little Brownie Reflex had served its purpose well.
The coalminers’ strike was eventually settled and people went back to work. After two or three months of unemployment Dad got a job as a electrician in a small coal mine in a nearby town.
He worked there for a few months until he found better employment as chief electrician at a larger mine.
One thing that my father did which causes me to really respect him as a man and as a human being is that when he obtained a new job with a good wage he started repaying the outstanding balance at Bell & Howell. Of course under bankruptcy laws he was not required to repay the loan but he was determined to do so. After the loan was paid in full he received a very nice letter of commendation from Bell & Howell. The letter thanked him and said if he ever wanted to buy anything else from Bell & Howell he had an open line of credit with them with no credit limit. That letter was something he was very proud of.
The next thing to happen during this time of turmoil was my grandmother moving in with us. She was living alone half a mile or so up the road from our house when she fell and broke her arm. She wanted to stay with us until her arm healed. Problem is that she stayed until her death seven years later. This put a nearly unbearable stress on our family, especially my mother. We could never go anywhere as a family for someone had to stay home and take care of her. Every month or so one of the relatives would take her home with them for a visit. She would stay for a night or maybe two then they would bring her back.
She refused to stay anywhere else. She received a small monthly government pension check from my grandfather’s service in the Spanish American War. Her youngest daughter and family moved into my grandmother’s house. The daughter or one of her seven children would come to visit grandmother once a month, right after the check came. Although my mother attended to her every need for her last seven years, she gave her check each month to the daughter. I have adequately discussed my relationship with her in the previous chapter so I will not elaborate further here. If my mother had refused to attend to her and given my father the ultimatum “either she goes or I go” I don’t think anyone would have blamed her.
This paragraph is extremely gross, but it details vivid memories of my grandmother. Since we did not have indoor plumbing, she used a pot which was stored in a nearby closet when not in use. I think everyone in eastern Kentucky called their pot a “slop jar”. Someone would have to help my grandmother out of bed to the pot, then help her back to bed when she was finished. Then there was the task of taking the pot outside to empty and rinse. Often I was the one who had the honor of emptying and rinsing her “slop jar”. She was addicted to a laxative named “Black Draught”. She definitely did NOT need a laxative, for she had coal-black diarrhea the entire time she stayed with us. It stunk up the entire house and the smell lingered for hours. I don’t know what addictive powers Black Draught had, but it seemed that most of the older people were on it. It was always a popular item in the grocery stores. In preparing for this paragraph I searched the internet for Black Draught. I discovered it is still available and has been on the market since the nineteenth century. As vivid as my memory is about her, I don’t remember ever hearing a “thank you”, only “di-diddle-dum”
Our car at that time was a 1947 Buick Roadmaster. It was originally black but after my aunt Bessie’s first driving lesson when she ran off the road into an embankment, it was painted blue and white. Dad never gave her another driving lesson. His driving was as fast and furious as his flying. Although the daytime speed limit in Kentucky was 60 mph there were few places in Pike County where the road was straight enough to drive that fast. I remember one time hearing someone excitingly tell my mother “I saw Cordell yesterday and I’ll bet he was going sixty miles an hour”. My mother never had an interest in driving and never learned how. Most women in that era did not drive.
When I was eleven I applied for a correspondence course from National Radio Institute in Cleveland, Ohio. When they saw my age on the application, it was rejected. My rejection letter stated that I was too young for the course. Their minimum age was eighteen. My father wrote a letter stating that I was mature enough for the course and he would be responsible for paying for it. They did not reply to my father’s letter but started sending course materials. They would send study booklets which I would read and study, then take a written test provided with the booklet. When I completed and mailed in a test, they would grade it then send the next set of study materials. The course lasted for several months, maybe as long as eighteen months. Toward the end, they provided some simple electronic kits to be assembled. It was a wonderful opportunity to learn something that the schools did not teach. When I completed the course I received a letter stating that I was the youngest person ever to do so.
I had a little radio shop in the attic. There was a ladder in the back bedroom which provided the only access to the attic, which was not heated or cooled. Along with the test equipment built from National Radio Institute kits, my father gave me some old equipment from his amateur radio days and purchased some new equipment for me. I started accumulating a stock of repair parts and vacuum tubes. I repaired radios for neighbors and friends and quite a few for my teachers. Many times I would ride the school bus home carrying some teacher’s table model radio to repair. When I got off the bus, I had to carry it the mile up Little Creek to our house. Sometimes I would need to stop and rest for a while, but I didn’t mind. I loved what I was doing. If I needed a part which I didn’t have, my father would buy it at one of the radio shops in Pikeville.
In 1952, my father got a job in Knoxville, Tennessee working for Myers Whaley, a heavy mining equipment manufacturer. He worked there for about eighteen months. While in Knoxville, he traded the old Buick for a nearly new 1951 Ford two-door Victoria. It was our first family automobile with an automatic transmission. After the time in Knoxville, he started working at a mine somewhere near Jenkins, Kentucky. Since we still had lots of photographic equipment stored, he decided to open a small studic in Jenkins. He hired a receptionist to take orders during the day, and he would do the film processing at night, same as he had done previously.
My father sold the Jenkins studio after a while and started working for Clinchfield Coal Corporation as an electrician. He also started doing aerial photography for Clinchfield, which he continued to do for several years.
Although he was always inventing things, he only got patents on three items. His first patent was obtained somewhere around 1952 or 1953. It was for a light-reflecting plumb-bob to be used in the mines, which would allow surveying to be done by one person instead of two. His patent attorney was the Victor J. Evans Co. Although he built several of the devices to be tried in the mines, he never pursued marketing them.
All the jukeboxes and pinball machines in Pike County were provided and serviced by Whitaker Music at Jenkins, Kentucky. Mr. Whitaker was a friend of my father and knew about my interest in electronics. One day a Whitaker Music truck arrived at our house. One of the two gentlemen in the truck said “Where do you want your jukebox?” Mr. Whitaker had given me, and delivered, an old retired Wurlitzer jukebox. It was beautiful, with swirling lights down each side and a clear glass window in front which allowed viewing the changing mechanism, records, turntable and tone-arm. We had no place for it so it stayed on the front porch. I tried to protect it from the weather but eventually the outdoor climate ruined the finish on the cabinet. When 45 RPM records became popular, all the 78 PM jukeboxes that only held 24 records were replaced with new units that held and played hundreds of 45 PM records. I loved playing the old jukebox with the several 78 RPM records I had.
Cordell Damron photo date unknown, Gypsy Wagon Caravan picture taken at Rocky Gap near Yeager, Ky.
Photo courtesy of John Damron
