(The following has been extracted from a story written by Dennis B. Roddy, Staff writer for the Tribune-Review, published in "Communities in Profile" in the Sunday Tribune-Review, Greensburg, PA, August 18, 1985.)

The miners would line up at the paymasters window at the Company Store, to receive they pay envelope, and find out if they had anything left in it after the company store deductions and the other mine deductions.

On Saturday a man from Greensburg would drive a nine-seater Buick into the town to begin the long shuttler of miners and families to and from Greensburg, the center of commerce.

"He'd pack that thing full and make as many trips to Greensburg as he could on Saturday,"  Saunders remembered.  There they would be joined by miners from Luxor, Crabtree and a settlement then called Red Onion, today known as Hadenville, (South Greensburg).

Those who didn't go to town had other activities, among them tipping a pint or maybe two.  "It was Prohibition,"  said Saunders, "but you knew where to go to get a pint."

Shopping in Greensburg was a practice that came in during the 1920's and 1930's.  Prior to that, Saunders said, the town was a closed place. A single road snaked in past the company supply store, past the church Harry Bovard built and past an ever-present Coal and Iron policeman who shooed hucksters away and kept outside delivery wagons from competing with the company store.

It was the practice of the Keystone Coal & Coke Company in its early years to run closed coal patch towns, nothing was allowed into town that wasn't purchased at the company store, if you brought in something that was purchased outside of town, your name would be taken down, and the pit boss would warn you, that your job and home was at stake, if you did it again.

The original company store was in a house at the foot of the hill on which the town rests.  "I was raised in that house.   I never knew it was a store until I was old enough to understand,:  Saunders said. "We were fortunate that the company store wasn't like other company stores, in that it didn't gouge."

The coal company later built a big store and office. Nearby stood a town activity hall.  Up the road Harry Bovard built the Union Church.

Inside the community hall was a bowling alley and a pool room.  As a kid, of course, Frank Saunders wasn't allowed in there.  "Kids were kids.  They were to be seen and not heard.  They were to obey without question."

Inside the community hall was the company barbershop.  Every patron had his own shving mug on the barber's rack.  Rent for one of the duplex houses was $4.00 a month.  Until the bitter coal miners strike of 1922, the miners earned $1.25 a day for a 10-hour day.  Some earned 13 cents an hour on the tipple, picking slte out of the coal.

Were a pile of waste rock or "gob" to stall production in the mine, the workers were not paid for the time spent cleaning up and loading the waste rock.

"The wages were very very low and there wasn't any way, shape or form that they could do anything about it,"  Saunders said.  If it was difficult at times there were few complaints.

"You have to realize they were immigrants from Europe and in Europe they were lucky to get that $1.25 a month,"  said Saunders.  Then again, a loaf of bread was three cents.  A dozen eggs cost 11 cents.  And if house coal was three cents a bushel, residents still rushed out with carts and baskets when any leftover coal were given out free from the mine.

Through it all, the miners and their families achived something rare today, siad Saunders.  A sense of community was pervasive.  If one family was out of work it was likely the others were, too.  Five cent movie shows at the community hall were a common recreation for all. Basketball games brought out the town.  The baseball team carried the town banner in competition against teams from other mining communities.

"All of the social activity was primarily right here.  Kids in Bovard never thought of going to Pittsburgh. It was like going to the moon," said Saunders.

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