:04:08
It looked like any other town
out of the '40s or '50s.
:04:11
Just some rural town.
It was on the way to nowhere.
:04:14
And you probably couldn't find it on a map.
:04:23
Maybe three blocks one way,
and maybe three blocks the other way...
:04:26
and that was like a main street
where all the department stores were...
:04:29
the drugstores, the...
That's about it, you know.
:04:37
What happens to a town
after the livelihood is gone?
:04:40
All right, it just sort of decays
and blows away, doesn't it?
:04:43
That's the way it goes.
:04:46
Most of the land was either farmland...
:04:48
or just completely scavenged
by the mining companies.
:04:51
Very hot in the summertime...
:04:53
in the winter,
it was just rightly cold, you know.
:04:55
All winter, it was just, I mean...
:04:58
We didn't have the clothes they have now...
:05:00
so I mean, you just wore
two or three shirts at a time.
:05:02
Slept in your clothes.
:05:06
The pit was on the outer limits of the town.
That's where everybody worked.
:05:10
You couldn't be a rebel.
It was so cold that you couldn't be bad.
:05:14
The weather equalizes everything
very quickly.
:05:16
And nobody was gonna really pull a stickup.
:05:19
There really wasn't any philosophy,
any idiom...
:05:22
any ideology to really go against.
:05:28
My father and his brothers,
they had an electrical store.
:05:32
'Bout the first job I ever had
was sweeping up the store...
:05:34
and I was supposed to learn...
:05:36
the discipline of hard work or something,
you know...
:05:40
and the merits of employment.
:05:50
Circuses came through.
:05:52
There were tent shows
at the carny midways.
:05:55
And they had barkers.
:05:56
Got a horse with two heads!
:05:58
Got a chicken in there with a man's face!