Back in Bradley ... sort of
By ESTHER MCCOY, Staff writerArticle Photos
SMITHFIELD - You can't go home again was something those visiting the Smithfield Historic Museum for the first Bradley reunion realized. But warm memories of the coal mining town that disappeared after more than 40 years were shared by the 30 former residents and their children attending the recent reunion.
The community got its existence from a company known as Bradley Coal Co. around 1900, according to Virginia Riley Nameth, who compiled sheets of information as she remembered the details from her youth and from bits of conversation from adults who lived the experience.
Alva Bradley brought mining into the area about two miles from Smithfield, but he is most remembered as the owner of the Cleveland Indians. The community was named after him.
There were two coal sections, with Bradley known as Crow Hollow No. 1, and the one south of Smithfield was named the Slope or Bradley No. 2.
Older residents remember the coal company was a self-contained business, consisting of a power plant, water tower, machine shops, a lamp house, bath house, mule barn, union hall, the Company Store, doctor's office, double company houses, Tony John's shoe shop and the James Hotel.
The power plant provided electric for the mines, machine shops, tipple and other buildings used for coal production. Electric was not offered in the homes until 1936.
The water tower carried water to the mines and the company homes, and there were outside pumps placed at intervals between the houses.
Carbide lamps were first worn on the hard hats of the miners to illuminate the way in the dark mine, and the lamp house was built after the coal company started to use battery lights. Ettore Paolucci, Gary Kish's grandfather, was its caretaker.
The first method of bringing coal cars from the mines was by mule power. The animals were housed together in a barn until a fire destroyed the building in 1934, and Alex Klan was the mule boss until all but one mule were destroyed in the fire.
The lone mule was toiling in the mine at the time, according to Dorothy Klan Corona, the mule boss' daughter. "It died within several days of the fire. Apparently it missed the other mules," she said.
The mines then were mechanized using electric motors to bring out the coal and take the workers in and out of the mines when shifts ended.
There were 50 company houses of double occupancy in the small community for the miners and their families to use as long as they remained employed with the coal mines. The dwellings had four rooms on each side, with no inside bathroom. "And many families raised up to five children in those two-bedroom houses," Dorothy Corona said.
There also were three sections of long row houses known as the barracks or the "palaces," but not for their luxurious accommodations. Another name for that section was Scab Hill. There were a few private homes as well.
"We had everything we could want in Bradley," Ed Waldman said.
"There was a school, softball teams, stores, a doctor's office, post office, theater and a pool hall. Until we went to Smithfield High School, we never left our community."
He recalls the three-room school he attended, starting the fire in the coal stove in the morning, taking out the ashes, pumping water and using homemade paper cups for drinking and going to the male-designated outhouse, a "gigantic eight-seater."
Schools were at three locations during the coal mining years. Some were one-room buildings, while others included several grades in each of three rooms.
From the sixth grade on students went to Smithfield and walked the more than two miles one way.
Waldman also remembers movies shown at the Miner's Hall, where it cost a dime to enter. "It was a dime or four frog legs," he said, noting the money collector enjoyed eating frog legs.
"Harry Torok would push those of us without a dime or frog legs through the back window to see Tarzan or Gene Autry," Waldman said.
Larry Kovarik, who went on to become a distinguished musician, playing in a polka band throughout the world, said everyone born in Bradley could list their home as their place of birth. A midwife delivered the babies, and Dr. Edwards had an office there in case medical attention was needed, Kovarik noted.
A lack of entertainment meant many people played musical instruments. Kovarik, Leonard Corona and Babe Garcia Kovarik played the clarinet, and Mary Palinchak Kertoy played the violin, to name a few of the musicians.
A Mrs. Cibulka, who came to Bradley as a missionary, taught Bible school and Sunday school in the Miner' Hall and played the piano for singing, Kertoy remembers.
The Dillonvale Brass Band would come to town and play for entertainment on Sundays, and no one had to sneak in or catch frogs for payment for this, it was noted.
Leonard Corona told that Alva Bradley would give out tickets to the Indians baseball games. "They were worthless to us as nobody had a car or enough gas to go see the games," he said.
He remembered being cajoled by Esther Smith, a music teacher, to play Hansel in the play "Hansel and Gretel," but he chose not to, and Benny Zalenski took the part, dancing himself off the stage and onto the floor at the Company Store.
"We had so many nationalities living in Bradley. There was an interesting combination of people," Kertoy said.
Although the double houses and barracks were ordered to be torn down or removed from the area when the coal mining industry came to a halt in 1945, the single homes at the top of the hill were sold.
Kertoy is the owner of one of the homes. Nameth, Roy Grant and Carl Raggets have past company homes that have been remodeled and still reside there.
"I remember when I graduated in 1944 and left for Pittsburgh for a year that Hanna Coal, which purchased the company, was putting up street lights. I thought how wonderful it was to have the streets lit. I came home a year later and just after that the mine closed. Houses, street lights, stores and everything was being town down," said Kertoy, whose dad was killed in the mine 15 minutes before quitting time.
The mines were a dangerous place to work, and Kovarik recalled that when they saw an ambulance zip to the coal mines, they would know someone was either badly injured or killed.
Charles Greene remembers delivering the Herald-Star to the Bradley residents and loved the holidays. This was when he would receive taste-tempting baked goods from his customers.
"Mrs. Palinchak made a fried bread with cabbage inside that was good and so were the kolaches and other pastries," he said.
Helen Cerzinsky Lippert remembered her dad Frank having a general store, one of about six that were in the Bradley community at one time. She resides in Toronto now but remembers the Bradley days fondly and her friendship with Mary Torok Bartek.
Leonard Corona tells that the three cooperative stores in Bradley, Dillonvale and Piney Fork had softball teams and the home games were on the top of the hill.
Everyone would walk up the hollow to attend the games as Sunday entertainment.
Corona was hired to work as a mining engineer by J.D. McHugh, chief engineer with U.S. Coal. He went to work right out of high school but then left for cadet training during World War II.
When he came home in 1946 from the service, where he was trained as an aerial photographer - a craft that continued in his work with the coal company - Bradley was gone.
"We now live in a company house here on Mill Road," he noted. "All the homes in Bradley had to be torn down or moved. There are 10 homes from Bradley along this street," he said.
And it is interesting that in a Bradley School photo for the 1931-32 year, Leonard and Dorothy Klan are pictured side by side. They still remain that way to this day. Bradley is their common denominator.
(McCoy can be contacted a emccoy@heraldstaronline.com.)
