Only a narrow channel of open water near the distant bank of the Kanawha River visible on Friday, January 24th.
Editor’s Note:
The scene of a narrow channel of open water on the Kanawha River at the Winfield Bridge on Friday, January 24th, brought to mind a submission by the late Fred McCallister published in the January 9, 2014, issue of the Breeze. Fred recalls a winter in which the Kanawha River was completely frozen over.
His story follows.
Ice Fishing On Bills Creek
By Fred D. McCallister
January 9, 2014
We (Ella, Oscar, Woodrow, Pansy and Fred McCallister) were living on the “Sid” Morgan place in the winter of 1939-40.
We had the old slave kitchen, which was our main residence, and we also had two bedrooms in the old Morgan mansion where four of us slept. Mother “Ella” and Pansy slept in one room at the top of the stairs on the northwest side of the house. Woodrow and Fred slept in the room across the hall at the top of the stairs on the southeast side of the house. Oscar slept on a roll-a-way bed in the old kitchen where he kept the fire burning all night to keep everything, including himself, from freezing. The upstairs bedrooms had no heat.
That winter the weather got really bad. It began by having a big, eight-or ten-inch snow, and then the weather turned cold and everything began to freeze. The running streams froze over along with the swamps of which there were many in the flat, bottom ground. With all the streams and ponds frozen over with four to six inches of ice, it was hard for the farmers to keep a place where their animals could get water. (Horses will eat enough snow, if there is snow for them to eat and make it through winterís frozen times. However, cows will not eat snow; they must have liquid water in order to survive.) Not only creeks and swamps froze over, but the Kanawha River began to freeze over also.
The Coast Guard ran an ice cutter up the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers from down on the Mississippi River. That ice cutter cut a path up the center of the river to Charleston and docked for the night. The next morning the ice had frozen over the path that the boat had made going up the river, and the ice cutter was stuck in the ice and it could not get back down the next day. The boat stayed in Charleston several days until things began to thaw!
With all the running water being covered with ice, the cows in the community of Bills Creek could not drink. Mr. Clate Tincher lived with his family in the old Thompson Mansion. (This mansion house sat on the creek bank, about 200 yards back from old Route 17 on the west rim of the property where the John Amos Power Plant now sits.) Mr. Tincher had gone over the bank, down into the Bills Creek bottoms and to the creek which ran behind the Thompson Mansion, and cut two or three holds in the ice about three foot square in order that his cows and horses could get water to drink.
The animals were thirsty and they followed Mr. Tincher down to the frozen creek area and were waiting for him to cut the ice. After he cut the first hole, he moved upstream a few yards and began cutting the second hold. As he worked there, he noticed that the animals were not drinking from the first hole, although they were thirsty. He watched for a minute and they would start to drink and then just jump back from the waterhole and stand and look at it. Mr. Tincher walked over to see why that his livestock was not drinking and found a very unusual thing taking place.
The hole in the ice was filled with large fish. They were all standing on their tails with their mouths extended above the surface of the water. They were opening and closing their mouths as if they were eating something. When the mystery was solved, the fish were starving for oxygen.

Community Center.