Dust

I grew up in a Kentucky coal mining community. Most people picture mountainous hollers of Appalachia, but my hometown was a world away, way out west in the Ohio River valley. There the land is largely rolling and transitioning to the plains. The people are not Hollywood's Hillbillies. They are crossroads people, crossbred people. I am part quiet southerner, part strong mid-westnerner, part rural northerner, and (probably) part Native American. Trace far enough back, and my people were the literal "brother against brother" in the Civil War mythos.

My family and my friends' families crawled into a cave at the break of dawn. They crawled back out again (hopefully) at dusk, their clothes as covered in black coal dust as their lungs. My classmates probably remember one particular morning in high school. The announcement said that a number of men had been killed in a mining accident. That explained some of the absent kids.

When I was young, though not a child, probably a pre-teen or teenager, my uncle and I went by his mines to pick up something he left at work. It was closed for the day. Before leaving he took me to the mouth of the cave to see inside. I'm a curious sort. I've always liked seeing new things. I've never been remotely claustrophobic, but I do hate heights. Standing on a bridge or roof, my palms drip and my knees quiver. I muster willpower and logic to prevent panic. I really hate heights. Confined, tight places have only one time caused any anxiety. Though the mouth of the tunnel was huge and I was barely ten feet inside, dread and terror seized me. My eyes and breathing must have alerted my uncle.

We turned back. Ten feet, that was the furthest I've ever been into a coal mine.

I won't pretend to understand any of what miners experience. Thankfully, I have no frame of reference. At work the closest thing I come to a coal mine is an air-conditioned edit bay. It's dimly lit; the shades remain drawn. But there's no fear of cave-in. The keyboard won't yank off a finger. The hard drives, spinning 5000 times per second, have no chance of chopping me in two. The air is fresh. Water in the refrigerator is filtered. The cleaner wipes away the traces of dust every Wednesday evening.

Like most of my friends, following footsteps into that dark career was never to be an option. Our families sacrificed themselves, sometimes quite literally, so that we would never have to. I do not recall it being a lesson explicitly taught, but I know that it was one well learned. Songwriter Pat Haney said it with more poetry than I could: "When I draw my dying breath, it won't be over no coal."