Mama's Christmas Coal

Times were hard in eastern Tennessee in the late 1940's. Work was short and men were traveling out of state to find jobs. For 12-year-old Evelyn Lewelling, it was even tougher. Her mother was sick and Evelyn had to drop out of school to take care of the other kids. Her father was working in the marble mines near the French-Broad River and the hours were hard and long. Money was hard to get and saving was almost impossible.

One of Evelyn's chores was to walk along the railroad tracks and pick up pieces of coal that oftentimes fell from the passing trains. Wintertime was especially bad when the snow fell. The tracks would sometimes be covered by snow and finding coal was a difficult job at best. Still, a bucket of coal was worth a night of heat in the old house they lived in and it was her duty to find enough to last each day.

It was a dangerous job, walking those tracks every day looking for the stray lumps of coal. Evelyn often had to run into the neighboring woods if she saw a stranger coming up the tracks toward her. Sometimes, if the wind was blowing hard, she could not hear the trains coming and many times, she was able to get out of the way of a racing locomotive only by literally jumping off the tracks just before the engine would get to where she was standing.

Evelyn was not very big at 12 years old and when she finally reached her full height as an adult, she would still only be 4 foot 11 inches tall, so dragging a large tin bucket behind her to put coal in was almost more than she could do. Once she found enough coal for the night, it would take an hour to drag the coal-laden bucket home. The problem was, many days there would be many folks out there walking the tracks looking for the very same coal she was, so the competition was great to get enough coal.

However, on Christmas Eve, 1940, snow had fallen and it lay several inches deep on the ground. When Evelyn's dad told her it was time to go after coal, she and her brother, 8 year old Ralph, had to trudge through the wet snow to where the tracks were, almost a half-mile from their house on the outskirts of Sevierville, TN. Footprints in the snow showed that several people had already walked the tracks, which meant the coal was going to be especially hard to find since the tracks had already been picked over. Wearily, the two children started up the tracks, kicking snow off likely lumps and by the time they had gone a mile, only a few pieces of coal were in the bucket.

Suddenly, the sound of the train whistle reached their ears and the children jumped off the tracks, waiting for the train to come around the bend at Sevierville. Today it was not running real fast because of the snow and because all the cars were loaded down with coal, frosted over with snow like icing on a cake. As the train continued past them, they realized the coal was too frozen to fall off the cars and that the chance of finding it was going to be almost impossible. Slowly they began to walk along the train as it slowly outpaced them, dragging their tin bucket between the two.

As the train had almost gone completely by them, they heard a shout. Looking up, Evelyn could see a man standing on top of the last coal car that was attached to the caboose. He waved at the children and began to throw coal off the top of the car. Lump after lump of coal hit the ground along side the tracks. The children wildly waved back at the man, but wasted no time in running to the coal. There was twice as much as they needed to fill their bucket. Once more, they waved to the man on the train though he was now out of sight. He had climbed back down and had gone the caboose where he would warm up next to the stove inside.

The children quickly dragged their bucket to the trees and found a hollow in the ground where they piled the coal they had picked up. A second trip quickly filled up the hole and they covered it with a piece of tin that was lying up against a tree. Then they covered up the tin by burying it under some brush. Now they could take their time to pick up the rest of the coal and make the long trip home. Even so, they were very happy because Christmas was going to be warm this year and it was all because of a kind-hearted Santa on the "Slow and Easy" train.