Jackson Street, a favorite memory

Snow is a good thing when you’re a child

Bridge Street facing
Lower Traction

Adam Michna’s photos of the snowstorm that dumped more than two feet of white manna onto Monongah brought back memories for me.

In particular, the picture of Jackson Street, looking up the hill. We had to drag out feet coming down the street that goes past Calvary Cemetery so that we could make the turn onto Jackson without plowing into the Koval house.

All that sledriding made the hill very slippery for the folks who lived there, so they could come out and dump coal ashes just off their driveway so that their cars wouldn’t slide sideways out of the driveway.

We countered by pouring water over their ashes. There some fuming Jackson Street residents.

Kids!

Reidy Street

My #1 sledriding experience came in November 1950, when Monongah got 45.5 inches of snow in 3 days, which is about double what hit this year.

Autos couldn’t get onto U.S. 19 at Swisher Hill, so we went sledriding down it. Must have broken the speed limit by the time we hit the bottom because we had to drag our feet (only “brakes” we had) to keep from flying off the curve at the top of the next, smaller hill, not far from where Angelo Raymond had his bar and home after he and Mary and children Bobby and Rosemary moved from the Church Street rental that the Olesky family purchased from Consol Coal Company, which knew that it was closing down the mine in 3 years and wanted to get a last drop of money out of the miners.



McCue Street
aka Front Street

We were renting one house over on Thomas Street, which had an outhouse as our facility, and the Raymond rental had indoor plumbing.

I was SO happy to not have to go out to our 2-holer in the middle of winter!

I’m sure you have childhood memories of enjoying snowfall – sledriding, snowball fights, etc. Email John Olesky at jo4wvu@neo.rr.com about them and I’ll add them on this blog. If you have childhood photos in the snow, also email them in jpeg format.

Thank you.