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It's a mid-December morning and I'm on a bus headed down South from Chinatown, New York.
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The reckless driver speeds up on the icy roads. I am traveling across the States in a snowstorm...
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because of a book. Written over the span of 20 years, back and
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forth from the mining areas of Eastern Kentucky, the book by Italian scholar Alessandro Portelli,
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is a monumental collection of oral history. It tells the struggle of a secluded world
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built around the mining of coal, when immigrants would come to the area to work well-paid but
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often ill-fated jobs. The book tells the story of Harlan County. And that's where I am going.
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I'm headed to the Deep America of Portelli's book. I want to see what's left of that world
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30 years since his first visit, now that the US is shifting to natural gas and coal mines
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are shutting down, one after another. I do not expect to find a lively city. But
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when I drive into Harlan, I find a ghost of a city, where people are stuck, like characters
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in a black and white picture. Their stories and their voices have not changed
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much from those recorded by Portelli in his field research and that today are leading
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me in this journey.
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I'm a hillbilly.
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Well, what is a hillbilly?
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I don't really know what a hillbilly is.
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They call them a backwoods person.
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But I ain't a backwoods person because
I've been in 38 states.
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Plus, at least in Italy.
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Yeah, and Canada. And Canada, yes.
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But, I've drove through 38 states.
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I wouldn't classify myself as a hillbilly. But I am
proud to be from the Appalachian Mountains.
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They call it Appalachian Mountains but the old people called it the Appalachee Mountain.
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I got married when I was 16-years-old and my husband was 17-years-old.
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We had been married about six months when he went into the mines
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and six months after that he died in an electrical accident. And we had a two-week-old son.
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Lady lives down the street here on the end. Her husband was killed where the mine stand
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here when it was running. Him and his brother-in-law
and another guy, they went in on Christmas Eve.
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Company wanted some holes drilled
and some charges set off so they'd have some coal
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ready for after Christmas. They went in there.
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Anyways, sunk the hole up, put the dynamite and stuff in.
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And when he backed up, got into the high voltage wire
and it barbecued him, roasted him, killed him instantly.
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Like that, that much power, two or three thousand volts,
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something like that it went through him.
Killed him, and he was killed in that mine.
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That's 1956. Name of Robert Camel.
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I find remnants of the mining history all over. Memories of the casualties and the hard
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labor are alive in the stories told by the young and old alike.
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They are nostalgic for the glory of collective struggle and hard work paid-off.
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Speaking to the locals in dusty bars and saloons, I can see that their life was, and still is, mining.
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Mines are their narrative, their collective legend and whoever played a part wears it with pride.
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They are survivors of a world disappearing before their eyes.
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This is the newspaper. That's my Granny. He worked first shift. He just got off shift
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that day, first shift. They came in second shift when the mine exploded, so he escaped it.
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I guess he got them out of job. That's my grandpa, my grandma, and my six uncles, right there.
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You'd never let him leave home mad at each other. You always had peace because you don't
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know if that's the last day you'll see him.
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The water in the mines that you would have to drag through water, it would get up over
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your knees and the horses would have to pull through it, the ponies would,
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and then they would lay two-by-fours for tracks sometimes when they'd run out of track.
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People here need work, like anywhere else. There is nothing for them to do. All the young
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people are turning to drugs, alcohol.
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If someone would, from out of state I would say, from our government,
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would get get interested in this place, this part of Kentucky, I think we could
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– these young people could – make it.
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But if they don't, they are dying every day. Overdosing and, this, that, and the other.
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Well, I went to Harlan County looking for the class struggle.
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And the class struggle is still going on.
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Maybe not in terms of the unions but for instance right now, in terms
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of the environment.
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You're taught that you can't fight a coal
company and win.
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Nobody's ever fought a coal company and won.
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You're wasting your time. They're
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very evil people, you know, they
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do things to the families.
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They do things to
the young'uns.
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Of all Kentucky counties, Harlan produced the most coal,
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at the time in which most of what powered the United States came from Kentucky.
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Today, the 33 active mines left in Harlan
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employ less than a thousand.
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Some of the old mines have even been converted into museums.
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Laid off and left with nothing since the 90s,
many live off welfare.
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They don't see any other options.
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In the few hangouts in town,
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unemployed men are the usual customers.
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Well Harlan County was founded on coal, I
mean that's the reason Harlan County was built.
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It is Harlan County's livelihood, it's its
backbone. Basically it’s what Harlan County is,
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it's built on coal. And if you ain't got
the coal, there’s nothing else here.
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We don't have the luxuries of the big cities,
we don't have factories
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and the reason why that is, because we’re so secluded in the mountains, we don't have the roadways in which
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larger semi-trucks can come in and out. And,
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I could go flip hamburgers at the local McDonald's
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or I could go down there at the pizza joint, make a pizza, but that's not gonna pay my bills
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Harlan used to be a booming place,
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you could walk down the streets find anything you wanted.
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If you didn't watch you'd run over people
cause the population was so big.
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The coal mines started leaving, during the strike and
now is getting worser.
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Everybody’s having to leave home.
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Well,
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I have been working since I was 15,
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altogether.
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And I went into mines when I was 21,
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somewhere around there.
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It looked like a good future.
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All my uncles that worked underground
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was working through the '70s when all the
striking and everything was good,
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and they told me not to get too comfortable, and I did.
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I don't know what I am gonna do.
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If we don't get something here, in another
10 to 12 years it's gonna be a ghost town.
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There won't be nobody here but retired people
and people who draw checks. That’ll be all of it.
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When I went in the coal mines I was 18-years-old,
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it was right when I got out of high school.
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And I worked in the coal mines for 5 years
underground and 2 years surface mining.
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I am a waiter here at the Huddle House.
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Is the pay better than in the mines?
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Oh, no… I make 2 dollars 13 cents an hour
plus tips and since coal mines
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aren't around anymore, the tips aren’t very good. There is not as much money in the town of Harlan.
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What am I doing here?
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I just got out of jail!
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For what?
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Possession of stolen property.
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I’m not guilty.
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I mean, jail is jail.
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It’s not good, but
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it’s alright.
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They feed you three times a day
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give you a place to sleep, roof over
your head, TV, all that stuff.
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When I was a teenager, Smith and Jones’ creek,
that was the two of the roughest places around here.
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Well, I started carrying a pistol when I was
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about 12 years old,
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and I've carried one ever since and I still carry one.
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I'm the gun guy here at the pawn shop, for
the past five years.
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We take everything from,
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DVDs, boat motors or whatever you wanna imagine.
We have some motorcycles, and some other things.
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The mining equipment, we would take a lot
of that stuff.
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We would sell a 400 dollar mining helmet maybe once a week, lights daily,
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but the fact that mines are shutting down…
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makes it difficult to sell that stuff because
these were being sold to personal miners
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for their own use.
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They are not into mining anymore of course they are not buying it.
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Have you been working in mines?
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23 years
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Where?
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Where? All over Harlan, Perry County.
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Just
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Everywhere.
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In the stasis of today,
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it's hard to see any traces of the turbulent past
that once made Harlan notorious.
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The county is still mostly
‘dry’, and was one for years.
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People used to make moonshine.
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Now drugs are on the rise: at first pain killer prescribed by doctors
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to treat the injured and sick miners,
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now,
an escape from the emptiness.
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There’s a lot of people here that's addicted
to prescription drugs.
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Oxycone, Percocet, Xanax, Valium,
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pretty much anything that makes them feel better
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or they think that make them feel better.
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We have a lot of problems with items that
come in that are stolen,
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and maybe not just from drugs users but that is a problem.
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And I can say, again it's desperation,
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it's trying to get some money to maintain a habit, you
know.
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And I think since all this, you know the mining,
the depression of the mining and everything,
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it's caused a rise in pills.
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Pills are the
new alcohol.
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You're talking about the Forties.
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I'm talking about the Forties and Fifties.
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So in the fifties well,
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we made moonshine, and sold it.
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During the summer we'd pick huckleberries,
blackberries; sell them. The huckleberries we'd
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carry into Virginia, sell for a dollar a gallon.
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The blackberries we only got a quarter
a gallon. But we'd get enough
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money from that
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to buy clothes and some food for the winter.
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Mostly what we bought for in the food line was
cornmeal and
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lard, beans, soup beans, what we called pinto
beans. We call 'em soup beans yet today.
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So
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it was a rough life but
a good life.
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In the beginning I would only have to take
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a few. I could do one and it would last me all day.
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Towards the end of my drugs addiction
I was taking
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5 to 10 of the
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Oxycodone 80s
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before they switched
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to the one that gelled them up,
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I went from a 50 dollars day habit
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to a 1,000 dollar day habit.
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The jobs are gone. Coal mines,
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they are shutting them down. All the coal mines are shutting down.
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And that was our lifeline.
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Coal mines were the lifeline around here
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and they are shutting down to people
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in poverty.
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It's over.
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I walk the same roads Alessandro Portelli
walked three decades ago,
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and words from the opening paragraph to his book come to my mind:
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“It was 1988, my fifth visit to Harlan County.
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I was on the winding road from Harlan to Evarts, driving a borrowed pickup truck,
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when I began to notice the roadkill.
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It was a dangerous
road, with more than its share of adventurous drivers,
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and it was getting dark.
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I began to think of the many ways in which death
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was a presence in this land:
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the dead animals,
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the road accidents,
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and of course
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the coal mines.
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Guns. And black lung”.
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Returning to New York, leaving behind Harlan
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in an endless rain,
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I try to put together the pieces of a remote world I only got a glimpse of.
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I always wondered where all that energy came from,
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the energy that lights up the luxuries of the big city.