There was a boy who died in a place that’s not here anymore that came from a place that’s not here anymore and this unassuming, apparently average boy grew to be most extraordinary and heroic at critical moments of his life. His name was Clarkie Mayfield and he called Black Star, Kentucky his home.

Black Star Coal Camp was on the way to nowhere, that is unless Black Star was the destination. There was one road in, winding past other forgotten towns like Blackmont, Blacksnake, Insull and Pathfork. So obscure was Black Star, while it was located in Harlan County, the only road into the landlocked Black Star wound through Bell County and then back into Harlan County.

Literally Black Star was the last stop on the road, which ended at the mountain that served as the backdrop to the town.

To go further, one had to turn around and retrace their path.

The town was founded by the Black Star Coal Company and while the town was officially known as Alva, it was always just Black Star. It was well-served by coal trains, but passenger service stopped at Blackmont, some eight miles up the road.

As coal camps went, Black Star was a model community. There was a well-stocked company store, featuring many locally produced products. The town also had a grocery, a butcher, a furniture store, a barber, a post office and mining offices, all situated in the same building. Everything was within walking distance, the miners living in a well-maintained company homes.

Paid every two weeks in cash, an armored car brought the pay in from Blackmont. The cash could be exchanged for scrip, which was accepted everywhere but the Post Office.

Life was full in Black Star and the company-owned homes could be rented cheaply. They all had running water and electricity, which not all the hollows had at that time. Coal was free of course and so too was firewood – residents did have to cut it themselves.

A child in Black Star had plenty to do. There was a swimming hole (ice cold in the summer) at School House Holler. Under a tent in the summertime, a roller skating rink was maintained. Teenagers hung out at a frozen custard stand and sometimes gathered for parties.

In Black Star there was always something going on. It was a big time for young people to gather and just be together. To put the simpleness of the time in context, at one party seven different kinds of Kool-Aid were served. That didn’t just mean Kool-Aid mixed with water. It was Kool-Aid with seven different types of booze, moonshine, there was always moonshine, bourbon, gin and whatever else the bootleggers had. While the bootleggers wouldn’t sell to the kids, a third-party could always be enlisted for a bribe of a few dollars.

And if the Kool-Aid worked and romance struck, there were plenty of places to park in the hollow.

The most significant drawback to coal camp life was the ubiquitous coal dust. It was everywhere and couldn’t be avoided, a small price some thought to pay for this little piece of mountain paradise.

If there was trouble, and there wasn’t much trouble in Black Star, residents couldn’t depend on the Harlan County Sheriff to come. It was just too far and in any event, they weren’t about to come all that way to the clannish coal camp. If there was minor trouble, they sorted it out in Black Star with two elected constables and a nightwatchman.

At one point, a constable had an old Mercury and put a flashing blue light on top. But most teenagers in town could outrun that pseudo-police cruiser and head into the hills. If any real trouble came to Black Star, the call would be to the Kentucky State Police.

The town was isolated but a television antenna was placed on a nearby ridgeline and residents could receive stations from Knoxville and sometimes as far as Charlotte. The Knoxville News-Sentinel arrived every day.

Black Star also had a school, a good one, that covered all twelve grades in a single building. The school fielded competitive athletic teams in football, baseball and basketball, all accompanied by a uniformed marching band.

It was the one high school football field in the region that didn’t have lights. Any game at Black Star was played on the dusty field in the daytime. There weren’t bleachers either and spectators stood around and watched standing several feet deep off the sideline.

Black Star ceased to be in 1960 as the country started to move to electric heat from coal. The town shut its doors, the houses were torn down and sold as scrap. In short order, the town’s main building was gone and the ball field was overgrown. Today there is little to inform a visitor that this hollow was home to such a vibrant community.

They weren’t rich in Black Star, but they felt rich. Their houses were warm and comfortably furnished. The food was good and plentiful, including sausage and bacon for breakfast. For dinner, there were fried pork chops and wild game too, including squirrel and rabbit with biscuits.

Clarkie Mayfield came of age in Black Star and was its star on the football field. A likeable and popular boy, he was thought of as happy-go-lucky. He grew up with plenty of everything by Black Star standards. His father was a coal miner and his mother was the town’s revered 3^rd grade teacher.

In the summertime, there was nothing better for Clarkie and his neighbor friend, Nancy Hooker (she was a year younger), than to make a trip on foot to Virginia. They would get up early in the morning and make the seven-mile walk (one-way) over the mountain. They’d know it was time to turn around when they saw the sign at the state line.

Up early, they’d pack their food with them. Nancy brought biscuits, and Clarkie had a jar with onions (he loved onions) mushed cornbread and milk all mixed together. If they got thirsty along the way, there wasn’t anywhere to buy a soda pop. They just drank from the creek.

Along the way, there was all sorts of wildlife to be seen, deer, turkey, bobcats and the occasional bear. But on the way over the mountain, it was a community of sorts. If a bear had been in the area, mountain folk would warn them to take another ridge.

And the people of the mountains, those that really lived on the mountain, isolated from the world, roads and everything else, were good to Clarkie and Nancy, sharing whatever they had along the way. It would start on the way out of town. Old Man Green Rose, heading up to harvest ginseng and sassafras would give them a ride on his mule for part of the way.

As they traversed through old logging roads, there were others too in the mountains, the boys who’d gone AWOL from Korea and were still hiding in caves and abandoned cabins – government men sometimes came to Black Star in shiny sedans, but no one would tell them anything, no more than the so-called revenuers who looked fruitlessly for moonshine stills.

Nancy’s father, who worked a logging truck, would sometimes bring these lost boys in the mountains food and cigarettes. But there wasn’t a danger in the world to the children. Clarkie and Nancy had only to be back off the mountain before dark, that is, before the bobcats came out.

The trip to Virginia made for a long day, but in the summertime, they’d make the walk as children every week or two. There was adventure and excitement in the wonderment of the pristine mountain. They collected buckets of arrowheads and there was plenty of shiny fool’s gold too. If they got hungry, there were abundant blackberries and two kinds of mountain grapes, scuppernongs and muscadines.

It was pretty good living for a boy in Black Star.

As Clarkie moved into his senior year of high school, he was expected to lead Black Star to gridiron glory in 1958. The Harlan Daily Enterprise previewed the team that fall, describing Black Star as "ballyhooed" and a contender for the Cumberland Valley Conference title.

That was saying something in Black Star which until the year before, with Clarkie leading the way, had not enjoyed a winning season since 1941.

Clarkie had played a big role the year before and was expected to do so again at quarterback, the local daily calling him "one of the smartest in the business." That this was the special brand being mountain football, it was discussed that the Black Star squad would have thirty players and this distinction impressed upon the reader that a lot of boys had turned out. Clarkie and most of the other boys would play both ways.

One boy, a small freshman on the team, Earl Rice, III, had an unusual distinction that season that suggested football was not in his future. The Black Star coach, Bill Terrell, remarked that Earl was a "place kick holder specialist" meaning it seems likely, that the boy couldn’t do much else.

The Black Star schedule in 1958 was competitive, but unlike the large public schools in the state that traveled far and wide to play, Black Star would play most of its games without leaving Harlan County, that is except to retrace back through Bell County to the Kingdom Come Highway. [The apocalyptically named highway runs from Pineville to Harlan and to go from Black Star to Harlan, one would reverse down the valley to Kingdom Come and then head east back towards Harlan.]

The local opponents for Black Star included Hall (Cawood Ledford’s alma mater), Loyall, Evarts, Wallins, Rosenwald, Benham and Cumberland. This was a time when Harlan County boasted a population of nearly 70,000. It is less than half that today, and thus there was a lot of good competition nearby. The furthest trip by a long shot for Clarkie’s Eagles that year would be to play powerful Somerset.

1958 opened well for Black Star as it crushed Hall 34-0, Clarkie leading the way. Described as a triple threat, running, passing and kicking, Clarkie scored on two long runs, kicked four extra points and added two interceptions for good measure.

The next week Black Star was to meet Loyall at the stadium in Harlan. However the afternoon kickoff was called off as the two referees for the game, traveling together towards Harlan, became entangled in traffic from the town’s Black Diamond Parade. Waiting an hour and finding no suitable replacement in the stands (at least two that both Black Star and Loyall could agree upon), the game was called.

The lay-off didn’t slow Black Star which routed Leslie County 60-0 in Hyden a week later. The first big test came the following Friday back in the county against Evarts which was led by a powerful fullback, Perky Bryant. [Perky would sign with Kentucky a year later.] The game was a 6-6 draw.

Then to the away game with Somerset, Black Star acquitted itself well against the Briar Jumpers, but fell 19-6. That loss ended any chance of a playoff berth for Black Star, but in Harlan County, that wasn’t as important as being the best in the Mountains.

Black Star won its last four games of the year, defeating Wallins, Barbourville, Benham and Cumberland. In every game, Clarkie was the face of Black Star, setting up touchdowns with his defense, then scoring on dazzling runs and finally adding the extra points himself. He literally did it all.

Their impressive record, with just one loss and a tie, earned Black Star a spot in the 1^st ever Black Diamond Bowl against Harlan High at the county seat’s Huff Park. In a seesaw game, Black Star was better by a 27-14 margin. In his last game with Black Star, Clarkie scored on a punt return and added an interception. [A sophomore for Harlan, Howard Mize, who would be a Kitten in 1961, had scored twice for Harlan’s Green Dragons.]

Winning the Cumberland Valley Conference was a momentous accomplishment for Black Star and so too was his being named a third-team All-Stater. Such an honor wasn’t unusual in Harlan; there was a plethora of talent in the county, but it was exceptional, almost unheard of, for a Black Star boy to gain such recognition.

Clarkie’s accolades on the field brought some recruiting attention. Had they looked closer, it would have been apparent that Clarkie wasn’t very fast, wasn’t very strong and maybe was something less than an SEC football player. He was described as a player that could "run all day in a shoebox", that is, he had a long stride but didn’t cover much ground. Blanton Collier signed Clarkie and would find a place for him in the Kentucky family.

Clarkie loved Black Star, it was home, but he wasn’t coming back to the Mountains. He would not be a coal miner like his daddy.

Arriving in Lexington in the fall of 1959, it didn’t take long for Collier and his coaching staff to sum up Clarkie’s talent. There was just one thing he could do and do well in the SEC – that was to kick. For his first three years in Lexington (1959 to 1961), that’s all Clarkie did in practice and in games.

But he did it well. In 1960 as a sophomore, it was Clarkie’s leg that keyed Kentucky past LSU 3-0. He also had a big kick in UK’s 10-10 tie in the final game of 1960 against Tennessee. In his two varsity years, while Clarkie was only on the field twenty-five minutes, he accounted for 56 points, making seven of twelve field goals, the rest representing extra points.

Clarkie was also inducted in 1960 into the K-Men’s club, a fraternity of sorts that represented varsity letter winners. Inductees were taken to a barn outside of town and made to run a gauntlet of paddles. In a scene right out of Animal House, players grabbed their ankles and asked for another paddling.

Things got out of hand in 1960 and Clarkie took a beating that put him in the hospital. It was first feared that he would lose a kidney, but Clarkie quickly recovered. Coach Collier was none too happy to hear about the hazing and the off-the-field K-Man antics were significantly toned down after that.

Coming into 1962, Clarkie a stout 204 pounds (he stood 6'1" tall), had maybe gotten a little soft in the Collier regime, mostly working on his kicking and drinking beer when he didn’t kick. All he had to do was make his kicks on Saturday, drink his beer Saturday night and that was plenty enough for him.

He was a kicker after all and what kicker is involved in hitting drills? What would be the purpose?

January 1962 would be a sudden and rude awakening for Clarkie.