Travel blog

Dateline July 10, 2019, Beckley and the Coal Mine

Having loved the Soudan mine last year, we went down into the Beckley Exhibition Coal Mine in West Virginia, riding the mantrip five hundred feet in behind a guide who spent twenty years underground. He showed us the thirty-inch seams worked on hands and knees, the rats that meant the air was safe, and twenty cents a ton for a brutal day's labor. Above ground, a whole company town, homes, church, school, and the store that kept a man in debt, told the rest of the story.