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Clarence V. Beck
Little Dog Mine
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Clarence V. Beck, Sr. Son of Clarence Benjamen Beck Born : Residence 1917 - 1970 : 6012 Clemens Avenue St. Louis, Missouri Occupation : Coal Mine Owner 1945 - 1968, Little Dog Coal Mine Gillespie, Illinois Died : 1973 |
Clarence V. Beck, Jr. Son of Clarence V. Beck, Sr. Born : 1918 in St. Louis, Missouri Nicknames : 'Snipper' & 'Junior' Education : John Burroughs School in St. Louis, graduated in 1936, Duke University, graduated in 1940 Degree in Mechanical Engineering Military : Army Air Corps, World War II Married (1) : Alma Hill in 1946, divorced in 1949 Married (2) : Martha Ceta Smith, in 1954 divorced about 1970 Occupations : Coal Mine Superintendent 1946 - 1968, Little Dog Coal Mine EPA , in Belleville, Illinois Died : 1988 in St. louis, Missouri Burial : Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, MO. |
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| See also : Little Dog Coal Mine History & Photos |
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| By : Nancy Vickers Beck © | |
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| Clarence Beck & Little Dog Mine Memories | |
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My father, Clarence V. Beck Jr., was the only son of the Little Dog mine owner, Clarence V. Beck Sr. He was born in
1918 in St. Louis, died 1988 in St. Louis. My grandfather lived in the same house at 6012 Clemens Avenue from 1917 until 1970, and
was in the coal business all his life, as was his father, Clarence Benjamen Beck. I think my grandfather was originally a sort of
middle man in the coal business, selling coal for home heating and such, as most homes in St. Louis were heated with coal.
My (2nd cousin? ) Marian White, born 1915 who is my father's first cousin and the only one of that generation of the family still alive,
told me an anecdote just in the last few years about how my grandfather bought some kind of automatic stoker for the house at 6012
Clemens, this would have been in the forties I think but maybe even the thirties, I don't know exactly what year.
Anyway, the story goes that my grandfather was so pleased with this stoker, maybe he was selling them, I don't know, that he cleaned the basement thoroughly, painted it, and had a fancy cocktail party down there to show off the stoker. I can just remember the stoker, even my grandfather switched to gas in the late 50's, but it was like a coal loader in a mine, only in miniature, with kind of a grabby arms conveyer belt into the furnace. My cousin Marian said he was proud as a mother hen, and everyone was all dressed up in cocktail dresses and suits in the basement for the party, with hired servers in frilly aprons. The story goes that my grandfather's fortunes would wax and wane as he made a series of deals in the 20's, 30's, 40's. By the time I can remember in the fifties the Little Dog Mine was the only real business in the family. My father also had two nick names. In the family he was "Snipper", from when he was very small, but he was also called "Junior" by many to distinguish him from his dad. My father went to John Burroughs School in St. Louis, graduated in 1936, and then went to Duke, graduating in 1940. I think he worked for Allison Engines, somewhere out of town. Maybe Indianapolis? This was briefly until the war began. He enlisted in the Army Air Corp, and was a captain, stationed in the Pacific. I think like many young men he wanted to be a pilot, but his eyes weren't good enough. He was in charge of a group of mechanics, worked at an airfield, keeping the planes going as I understand. He came back from the war in 1946, married my mother, Alma Hill, whom he'd met while training at Warner Robbins Field in Savannah, Georgia, and I was born while they were living temporarily with my grandparents... at 6012 Clemens. The story was that my grandfather told my dad to come into the family business, with the implication that he would retire in a few years and hand the business over to my dad. Well, when the mine closed in 1968, my grandfather, then eighty something, still had his hands firmly on the tiller. However in all those years after the war, my dad was the mine superintendent at Little Dog. He and my mom divorced, she and I moved to Florida in 1949 when I was three. He remarried Martha Ceta Smith of Greenfield when I was seven, and had three more daughters, Katherine, Claudia, and Connie. I used to come up and stay in the summers. I can remember going down in the mine only once, when I was ten. My dad explained to me that Little Dog was lucky in that the coal seam was a full eight feet thick, that no-one had to stoop to work there. He took me to a mine once in Kentucky where the seam was only four feet, and all the equipment and all the men had to stuff themselves in; the locomotives and all were short. But in the Little Dog Mine you could stand up straight to work. Daddy used to go on equipment buying runs to farther South in Illinois and Kentucky, buying used equipment for the Little Dog. | |
 Photograph furnished by : Carol Ries |
I remember the mine office at Little Dog well, it was just as dirty as any other part of the mine, not air conditioned, and had inches of coal dust everywhere. There were thick ledgers, my impression was that all the accounting was by hand. Figuring was done on Comptometers, ghastly things, I remember working them at an early job. They had like 100 keys and a crank on the side. I remember the coal smell well. Even my grandfather's basement in St. Louis had that smell of coal, twenty years after he switched to gas heat. |
| I particularly remember the death of this young man. My father, Clarence V. Beck, Jr., was mine superintendent and was very disturbed by this young man's death. He lingered for nearly two months at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, arguably the best hospitals in the region. I was 21, and my father took me with him on one of his visits to the young man |
May 4, 1968, Saturday, James J. Spurney, of Mt. Olive
Mr. James J. Spurney, age 18, single, was injured in an accident at Florida Coal Caomapny, Little Dog Mine located at Gillespie, Macoupin County, Illinois on Wednesday, March 6, 1968, at 9:15 p.m., while performing his duties as shuttle car operator. he had been employed at this mine for 8 months. Mr. Spurney, regualar shuttle car operator in the 5th East Panel, conventional unit, was loading the fifth car from #12 room cross-cut to right off 3rd East entry of 7 entries being driven east. The 11 BU Joy Loader, being operated by Mr. Ralph Link, 2nd man on loader, was being repositioned in the cross-cut which was approximately 22 feet deep from the entry rib line. Mr. Jerry Spurney, Joy Loader operator, was at the corner of the cross-cut and the entry watching the Joy trailing cable and the shuttle car being loaded by his son. The clean up operation of the cross-cut required Mr. Spurney to move his shuttle car (Joy Type 42 E 15, 6 ton cap., front wheel drive, rear wheel steering, built in 1946) out into the entrywith the car approximately 2/3 loaded. While seated facing the Joy Loader, Mr. Spurney, to provide additional space for movement of the loader, depressed the foot controlled reverse switch on the shuttle car so as to back the shuttle car out of the way. The reverse control stuck-would not release-and caused the shuttle car to continue back in an angular direction of travel and run up against the rib of the entry. The shuttle car had traveled approximately 60 feet from the loader to the point of contact with the rib at #11 room cross-cut. The entry at the place of accident was approximately 18 feet wide with a height of 7½ feet. At the point of contact, the rib entry was almost vertical. with very little, if any, overhang. Extensive injuries were received by Mr. James Spurney in the pelvis area with multiple fractures of the hips, a broken leg and other internal injuries. Mr. Spurney died May 4, 1968 at 2:30 a.m. |
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After much travail, the mine closed in 1968. Dad was good friends with Junie Bartulis, who I think had a trucking firm in Benld.
He drove a truck sort of part time, maybe for Junie, I can't remember. Junie became a state representative. I still have a campaign T-Shirt
that says "I'm a friend of Junie Bartulis". I often wonder what happened to Junie, but he was a big overweight man like my father, and
he'd be nearly 90 now, and I somehow don't think he'd around any more.
So in the fullness of time, some time in the 70's, Junie talked dad into getting a job with the EPA office in Belleville. Dad worked there until he could get social security. By the time he left EPA, he was living with me in St. Louis, I had bought a big old Victorian house for peanuts as you could in those days. I went to college from 1967 to 1971 at SIU Edwardsville, and all those years, my father lived in an apartment over the Canna Theater in Gillespie, having separated from his wife. I actually lived there my last year of college with him. I think he lived there until about 1973, when he moved in with me, temporarily of course, in St. Louis. I was shocked to see on-line that the Canna Theater was still operating last year; I thought the place would have fallen down by now. Canna Theater -- The apartment upstairs had a nice floor plan, two bedrooms, a big living room, a kitchen, bath, and a store room where part of the projection equipment was housed; big tubes on a platform that looked sort of Frankenstein's lab like. Most of the apartment was (is?) over the lobby, but the kitchen was kind of cantilevered over the back rows to the left as you look at the screen. I don't know when the theater was built, but the apartment had been remodeled in the 40's I would say. The kitchen had a nice inlaid linoleum floor, a gorgeous big stove of moderne design, but it was electric and I was kind of afraid of it, I think daddy said the electricity in the kitchen was not up to snuff. There were some good quality white metal cabinets. The main flaw to the kitchen was that the side cantilevered over the back rows must have lacked support as it sagged about 6 or 8 inches from the door to the kitchen to the far wall over the theater seats. I was always afraid the whole kitchen would end up on the back rows. The tubes in the store room would fizz and glow when the projection equipment was running, and once when I was in the bath at the end of the hall, the projectionist let himself in and came up and whacked the electrical stuff in the store room with a broom handle or something. Scared me to death. Didn't know they'd come up and do that. There was a definite 40's flavor to the place. I remember some rather gaudy modern non-representational wallpaper in one of the rooms that my stepmother characterized as "screaming skulls" when she visited, and I've always liked that turn of phrase. something. My father's tenure above the theater was not a shining time in his life, it was after the mine had closed and he was at loose ends. Dad liked McGrady's Tavern on Gillespie's main street. It had a very thorough and unlikely Hawaiian decor. My my father didn't really drink, he just loved to sit and gossip at the bar over endless Coca-Colas and bar snacks. When I was a perpetually starving undergraduate and needed a car, I always got whatever vehicle my mother in Florida or my dad in Illinois was finished with. One time I was at loose ends and daddy said he had a hot prospect for a car for me. I think it was about 1967. The back story is that a doctor had committed suicide in Gillespie. Mind you, other than staying in Gillespie for a year while I was in college, I've never really lived there. But this was a popular doctor, and I think daddy said he was the "mine doctor", whatever that was. The story as I remember is that the doctor had cancer, and knew too well how his illness would progress, and took a short cut with a shot-gun--- in his car. What I know for SURE, first hand, is that my father took me, about age 20, to see a late model nice car, maybe a Chrysler. Off course gas mileage was not an issue, gas being about 30 cents per at that time. Minimum wage about $1.15 I think. This car was white or cream colored, parked in an empty lot along Gillespie's main street. Daddy enthused that it was a good car, late model, low mileage. What I saw was that the shotgun had been directed upwards and had mushroomed the top of the car above where the driver sat. There was a significant bulge, about a foot and half in diameter. Daddy glossed over this and opened the hood. I checked the interior, which smelled like blood. The front seat was clean, but the footwell behind the driver was full of blood and nasty bits. Daddy assured me that this could be cleaned up, and the bulge fixed (oddly, the shotgun hadn't pierced the roof, only belled it up). Of course, beggars can't be choosers, and I told daddy OK. However he put his bid in for the car, but "someone sniped him", and the car disappeared. I was kind of relieved. I can't remember the doctor's name, but I'm sure the story of his death is well known. Daddy and I lived in the Central West End. After he retired, he kept pretty much the same habits. He always went to Illinois for his social life, he had a girlfriend in Belleville until he died. He kept up somewhat with friends in the Gillespie area. Gillespie I remember as not so pretty a town as Carlinville, with the railroad running down the middle of the main street. I remember that all the stores downtown closed back in the day on some weekday afternoon by custom, was it Wednesday afternoon? Daddy was very much mechanically inclined all his life. He was a first generation automotive juvenile delinquent he used to say. He used to have hot rods before they were called that. I remember him saying he had a stripped down flat head Ford and he would get it up to 100 miles an hour in Forest Park on his way home from school, this would have been about 1935, I'm sure the statute of limitations has run out on that offense. I remember that before Illinois had a speed limit, I think it was imposed in 1955, he would routinely squeeze the distance from Greenfield to Gillespie when I was visiting by going over 100 miles an hour on those two lane roads in his '52 Ford. Until the day he died he kept after the cars in the family, he changed a tire for me a week before he died. I had asked him if I should go over to the gas station and have the tire changed and he changed it, I fussed at him. I didn't want him out in the cold changing a tire, he had high blood pressure and was wheezing a bit. He always said he had a touch of black lung from all those years around the mine. The Friday after Christmas, 1988, he came down with his shoes shined and a clean shirt, and said he was going over to Illinois for his lottery tickets. He died in the kitchen of a massive heart attack while eating a bowl of cereal. My boyfriend gave him CPR, two ambulances were there almost before I got off the phone, but it was no avail. He is buried in the family plot in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis. I moved to Florida in 1990. My mom died here in Florida in 1994. My father's ex wife Martha is still alive, lives in Georgia. Connie lives in California, Kate in Chicago, and Claudia lived in Springfield. I live in Altamonte Springs, a suburb of Orlando. | |
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© 2011 Wayne Hinton 
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