Clyde Mullins Memoirs Part 1

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From the Elkhorn City, Kentucky Website, The Memoirs of noted attorney, Clyde Mullins of Elkhorn City, Pike Co KY.

Left to Right, Merriel Powell, Clyde Mullins, Burgess Sloan on Bowens Rock, 1923

Clyde Mullins, 1914-1989

You may wonder why I am putting what I am about to on tape. The reason is simple. In the past few years many people have asked me to put down my knowledge, memories , hearsay, and things that have happened in Elkhorn City during my lifetime.

Some of the things I am going to relate I witnessed in person; others I was told by people and some is here say and can not be verified; while others are facts that I have learned during the practice of law for the past 30 years.

The things I am going to talk about will not be in the order in which they occurred or sequential, in that one thing followed another and will be in many different forms and subject matter. Some historical, some strictly local and some of the language may be a little earthy and the names called or said some of their descendants are living today or may be some of the people who participated in the affairs that occurred or matters that came up will be stated, but to cause embarrassment to anyone and if I do offend anyone I now offer my sincere apologies. Inadvertently, I may call names, but I said., it is not my intention to do so with any malice or ill will.

I undertake this because I have lived from the horse and buggy days here in Elkhorn City, Pike County, Kentucky to past the times when the United States has put a man on the moon. I have lived through World War I, served in World War II in the Army Air Force, having duty in the Pacific Theater with the 509th Composite Group (The First Atomic Bombardment Group) that dropped the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I lived through the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War, through the turbulent 60's, through the civil rights era and a lot of things that the generations that have grown up since my days of growing up know so very little about this community. I hope by making this verbal account a means of how it was to live through that time when the world changed more than all the history of all the years that went before.

A little background material may serve to authenticate or give authoriy to what I am about to relate. I have lived in Elkhorn City my seventy-five years except 37 months spend in the United States Army Air Force in World War II and the three years I spend away from home at Lexington, Kentucky while attending the University of Kentucky Law School and I returned to Pikeville to practice.

I was born on Elkhorn Street in a big two story white house. The construction of which was started by my mother around 1909. I am the son of Paris and Lou Emma Mullins and was born May 10, l914 in the big house that I referred to.

My father, Paris Mullins, was born and reared on the Mullins Ridge in Dickenson County, Virginia, the a joining county to Pike County and Clintwood was the county seat. He was a surveyor with the Railroad Engineers being rodman, when the railroad was build he became a clerk in the freight department in the depot and worked there a few years until the Brotherhood of Clerks came out on a strike in either 1922 or 1932. And while he was on strike he was hired as a bookkeeper for the Federal Mining Company which operated a coal mine over near the end of the railroad trestle and the mine was opened in world war I by Frank Scott and a gentleman by the name of Warmick. My father continued to work for the mine up until his death in November 1935 when he died at the age of 53, very suddenly.

My mother was born on Grassy on land where the Willowbrook Country Club is now situated. Her first marriage was to a man by the name Alexander Looney from off the Cow Fork of Grassy. A young man that, at one time worked for the Yellow Poplar Company and he was stricken with tuberculosis and my mother moved to Elkhorn City, where she nursed and tended him until he died at the age of 22. He was taken back to the Cow Fork of Grassy to be buried there. Two children were born to their marriage, Gaynell Looney who now lives in Spartanburg, South Carlina and is 82 years of age and Roy Looney who resides in Elkhorn City and is near 80 years of age. To my father and mother four children were born. I was the oldest. I have a younger brother born 20 months after me, Claude Mullins, who now resides in Ashland, Kentucky. I have a sister, Maine Mullins, who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is I believe 70 years of age. The baby in my family was Paris commonly called Patsy or Pat Mullins who resides in Roanoke, Alabama. So that made six Children in my family. We lived together as one family even though we were of the half blood in certain instances. My father made no distinction between his own children and my older brother and sister.

My mother bought a lot on Elkhorn Street after her husband. Alex Looney died and started construction on a house. She ordered lumber which was hauled in by the railroad. I do not know where she bought it from. When the house was far enough under construction she kept boarders and roomers. In fact, the house was built for that purpose. On the adjoining lot, she and my grandfather, George Washington Mullins, whose home was where the White Star restaurant now stands, operated a livery stable. My grandfather took care of the livery stable and was a horse and cattle trader. When he was home he took care of the livery stable and rented out the horses to the people who wanted to rent horses. There was one buggy which I remember; a beautiful buggy with big springs on it. When you sat down in it the springs would bounce up and down and would give a little boy a nice ride. My grandfather would catch me in the buggy riding up and down and would put me out of it on short order.

The rooms upstairs in our home contained three bedrooms used in the house. The largest room contained four beds. The other two bedrooms being in the front of the house contained 2 beds each for sleeping purposes.

The people that stayed with my mother and boarded and roomed with her were primarily drummers and people who worked for the Yellow Poplar Lumber Company and other lumber companies and people who were traveling through on the trains and perhaps had to lay over here overnight. In addition to my mother keeping roomers, she also boarded people in a large dining room which has since been shortened and remodeled in which there was a long table with chairs which would seat perhaps 8, 10, or 12 people. The way the house was built so you could enter in during the winter time you could enter the house in a hallway go through the hallway and through the door and out on the back porch and then enter a side door in to the dining room.

There were very few restaurants and places to eat in Elkhorn City at that time, The only one I can recall is Bill and Joes restaurant on the ground floor of the old café building just across the depot and later on Cataldo Marinaro's, a man of Italian decent, put in a restaurant in a red tin colored building right there where the block building which he put to replace the one that was burned down. The people around this community could not call or pronouce his name of Cataldo Marinaro and called him Kelly Marino. Which was not his name but a corruption of his name. But nevertheless, there was single men that worked at the depot that roomed elsewhere but came down to my mothers to take dinner there. There was a dinner hour and the big table was set with food and I knew she served meals for either 225 or 50 cents, I'm not positive. A full meal of all the common food that was served in this country at that day and time. The roomers would take breakfast and dinner with her, also.