A Ralstonian Remembers

By: Michael R. Bastion

My great-grandfather, grandfather, uncles, and my father lived up on McIntyre and down in Ralston. When my father was a young boy he lived in a one-room shanty with his father. They called the cabin "Batsh" - short for "bat shanty". They were so primitive, the bats were their bed buddies.

My Uncle Charley ran the boarding house up there and they all worked in the mines. Only the affluent could afford a room in the hotel.

My father had to walk down off the mountain to Ralston for school. He followed the railroad tracks, and it was his duty to collect loose coal lying along the way for their heat. I said, "Wasnt that stealing?"

He always told stories about the rattlesnakes in the berry bushes, the wildcats, and the bears - oh my!
I asked him what he used to defend himself. "Oh, a stick or stones," he said.

 It was my father's job to take my Pop-Pop's lunch back in the tunnels. He would say how dark it was deep underground, and he talked of rats as big as house cats.

I saw one of his report cards once. He had many days absent or tardy and a few (well, alot) F's. He always said it was uphill both ways. Back in the olden days, the boys only had knickers and high tops and the snow got mighty deep.

Then came the Prohibition days. The Moonshine was a-cookin' in my grandfather's still. I heard tell it was the best White Lightening in the country. I think they drank more than they sold: they all liked to get hooched. Maybe it was the mine dust. My grandfather served a year in Federal prison for his business and all his capers.

One night after Pop left the saloon topsy-turvy, he decided to show a new friend how to fish with dynamite. Turns out this friend was the game warden: more jail time.

My father became a teenager, and he started hopping trains - literary jumping off the banks into the moving coal cars. He got more than one whoppin' for this stunt. He train-hopped to Canton to see the girls. He always had a fresh set of clothes hidden in a bag somewhere. They'd ride to Williamsport, eat a footlong hotdog, and see the Saturday movie matinee at the theater for a quarter.

My Pop-Pop later lived at and ran the McIntyre Inn. It burned twice, and he lost most of his possessions in the fire. My grandfather lived and tended bar at the Candle Light Inn in Ralston. I am also related to the Campbells (my step-grandmother was Lillian Campbell) in and around Ralston.

I was born and raised in Canton, the third son of five. I attended school in Canton with kids who rode the bus from Marsh Hill, a ways south of Ralston. My first visit to Rock Run was in the fall  of 1993. It was spitting snow and I went swimming. All I can I remember is: burrrrrrrrrr! I fell in love with the place.

Just think: at one time Ralston was a boom town. It even had a tannery. It started with iron ore before coal got big. There was logging too, and the railroad.

I asked my dad lots of questions about his upbringing. He said he endured hardships, but that he and the other miners were tougher than nails and harder than the coal they mined.

The Ralstonians are the same wonderful people they were back in the good old days. Time has passed and things have changed, but the beauty in these majestic mountains and the babbling crystal waters still remain: eye-catching, breath-taking, tingling to every available sense.

Please, let's keep it this way forever....and ever.