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| HAZY CREEK: My Old Home | |||||
| Hazy Creek is a place
known and loved by many people who lived or are living in the Coal River
Valley. Some of us called it home. Hazy was always a place of natural
beauty, blessed with an abundance of plants, trees, animals, water, coal and natural gas. Once, many men worked to dig the
coal in rich seams. Those were "boom" times for Hazy and its neighbor, Edwight. Near the end of the Nineteen Fifties, the
Raleigh-Wyoming Coal Company faltered. Company stores were closed, mining
ceased, and families moved away to such places as Cleveland, Ohio, to
Chicago, Illinois, to Detroit, Michigan and to other places where there
were work and wages. But those families couldn’t forget the beauty and good
times of Hazy and of Edwight.
Hazy fell on bad times. In the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, a lumber company exploited the timber of the region. They left a mess behind them. The EPA had to initiate a cleanup of the toxic material left behind. Currently, Hazy is being exploited for its coal by the A .T. Massey Coal Company, mining there under the name of "Performance Coal Company". Massey’s mine lies up the hollow from where Mont Asbury lived for many years. It is accessed from a road they made, just where Tom Kelly and Jeff Williams used to live, the road turning back around the hill and behind where the old house was. If you visit the area, you will find yourself turned away from Hazy, just at the point where old "Stringtown" ended and the Hazy dirt road began. There, Massey has placed a guard house, a guard, a surveillance camera, and a gate. You cannot drive into Hazy. If you attempt to walk in, you will be arrested as a trespasser. Those of us who have known Hazy in its "golden times" remember the easy access to all the things that were there. We could fish, seine for minnows, hunt for crawdads and hellgrammites, and swim in the creek. We could dig the abundant ramps, ginseng, May-apple, Shawnee lettuce and other greens. We could hunt for squirrels, foxes, coons or other game. We could find and capture wild honey bees, if we had the notion and the skill. And maybe best of all, we drive where we wanted and walk to the head of any hollow or to the top of any mountain, unchallenged by anyone or anything, except our own stamina and our will to get there
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If you have a picture of Hazy or of Edwight, I would love to feature it here. If you have a story of Hazy or of Edwight and would like to share it, this is the place you should send it. All of your contributions are welcome. Let’s make this a place that has that old-time, good feeling we used to have when we could ramble the roads, the paths, and the hollows of good old Hazy Creek! Send your picture or story to: | ||||
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For interesting views on familiar topics, see the following: | |||||
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For photos of the Hazy mine tipple and other photos of interest, see this link: | |||||
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For old-timey photos of Hazy, Edwight and the Bradford and Wills families, see this link: http://www.visto.com/guest/ctbw
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