On winter nights the piled high coal slag burned blue bright like a lava lamp and I loved the sight of it. It was my beacon and became my memory.
I inhaled the sulfur scent and today never tire of the odor of a match strike. It takes me back.
The relatives drove me places. Into leaning coal camp homes, clinging to eroding hillsides.
Like a griot in training, I met old Italian woman who cooked their chickens head down in enormous pots with feet exposed and steamy.
Black grandmothers unearthed photos and official testimonies that celebrated freely elected Black mayors, union organizers and co-op founders. It was quite a treasure trove.
But my father ran from it. So much poverty and so much racial prejudice.
A great grandfather stood with UMWA Richard Davis and shouted at his fellow miners not to side with company men who created racial divisions just to increase profit. I felt their presence along the worn out, rutted muddy strets of Rendville where only a dark-timbered pool hall remained.
Here we could buy orange soda and drop nickles into a beat up juke box.
Famed photographer, James Karales, saw what I saw and about at the same moment in time. He used a camera to record images of how it was at the end of its career as a vibrant human center.
