Yatesboro ... Raised in a Mining Town

You load 16 tons what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don't ya call me 'cause I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store.

— Tennessee Ernie Ford "Sixteen Tons"

CHET COPPOCK: Were so many people that naïve?

When Ford released his chartbuster in 1955, some people saw it as a happy-go-lucky tune about life in the mills. In reality, Ford, blessed with a magnificently rich baritone, was shedding musical tears for the plight of those people who seemed, at birth, to be glued forever to the physical and mental anguish of life in the mines.

Nothing else, just the mines and family and, maybe, religion.

Samuel Fred Buffone, Doug's father, could relate to Ernie Ford's mournful lyrics. No one had to tell him about black lung or the ever-present danger of working in a coal mine.

Sam began working the mines when he was in the sixth grade.

The job carried a big slice of heartbreak. Samuel lost a brother one day when the mine collapsed on him. The company paid for his brother's funeral.

Always the company and yes, Sam Buffone and his family always shopped at the aforementioned company store.

Damn near everybody in Yatesboro, Pennsylvania, struggled through life toting their lunch pails to and from the mine. It was the only existence most of the local folks really knew.

You were born. You worked the mine. And you died.

That's just the way it was.

Sam Buffone was lucky.

And smart.

After 30-plus years of grime, unbearable heat, and bone-jarring cold, along with aches that never took a day off, he got a job as a local cop.

However, he had trouble adjusting to his new career.

Doug will tell you that his father's rough-edged approach to life didn't really make him a fit for police blue. Samuel had his own kind of discipline.

With Sam, it wasn't necessarily, "We serve and protect." It was more like, "Don't screw around with me."

This was a very intense guy who was looking to imbue his hard-nosed way of life into his children.

Enter Douglas John Buffone.

DOUG BUFFONE: I don't think my dad ever made more than $6,000 a year. He was a tough man. He had forearms like Popeye and a voice like Dean Martin.

We did all our shopping at the company store and we lived in a company home. Our whole life revolved around the company. Damn near everybody's did. Really, it was all we knew.

I didn't have an expensive meal at a first-class restaurant until I went to Louisville to play football.

Our house didn't have any indoor plumbing. I bought a new house ... with plumbing, with my rookie signing bonus ($20,000) from the Bears.

Now, think about this. I was raised in the late '40s and early '50s and we had an outhouse. That's why I loved to play football, basketball, and baseball during high school. It meant I could actually take a shower every day.

It also meant that during the winters, I had to go out and shovel coal to keep the rest of the family warm. There were seven kids and we lived in a four-room house made up of two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a living room.

That's it.

Once a month, sewage guys would come along with a giant hose and retrieve the waste from the outhouse into a truck. They were called honey dippers. It was really country. I guess maybe 500 people lived in our town.

The area was a melting pot. We had Italians, Germans, Poles, and Irish. We were all poor. We used to call wealthy guys "cake eaters," families that were so rich that they "could have their cake and eat it, too."

We didn't hate them, but we sure as hell resented them.

I can remember when I was real young, I wandered over to a cake eater's house and this old man screamed at me, "Get off my lawn, you goddamn Dago."

Jeez, I didn't know what the word meant. So, I went home and asked my Pop, "What's a Dago?"

I really can't remember what dad said to me, but I'll never forget this. The old man went over to the guy who called me a Dago and just beat the living shit out of him.

Dad used to work out on a speed bag. The cake eater never knew what hit him.

Dad was a really nice guy, but everyone knew: "Don't piss him off."

COPPOCK: You were a pretty good athlete, too.

BUFFONE: Yeah, I played the big three: football, basketball, and baseball.

COPPOCK: Long before Tommy Lasorda became the High Priest of all things "Dodger Blue," he began his career with "Dem Bums" as a scout.

This was back in the early '60s, long before Lasorda took over the Dodgers' lineup card from Walter "Smoky" Alston. And Lasorda has told me on a number of occasions that the best catcher he had ever scouted was Doug Buffone.

BUFFONE: I really loved baseball, even more than football.

I didn't like watching games, but I loved to play ball. There was something about hitting a home run that I just loved. So, I'm playing three sports and I'm also playing the trumpet.

Lasorda said to me, "I want you to be part of the Dodgers." Tommy sold me hard. Tom also wanted to sign Joe Namath, who was from Beaver Falls, about an hour away from Yatesboro.

He said he'd give me $6,000 if I signed. I'd never seen any money in my life. I really wanted to sign.

But my mother, Adeline, and my old man told me they wouldn't let me sign. They were determined that I was going to go to college. I was a good student in high school. They were right about college.

I had one other option.

I was serious about becoming a priest. I even met with our local padre to talk about my future. We were a very close town when it came to religion. I was thinking about it as a vocation.

However, when I told my dad I was thinking about becoming a priest, he looked me right in the eye and said, "What are you, a moron?" Shortly after that, I lost my virginity in Yatesboro.

My old man knew...