Interview

Leading up to my interview with my grandpa, I realized I was rather nervous to begin. I love my grandparents on both sides of my family, but I have not spoken much to my grandfather for a few years. I also realized that this was really the first time interviewing somebody over such personal matters regarding his childhood and home-life, things that I knew nothing about. After corresponding via email and phone calls we finally arranged to speak on Friday, November 27th. The interview was help over phone call, totaling a time of 2 hours and 15 minutes of conversation. The purpose of the interview that took place was to gain a deeper insight into the life and legacy of my grandfather, Eddie Shotton, while also attempting to become closer to him as a person and a grandparent to me at the same time.

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Nate: Hey there, Peepaw (grandparent nickname). How’re you doing today?

Eddie: Hey, buddy. I’m doing fine today, thanks. How’s school going for you?

Nate: Oh it’s good right now, keeping me busy for sure.

Eddie: That’s good, that’s good. So this interview you have to do is for which class again?

Nate: It’s for English. The whole class is kind of like one big project and the interview is just one section of it.

Eddie: Oh okay, the class were y’all are talking about family history and all?

Nate: Yes sir. So as I mentioned earlier the questions I have prepared are focused on you, and then later we’ll specifically talk about coal mining a bit and your family.

Eddie: Okay, sounds fine.

Nate: Alright so my first question I have here just to get the answer on record is where exactly do you live now?

Eddie: We live in Spencer, Tennessee. We’re up here in the mountains and in the woods. Do you need our street address or anything?

Nate: No sir that’s fine. Now, Peepaw, as a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Eddie: Well you know, when we were real young we didn’t talk about that too much in the house. But I do remember I was in 6th grade and my teacher went around the room one day and asked each of us what it was we wanted to do. Again I hadn’t put much thought into it or anything. Anyway, when she got to me I said “police officer”, it was kind of a spur of the moment kind of thing.

Nate: Now you did end up becoming a police officer one day, and we’ll talk about that later, but back then why did you think that’s what you wanted to do?

Eddie: I just thought it was interesting. Ya know you get to catch the bad guys and I thought there would be a lot of interaction with people, which I enjoy.

Nate: Okay, I see. Like I said we’ll go back to your careers here shortly but just a few more general questions first. How did you and Meemaw (again grandparent nickname) first meet?

Eddie: We met at church. We, as you know, are Mormons. We were in Cincinnati, Ohio, I had just got out of the military and my sister told me I needed to meet this “real nice girl.” So I said okay fine. Now back then I only went to church maybe once a month or so. Anyway, it was there one day that we finally met. This was back in 1972.

Nate: So you guys just hit it off from there? How long have you two been married?

Eddie: Well no. We only met that one time, like I said 1972, and we didn’t speak again until 1973. It was maybe 6 or 7 months after we first met that I finally called her up one day and asked her to a movie. We got married in June of 1973, so we went pretty quick once we started dating.

Nate: Wow, just a few months of even knowing each other before getting married?

Eddie: See I was turning 26 that year and was real ready to settle down. So since 1973, that puts us at what 42 years now? Yep, 42 years we’ve been together.

Nate: That’s awesome for you guys. Now once you two were together how did y’all decided of the names for your kids?

Eddie: Okay, very good question. Nathan (my dad) was picked out of a book. We didn’t have a name ready and the hospital we were at had a baby book with all kinds of names in it for boys and girls. We were just flipping through it and happened to see “Nathaniel.” We didn’t know anyone named Nathan or anything but we like it and it stuck.

Nate: Why didn’t you name him after yourself?

Eddie: There wasn’t really any reason. His middle name though, Dean (also my middle name), is my middle name so I did give him that. Now Comfort (aunt) was the name of Sandra’s (Meemaw’s) grandmother so there I didn’t have a say in that really. Her middle name though, which is Rhey, was the name of a great guy who had once been a bishop at a church of ours so we decided to give her that name for her middle name. Then there’s Mackenzie. So Mack was the name of Sandra’s uncle who she really adored and again we used a baby book and were looking for a name that went along with the name Mack. Well we found Mackenzie and we knew that was it. As for her middle name, Louise, that was the name of one of my sisters, Linda-Louise.

Nate: Now during my time of digging around on Ancestry.com that I told you about, our ancestors normally had a pretty big family, including your family growing up. Why did you and Meemaw stop at 3 kids?

Eddie: Well, back then it was common practice that after a birth the doctors would give an enema. Well when Comfort was born, Sandra told them she wasn’t really feeling like she need it but they insisted. Anyway, the enema didn’t go right and long story short Sandra ended up with a ruptured colon. She got pretty sick and had to be quarantined like she had a disease or something. Well the doctor told her she shouldn’t be having anymore kids after that in risk of potentially rupturing her colon again. Then a while later she ended up pregnant with Mackenzie *shouts to Meemaw in the background* “how’d you end up pregnant again anyway?” *laughs* But after Mackenzie we said no more. So really it was a medical thing for us.

Nate: Wow, I never knew that. I’m glad everything worked out with Aunt Mackenzie’s birth and all.

Eddie: Yeah, we were grateful for that.

Nate: Now we’re going to switch over a little bit to talk more specifically about you, okay?

Eddie: Sure thing, buddy.

Nate: Okay so when and where were you born?

Eddie: Well, I was born in Lynch, KY. I was born December 14, 1946 in the local hospital there. Now some of my brothers and sisters back then were born right there in the home and the doctor would have to come by, but they made it to the hospital for me.

Nate: Now Lynch, KY is a town in Harlan County correct?

Eddie: Sure is. It was just a little ole coal mining town up in Harlan yes sir.

Nate: Okay, so how long did you live there in Lynch?

Eddie: Well, my family moved there in 1940, course I was born there, and I stayed there until I went to California in 1965. So I was there for 19 years and after that we all dispersed. We had to leave to get a job ya know? You had to leave or you were mining coal.

Nate: I see. We’ll touch more on the coal mining here in a bit, but why did you move to California? I didn’t know about that.

Eddie: Well I had a brother, Jim, who was already living there. Now I tried enlisting in the Army before I moved but I failed the health examination on account of a kidney infection I had at the time. So anyway, when they denied me I talked to my brother a little bit and ended up buying a bus ticket and rode cross country from Lynch, KY straight to Las Angeles looking for work.

Nate: Now when you were growing up, how many family members lived in your household and how old were you in comparison to your siblings?

Eddie: Well we were a large family. My momma had 10 children, but the first one died real young. Then my dad had 3 other kids from his first marriage so all together we were at 12, but they were spread apart by a few years. When I was growing up there were 6 of us kids in the house, plus my parents. I had 2 brothers at home and 3 sisters. Now I wasn’t the baby of the family, but I was close. I was the second to last child. I have a sister younger than me. But anyway back then it was very common to have a large family, ya know? More people to do work.

Nate: Well that leads into my next question actually. When you were growing up what kind of responsibilities did you have around the house?

Eddie: Well once upon a time we had a garden up the hill from our house bout a mile or so and each of us kids had a garden assignment and had to go up there ad do our part. My sisters normally stuck around the house for chores but us boys had the garden assignments where we would go up and do diggin and platin and pickin and waterin about every day or so. We also had our own odd and end chores around the house here and there and would do all the yard work. Now up in Lynch it’s the hilliest place on Earth, no flat land anywhere. But my dad, well he wanted a flat front yard so I remember a big job he had us do which took a few weeks. We would go in the backyard and shovel up the ground and take that dirt the the front yard back and forth for hours for weeks till we got it nice and even all around. I was only 9 or 10 back then.

Nate: What else can you tell me about your hometown?

Eddie: Well, the wonderful thing about small towns is we knew just about every person in the community. There were about 4,000 maybe 5,000 people in town and we knew probably 75% of them. With everyone having such large families you knew everybody through the school system because everyone went to school with someone else’s kid. It was a real nice place growing up with real friendly people. The only problem was when you got older, high school and all, there wasn’t anything to do and nowhere to work.

Nate: I see. Now you already answered this a little bit but why did you leave your hometown again?

Eddie: Like I said it was all about work. That’s how I ended up in LA.

Nate: Now I know you ended up in Ohio at one point. How did that happen after living in LA?

Eddie: Okay well once I got to California I worked odd jobs here and there. Anyway the war came around and I ended up getting drafted. Well I wanted to be a Military Police Officer but they said I had to be enlisted to do that. So I said, instead of drafting me, let me enlist so I can be a MP like I wanted and the Army said sure thing. See at this point I didn’t have any health problems so I passed the health examination this time. Anyway, I spent 3 years in the military and when I got out I moved to Cincinnati to stay with another close brother of mine, Robert. He told me about some jobs they had going up there and I was always looking for work.

Nate: That brings up a good subject, can you tell me about your time in the Army?

Eddie: Well, when I first got in they sent me to Texas for training then to military schooling in Georgia. After that 20 or so people in my unit including me got sent to Germany for security detail at what they called an “ammo dump.” I spent 10 days in Germany guarding this depot, walking back and forth along this fence line and got sick of that real quick so I volunteered for Vietnam. My sergeant didn’t like that because he figured I was just trying to figure out a way to get home but really I couldn’t stand that job at the time and wanted to go do anything else. Anyway, when I did finally get over to Vietnam I had a real good duty there, real good duty. I had highway patrol where I would assist in escorting whole battalions of men throughout Vietnam. We also had to do some POW, prisoner of war, transport and move them from camp to camp. Then, in 1967, December of 1967, there was a bad wreck with my vehicle and a large transport truck. The wreck broke my arm and that was all it took for them to send me out of there. They asked me, “where do you want to go?” I told them I’m from Kentucky so they sent me to Ft. Knox, KY where I finished up my time of service. I was in from 1966–1969. Then it was from Ft. Knox that I moved up to Cincinnati, Ohio with my brother.

Nate: Now you were a police officer for as long as I can remember. Why did you decide to become one and what was your favorite aspect about it? Also your least favorite if you could.

Eddie: Ya know, when you’re knew at something you can handle just about anything. But after a period of time things get stressful and start taking a toll, and I did police work for over 20 years. But really I didn’t have many jobs as a cop that I didn’t enjoy. Now when I was assigned as an investigator for domestic abuses cases I really enjoyed that. I liked going in and helping these ladies who were in a real bad way and putting those bad guys away. I never understood the guys that would do some of the things they did, and some were real bad, but I was glad I could make a difference and get rid of them. I worked a jail house my first 5 years and it was alright. I was real good with the inmates and all but after a while I was feeling too confined and was ready to get out and move around more. That’s when I finally got out on the streets, there was just much more freedom and it gave me a chance to go and catch the bad guys.

Nate: So aside from the military and law enforcement, what other career fields have you worked in?

Eddie: Well, I worked in organized management for a long time, about 20 years or so at various companies once I got out of the military. I tried doing college on my GI bill at the same time while I worked but that was too much. Anyway, I worked in a warehouse for lighting fixtures as the floor manager until the factory got shut down while I was in Cincinnati. After the plant shut down I moved to Georgia cause my sister lived down there and I got another job in a factory until I got laid off. They ended up calling me back but I turned it down and that’s when I went to apply to the police academy in 1990.

Nate: Okay so that was my next question, when and why did you move to Georgia?

Eddie: Well it was in 1981 and I had been out of word for several months. I lived in Cincinnati. Now my youngest sister, Minnie Gentry lived down near Lawrenceville, Georgia and she called me up saying “why don’t you come down here, Lawrenceville’s booming!” Now, Nathan this was on a Sunday she called me and you know what? I told her I’ll be there by Wednesday, and sure enough. Shoot back then if there would’ve been work in Alaska, honest work now, I woulda been there in a heartbeat.

Nate: So you served in the military, did some time at factories, and worked law enforcement. Which would you say was your favorite and least favorite job/career you’ve had?

Eddie: Well, uh, I really like the sheriff job. Like I said I worked family violence, worked that for about 10 years alone, and I had a good time with that. My least favorite job would probably be just the odd ball jobs I had did to get by back in California and in Cincinnati, but long term I’d say the warehouse job. It was just a clock in work and clock out kind of deal. Let me think, uhh, yeah I’d say the warehouse. The general labor was probably my least favorite I suppose but we were making money and that’s the point right?

Nate: Yes sir, that’s the most important thing. Okay from here we’re going to switch over a little bit to your family and about coal mining in general, okay?

Eddie: Sure thing.

Nate: So your father was a coal miner, correct?

Eddie: Right.

Nate: Can you tell me what you know about being a coal miner based off your father’s experience?

Eddie: Well course I was uh, in uh, never did work actual the coal mines, ya know. I’ve been in coal mines and got an understanding of how it worked, coal mining. It was dark, cold, about a mile or so into a mountain. Now our community we had a special situation. We had the whole healthcare, decent money, and other benefits other people working coal didn’t normally have. This was because the local coal company owned the town and gave it’s employees more benefits. Now my father always worked hard and he worked long hours, but for him to support his family it was worth it. He also never had any kind of issues with injuries or anything, thank goodness. You know back then it was very common for somebody to get hurt or even killed but he never had a problem.

Nate: Would you say his working the coal mines, being a miner, was hard on your family?

Eddie: Uhh, well. It wasn’t really hard on us too bad. He worked the mines 45, about 50 years of his life and they hardly payed anything, but as a family and as kids we were happy. Now for my father, sure thing it was hard on him cause that’s a long time to be doing that kind of work and he was ready to retire as soon as he could. He was always looking for what he called that “rocking-chair money”, that being social security of course. In a short answer, it wasn’t hard on us as kids, but it was for my parents. My dad worked nearly everyday and then my mom, with her 9 kids was always either cooking or cleaning or watching after somebody, and course she wasn’t payed for that but she ought to have been. That was hard on her sometimes.

Nate: I can understand that. My mom’s only got the 4 of us kids and I know she’s ready to kill one of us every now and then. Now could you tell me more about your father in general? What did he like/dislike? Where was he born and how did he end up in Harlan?

Eddie: He was born in Tennessee, and he uhh, was in an almost poverty situation I’d say. When he was 2 years old, my grandpa, I never knew my grandpa, left his family and nobody really knows what happened to him. So my dad started working the mines when he was 12 or 13, you know back then child labor was real common. He was working with all kinds of people, immigrants and all, and there were so many of them that the pay was real low. Sometimes less than minimum wage. He worked the mines all his life you know. Now he ended up in Harlan when a new mining company up there called US Steal offered to pay more money and give benefits to their employees. So he applied and they took him and he moved his family to Kentucky. Now when he wasn’t working, my dad like to hunt. He never took to fishing, but hunting he liked. I can’t really tell you what exactly he didn’t like really, but I know he never could read or write. I think one time he wrote and X, and I think I saw him write his signature once.

Nate: So it seems like, at least when he got to Harlan, that the mining was working out pretty well. What influenced you to not also become a miner like so many, almost all, of your ancestors before had done?

Eddie: Well, uhh, in our community that was all there was to do. Every job revolved around coal and I knew that just wasn’t what I wanted to do. I never worked in a mine a day of my life, heck I never applied for a job in a mine. I just knew I wanted to do something else and to do so I would have to leave my town. That’s how I ended up in LA and lived there a year till the Army called my name.

Nate: So you mentioned him briefly a moment ago, what do you know about your grandfather?

Eddie: I never knew my grandfather. They say he disappeared when my father was just 2 years old. Honestly he may have died, ran off with another lady, we really don’t know. Some people have said he had a gambling problem and that might have gotten him into some trouble. But then again it may not have been at any fault of his own, back in those days somebody could commit a murder and get away with it too easy. We’re talking 1900. You couldn’t just go file a missing persons case at the sheriffs office. All I know is he mined coal all his life, then one day he was gone.

Nate: That’s crazy nobody knows what happened to him. But aside from your grandfather, what do you know about our ancestral family and the Shotton name in general?

Eddie: Okay, okay. Well the Shotton name comes from the phrase “the farmer on a hill.” In other words, if someone was a blacksmith or something of the sort way back in the day, they were giving the same of their job basically. So the story goes that way back when in our family 4 or 5 hundred years ago our ancestors were farmers in a mountain in Ireland. Our family ended up in England for many years after that I know before coming here. But over there in the UK Shotton is a lot more common of a name than here. I’ve never met a Shotton that wasn’t kin to me somehow.

Nate: Yeah I haven’t either. Now you recently attended a Shotton family reunion this past year. How many of us are there and how are we connected?

Eddie: Any family members were invited but the primary people invited were direct descendants of my mom and dad. Like I said between them they had 12 living children who all went on the have kids of their own and some of them already have kids of their own. Including spouses, there were 198 Shottons show up to our reunion, all family of some sort of my mom and dad.

Nate: That’s pretty crazy because I know I haven’t even met but barely anyone of them.

Eddie: Haha, until then neither had I.

Nate: Now why did you decide to retire in Tennessee, Peepaw?

Eddie: Okay, now your grandmother and I, for twenty years were pretty strapped. In other words we were pretty conservative with our money. Now we loved the mountains, for many years we loved them. Even though we were always strapped for extra money we knew one day we wanted to end up somewhere in the mountains, so we saved up. Once we got close to retiring, we started looking for some land. We found some pretty good deals but we also figured if we moved up to Wisconsin we’d never see you guys and our kids wouldn’t visit us. So we picked Tennessee. Up here I bought 100 acres for the price it would take to buy maybe 10 acres in north Georgia. We wanted to get away, but also stay close to our family.

Nate: Well, Peepaw, I only have one last question for you. I’d say it’s the most important. Are you happy?

Eddie: Buddy, we’re real happy here. We’ve got a loving family, got a few bucks to live off of, we have the land we always wanted, and we stay real active. We’re real involved in our church around here, as you know we’re Mormons like I said and I work in the High Council at our church, I have the past few years. We’ve been involved as much as we can and it can be very time consuming sometimes but we fully believe we’re helping people with what we do. We’re not just sitting around on the couch all day or anything, we’re always our doing something or working the farm a little or riding the 4-wheelers.

Nate: Well Peepaw, interview wise that’s all the questions I have for you. It was really good to be able to talk to you like this.

Eddie: Buddy, I’m honored to tell you about all these things. I’d say this was really an answer to my prayer to get to spend some time with you and go over our family a little bit together. Let me know if there is anything else you need for your project or anything I can do.

Nate: Yes sir I’ll do that. I hope to see you soon Peepaw and thanks again!

Eddie: It was an honor and a privilege. I love you, son.

Nate: I love you too, Peepaw. I’ll talk to you soon.

Eddie: Alrighty, sounds good.

As I mentioned earlier, leading up to the interview I was rather nervous. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. My grandfather was more than happy to answer everything I had to ask him and was excited to be participating in my project. He offered a lot of good information, some things I never had heard before, about himself and our family’s past. I was warned by my grandmother prior to conducting the interview that my questions ought to be pretty straight forward or otherwise my grandpa would go on and on, but he did a great job at staying on topic. The whole process was very smooth and in the end I can’t help but feel much closer to him as a person by now knowing all of these personal aspects of his life.

Questions for reflection:

● How does your tradition-bearer’s story relate to your community in both the present and the past? How does it relate to you?

— My grandfather specially mentions his own community in his hometown while growing up. He remembers how close everyone in it was and that everyone knew each other. This is interesting to me because being from a military family myself, I don’t have a “hometown” exactly and could not say I ever knew the majority of people in my community. Towns today are also much larger than Lynch, KY was back in the 1950’s and 1960’s so I think his perspective also speaks of how the increase in population over the years has caused many people to lose some personal touch in their community.

● How did your perception of community history change, from before the interview to now?

— I never put a lot of thought into it before. I have always been involved in sports and/or ROTC/JROTC and have participated in plenty of community service events as I always felt they were important. However, I never thought about the difference there is in communities today as compared to many years ago. I realized I don’t know the names of my neighbors in Columbus, who I’ve lived next door to for almost 3 years now.

● How did this project inspire you to learn more about your community?

— I would say that it has taught me that everyone has a story to tell. Just by speaking to my grandfather for a few hours, a seemingly normal guy, I learned a lot and heard a lot of very interesting information. It is these stories younger generations could learn from and gain advice from people in their community who have the life experience.

● What were some of the challenges you faced during this project? What could you do differently in your next oral history interview?

— My biggest challenge was transcribing the interview. I had no way to directly record as we spoke on the phone and I had no gotten a phone call recording application. Although I was able to type out our conversations in real time as we spoke and that ended up working just as well. I was then able to go back and do the formatting later. For my next oral history interview I would for sure find some way to record the conversation so I didn’t have to worry about missing any information as I typed away.

● If the roles were reversed and you became the tradition-bearer, what stories would you like to tell?

— If the roles were reversed and I became the tradition-bearer, I would speak of my experience with moving around so much due to the military. Also as I am on track to also one day join the Army like my grandfather (on both sides of my family) has done and also my own father, I would speak of the military as the tradition in my family that I myself would be upholding.