Joseph A. Cha, Price, Utah: an interview by Winston P. Erickson, June 28, 2002: Saving the Legacy tape nos. 460 & 461

Page 6

JO EPHA.CHA J 2 2002 one year to Helper. Then I went to College at Carbon High chool. Wa a c mbinati n of high school and a junior college. I graduated from Carbon College now. [Editor ' note: This unusual arrangement of combining high school and junior college wa al o done at Dixie College in St. George, Utah. Students would go grades one through ix in elementary school, then seven through ten in junior high. Then they attended eleventh and twelfth grades of high school, receiving a high school diploma and could continue at the same school for the first two years of college. Carbon High School/College is now the College of Eastern Utah.] WIN: Can you describe your life growing up in the coal camps? JOE: Yes, it was hard. We worked real good (steady) in the fall and winter but in the summertime, we'd get laid off for about four months and most of the time in the springtime we'd start to slow down. [Editor's note: Until the 1950s most people in the intermountain area heated their homes with coal in the winter. There wasn't much air conditioning driving a high demand for coal-fired electrical power in the summer. Consequently, demand for coal fell off in the long warm days of summer.] We'd work maybe two or three days a month. In those days, there wasn't any compensation or any relief, like now or unemployment, if you'd get laid off. WIN: No unemployment pay? JOE: They didn't have that until later on in the late 1930s and '40s. Then we started getting more money for unemployment and layoffs. During that time, they were also organizing all these coal mines. Like where I worked at Rains, it was under the United Mine Workers of America, as were the Latuda, Standardville, Spring Canyon, and Peerless. [Editor's note: These are all coal mines and coal camps located in the area 6