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School and Work

“Bill didn’t skip school very much. He was a studious fellow. If I got home before he did, we had a big old
stove and I would hide under the stove where he couldn’t see me until I thought it was time for me to get

home, and then I would open the door and act like I was coming in. He worked. He always had him a
part‐time job. But I worked too.

We pitched coal in basements of houses. We had one place that we pitched 6 tons of coal through a
window every week. It was Fieldman’s Dairy, where my brother Jim worked. The window we had to pitch

the coal through was about 3 or 4 feet high so that was a hard job for a little skinny guy like me. It took
us about 2 hours but we all worked together, me and Bill and Dad.

Me and Bill would start it because Dad wouldn’t be home from work yet and then Dad would come home
and help us. When we got done we would go to a saloon called Baden’s Cafe and get us a nice cold beer.
We would get that and a bowl of chili. Back then they didn’t say much about kids drinking beer as long

as they were with their parents.” Earl Davison from 2003 interview