Coal Hollow
the text

If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined. Look around and focus for a moment on any random, manufactured object. The materials with which it was made came from the Earth; animal, plant, or mineral substances of some kind. No matter the origin, every object we buy has been processed by machines that were themselves shaped and tempered by white-hot, coke-fired foundries. The mining of coal is at the root of the magnificent abundance of things we create. Consider this sampling: batteries, aspirin, street paving, germicides, baking powder, toothpaste. This is on top of the electricity generated by burning coal. We all use coal. We all have a responsibility to know why this versatile substance is produced so cheaply.

My husband, Ken had been bringing back pictures from coalmining communities in West Virginia for three years, but I had not become completely engaged. The people in these photographs looked so poor that if I squinted my eyes, they might have been in Africa or Peru. It seemed to me that life had always been rough in Appalachia, but this degree of poverty was the ugliest, toughest poverty I had ever seen. It was too hard.

Then Ken brought home some archival panoramic photographs of miners and church groups from the 1940s and 1950s by Rufus Ribble. The difference between the old pictures and the new ones was striking. Those earlier miners looked like rough-and-tumble laborers, but they also looked more alive, as if they had pride in their ability to bring home a paycheck. The families seemed to have some energy and hope in the future. The kids wore clean clothes that matched and fit, and they looked alert and happy. How could conditions have so deteriorated in forty years?

The answers I found to this question are contained in the essay, the oral histories and the visual record of this book. The experience of traveling through the region was richly rewarding in many ways and I hope you get as much out of this as I did.

Adapted from “Field Notes”
By Melanie Light, ©2005

Please click here for an exerpt from one of Coal Hollow's Oral Histories

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