2010 Patch Town Days at Eckley Miner's Village
June 19th and 20th
Sunday was Father’s Day. The Eckley Miner’s Village Patch Town Days was scheduled for this week end and the attendance was great. The weather could be called ideal if you like 85 degree temperatures. Every year we remark about the wonderful air conditioning in those days. They would open the door in the front and open the door in the back, this is called cross ventilation. And it really was delightful with a slight breeze blowing through the house. The outdoor kitchen was a blessing in the summer when it was hot. The couple making lokše in that kitchen was really perspiring.
Patch Town Days at the Eckley Miner’s Village celebrates the customs and traditions of the anthracite coal region through music, dancing, food, living history presentations, crafts, and more.
It
is always a pleasure to explain the Slovak Home to the youngsters who have no
idea of how hard living conditions were in patch towns. For us, senior citizens,
Eckley and especially the Slovak Home are very sentimental places. The home also
brings back memories of Grandparents. The holy pictures on the walls, the
beautiful embroidered cloths on the dressers, the coal stove, the wooden floor
that they scrubbed on their hands and knees, the rag carpets, the vegetable
garden, the grape vines, the peonies in bloom and of course the nut and poppy
seed rolls.
The Society has greeted visitors to the Slovak Home since 1996, explaining life in the 1890s. One side of the home shows the furnishings when a family first arrived in the village, the other side shows how, in 10 years, things had improved for a Slovak family. The walls are painted with whitewash that is colored with bluing. There is a wonderful coal stove, rope bed with the perina (a feather tick cover), lovely pictures on the walls, curtains on the windows and embroidered cloths covering the sparse furniture. Samples of makovnik (poppy seed roll), and orechovnik (nut roll) were distributed while lokše baked on the top of the outdoor kitchen stove.
A
home in this patch town had four rooms. It not only housed the family which
comprised the mother and father
and several children, but usually had boarders.
Some of the boarders worked during the day and slept at night while another set
worked during the night and slept during the day. The mother had a lot of work,
cooking, cleaning and washing all of those clothes. Imagine scrubbing the wooden
floor that was certainly covered with coal dust!
There were many Slovak families along with Irish, German and other nationalities in Eckley Village. The village had a Catholic Church but the services were in English. The Slovak people walked 5 miles to the Slovak Catholic Church in Freeland. They went twice on Sunday, for Mass and for Vespers.
The Society Members acting as tour guides in the Slovak home were: Anna Hudock, Mary Migatulski, Elaine and Tony Palischak, Dorothy Sullivan, Philip Tuhy, Bernadette Yencha, and Bill Zdancewicz.
We encourage you to visit Eckley Miner’s Village.
Eckley Miners’ Village is located in Weatherly, Pennsylvania, nine miles east of Hazleton, off Route 940. Check their web site for upcoming activities. www.eckleyminers.org
O Lord after I have worked my last day and come out of the earth and have placed my feet on Thy footstool let me use the tools of prudence, faith, hope and charity. From now on, till I will be called to sign my last pay roll, make all the cables in the machinery strong with Thy love, supply all the gangways, slopes and chambers with the pure air of Thy grace and let the light of hope be my guidance, and when my last picking and shoveling is done, may my last car be full of Thy grace and give me the Holy Bible for my last shift, so that Thou, the General Superintendent of all the collieries can say: “Well done, thou good, faithful miner come and sign the pay roll and receive the check of eternal happiness” Amen
This prayer appeared in the program booklet of the Slovak Catholic Federation Convention held in April 2005.