Anne Regets lived most of her life in a small river town in southwestern Pennsylvania. Her father, several of her brothers, and her husband worked for the bituminous coal companies which dominated that area's economy for much of the 20th century, and she grew up during the period when accidents in the mines and bitter labor-management strife resulted in great conflict and personal tragedy. She is one of the very first women I interviewed who wanted her real name to be used. The following story begins when a child's imagination is captured by an all-too-common event for coal mining families, a funeral, and unfolds into a lifelong pursuit of natural beauty in a world fraught with sadness and struggle. When this was recorded, Anne was living in a two-story frame white frame house that her husband built himself. She was seventy-nine years old and living alone by choice, despite a serious heart condition and against the advice of her doctor and the wishes of her children.

ANNE REGETS
Red Carnations

It was cold yet when I saw my first funeral. I was about five years old, and we had just moved from a company house in Ronco into a new home that my dad built for us. From our yard I saw people come into the field across the road. They moved slowly and they were crying and seemed sad, and that made me curious. I had never seen anybody dead, I didn't know what a funeral was. I didn't know that field was a graveyard, I didn't understand what a cemetary was. I watched until the people left, then I walked over and I took some of the flowers off the grave and brought them home. Red carnations. I'll never forget. My mother looked at me, and she said, "Where'd you get those?"
     "Somebody threw them out there in the mud."
     "You're not supposed to take those flowers," mother said. "They belong to the person in that grave."
     Well, I didn't know who was in that grave. I said I didn't understand what a grave was. Mother told me then that when people die they are put into graves. She said, "You have to take those flowers back."
     I can still see Bob Bradley-he was the grave digger -watching me and snickering. He didn't tell me not to take those flowers, but he laughed when I brought them back. Well, that was okay; Mother made me take them back. I knew then that I wasn't supposed to take flowers that had been left behind on a grave.
     Come spring time, peonies were in bloom in the graveyard. Boy, I go over and pick me some peonies, and I brought home as many as I could carry. Mother said, "What did you do?"
     "I picked these flowers in the field," I said. "They don't belong to anybody. They're mine."
     Mother tried to explain to me that the flowers belonged in the graveyard. They were something that was over there that I wasn't allowed to have. I couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to have those peonies.
     I was told to stay out of the graveyard. But I was fascinated with what went on there that made people cry, and, when I got a little bigger, if there was a funeral in town, I went to it. I guess I thought I was going to find out what happened that was so mysterious.
     The first dead person I ever saw was my half-sister Lizzy's husband. He had consumption. He was so sick all the time. There were days when he couldn't go to work in the mine. He would just lay around, he couldn't do anything. Lizzy was doing everything. People called her husband lazy. They said he didn't want to work. Really and truly, the man wasn't able to work, and Lizzy knew it. I remember her saying, "He had to die to prove to people he was sick."
     Lizzy had four children. One of her girls had fallen and broken her hip, and it had never been fixed. She was in a high chair all the time. Lizzy was pregnant when her husband died, and right after the funeral, she had a set of twins. They only lived a short time, and then this little cripple girl died too. Lizzy had four funerals in two months.
     Lizzy had no income and she had to go to work cleaning houses. People helped her, but she had three kids to raise. Then another miner whose had died came up to our house and asked to marry Lizzy. She didn't want to get married again. She said she didn't want any more men. But Mother told her that she was still young, she said that life was too short for Lizzy not to remarry. Mother knew the family, she knew he was a good man, and she said that he would make Lizzy a good husband. And he did. He was a good provider. He had children, too, from his first wife, but his daughters were grown and they went out to work early and got married. And Lizzy and him had seven children together.

     This town is dead now, but when I was young, Rices Landing was a busy place. The mine was here, we had a big movie theater, a jail, a drug store, two clothing stores, the garage, the whole street down along the river was business. The bank was next to the Methodist Church. There was a great big company store that had everything. A barber shop was down under the bank. We had a big hotel where the telephone operator sat. The post office was in the hotel. Across the street from the bank was a big department store. Down below the bank, Blanche Sharpneck had a drug store and soda fountain. An ice cream parlor inside a drug store-that was common when I was growing up. Right next to the garage was the pool room, then the creek-Pumpkin Run-then the schoolhouse, then Grubby Hughes' grocery store Down past the railroad underpass was the machine shop. The town had big lumber yard. There used to be a dentist's office and a doctor's office. Grace Gusman had a Lady's Apparel store. Trains stopped here regularly. We had a railroad station and a freight station. Up by the freight station was another grocery store owned by people by the name of Frazie. We used to buy candy there while we waited on a train.
     Most of the miners were "foreigners," and the bosses in the mines and the local farmers and landowners and all the business people in town were "Americans." The miners lived, mostly, in little company towns. We were poor, but we had something that's gone now-there was more of a sense of community. People cared about each other more, they helped each other out more. The mine bosses owned houses downtown. A man named Black owned the movie house; his dad was a mine foremen. Most of our politicians worked for the mine company. The mayor was also a foreman at the mine. The railroad had lots to do with the town and politics, too. A lot of people who worked for the railroad lived in town.
     Steamboats ran on our river, the Monongehela. Starting early in the spring and going as late as fall, there were excursion on the river as far as Greensburg. The trip took a whole day. I went on two or three.
     A man named Johnson ran an open dance pavilion. There was no roof; if it rained, the evening was cancelled. Big name orchestras came to our little town like you wouldn't believe, and he drew big crowds. I didn't go to dances as often as I wanted to because it cost about $1.50 to get in, and that was a lot of money when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. Sometimes we girls couldn't get in because we weren't always dressed in the right clothes. I used to go to the pavilion with Margaret Popovich (she married my brother Butch) and Gertrude Popovich and Francis O'Daniels. We'd hang around outside and watch the people. Sometimes we did get in. I'll tell you how. Some evenings Johnson would let us girls in for free because he had more boys than girls and he wanted to keep the boys there. Then we'd get to dance.
     We didn't have any beer gardens when I was little. For a long time, Greene County was dry, although we had some speak-easies during Prohibition. When we'd go on dates, the young men would leave us girls in the car and go into somebody's house and buy themselves a drink.
     There's nothing downtown now. No stores. Even the bank and the post office have been moved up to Dry Tavern. The machine shop is still standing, like a miracle. It was restored by the historical society. But when I was growing up, this was a booming town.

     I've raised flowers ever since I can remember. When I was a kid I had a special place around the well for my very own flower garden. My dad used to spade the ground for me, and he put up a fence for me and I grew sweet peas and nasturseums. After I married Andy, he spaded the ground for me, and if I needed a plant moved, he'd dig the hole. We always worked together.
     We got married when I was fifteen. In Crucible, when we lived in a company house, I planted flowers in the backyard. We had a walk through the middle of the backyard that went to the outhouse and the coalhouse. The company gave us the material, and Andy built that walk. I planted flowers along the house, and in the little yard in front of the house, and along the fence. I had maybe eighteen or twenty inches for my flower garden down the whole length of the yard, and the yard was long. After we built a house of our own, and once we had property of our own, boy, I really had a good time. I put flower beds in the backyard, and I planted flowers all round the house too.
     I always grew flowers inside the house, too. I always had a green house. If you'd see them now . . . I don't know whether I'm supposed to move out or what, the plants have grown so big. I've got houseplants upstairs, downstairs, in the cellar. If there's a window, there's at least one plant on the sill or hanging.
     Andy and I used to decorate graves in the cemetary with flowers every Memorial Day. Mother always told me not to carry flowers to her grave, but to take them to the church. Mother said, "Just put them on my grave on Decoration Day so that people won't talk about you." It bothered me, and I imagine lots of people used to say, "Gee, she's got all those beautiful flowers growing in her garden but there's none on her mother's grave." But I just couldn't put them on because Mother clearly told me not to. She said, "Flowers are for the living."

     Most of my family is buried in the graveyard now, and many of my friends, Mother and Dad, two of my brothers, and the ones still living will go there too one day. My Andy is there, waiting for me.
     I don't fear death. I don't want to die, and subconsciously you do fight for life. I know that because when I had my heart attacks, I did fight to live, I chose to live. I was in intensive care, that's a place where you don't know whether it's night or day. The only I can remember is that a nurse was in the room. She said, "Can you lean over a bit so I can check your lungs?" I remember telling her, "Oh, everything is black." I saw her look up real quick at the monitor, and that's all I remember.
     I died. That's what they told me afterwards, when I came back. My heart had completely stopped. While I was gone, Andy came to me. He did. He came to me. Andy came to me, and he said, "Come this way. It's easier." I didn't see anything else. I didn't feel any pain. There was nobody else, just him, and all he kept saying was, "Come this way, it's easier." He repeated that three or four times. He was in this big space that I couldn't reach, I could only see his head and hear him talk. His face, his voice, everything was the exactly the same as when he was alive. He took my hand, but I couldn't hold on. I let go.
     I think I came back on my own. I don't know. But after I came to, that's when I really wanted to go back with Andy. I wanted to black out again. Then my family came into the room. My daughter Betty said, "Mother, did you see Daddy?" I said, "Yes. He came after me. He wanted me to go with him." My family started to cry. They said, "No, Mother, he didn't want you to leave us." I said, "No, he said for me to come with him because it was easier that way." They looked at each other, and then the nurse came in and made them leave. But before Betty left, I asked her, "What made you ask me that?" She said, "I don't know. You just looked so peaceful I thought you had." I said, "Did I talk in my sleep?" Betty said, "Mother, you weren't just asleep. You were gone."
     So I'm on my second life now. That's really true, when you stop to think. But one thing I have learned. It's not hard to die. Things just go black and that's it. It was a good experience. And I'm ready to go any time. Now I live each day as if it was my last day. I don't let things get me down. I don't have my housecleaning done, but I don't care. The work is still going to be here when I'm gone. The one thing I do have to do is go out and play in the dirt. I do a little bit outside every day or so, weather permitting.
     Play in the dirt. Grow my flowers. That's what I like to do. Other people spend money on hairdos or clothes. I spend my money on flowers. What I like best are flowers and birds. They don't talk back, they don't hurt you, they don't give you trouble.
     Oh, hear that? It's my redbird. He's hungry. Do you want to see something? I've trained him to eat peanuts. Come out to the porch and watch. I break the peanut in half and put it on the banister, and he'll come and get it. The male. The female comes too, but she's more cautious . . . . Now keep back behind the door. He's used to me, but if he sees you, he'll fly away.

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