Apr 26, 2013 4 min read

Some people tell a story so well, they mesmerize you. This happened last year when I visited Ed Jackson, 89, of Ohiopyle. His tales were so compelling, I knew I would go back when we could record his life story. He will be 90 in June.

I recently joined his family to record his tales. He had planted black walnut trees and grape vines with his daughter, Tammy, earlier that day. I knew when I met him that he is not an average man.

Ed’s father was Barton Jackson of Ohiopyle. When he was 18, he went to Reedsville to work in the steel mills where he lost his leg. Bart came home and worked on his uncle’s farm on Kentuck Mountain. He saved his money, buying himself an artificial leg. He had a 6-inch stump while working on the farm, mind you. He was paid $8 per month by the mill until he bought the leg, then they felt he was fit to work and stopped paying him. It was the early 1920s.

He had other pressing matters on his mind, namely, Alice in Reedsville. Bart could not read or write, so his sister wrote the love letter that brought Alice to the mountains. They married.

When I asked if he remembered the Depression he said, “I do recall the day dad came home and said he had no job. The timber outfit he worked for shut down. Mom cried.”

Dad said, “We have this farm. It’s not much, but we can grow food.” And they did.

Ed worked on the farm as a kid. He was nine years old when they cleared the nearby plot for Kentuck Church. He had a strong horse named King, whom Elmer Wallace hooked to a large oak tree. Ed knew the tree was way too big. “Make him go,” Wallace ordered.

“I kicked King in the ribs. The harness broke, and I went rolling out over the yard. No bones were broke.”

“Get on that horse!” Wallace yelled as he pitched the young Jackson up on King.

Stories like this make me realize how Norman Rockwell-like my childhood was. Ed remembers helping his father pour the cement for the church basement. It was cold, so Bart had them build barrel fires to dry the floor. They stayed up all the entire cold autumn night. “We put corn fodder around the outside, too, to keep it warm.”

He then drove a horse team logging in the woods at 13 years old for his uncle. He was paid room, board and 50 cents. “You got fed but no money. They used it for coal. I lived close-by, so I didn’t need boarding.” Ed was unimpressed with that deal so he went to work logging for my grandfather, Buck Marietta.

Ed started working full time after eighth grade. He, Rob Taylor and Buck dragged trees in to the sawmill below Kentuck Church. Tug (Morrison) and Jim and Bob (Marietta) worked the mill. One day when Rob arrived back for lunch, the men had eaten everything from his bucket, filling it with horse poo. They then tied it to a sapling. He had to cut the tree, which threw his bucket. The hungry Taylor also got to wash his bucket out.

“Besides that, when did you have fun?” I had to ask.

“We had two swimming holes. That’s where we bathed. On Saturday nights we went to Ohiopyle to a show.”

Before WWII Ed worked in a coal mine near Smithfield. His natural engineering aptitude had his boss trying to keep him from going oversees. He did go for 35 months. Here, he was trained as a specialist engineer to place runways behind enemy lines.

I am writing a more in-depth article about Ed’s life. His ingenuity is evident in his beautiful five-bedroom home, which he built at 68 years old, without designs, by hand. He tapped his temple, “I had it all up here.”

Marci McGuinness is the author of 28 books including “Ohiopyle, That Little Town, WWII with Lillian McCahan. Contact her at: 724 710-2919 or shorepublications@yahoo.com. Details: www.uniontownspeedway.com and www.ohiopyle.info.