Can you imagine the stir of excitement when the first train came to Harlan? the horse and buggy was the only mode of travel up until that time. Women grabbed their children by the hand and ran down Main Street to get a glimpse of the "iron horse." The steam escaping from the engine was frightening to the children.

"Will it jump the track?" asked one spectator. "Will it stop long enough for us to get on?" was another's question.

In the crowd was a family who was going to board the train. The only riding the small girls had ever done was on horseback behind their father. As they approached the train one of the little girls said, "I'm going to ride behind papa."

Everybody put on their Sunday best to meet the new mode of transport. It was a social event to have the privilege of meeting the train. Everybody did.

The vehicle came only to Harlan for a few months before the track was built on to Kildav. It was called the "Kildav Special."

Trainmen Had No Tickets

Bill Greaver and Pat Thomas were two of the first trainmen to run to Harlan. They had no tickets and persons riding the train paid cash to the conductor.

Some of the hotel and boarding house owners met the train and directed passengers to their repective places of lodgong. Eva Jones Cherry owned a restaurant and grocery store combined near the train stop and it proved very convenient for travelers.

Before the rolling stock era..the only reliable mode of travel was the horse and buggy or just plain horse back. As a result, not many people from the outside world traveled to Harlan County.

The bare necessities were all the pioneer people had. They made most of their own medicines and prescribed their own doses. There was always a fear of diseases in the early days, and well there might have been because of the distance between neighboring towns and mode of travel to obtain medicine.

Free advice for ailments was given by many. There were only a few doctors and so many patients. Sometimes when the doctors left calomel and pills, later some granny came in and either destroyed the whole batch or substituted her herb.

Much Sassafras Tea Drunk

Old-timers sincerely believed that if a person drank sassafras tea in February he would never have typhoid fever. They also gave sage-brunch tea for typhoid and starved the patient to death.

"We always took our sulpher and molases regularly," an old timer disclosed. "We didn't know why except that it was just good for us,"he added.

If a child neded to be doctored for the croup, granny rushed to the cupboard for hog's grease, a little coal oil and a few drops of turpentine.

Perhaps every old timer tied a little bag of asafoetida with a string and places it around his children's neck. It was said to be good to kep diseases away. From the odor, one wouldn't doubt the adage.

One day a farmer rode into town for supplies. He stopped at Creech Drug Store and asked Will "Pappy" Eager for a dime's worth of asafoetida."Charge it," said the man.

Difficult To Spell

"Just take it along and forget it," said "Pappy," Eager. "I wouldn't try to spell it for a dime."

Adults and children alike went blackberry picking during the summer months. Poison ivy was a nuisance and spread like wild fire when it got a "head start." An old lady who lived up on Poor Fork had her own remedy and it was a good one.

"Well , sir," she said, "I get my herbs up in the hill and cook them all together for a few minutes and make an "ooze" out of it and smear it on the youngun's face and it cures them up in a hurry."

Those teas, onion poultices and "bitters" concocted by old-timers may have been crude but many people stuck by them and religiously believed in their powers.

Sunday March 29, 1953

Volume 52 Number 73

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