Coal Miners Son

My dad always worked in the coal mines, sometimes above ground, sometimes below, but he always came home covered in coal dust. Sometimes he worked at the mine at the end of the road, it was the whole reason anyone lived where we did, sometimes he worked a town over, sometimes a few counties away, but the dust always came home with him. Some of my earliest memories are of going in to the doctor and being endlessly tested, eventually being diagnosed with severe asthma; something my dad always believed I could overcome by running until I passed out or just manning up. So I breathed in deep and filled my lungs day after day with the remnants of my father’s work, with the fragments of black gold that powered our homes, my home state’s economy, and the destruction of it’s natural beauty. I am the son of a coal miner, the grandson of coal miners, the nephew and cousin of coal miners, it is in my blood and in my lungs from my birth to my death.