Coal Country

As my group and I drove our van to our site location listening to the local country music station, we heard the stations slogan which went, “We’re you’re tristate Coal Country music station. Yeah, we’re that big, but you handle it.” As it turned out, this was an attitude that radiated through the mountains of Appalachia. The people of Buchanan county and I assume a significant amount of the south have a deep-rooted pride in their heritage and their way of life. The pride is visibly apparent by the amount of confederate flags that can still be found waving around Buchanan County. The pride was apparent in the tone of Robert’s voice as he boasted to us about the opportunities that coal miners had to make an amazing living as far as he was concerned. The pride was most apparent however in our group’s encounter with an elderly gentleman named Ed. Ed was schoolteacher and most likely one of the better-educated men in the area. Our entire sight had the privilege of viewing the Breaks Interstate Park with Ed and listening to the stories he had to tell. Ed told us one story about a girl who lived during the civil war who had rode her horse across and through the mountains warning her neighbors that the Yankees were coming. It was eccentric from my perspective trying to view this as a positive thing being from the north myself, but Ed’s eyes lit up as he told the story about the courageous young girl. It was apparent that Ed was very proud to tell the stories about the people that had come before him, and it was obvious that Ed was very proud of where he had come from. Ed had grown up in Buchanan County where his father and all his uncles had been coal miners. Ed had left Buchanan County to continue his education, but his pride and love for his home had brought him back. As Robert had said, “I wouldn’t wanna live anywhere else.”