Today I was given the chance to look into the past and the future of coal in West Virginia. The history found in the Coal Exhibition Mine www.beckley.org/exh was wonderfully enhanced by the richness of our guide's story telling ability and the sound of his West Virginian dialect. You really got a sense of the courage and dedication it must have required for the workers to have crawled into that mine on a daily basis. I don't believe for a second that these men worked the mine out of dispare or lack of opportunity. They could have walked away or found something easier but I believe they were dedicated to their families, their fellow workers, and there was a sense of pride in the work that they were doing. Even Marvin, our guide, responded with that same sense of accomplishment in his voice when he said " I was in the mines for 24 years."
Touring the coal mining camp was one of the highlights of the trip. Seeing how the miners and their families lived, being in rooms that they walked in with things they possibly touched really brought allowed me to
paint a picture in my head of what their life may have been like. However, being a sceptic I believe I saw the best examples of a coal camp minus the layers of coal dust that must have covered everything and I still cling to images of extreme poverty that I previously thought existed everywhere in all coal camps.
From the past to the future of coal in our time travel adventure, our next stop was a company that manufactures highwall mining equipment. This company creates these multimillion dollar machines in West Virginia and ships them all over the world. The use of exclusive technology as well as the pride in workmanship displayed by this company certainly carries on the heritage of coal mining in West Virginia. My chief concern with the innovative technology is loss of jobs for workers since this equipment requires fewer operators.
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