Mom and Dad worked hard that first summer, building a nest as they called it.
A typical day would start at about 5:00 am. With the building of a fire in the cook stove. The stove had a water tank built in on one side that held about five gallons of water which would stay warm enough overnight to use to wash our face and hands and for dad to shave, which he did while mom made breakfast.
Working in the coal mines was a very dirty job but I remember Dad washing his face and hands, combing his hair, and shaving every morning, in those days he used a straight razor to shave with, and each evening when he got home Mom would having a steaming kettle of water waiting and the wash tub sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, with clean clothes and towels waiting on his chair. After he had bathed Mom would start fixing supper while the rest of us started doing our evening chores.
Another thing I remember is that no matter what the weather was like, Dad always walked to work, which was about a two-mile walk each way. I don’t know if he did this from habit or to save money by not using the car.
Dad had started right in cleaning the place up, clearing away the underbrush, and killing the larger trees by cutting through the bark to form a ring around the tree, which he called girdling. This he did with an axe and he used a mattock to dig out the small trees and shrubs. He kept the brush and used it to build a fence and the rocks were picked up and put into piles to be used in road maintenance. Most days he’d come in from work, take a bath, and then start right in with the clearing. Some days he wouldn’t even stop for supper. On these days mom would manage to keep the food hot until he quit working which was often after us kids had gone to bed.

By doing this Mom and Dad were able to plant their first real garden that spring.