Coal Mining

I found myself on the night of August 16^th 2007 sitting watching the news on MSNBC around midnight. There was BREAKING NEWS of the Utah mine disaster. Dan Abrams was reporting and said that nine rescue workers had been injured a "Mountain Bump" which is an underground explosion. They came back a few minutes later and said that one of the nine had in fact died.

This of course reminded me once again of the Sago Mine and tragedy that happened there not long ago. I also began to remember stories that my Grandmother use to tell me about living in a mining community in West Virginia when she was a little girl. I heard so many stories from my Grandmother in the years that she was with us. I remember sitting and listening to her stories of how life use to be, how things have changed and so on. After listening to the news late last night and early this morning I wished I could listen to my Grandmother's stories again.

My Great-Grandfather was a miner in that small mining community in West Virginia when my Grandmother was a little girl. She would often tell me the stories of the days back in that small mining community. I say small, but in my mind's eye I now believe it was bigger then what she remembered. Everyone in that area in those days worked in the mines or had a job dealing with a mining company. One of the stories I remember her telling me many, many times was about watching the miners coming home after a long, hard day under that cold hard West Virginia ground.

She told me this story always with a smile on her face. You could see in her eyes that she moved back in time remembering those days. She said that she and the other children of the miners would stand on top of a hill overlooking the direction of the mines. They would stand there as it started to get dark, and wait for their father's and grandfather's to come walking up the hill toward home, holding their lunch pails and carrying what little gear that they had such as head lanterns. She would get a grin on her face remembering that the nights in West Virginia when she was a little girl would be so dark. Then she would proceed to tell me no matter how dark it was you could always see the miners walking up the hill in that pitch black darkness. The black soot of the coal made the miners blacker then the night.

Thinking back on her stories of this, I mainly believe that they would stand on that hill waiting for their father's and grandfather's just to know that they were safe and had made it home one more time to be with their families. I also heard stories of tragedies of the mines in those days. Luckily my Great-Grandfather always made it home safe to my Great-Grandmother and all of his sons and daughters.

The mines then were much different then today. The thing I am sure that hasn't changed is the fear that the families of miners must feel everyday that their loved ones go off to go under the cold hard ground that is a coal mine. The fear they must feel never knowing what may happen in those hard dark places. The worry that must move over their minds when they hear that something has happened in their area.

The days and years that my Great-Grandfather was a miner also had many more dangers then the people of the mines face in this day and age. The lack of protection for the miners then was just a fact of life. They knew the dangers of course but they did what they had to do to provide for their families and to survive at that point in time. It could take years and years for the effects of the long days in the mine to show, but for so many miners the day came when they would find out they had numerous health problems that could be traced back to those years they spent in those mines. My Great-Grandfather was one of the men that years later had these effects ravage his body.

I remember my Great-Grandfather when I was really young. I can remember him walking and talking without becoming exhausted from the effort. I remember him working in his garden and sitting in the kitchen with a cup of percolated coffee. In fact I remember those days so well, that I can still see his kitchen table, his coffee cup and him sitting there with it in his hands. As I got older my Great-Grandfather found out that he had "black lung" from all those years under the earth. I also heard this disease referred to as "miner's lung" and "coal lung". All the older people when I was younger referred to it as something different, however it all came down to a slow, painful death.

I remember watching my Great-Grandfather go from working in the garden to being bed ridden. I remember watching it become difficult for him to breath to the point that he was finally put on oxygen 24 hours a day. He slowly got to were his beautiful blue eyes would always water, then they became more red and blood shot then that beautiful blue that I can still see when I look at my own Mother's eyes.

I would go visit him and sit beside his bed by a big window overlooking the mountains behind my house. I would sit and tell him about the games all of his great-grandchildren were playing or what was going on at school. He had nicknames for all of us, he rarely called us by our given names. I honestly think it was easier to remember the nicknames then the real names of all of us. He always had candy to give us kids when we would visit him. I would talk with him and keep one eye on him and one eye on his huge white Persian cat, that cat was like his watch dog. I can remember sitting and watching him start to tire from the talking and slowly he would drift into a peaceful sleep.

Even at the young age I can remember thinking what I would do if I went to talk to him one day and he wouldn't be awake or wake up. I had dealt with death and knew what death meant by this time. I can remember thinking about what it must have been like for him knowing that all those years of being under the ground had reduced him to a shell of his former young, strong self.

I would sit and think about what would go through his mind everyday that he made the trip down the hill that my Grandmother and the other children would stand at the top of waiting for their loved ones. I wondered if he had fear everyday, or did it just become part of his life that he learned to deal with and not think about the dangers that waited for him and the other men. I never got the chance to ask him these questions. He passed away from the "black lung" disease that was tearing apart his body when I was still fairly small. In fact I called my Mother to ask when Grandpa Mack died so I could give you an age and year, however she couldn't remember and told me that she would call me when she got home with the date.

After the tragedies the last couple of years dealing with mines and the workers I always find myself thinking about my Great-Grandfather Mack. I always wonder with all the technology available that can drill the mines, and feed the coal and other material out why in the world we are still putting these people at risk. I realize that people can still do some of the things better and more thoroughly then machines. However, there has to be something done to help combat these tragedies. The useless loss of human life for a natural resource that can be gathered in other methods upsets me to no end.

I started to research for this piece to add some facts to it as well. I came across a wonderful description from Merle Travis who wrote "Dark as a Dungeon" and his quote is this "It's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew, when the danger is double and the pleasures are few, where the rain never falls and sun never shines, it's dark as a dungeon way down in the mine." On the site with this quote there are many wonderful links to describe the old days of mining, the ways of the mining industry today, and some stories of people from the mines. The site is called West Virginia Coal Mining.

Some interesting facts about mining that I found are that coal is more plentiful then natural gas. According to the National Mining Association coal thus far has been found in 38 states in our country, 13% of the land in the United States is coal material, and it is currently produced in 26 of the 38 states that it has been discovered. Also on the National Mining Associations site they have many more facts and figures about mining. As if the deaths and injures aren't enough as is, the site says that the mining industry will need about 50,000 new miners in the next ten years to recover from miners that are retiring, and in my opinion to replace the ones that are killed doing their jobs.

Some other links for mining facts can be found at the following: West Virginia Coal Mining Facts, Coal Mining, Coal Education, and Coal History