Coal mine disasters are a regular part of life in West Virginia. I had the honor to live with the big hearted, loving, humble, hard working people of West Virginia and Southeastern Ohio for about eleven years. I thought I would never leave the area, but got the wild idea of checking out the woods of Oregon and Washington, as a possible alternative. Fate led me to San Diego, CA and then Sacramento, CA instead. A far holler from the hills of West Virginia. Yes, they are "almost heaven" as John Denver sang.
One fact of life that is a part of the culture is the coal mine. In the most impoverished region of the United States, it is the only wide-scale source of earning a wage. The other source is the chemical industry. I lived for a short time on the Charleston River as it ran through the Charleston, W.V. area. This area was affectionately called the "arm pit of the world". I heard stories of men passing out from the fumes and falling into vats of the plastic used to make Saran wrap and similar plastic wraps. I saw paint peeling off of fairly new cars, because of the chemicals in the air.
There are many stories and songs of the horrors of coal mining. I met men with "black lung disease". They could hardly breath and constantly coughed up black phlegm, until they eventually suffocated. I met a young man who saw the mountain he played on as a child, and that loomed large is his consciousness, literally leveled by strip mining, as he watched on helplessly. I've seen, first hand, the decimation to this beautiful land, by the strip mines. So these brave men, who go down in the hole every day, save huge expanses of surface land. Yet every time they turn around, they are having to struggle politically, to make a decent wage. They are having to struggle for mine safety. And some of them are going to die, and they know that.
The cause of this weeks mine disaster has not yet been discovered and/or communicated. But the mine had many safety citations recently; many more than most according to press reports I have read. This is nothing new, as the lyrics to this account of "The Disaster at the Mannington Mine" will tell.
Because of unsafe conditions, the Mannington Mine, Farmington, WV, was inspected by the Federal Bureau of Mines 16 times in 1968. Extensions were granted to the company 16 times.
On Nov 20, 1968, the mine exploded. Four men survived, 78 were trapped in the mine...
Manfred Helfert, info from "Harlan County U.S.A" documentary, 1970s.
DISASTER AT THE MANNINGTON MINE by Hazel Dickens (1970's)
Lyrics as reprinted in liner notes of "Come All You Coal Miners" (Rounder 4005, 1972).
We read in the paper and the radio tells
Us to to raise our children to be miners as well.
Oh tell them how safe the mines are today
And to be like your daddy, bring home a big pay.
Now don't you believe them, my boy,
That story's a lie.
Remember the disaster at the Mannington mine
Where seventy-eight miners were buried alive,
Because of unsafe conditions your daddy died.
They lure us with money, it sure is a sight.
When you may never live to see the daylight
With your name among the big headlines
Like that awful disaster at the Mannington mine.
So don't you believe them, my boy,
That story's a lie.
Remember the disaster at the Mannington mine
Where seventy-eight miners were buried alive,
Because of unsafe conditions your daddy died.
There's a man in a big house way up on the hill
Far, far from the shacks where the poor miners live.
He's got plenty of money, Lord, everything's fine
And he has forgotten the Mannington mine.
Yes, he has forgotten the Mannington mine.
There is a grave way down in the Mannington mine
There is a grave way down in the Mannington mine.
Oh, what were their last thoughts, what were their cries
As the flames overtook them in the Mannington mine.
So don't you believe them, my boy,
That story's a lie.
Remember the disaster at the Mannington mine
Where seventy-eight good men so uselessly died
Oh, don't follow your daddy to the Mannington mine.
How can God forgive you, you do know what you've done.
You've killed my husband, now you want my son.
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