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The other miners knew their friend&rsquo;s young son was terrified of bears. So after they&rsquo;d sent the boy to a wooded area to fill their water bottles, one of them sneaked up behind him, rustled the brush and growled.
				Convinced that the fierce sound meant he was in danger of being eaten, young Louis R. Scatena tore off in the opposite direction, flinging water bottles as he ran.
				A few years later, in 1959, he&rsquo;d leave the Pittston area to join the service. And if you ask him what was more difficult &mdash; the U.S. Marine Corps basic training, or some of his earlier experiences helping his father extract coal from the ground &mdash; he&rsquo;ll say it was the latter.
				&ldquo;I was never afraid for my life with the Marines,&rdquo; Scatena, 78, said in a telephone interview from Phoenix, Ariz., where he now lives. &ldquo;But I was afraid for my life in the coalfields,&rdquo; he said, chuckling a bit as he related the &ldquo;bear&rdquo; incident.
				Scatena, who has enjoyed a long career as a structural engineer, recently published his memories of growing up in coal country in a book titled &ldquo;Anthracite Boot Camp.&rdquo;
				&ldquo;I intended it mostly as a tribute to my father. He was my hero. He was like Superman to me,&rdquo; Scatena said, crediting the late Pete Scatena with teaching him the value of hard work, focus and diligence.
				Pete Scatena worked not in a large mine but in &ldquo;dog holes&rdquo; where coal seams slanted upward to the surface, roof rock was thin and, the author says, &ldquo;all of the safety issues that confronted miners in the large collieries were multiplied.&rdquo;
				The cover of the book is an image Louis Scatena drew to portray a dramatic scene from his youth. &ldquo;The dragline&rsquo;s bucket is mired in mud in the picture,&rdquo; he described it, &ldquo;and my father is battling with the controls to free the bucket as the dragline tips closer and closer to the deep pit.&rdquo;
				Along with some local and international history of mining, Scatena book includes stories about his family that offer intriguing glimpses into the lives of people who left Italy for America and the hope of a better future.
				Readers will meet Nonno, his paternal grandfather, who had worked in Italy&rsquo;s lignite coal mines and &mdash; perhaps proudly, Scatena speculates &mdash; listed his occupation as &ldquo;miner&rdquo; instead of &ldquo;laborer&rdquo; on the ship&rsquo;s manifest of the SS Cretic when he emigrated from Naples in 1908.
				You&rsquo;ll also meet Nonna, a widow whose marriage to Nonno was arranged through an introduction by her sister Adele.
				And you&rsquo;ll learn that, on the other side of Scatena&rsquo;s family, another marriage was also arranged by a sibling, apparently with less delicacy.
				The young woman who would become his maternal grandmother, Maria, had been living on Parsonage Street in Pittston with her brother Mike and his family until her brother became impatient and demanded that she find a husband. Her brother even placed a newspaper advertisement to that effect and after, Maria rejected a few suitors, told her she&rsquo;d have to marry the next man who came through the door. The next man was Scatena&rsquo;s grandfather Nicholo.
				&ldquo;What I wouldn&rsquo;t give to have a copy of that ad,&rdquo; Scatena said, wondering what it might have said.
				Scatena recounts how his relatives survived hard times, not only mining but hunting birds, snaring rabbits and groundhogs, sewing clothes from flour sacks, tending vegetable gardens and gathering wild blueberries, mushrooms and dandelions.
				His Aunt Della, his father&rsquo;s older half-sister, also told Scatena how Nonna would bribe the local truant officer with homemade red wine so the officer would overlook the fact that Aunt Della &ldquo;couldn&rsquo;t be spared&rdquo; to attend elementary school because she had to help out at home.
				As the years passed, education became more of a priority and Scatena&rsquo;s parents, Caroline and Pete, hoped he would become a doctor. But he didn&rsquo;t want to go to college immediately after graduating from Jenkins Township High School in 1959. Rather, he set his sights on the U.S. Marine Corps, and eventually his father agreed that he could enlist.
				His going-away party was in July 1959 and, a few weeks later, he was at rifle practice at Parris Island when his drill sergeant, seeming less gruff than usual, brought him a terse message: his mother wanted him to come home.
				Scatena didn&rsquo;t ask for specifics. He didn&rsquo;t want to hear the confirmation of his fears.
				But, he said, &ldquo;I knew what that meant,&rdquo; and he prepared to go home for &ldquo;the saddest day of my life.&rdquo;
				 Pete Scatena had been claimed by the mines. But the lessons he&rsquo;d taught his son would live on. They would be values Louis Scatena would strive to instill in his own three children, and to share with any readers interested in &ldquo;Anthracite Boot Camp.&rdquo; Copies are available through bookbaby.com.

Author remembers early experiences in ‘Anthracite Boot Camp’