I TOO WAS BORNED A COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER...

"Daddy Miner" By Skitch

My dad tells a story about me that's even more unbelievable than the one my mother tells of me "reading" when I was yet too small to even sit up. I said I'd write about that story next and so I will. I like to keep promises...




THEN:                      
                       
I Too Was Borned a Coal Miner's Daughter


My father can beat a moat around the proverbial bush when he wants to, but lying has never been his thing. Even before he started going the church and became a preacher, he wasn't much of a liar. The only "lies" I've ever caught him in were before he became religious; they were temporary and "kind". And I didn't "catch" him, actually; he told on himself sooner or later. My first horse, for instance, "ran away with the wild horses". (He didn't fall over a cliff and die because he was completely blind.) Dad couldn't look into a two year old's eyes and tell her that her horsie was dead. So, that horse ran away with the wild horses. It was twelve years and a dozen horses later when he told me the truth.

After Dad became religious he stuck to beating around the bush, and I was usually let in on the bush beating. It was like I was being trained on how to tell the truth but no more than the truth, on how to take things very literally. Dad would make an excellent witness in the courtroom. "Yes" and "No" are two of his favorite answers. Too bad he's never had to testify.

Pop worked in the coal mines when I was a baby. This was in the days when there were no regulations and most miners sold their youth and their health to the company store for just enough to eek out a poor living for their families. Big Money Man had swooped into Southwest Virginia, conned the locals out of their piece of the hard mountain, and then put their sons to work underneath it. Big Money Man paid very little for the land and then he paid those sons next to nothing and endangered them as well, but that was not enough for him. He then tied those sons to the company store making it nearly impossible for them to get out of mining and do any other kind of work. This is the heritage that so many of my relatives are "proud of".

"You dang right my grandpappy was a greedy fool that sold my heritage for next to nothing and ruined my part of the world! Dang right we're still making Big Money Man rich while continuing to ruin what should have been our inheritance but is now his kids' inheritance! Dang right we're destroying the community and possibly the entire world in the bargain! Go mining!"

Don't get me wrong, I love my miners, especially my daddy! But it's high time this generation woke up and smelled the carbide. Mining is something that someone should be paid a lot more for than our miners are paid or have ever been paid. It's also something that should be regulated heavily so that our children can have some of those cool things in nature like we did, you know - like oxygen. Today's miners are risking their lives, not for wealth of their own or to save the world. They are risking their lives to make someone else rich and to destroy the land for their own grandchildren. They need to insist on better pay and they desperately need to embrace the same regulations that brought miners a little safety and the ability to stop "owing their soul to the company store," as Merle Travis said. They need to support other forms of energy because coal is going to die out, it has to.. or we will. But instead many of them perk their ears up when the current Big Money Man talks. Big Money doesn't want to give up even a portion of his millions or even billions to follow some common sense regulations that his greedy butt should have been following in the first place, so he drums up a lot of votes for the un-eco friendly politicians, the ones that put their priorities where Big Money does, making the rich man richer whatever the cost. He drums up these votes by saying the regulations are "putting him out of business" and "costing the miners their jobs". If anything is costing the miners their jobs (and their health and sometimes their lives) it's Big Money Man's GREED! You don't have to look hard to find evidence of it. It's in the ugly strip jobs that dapple our once majestic Appalachian Mountains. It's in the grandfathers and fathers struggling with black lung or other conditions that suck the air right out of them. You don't even have to look at the miners that were killed in unsafe conditions... But you should.

Mining is rough work, hard and dangerous, even today with the regulations the mine owners SOMETIMES follow, but in the days when my daddy slaved away at it, mining was even tougher. There were no protective regulations for either the miner or his community. There was none of that sissy standing up and using a mattock in big powerful swings that they show in the movies. Dad saved those swings for chopping wood for warmth and cooking. They did not have big machines and electricity down there, and they didn't do much walking around. He was mostly down on his knees, crawling through water, dirt, coal, and mud with a carbide lantern on his head, following a little slice of light. They used mules to pull out some of the coal but a great deal of it came out of the mountain by the miner's own steam. Dad got up before daylight, took his dinner bucket, forded a river that was sometimes skimmed over with ice, walked to work, worked in tough conditions, walked home fording the same river that evening. Sometimes he put bread bags on his feet to try to keep some of the ice cold water from getting into his skin. His feet cracked and his knees were cut and bruised. He missed the sunlight most days unless he had the opportunity to sit outside while eating his lunch. This is what many miners endured. Daddy did all this in poor health. He had ulcers that blocked the exit from his stomach. He would eat and not too long afterward he would lose everything he'd eaten. He vomited every day of his life, often more than once a day, for many years of his life. He lost all his teeth and he stayed painfully thin because his body wasn't given much time to absorb nutrition from the food he put in it. His stomach hurt so much and so often that he felt like staying doubled over. He once told me that mining was the perfect job for someone that couldn't stand up straight without a lot of pain. This is what my Pop endured in order to feed his family.

On the day the unbelievable happened my dad and his friend Arvil were alone working in the pitch black mountain. Other miners were off in another section, but right there, it was just the two of them. They finished what they could do alone and decided to turn off their lights while waiting on the other men to show up. They wanted to save the carbide for later and figured they didn't need to see how to rest. They'd figured that one out a long time ago. So, there they sat in a darkness so thick you could almost slice it, listening to each other breathe, resting. Then, my father says, he saw a light coming toward him. He sat up a bit more, but was too shocked to speak. The light got closer and he could see that it was me, crawling toward him. I was glowing. At home, I had just learned how to crawl and how to give big, fat, open-mouthed baby kisses. He used to call me "PossumFrog" and tell me, "You needn't growl. You can't bite. You have no teeth." But then I grew teeth, bit him, and he had to stop telling me that. He says that on that day, his PossumFrog crawled over to him in the dank belly of that mine, kissed him on the cheek, sadly, as though she were saying goodbye. Dad says I immediately disappeared. Cold chills ran up and down his spine and his stomach felt extra ill. He spoke to Arvil, telling him they had to get out of there. Arvil growled but he followed Dad out, if nothing else so he could be heard while he was complaining. They made it out in the sunlight and dad felt the sick in his stomach begin to abate some. They made their way up a hill and sat under a tree not far from the mouth of the mine. It was a hot day and the light was nearly blinding to two men that had spent so much time in pitch darkness. Arvil was raking my father over the coals about dragging him outside when they both heard a rumble deep under the ground, like Mother Earth was having her own stomach ache. Arvil hushed his complaining. Then they heard a loud crash and, after a long moment,  dirt and coal dust billowed from the mouth of the mine. Later, they explored the area and found that the very spot my dad and Arvil had been working had fallen in on itself. There would have been no pulling their bodies out for a funeral if Arvil and Dad had been there when it happened. Arvil didn't growl another grow about Dad and his crazy ideas. To this day, Dad says I saved his life, and I believe he is not lying and not beating around any bush. For all my forty-odd years the story has not changed. When he says I saved his life, I usually give him the same reply, "Well... I needed you." Because I did and do. I'd give my life for that man, a thousand times over, and if it is humanly (or spiritly) possible to send your soul to warn someone, I'd warn my daddy. I trust my daddy, and he has told me repeatedly that this actually happened. So, I believe in the unbelievable, and I thank God (who some find equally unbelievable) for whatever crazy thing happened in that mine that day. I was blessed. I was given a chance to know and love a very impressive and wonderful man.
Go tell it on the Mountain!