Appalachian Struggles: A Tunnel Runs Through It

[Petrushka]

DINGESS, West Virginia — Hidden deep within the coal filled Appalachian Mountains of Southern West Virginia rests a forgotten land that is older than time itself. Its valleys are deep, its waters polluted and its terrain is as rough as the rugged men and women who have occupied these centuries old plats for thousands of years.

Referred to by neighboring communities as “Bloody Mingo,” the people of this West Virginia county have both commanded the respect and fear of anyone wishing to cross them, or their mountainous borders.

Despite the rich resources buried beneath their feet, the proud and strong inhabitants of this haunted land have seen neither fortune nor rest. Dating back to the days their ancestors first crossed into this intrepid territory, nearly three hundred years ago, life has been cruel.

I know all of this to be true, because I was born in this bitter region four decades ago.

Three days following my birth, my mother and father made the same passage my dad’s parents had taken only a handful of years earlier; a journey over Logan Mountain and back to the same parcel of ground owned by the Farley family for centuries.

The passage home included a drive through a one lane train tunnel nearly 4/5 of a mile long.

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http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1137805

[theHandpuppet]

1. Some things never change, do they?

The hostility of the locals against black and Chinese workers for the fear they were coming to take jobs sounds so familiar to the hostility today against Hispanic workers and immigrants.

My grandfather and a number of his cousins migrated during the depression from Pike County, Kentucky to Scioto County, Ohio, where they found work on the Norfolk & Western, now Norfolk Southern. Eventually my Dad became a superintendent for the N&W line between Cincinnati and Williamson, WV. (Though I don't think the line extended all the way to Mingo.) Occasionally we'd ride the train to Williamson where we also had relatives. It was during those childhood trips that I first became fully aware of the poverty and isolation of West Virginia's hills & hollows. I still have some images from those childhood trips seared into my memory.