Walter Tevis, The "Kentucky Writer" Who Didn't Like Appalachians

 

I had known indirectly about the writing of Walter Tevis for many years but had never really read his work until recently after my wife and I had watched a documentary about his life on KET.  Tevis was the author of two books which were made into two of the most well known movies starring Paul Newman, "The Hustler" and "The Color Of Money".  I  had always loved both movies primarily because of Newman's acting.  He was nominated for Best Actor Oscars for both movies and won for "The Color Of Money".  But, somehow, I had never read the books on which those two movies were based and had also never read Tevis' science fiction despite having been a regular reader of the genre for most of my teens and twenties.  Two of Tevis' books are considered among the best science fiction ever written and deservedly so.  I had also not heard Tevis's name mentioned, except perhaps in passing, despite  the fact that we both lived in Lexington, Kentucky, for several years at the same time.  Tevis was inducted into the Carnegie Center Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame in 2018.

After my wife and I watched the documentary, she wanted us to read his works and she was especially fascinated by his novel "The Queen's Gambit" which has been turned into a Netflix miniseries which has been widely acclaimed.  My wife has now read the book and loved it.  I have still not read that book, but probably will get around to it sooner or later I suspect.  I did read his science fiction classic, "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and loved it to the degree that it prompted me to order most of his published works the remainder of which still lie on my always large "To Be Read" shelf.  Tevis's work on "The Man Who Fell to Earth" is as good as any science fiction I have ever read.  It is one of those rare works of science fiction which also falls solidly within the larger and more important body of what we know as "Great Literature".  It is a masterpiece and deserves every accolade it has ever received.  As a largely productive genre of literature, science fiction can boast only a few such masterpieces with other examples being Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and "Stranger In A Strange Land" by Robert A. Heinlein which can be said to be somewhat similar to "The Man Who Fell To Earth" since both main characters are truly unique creatures from other planets who find themselves on earth. 

But after reading the book and watching the documentary, I became much more interested in Tevis, his life, and his other works.  That led me to the official Walter Tevis website which his agent, The Susan Schulman Literary Agency operates.   The website states in their biography of Tevis that "Walter traveled across the country alone by train at the age of eleven to rejoin his family and felt the shock of entering the Appalachian culture when he enrolled in the local school."  Tevis actually attended high school in Lexington which is not now, nor was it ever, an example of the Appalachian Culture.  The dominant culture in Lexington is vastly different from the Appalachian Culture.  The Appalachian Culture is seen in hundreds, perhaps several thousand residents of Lexington but is vastly different from the Central Kentucky Culture which is rooted in the earlier history of Lexington, Fayette County, and Central Kentucky as an agriculturally based economy which was deeply affected by the pre-Civil War slave holding plantation system while the Appalachian Culture is rooted in an area which was first settled by anti-slavery settlers from the British Isles, many of whom had actually come to North America as indentured servants large numbers of which settled the Appalachian regions of Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and the Western Carolinas.  The predominant culture of Central Kentucky is  rooted in settlers who were often recipients of large land grants due to a combination of justifications ranging from simple political connections to the political kings and king makers in early America to legitimate service in the American Revolution.  Most of the early landowners in the Eastern and South Eastern areas of Kentucky which constitute the Appalachian area of the state were simple homesteaders who traveled to the mountains where they could stake claims to small holdings of land which were never productive of the Thoroughbred horses, Bourbon, and tobacco which characterize early life in Central Kentucky.  While Tevis did use the "hillbilly" ethnic slur in his writings and his literary agency seems to see that as a point of pride, Tevis never lived in the truly Appalachian area of the state.  Whatever contact he had with Appalachian people took place in Lexington where they were just as out  of place and uncomfortable as the somewhat odd genius Tevis who actually was an immigrant from California.  

Tevis was a truly unique and apparently deeply damaged person well before he came to Kentucky to join his family of origin after having spent more than a year alone as an adolescent patient in the Stanford Children's Convalescent Home in San Francisco due to his having been diagnosed with a rheumatic heart condition. His parents placed him in the home and effectively abandoned him to return to their native Central Kentucky until he was released from the convalescent home and required him, at age 11, to travel alone by train across the continent to a place he had never lived to be reunited with a family whose only contact with him had been periodic letters and telephone calls.  Very few children at that delicate age of development would have survived that type of treatment without having been deeply damaged.  Tevis became a chronic alcoholic and was always known as a unique individual at best and a truly odd human at worst.  An argument can also be made that his advanced level of intelligence might well have made his ability to cope with the abandonment even more fragile.  But regardless of how deeply his abandonment affected his later life, it must also be conceded that Tevis was a genius, a tremendous novelist and short story author, and a man deserving of a great deal of respect for his literary output.  In all, he wrote six novels and one collection of short stories all of which are well respected work.  He also spent most of his life as a teacher and college professor at Ohio University where it said that he was a popular professor.  But, I am not convinced that he was ever truly a "Kentucky Writer" or that he ever viewed himself as such.  Yes, his works do have settings in Kentucky  and he does, from time to time, express his written opinions of the state.  But in many ways, he must be viewed somewhat as "a man without a country".  He was deeply traumatized by his last year living in his native California and never truly adjusted to Central Kentucky where he spent his late adolescence and was educated at the University of Kentucky.  He also taught at UK, Northern Kentucky University, and Southern Connecticut University.  He seems to have drifted across a great deal of American geography, spent his last years in New York City where he died, but was buried in Richmond, Kentucky, at the edge of Central Kentucky.  He was a deeply damaged human being who managed to turn his personal history into a productive life as a writer of excellent literature but seems to have been unable to attach himself in a meaningful way to any particular environment either in Kentucky, Connecticut, Ohio, or New York.  

But, he was a genius and he deserves to have his writing survive as long as humans read great literature. 

Coal Mine Disaster-July 7, 1935-Van Lear, KY-Consolidation Coal Number 155

Throughout the history of coal  mining in America, there has been a long history of coal mining disasters from a multitude of causes including roof falls, explosions, dam failures, electrical causes, and asphyxiation by lethal gases. For many years in the early days of coal mining, lethal cases killed so many men that canaries were actually used as early warning devices of high gas levels in coal mines, hence the expression "a canary in the coal mine" as a descriptor of an early warning device. While the number of deaths due to coal mine disasters has gradually declined over the last several decades, that decline has been more due to automation and increased strip mining in all its forms having decreased the number of working miners than to widespread improvements in the working conditions in the coal mines.  Total fatalities were generally more than 1,000 per year from 1900, when the US began to keep well organized statistics about fatalities, to about 1948 when only 999 miners were killed and the number finally dropped below 1,000 for good.  At least 40 states have had miners killed although there have been several types of other minerals involved in the mining in the states outside the typical coal mining areas of Appalachia and the Western United States.  But, just as the most tonnage of coal has usually been mined in those two areas, the most miners have also been killed year after year in those Appalachian and Western states.  I have never written on this blog about coal mining disasters although I have lived most of my life in coal country and came from a coal mining family with my father, one grandfather, and several uncles all being coal miners.  I also had one brother, Hewie Hicks, killed in a coal mine in a single fatality accident.  

The photo above is of the death certificate of  Virgil Clay in the Van Lear explosion.

Over the course of the next several months, when I have time, I will write about some of the worst coal mine disasters in Central and Southern Appalachia, the area I know best and the area on which the majority of this blog is focused.  I have decided to begin by writing about a disaster at the Consolidation Coal Company Number 155 Mine at Van Lear, Kentucky, in Johnson County which occurred on July 17, 1935, and killed 9 men.  This disaster is covered in both the Floyd County Times newspaper archives in the Floyd County Library local history collection and on the website known as "US Mine Disasters" which I have used for my own reading and research for several years and which is the website to which I have provided several link earlier in this blog post.  I will also refer from time to time to the websites of the official state and federal agencies which supervise and regulate mining in America.  When I can find local news coverage of these disasters available online, I will also use some of that coverage.  But, sadly, the Floyd County Times archives cited earlier are the best and best organized of all the newspapers in Eastern Kentucky.  Many of those newspaper archives have been completely lost.

The photo above is of the tombstone of Virgil Clay.  

The July 19, 1935, edition of the Floyd County Times in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, covered the Number 155 disaster in neighboring Johnson County with a front page story which carried a banner headline and three subheads.  The opening paragraph of the story began 

"Thursday morning saw nine men, all dead, removed from Number 5 Mine of Consolidation Coal Company, Van Lear, in which they were trapped by an explosion at 9o'clock Wednesday morning. 

I will note here that the Floyd County Times refers to the mine as "Number 5" instead of Number 155 which is the designation used by the US Department of the Interior, Bureau of Mines in their official report on the disaster which is undated  and authored by John F. Davies, District Engineer.  I will accept and use the designation of the mine as "Number 155" since that is the designation used in the official federal report.  

 The photo above is of the Roy Murray tombstone. 

The Floyd County Times listed the victims of the disaster as "William Kretzer, 42; and, Charles Kretzer, 50, brothers; James Vaughn, 42; Frank Tutzy, 45; Hantez Gould, 60; Deerwood Litz, 28; Roy Murray, 38; Virgil Clay, 23; and, Shirley  Hereford, 35."   The official report from the Bureau of Mines does not list the men by name at all.  According to the Floyd County Times, two other men inside the mine escaped and "...company officials immediately began a relentless drive to rescue the men."  The newspaper also reported that rescue squads were brought in from as far away as Jenkins in Letcher County where Consolidation Coal Company also operated mines.  But according to the newspaper story, " tons of rock formed an impenetrable barrier to freedom for the imprisoned men, and this barrier was negotiated, foot by foot, by would be rescuers equipped with oxygen tanks.  As early as Wednesday afternoon, it was conceded that little less than a miracle could save the men."   I will note that I have located burial sites for several, but not all, of the men on the excellent website Find A Grave and have still not located the burial sites of the rest.  But I will continue to search for them since one of the memorials I located does contain a screen shot from an unknown newspaper which lists rough locations for where all nine were buried.  However, that screen shot does not identify the newspaper from which the screen shot was taken.  

 The photo above is of the Charles Kretzer tombstone. 

The July 19, 1935, story in the Floyd County Times goes on to describe the disaster as "the worst disaster in the history of Eastern Kentucky Coal Mining."  However, that statement by the newspaper is not accurate since just three years before on December 9, 1932, at Yancey, Kentucky, in Harlan County an explosion had killed 23 men.  Another disaster in 1925 in Harlan County had killed 17 men.  The newspaper lists the two men who escaped as Anse Wilson, water pumper, and Fire Boss Stanley Crane.  Wilson apparently gave an interview after the explosion and stated 

"I realized what had happened and I ducked behind a pile of rails.  Slate and rock hailed about me.  Then, when it was all over, I started for the outside.  I crawled about 300 feet through smoke and dust till I reached good air.  Mr. Crane was on ahead of me, that is, nearer the opening.  Is it good to be alive?  You don't know how good it is.  I only wish the others were here--they'd say the same." 

The following week on July 26, 1935, the Floyd County Times carried a front page story under the headline "Daniel Charged With Six Deaths", and with the subhead "Warrant Sworn Out by Miner Accuses Department Chief in Disaster".  John F. Daniel was the Department Chief of  the State Department of Mines and Minerals.  The warrant was signed by John B. Mollette, the secretary of the Van Lear local of the United Mine Workers of America.  Mollette accused Daniel of failure to enforce state mining regulations, failure to order the company to furnish sufficient fire bosses to inspect the workings, and that state regulations required at least five such fire bosses and at the time of the explosion only one was on duty.  It appears that the single fire boss on duty was Stanley Crane who survived due to having been quite some distance from the work area in which the men were killed.  The newspaper article quotes Mollette as stating that the warrant was turned over to the local constable, Brown Wells, who would serve it as soon as John F. Daniel returned to Johnson County.  "We have made charges that Daniel is responsible for nine lives in the explosion and we expect to prove them."  The news story about the warrant is continued from the front page of the paper to page six where it is found in the extreme right hand column of the page and that area of the page used to create the digital record of the paper in the Floyd County History Collection has some damage which makes it difficult to read.  But the gist of it is that John F. Daniel and attorneys for the coal company both disputed the claims contained in the warrant.  But the local Judge B. F. Conley stated in the paper that he had issued the warrant and had turned it over to Mollette.  The county Sheriff Fred Adams is also quoted as saying that the warrant could be served by any peace officer in the county.  A search of the Floyd County Times for the ensuing month after the warrant was issued for John F. Daniel does not contain any further news about the disaster or the service of the warrant or of any failure to do so by the Johnson County law enforcement community.  

The photo above is of the William Kretzer tombstone. 
 

The Find A Grave memorial for Virgil Clay and those memorials of at least one of the other victims contains a screen shot of a short news story about the disaster and the burials of the nine victims from some unnamed newspaper under the headline "27 Orphaned By Disaster At Johnson County Mine".  Since the headline uses the words "Johnson County Mine", it seems likely that the paper must have been published in an adjoining county but I have not been able to verify which paper carried the story.  The story states that Deerwood Litz was buried at East Point in Johnson County. I also note for the record that the name of Litz is spelled "Derwood Litz" at times and that is  most likely the correct spelling.  This news story states that the Kretzer brothers were buried at Hitchens in Carter County.  The cemetery in which the Kretzer brothers are buried is listed on Find A Grave as The Kretzer Graveyard but the address is now listed as Reedville.  James Vaughn and Shirley Hereford are both listed in the news story as having been buried at Ashland in Boyd County but I have been unable to verify the locations of their burials.  Roy Murray is listed as having been buried on George's Creek in Lawrence County.  Hantes Gould is listed as having been buried at Van Lear.  Frank Tuzey is listed as having been buried at Paintsville.  I note for the record that Tutzy, Gould, and Murray have also had differences in the spellings of their names in the various records which makes it more difficult to locate accurate burial information.  But it is somewhat simplified by the common date of death for all nine men and I will pursue their burial sites further by searching a variety of phonetic spellings of the names.  The last paragraph of this little news story states 

"Tuzey, last of the men to be taken from the mine, was caught beneath tons of slate.  His body and that of Gould were the last to be recovered, and were not reached until Friday.  Some of the bodies were badly burned, it was said."  (Unknown News Source Taken From Screen Shot On Virgil Clay's Find A Grave Memorial)

Virgil Clay's death certificate which is signed by Leon Spencer, presumably the Johnson County Coroner, listed the cause of death as "Traumatic External Violence Mine Explosion".  I have located the Find A Grave Memorials for the Kretzer Brothers both of which also contain the screen shot of the news story and photos of their tombstones as does that of Virgil Clay.   Roy Murray's memorial on Find A Grave shows that he was buried in the Murray-Young Cemetery at Lowmansville in Lawrence County and also contains a photo of his tombstone and the same screen shot of the news story.  I cannot locate a memorial or a definite burial site for Frank Tutzy under any phonetic spelling of the last name which is presumably Italian.  If Frank Tutzy was actually one of the many immigrant miners working in Eastern Kentucky at that time, it is possible that he was still single and may well be buried in an unmarked grave.  

On February 24, 2023, I received the following additional information from a person named Jon Bellomy who is related to the Kretzer brothers through his mother and also related to Virgil Clay through his paternal great-grandmother. 

"William and Charles Kretzer were brothers of my maternal grandfather (Ernest August Kretzer). They were so badly burned that their caskets had to be placed in front of the Kretzer farm cabin for the wake. Wax representations of their faces were placed upon them; as they were already in an advanced state of decomposition—because it took awhile to get to them. Granddad Kretzer had lost another brother — Louis Kretzer — four years prior in yet another mine: he was crushed when the roof caved in on him. Virgil Clay was a kinsman of mine through my paternal great grandmother Clarinda née White Bellomy (her mother was Julia Ann Clay, and her father was John White ((Shawnee lineage all the way back to Pekowi Shawnee Chief Meaurroway Straight Tail White Opessa — and many generations beyond him; all the way to a Mohawk Turtle Clan Chieftain who married into the Pekowi line)). My mother, Kathleen Evelyn Kretzer Bellomy, dearly loved her Uncle Bill and Uncle Charlie. She was a couple-three weeks shy of eleven years old when the tragedy hit. She spoke of them often up to the day she died at age 91; a few days short of 92. Her mom lived to be 94. Good genes."

Murder And A 25 Cent Piece Of Scrip(1)

I have been doing some work related to a cemetery in Wayland, Kentucky, where several of my relatives are buried including one of my great-grandmothers, a great uncle, an uncle, and an aunt.  During the course of this effort, I have added obituaries for several of the people buried there to their memorials on Find A Grave.  During that effort, I found not an obituary for one man but rather two sizeable news stories in the archives of the Floyd County Times which are located on the website of the Floyd County Library which maintains a fairly large and very useful local history collection containing newspaper files, historic photographs, a few sound recordings, and assorted other items of interest to both amateur and semi-professional genealogists and researchers.   

The man whose obituary I found contained in those two news stories was named John Franklin "Frank" Collins who died on May 27, 1934, at the age of 40.  Frank, as he was known, died at the hands of a local store owner in Estill, Kentucky, just a few miles from where Frank worked, lived, and has been buried for nearly ninety years. Frank was shot on a Saturday which would have been his day off from his job at the Elkhorn Coal Company mine in Wayland. He died the next day on a Sunday and a warrant was issued for the charge of murder against his assailant on Tuesday due to the fact that it was also Memorial Day on Monday.  Below is the full text of the article from the front page of the Floyd County Times edition of June 1, 1934.  It is interesting that the story about Frank's death is one of three stories about murders in the area that week.  Another story details the news of a shooting in which the victim survived. Admittedly, Frank Collins died almost twenty years before I was born in the area at Lackey in Knott County about a mile from Estill where Frank died.  I spent the first six years of my life on Steele's Creek. About a mile from the store in which I spent those first six years is the mouth of Steele's Creek, the site of the town of Wayland and the Elkhorn Coal Company mine where Frank worked.  I spent the next 14 or so years living in a second store my father had built at Dema, Kentucky, in Knott County about three miles from Wayland.  I have extensive knowledge of the area and its history. 

 Under the headline "Murder Warrant Issued For Craft" with the subhead "Estill Merchant Charged With Fatal Shooting Of Frank Collins Saturday", the news story/obituary about the murder of Frank Collins appeared in the June 1, 1934 edition of The Floyd County Times.  

"A warrant charging John Craft, Estill merchant, with murder was issued here Tuesday, following the death of Frank Collins, 40 years old, from the effects of a revolver bullet fired into his neck Saturday afternoon by Craft.  Craft had already been arrested and brought here Sunday morning when he was booked on a charge of shooting and wounding.  He executed $5,000 bond.  Collins died in the Beaver Valley Hospital, Martin, later Sunday.  Craft's bullet struck him low in the neck, ranged downward, and emerged from his back.  The shooting took place in Craft's store.  According to the merchant, Collins came into the store where he engaged in an altercation with Sol Bradley, who knocked him down.  Craft ordered the men outside, he said.  In the meantime, he stated Collins' small daughter had made a 15 cent purchase at the store offering 25 cents in scrip(1) as payment.  The merchant said he  had no scrip(1) change and soon after Collins and the child returned to the store, the father starting an argument over the change.  When Collins advanced on him with a knife, the merchant said he fired.  The other version of the affair, as told to Tbe Times, says that Craft was drunk and Collins was being taken from the store by his wife and a man when Craft leaped across a counter and fired.  This statement claims that Collins was unarmed.  The victim was a son of Mart Collins.  He is survived by his widow and five children.  Funeral rites were conducted Tuesday under the direction of G. D. Ryan, in the Collins Cemetery, three miles above Wayland.  Ministers officiating at the funeral were M. C. Wright and Earl Howard of the Regular Baptist Church. 

 

The photo above is of the Beaver Valley Hospital in Martin, Kentucky, where Frank Collins was treated before his death. The building no longer exists. It was typical of many small, privately owned, small town hospitals in the coal fields in the first half of the twentieth century.  It had only minimal surgical and little or no intensive care capacities and would not have been capable of providing appropriate care, by today's standards, for a victim of a serious gunshot wound. It was also not common for anyone to be transported to other larger, better equipped hospitals in the 1930's.  The hospital sat at the upper end of the town of Martin at what is now the location of the Nelson-Frazier Funeral Home.  I have actually received minimal outpatient care there as a teenager.  

When we read the newspaper story of the shooting and death of Frank Collins, we are struck by several aspects of the story.  First, Frank Collins was murdered in the sight of his small daughter.  I have little doubt that the child, who is unnamed in the newspaper stories, was traumatized by that event for the rest of her life.  Second, there are clearly two very conflicting stories about the shooting.  The shooter, John Craft, claimed he shot Frank Collins in self defense when he was threatened with a knife.  Mrs. Collins and one other person, the man who was helping her take Frank out of the store, both apparently claimed that Frank was unarmed and suffered the  gunshot as they were taking him out of the store.  Third, Craft claimed that Frank had been knocked down by a man named Sol Bradley during some sort of altercation.  Yet, the news story contains no statement from Sol Bradley.  I cannot say that I ever really knew Sol Bradley but I knew in my childhood who he was and never heard a negative word about him regarding brawling or any other sort of violent behavior.  But it would be interesting to know if there was some sort of family, business, or friendship connection between Sol Bradley and John Craft.  Fourth, and this is the most striking aspect of the entire story, the 25 cent piece of scrip(1) and the 10 cents of change owed seems to have been a key element of whatever happened.  It would be shocking to think that John Craft was willing to kill a man over 10 cents in change owed on a 25 cent piece of scrip(1).  It would be just as shocking to know that he was willing to kill a man over the entire 25 cent piece of scrip(1).  And, of course, there is also the accusation by Frank's widow and the unknown man who was helping her take Frank out of the store that John Craft was drunk.  There is a great deal left unsaid in that news story which we do not know and which would have given us a far better understanding of why John Craft was willing to shoot and kill Frank Collins.

 

In the September 21, 1934, edition of the Floyd County Times, a single sentence is tacked onto the end of a story about another man from the area who had been convicted of an unconnected murder.  That sentence reads: John Craft was on trial Thursday, as The Times went to press, charged with the murder of Frank Collins at Estill.  

There is another news story in the Floyd County Times the following week on September 28, 1934, under the headline "Craft Draws 21 Years In Prison".  The subhead to that story refers to a different murder case and the two stories are discussed in alternating sections of the single story covering both.  The opening paragraph of the story discusses Craft's conviction for the Frank Collins murder.  

"For the second time within a week, a jury in the Floyd Circuit Court gave a 21 year penitentiary sentence to a man accused of murder.  John Craft, accused of the murder of Frank Collins at Estill a few months ago, received the last sentence. 

The next two paragraphs in the story discuss two completely unrelated murder cases before resuming the discussion of the sentence given to John Craft.  

"In the trial of Craft, the Commonwealth gave evidence showing that he had shot Collins after the latter had been knocked down in an altercation with a man named Bradley and after Craft, a merchant, had ordered Collins to leave his store.  This testimony claimed that Collins was offering no resistance and had turned to leave when shot.  The defense sought to show that the merchant fired, thinking that Collins was armed and fearing that he would kill Craft."  

And that is the entirety of the newspaper coverage of the murder of Frank Collins and the trial and sentencing of John Craft for that murder.  Just as the first newspaper story left unaddressed several issues the disclosure and discussion of which would have made the coverage far more enlightening, this story also leaves several unanswered questions about the case.  First, who testified in the trial?  Were the only witnesses John Craft and the Widow Collins, who is not named by first name in either story?  Did Sol Bradley or the man who was helping Mrs. Collins take her husband out of the store testify?  Did the prosecutor and judge force Frank's small daughter to testify?  Did the police officer(s) who arrested John Craft and interrogated him testify?  Second, was medical evidence presented to the court by the doctor in charge at Beaver Valley Hospital which could have proven where Frank Collins was standing in relation to John Craft when he was shot?  Third, who was John Craft's attorney?  Fourth, was the issue of a 25 cent piece of scrip(1) and 10 cents in change owed ever raised in court?  Could that issue, if it was raised, have increased the jury's willingness to set a lengthy sentence in the case?  

Since I first became aware of the murder of Frank Collins and began writing this blog post, I have not had time to drive to Prestonsburg, Kentucky, the county seat of Floyd County and search for the Circuit Court records at the Circuit Court Clerk's office.  I will do that in the near future and, if those records exist, I will obtain copies of them and add the information they contain to this blog post.  I also have easy access to whatever employment records are still extant for the Elkhorn Coal Company which are now in the possession of the Wayland Historical Society and I will also search those records to see what pertinent information they might contain about Frank Collins. It is also possible that John Craft might have worked for that company for some time before owning his store just as my own father did before owning his.  I will also search for John Craft's employment records.  This is a very interesting small town Eastern Kentucky murder case from the heart of the Great Depression and the involvement of a 25 cent piece of scrip(1) in the events makes it even more intriguing.  Did John Craft murder Frank Collins just because of a 25 cent piece of scrip(1) or the 10 cents in change which he did not have in scrip(1)?  Was either amount of coinage worth the price of a poor coal miner's life? 

 

 

(1) I just cannot pass up one very necessary opportunity to act as a member of the Grammar Police.  The word "scrip" does not have a "t" at the end.  It is spelled "SCRIP" not "SCRIPT".  Scrip is a form of corporate currency which is rarely used in the world today but was common in the early 20th century in America especially with large coal mining and timber companies.  A "Script" is a written communication such as a "Script" for a play, movie, speech, or oral presentation.  "Script" can also be used to describe a general form of type face either on a computer, typewriter, or printing press.  

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