Preserving history
A look back at 71 years of the King Coal Show
Brice Rush still remembers his first King Coal Show.
It came in 1957, when his dad took Rush and his twin brother to the show after they’d finished milking the cows at their dairy farm in Khedive.
“He gave us each $1,” Rush said. “I spent mine on a Coke and hamburger, and still had 65 cents left.”
Rush wasn’t about to burn it on rides. “I had enough rides at the farm,” he said.
Instead, he had his eye on another prize: a bag of 100 cat’s-eye marbles.
“When the show was almost over, I said, ‘Hey, Mister, you sell me this bag of them marbles?'” Rush said. “He said, “Yeah, 10 cents.’ So I bought 300 marbles.”
Rush still has the jar of marbles, which he showed to visitors at his home Monday afternoon. Visitors can see those and a trove of King Coal Show and coal mining memorabilia at this year’s 71st annual festival, which runs from Aug. 22-29 in Carmichaels.
Brice and his wife, Linda, have been amassing vintage coal mining material from the area for the past 44 years.
They bring a display to the festival each year, rotating items from their vast collection.
In keeping with the theme of this year’s show, “Remembering the Past,” they looked back through their archives for displays dating back to the early days of the festival.
All 71 of the King Coal Show program books will be on display. In the weeks before this year’s Coal Show, Brice Rush has been busy building his own frames.
Another frame holds a collection of dash plaques, given away at the festival’s auto show. Brice’s collection only takes back to 1960, but he knows of ones dating back at least five years earlier.
“I’ll probably never pick those plaques up, but I’m looking for them,” he said.
When Cabbage Patch Kids were a hot enough commodity to provoke fights in the 1980s, Brice Rush was able to get a hold of one to benefit a nonprofit.
He converted the doll into a “Coal Patch Kid.” A dog collar became a pit belt. He also converted a Dairy Queen baseball helmet into a miner’s helmet, with illumination coming from the reflector he took from a dollar flashlight.
The Coal Patch Kids were all raffled off, but Brice Rush revived the tradition with newer generations of toys, like the Coal Troll he’s bringing to this year’s fair.
The collection keeps growing, both from items they purchase and from donations brought to their home.
“They know if they give it to us, they can come back and see it,” Linda Rush said. “It might take a while to find it, but we’ll have it.”
And every August, they share some of their material with the public at the King Coal Show.
“No one else will do it, so I do it,” said Rush, who started his own mining career in the Robena Mine nearly 57 years ago. “We’re trying to preserve the history of her grandparents and parents, and my uncles, and of course I was working in the mine too. We’re just trying to preserve the history.”
For a full schedule of this year’s King Coal Show, go to facebook.com/kingcoalassociation.