16. An Unexpected Turn of Events

“My father had a pretty good job, being a foreman of a certain length on the railway,” Edith says. “He had been that for many years; then suddenly things changed and he had a new boss who had a nephew he wanted to give the job to, which was quite upsetting to Dad.” Albert adds, “Father had served as foreman faithfully without a blemish on his record and was within a few months of being eligible for a pension when an inspector came along and accused all the crew, including Dad, of breaking a rule of the railroad regarding lunch-time freedom.

 It was evident that it was a case of trumping up a charge to get rid of Dad before his 40 years were up. All the others were hired back, but not Dad, and the inspector’s son was given Dad’s job. “This almost broke Dad’s heart. At his age he could not expect to find other employment, and there was nothing but charity facing us, it seemed.

 But the Lord cares for those that are doing right, and [Dad] soon heard from Bill, his oldest son, that there was an opening for a good man on the railroad switch yards of the Ocean Coal Mine where he was employed.” Bill “was still single,” says Edith, “and he wanted Mother and Dad to come down there to live. He felt sure Dad could get a job for the railway on top of the mine.

It took them a little while to make up their minds to move, but Bill was so insistent. He had joined the Methodist Church, which pleased my parents, as they had trained us younger ones in Church. The older ones did not all keep up the training.

“In our family at that time there was Maggie, the youngest, and Albert, then me at home,” she says. “They decided to take Fanny along with us so she could be a help to mother around the home. They felt she was too young to be left on her own. So Bill rented a home for us there and we finally moved to Wales [Treharris in Merthyr Tydfil District, Glamorgan].” Their father got the railway job. and in about one year was assigned foreman of those yards. They were happy they had made the move.