These Is My Legs

The first day I climbed the steps to Sister Jones’ house sitting high above Court Street, I ascended the hill with my heart in my throat. It’s not that I was afraid of Sister Jones; but I had no idea what to expect once I landed on her porch. I knew she was “ninety-six years young” and in poor health… but what exactly “poor health” meant was the mystery. I was filled with anxiety about my abilities in pastoral care.

But the moment she greeted me at the door with her Southern drawl beckoning me to “c’mon in, c’mon in”, I knew I was entering the lair of a great sage.

Sister Jones is perhaps the most well known person in town. If something needs to be done, Sister Jones is whom you turn to. If you need to find someone or learn something about the town, Sister Jones has the information. And if you want an inspirational lecture about how to live your life, Sister Jones has a good many on hand that she can deliver at a moment’s notice.

So, I entered her home and sat in an antique chair and waited patiently as nurses set to work on Sister Jones’ legs. For years Sister Jones has been nursing an “ulcer” that forms on the inside of her right ankle. She would care for it until it seemed to heal, but eventually it would reopen… over the years it became gradually worse. Now, she is left with a large, gaping wound on her foot that will not heal. Perhaps it is her age, poor circulation, or the years of medical neglect she has suffered, but it just will not close.

The nurses on call are frustrated by their inability to change the doctor’s orders or to offer her an alternative that will ease her discomfort… but Sister Jones doesn’t complain and she doesn’t raise too much of a stink. And the nurses are grateful that she’s easy to deal with, especially when they have to deliver the bad news that her leg isn’t healing. But Sister Jones proudly proclaims that it is looking better, anyway.

Once the nurses have left, Sister Jones begins telling me about one of the other women who offers her medical care. That woman doesn’t seem to care much for Sister Jones’ input and acts as if Sister Jones is simply too old to be of sound mind… but the woman wraps her leg too tight every time and often hurts her when she’s cleaning the wounds.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say nuthin’ to her ‘bout her job,” Sister Jones wonders out loud. But before I can encourage her to speak up for herself when she feels she is not being treated right, Sister Jones proudly proclaims, “But these is my legs, and they’s the only ones I got!”

I smile at her refusal to accept anything less than respect from anyone… but it would take me a while to understand just how subversive her statement had been.

Sister Jones is an African-American woman who was raised in a segregated America during the age of Jim Crow. Those who encountered her would automatically count two strikes against her: one for the shape of her body and one for the dark hue of her skin.

But Sister Jones knew in her heart that neither of those things were strikes against her and that even if America wanted to be obsessed with her gender or race, she would not allow it to stop her from achieving all that she wanted.

She was president of the Homemaker’s Association… although most of the women who know her now would never characterize her as a homemaker. Maybe that’s why she held the post for so many years: to subvert the myth of a woman’s place being in the home. Sister Jones worked… she worked for doctors and she worked all over town in jobs that meant everyone knew who she was. And then she began her own catering business and continued to run it until she decided to “retire.”

Of course, women like Sister Jones never really retire. She dove headfirst into volunteer activities… not that this was new to her. She had been volunteering her whole life to one cause or another, but now she could put all her energy into it. When it came time to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Walk for the Cure, Sister Jones’ knees wouldn’t allow her to participate. But she raised more money than anyone else in the region… and then she came back and did it the next year, too.

She has spent her life advocating for women, children, the church, and anyone else she saw who was in need of an advocate. Sister Jones never backs down from a fight, and she never assumes that she can’t do something well because the rest of the world thinks she shouldn’t be able to.

When the world told her she should keep her mouth shut and hide in a kitchen, she burst out of that dark room and into the light of day. When the world told her she was inferior because her skin was too dark, she stood up and demanded respect. Now she can’t help but feel the world is telling her she’s too old to know what is good for her… but she won’t accept it.

“These is my legs,” she proudly proclaims, laying ownership to her body, to her will, to her health, to her well being, and to her fate.

Sister Jones knows that every part of her body was lovingly crafted by the God that has walked with her through these ninety-six years, holding her up when life tried to knock her down and lifting her up so that all could see what a child of God can do to change the world. There is no one in this world that can strip her of her dignity and her freedom. And should someone try, Sister Jones will be there to put them in their place with simple words of great wisdom like, “These is my legs.”

I stood by her, one hand holding hers and the other resting on her back as I offered a prayer, but when I opened my eyes I knew that I was gazing into the face of Christ… I had climbed her steps, worried that I would not be a blessing to this woman. I descended those same steps, knowing that in that precious hour, I had been blessed.

Decomposing King Coal

McDowell County was once a thriving place. Sure, there were many problems, a fact that would be foolish to ignore… but there was also life in this place. This county once produced more coal than any other place in the world… but that was when coal was king.

At that time a tiny little McDowell County town, Bramwell, West Virginia boasted the population with the largest percentage of millionaires in the world. The streets were lined with mansions and the city seemed to glisten with the opulence of money.

Welch, West Virginia was a thriving center for commerce. The population was significant and people came from all around the county to shop here. A typical Saturday would see McDowell Street clogged with cars and foot traffic as people took their day off to head into town to look at the latest fashions or dine at one of the local restaurants. Youth from other towns would come to Welch for the theater, and the town was absolutely hopping.

Now there are very few businesses on McDowell Street and the few buildings that are still open are housing government offices and not business. True, there is a new theater, which has brought a little life back into the town, but overall, the booming days of McDowell Street are long gone and the buildings that stand are ghostly reminders of the death of King Coal.

A few years ago, Welch was virtually wiped out by the Tug Fork River’s hundred-year flood. Some thought it was the deathblow to this sleepy little town, and in many ways it seems to have been.

Coal had already fallen from its mighty throne and the once congested city had been witnessing a dwindling population, watching its numbers shrink with every year. Welch was on the verge of death.

When the flood came, it tore through McDowell Street and laid waste building after building. A few lucky business owners would clean up and reopen; most just closed their doors and never looked back. The buildings stood empty and abandoned. The water damage combined with the dead economy meant they could not be sold. The cost of repairs was too great to justify even trying. The town quickly fell into a state of disrepair.

Now, the leadership of Welch is desperately trying to resurrect the beauty that was once Welch. Of course, this means realizing King Coal is not going to rise from his cold tomb to breath life back into Central Appalachia. So, the mayor has begun a dismantling program… slowly but steadily taking the town that took so long to build apart. Every day a new building comes down, memories fall into the dust, and someone laments about the way things used to be.

“This was one big, long building,” Rick tells me as he drives me along the Elkhorn River, “But the mayor had it torn down. The flood just did it in.”

Now a brick wall and cast-iron fence stand as a tribute to a “beautification” project designed to make Welch pleasant to the beholder and no longer an eyesore.

“They’re gonna put in a park where those buildings are now,” Betty tells me as she gestures toward McDowell streets where heavy equipment is bringing low yet another building, her voice both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. “That’s what they say, anyway.”

She is an elderly woman who has heard her share of government promises and seen what “improvements” do to Appalachia. But, she holds on to the hope that things will get better. If Welch, the ghost town disappears, maybe the four wheelers from the popular Hatfield-McCoy ATV Trail will come to the new-and-improved Welch and spend some of their money.

It’s hard to explain to the people here that there are places where growth is happening. There are cities where they just can’t build fast enough… but in McDowell County the coal companies have left behind a world of abandoned equipment, buildings, and houses. It is a place that has not known growth for a long time.

Every day that I have been in Welch has been a sad awakening to the death of King Coal. "This is the legacy," I think to myself, "of the coal barons." I drive through the towns named for the barons, their wives, and the companies they built and I think about the irony of it all. The death that once touched the lives of the men, women, and children who would crawl back under a mountain has finally become visible. What had once been concealed in the dark depths of the earth has been brought into broad daylight. Everywhere you turn, everywhere you go, you come face to face with the decomposing body of King Coal.


Some Economic Facts About McDowell County
[US averages in brackets]

Population Trends:
1990—35,233
2000—27,329 (23% drop since 1990)
2007—22,991 (16% drop since 2000)

Average household size—2.42 [US=2.59]
Average family size—2.92 [US=3.14]
(To the woman who told me to push birth control in Appalachia to solve its problems.)

Vacant Housing—17.8% [US=9.0%]

High School graduate or higher—50.0% [US=80.4]
Bachelors degree or higher—5.6% [US=24.4]

Disabled—39.7% [19.3%]

In Labor Force—32.4% [63.9%]

Median Household Income—$16,931 [US= $41,994]
Median Family Income—$20,496 [US=$50,046]
Per Capita Income—$10,174 [US=$21,587]

Families Below Poverty Line—33.8% [US=9.2%]
Individuals Below Poverty Line—37.7% [12.4%]

Preachy About Green Myopia

I am settling in quite nicely here in Welch, WV. You never really know how much you have missed something until it’s gone and then back again. Southern hospitality was something I craved during my time in Colorado, but I never realized just how much I wanted (no, needed) it until I cam back to Appalachia.

However, I have never seen Southern West Virginia in the way that I have seen it since I’ve been back. Having spent three years away from here makes the difference. But, not only did I spend three years away, I spent it in one of the nation’s wealthier states, living in a city that throws money around like its confetti. After watching so much wasteful spending and gluttonous living standards, returning to a place in decay is shocking.

Welch was once a thriving community… When coal was still king, anyway. But coal is not king any longer, at least not to the folks who live in the coalfields. Jobs are scarce and unreliable and the coal industry really does not support the local economy as it once did. But coal is still the cultural norm here, so folks do not speak ill of it.

I took a long drive through the country the other day and as I neared Gary, WV I passed an abandoned piece of mine property. An old, rusted piece of equipment still stood as a ghostly reminder of yesterday and on the side was spray-painted the words, “Coal keeps the light on.” It’s the catch phrase of the coal industry in these parts and has become a rallying battle cry for those who feel their livelihoods are being threatened by the environmentalist-driven push toward green energies.

There was truth in that relic, though. It stands abandoned and forgotten by the original builders, left to rot into non-existence by a society that used it for all its worth and then turned its back on it, and still cherished by the people who labored in its shadows for so long, who cling to hope that it will one day glisten in the sun as it did once before.

The people of Southern West Virginia have been treated much the same way. For generations they labored at a dangerous and thankless job and told they weren’t worth anything by the society that used up the coal they mined. So they bent over and crawled, day after day, into the dangerous mines with no advocate to help them. When they decided that they were worth something, they had to fight against the coal companies, society, and the government to win basic rights to a safe working environment. Even still, they worked one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. And those who survived their years in the mines were cast aside when they grew old, their lungs as black as the coal they dug and slowly turning to rock in their chests. They were left to slowly suffocate to death, and no one blinked an eye. But they fought for recognition then, too. And now they have come under attack again. The same people who grew up in the privilege awarded by the coalminer’s hard work… who learned in schools powered by their coal, in building built from steel that came from their coal… those same people have turned on the coal industry with a rabid vengeance, forgetting that it was the greedy demands of American society that dug those mines and killed those men who crawled into them. And as America fights to shut down the mines, there is little mention of what will happen to the young men and women who need those jobs in the mine to keep their children free of poverty.

Now, I am all for progress. I am all for green energy sources. And I am all for being good stewards of this land. Coal is a thing of the past, and the day will come that we will no longer need it… in an ideal world, that day will come, that is… but I worry about the people.

American society told the people of Appalachia that their way of existing wasn’t good enough and they needed to enter the industrial period. The people of Appalachia did and they paid a dear price. They lost their land to greedy swindlers; they lost their lives to an energy-hungry America. Now, they are being told that their industry is evil and that it shouldn’t exist. But where is the promise of work? Where is the promise of life?

The green movement needs to go forward, but it should not take another step until it has added to its agenda a fight for the humanity of the people that gluttonous living standards disregarded long ago. After all, it was the very greed of cities like Denver that dug the dark tombs of the Appalachian coal miners. The green movement cannot condemn the coal dust-stained hands of Appalachia until it has acknowledged its own bloodstained hands.