Pulpish Genre of Books About the Fallen Coal Industry in PA.

I've read three books, 2 fiction, one non-fiction, in the last month (take a bit) about Pennsylvania's Anthracite Coal Region and I've been thinking a lot about the way former coal mining communities are represented in literature.

First, the non-fiction book was Unseen Danger: A Tragedy of People, Government, and the Centralia Mine Fire by David DeKok. DeKok was a reporter for The News-Item in Shamokin and spent 8 years covering the complicated, convuluted story of Centralia. The book is intense, extensive and seriously engaging. DeKok lays out the 25 year struggle with the mine fire and the push and pull between the divided town and the state and federal governments. Even though the fire started in 1962, it wasn't really taken all that seriously until early '80s, when the mine fire gases were appearing in large quantities in people's homes and basements. To say the least, the Centralia mine fire was a messy, fucked up situation that really didn't have a good solution to it. DeKok does an excellent job of taking a very twisted situation and making it understandable. In doing this, one can't but help utterly baffled at the bullshit that the town of Centralia had to put up with before the government got around to doing something.

I mention the non-fiction book first, because it's, well, non-fiction. Nothing is embellished for the sake of entertainment or enjoyment for the reader. It is a straight forward account of the Centralia mine fire and not only is it baffling, it is a really good read.

The two fiction books I've finished recently were Now You See It: Stories from Cokesville, Pennsylvania by Bathseeba Monk and Coal Run by Tawni O'Dell.

Monk's book was okay and of the three books, by far my least favorite. I liked the format, since I often use it myself (short stories that tell a larger story about place), her writing and quite a few of the characters. I wasn't so taken with the end, since it seemed sort of tacked on to the rest of the stories. I hate the bit about the town exploding (see below). Generally, I was entertained by the book but felt sort of "whatever" about it once I finished it.

O'Dell's book, which I finished in three days, had me by the figurative balls 2 pages in. Her writing is eloquent and sucks one into the story so intensely that you absolutely cannot stop reading. I fell in love, intensely, (this is probably a personal thing too) with the narrator, the great Ivan Z., the town's fallen football star and current alcoholic deputy. The story unfolds in delicious little pieces and, as I said before, sucks you until you absolutely must finish the damn book TONIGHT. I really liked the characters, all of them, even the "bad guys". Part of me wishes I wrote the book.

That said, I've noticed something really amusing about these town books and a short story that I've been working on that is set in a PA coal town. There are a few things that a story set in a Pennsylvania coal town must have in order to make the story work and to contextualize the place. I swear to god, anyone that's written about a PA coal town must mention these things. I know this, because that story of mine is hinged on these things. They are as followed:

1. You must mention a mine fire that wiped out a town and it must cling to a handful of truth, which varies from story to story. In Coal Run, the main character's hometown is evacuated and leveled like Centralia. In Now You See It, Cokesville's ultimate demise was when the mine fire that burned in the culm dumps out side of town reached a natural gas pipe line, exploded (there was natural gas pipeline that ran along one of the coal veins that the mine fire was in) and destroyed the entire town. In the fiction story I've been working on, the characters pass by a place that is suggested to be Centralia while coming home from a funeral. Which leads me to my next point.

2. Someone must die in an occupational accident, since they are coal miners. It can be more than one person but someone always has to die in a coal mining accident. Coal Run starts with a massive explosion that shakes the entire town, starts the stated mine fire and kills 100 of the men. In Now You See It, the narrator's father dives/falls into a vat of molten steel (okay okay not coal but occupationally related, so close enough) and get delivered to the funeral home as a 150 pound steel ingot. In the story that I've been working on, the narrator's husband's best friend is killed in a mine explosion.

3. There is always football. Coal Run's narrator is a fallen star football player, who's life is changed by a freak accident a coal breaker. Football isn't just a sport in that place, it's a way of life. Bonus points for mention of local high school football. A serious nod if you can work in JoePa and Penn State; even better if you can get in a state professional team.

4. There is always excessive drinking. Beer, whiskey and sometimes vodka.

5. Because of this excessive drinking, there is stupidity fueled violence.

6. There are always big trucks and cars.

7. The women are as tough as the men.

There are a few other small things that link the two books I just finished reading together with the short story I've been working on but those are the major points that let someone know what place they are in when they are reading. Part of me wonders if it's cliche or if it's something that is needed to explain that place. It's like they belong to this weird world of close-to-truth, pulpish genre of books about the fallen coal industry in PA. It makes that type of place really sexy in a way that is both far from the truth. While they all explore the complexities of class, they romanticize the life that comes with living in such a place.

Which is why I am glad that I sandwiched DeKok's book with Monk and O'Dells'. He narrates the seriously harsh reality of living in such conditions and while the other books mean to point out to the reader the ugliness, no one really wants the characters in a fiction book to have face the type of nasty bureaucracy that Centralia faced. They want everything wrapped up in a sexy, coal dust covered package with a nice cover design, in order to entertain themselves for a few hours. Truth in a fiction book, like in most of the arts, is a really relative term.

Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed at my story's reliance on those points above to explain the complexities of living with coal mining. I was rolling around the idea of posting it here, since it's been pretty time consuming and I kinda liked it and now I think I might be too embarrassed about my reliance on the points above to really want anyone else to read it.

There was also something else I noticed as I read O'Dell's and Monk's bios on the back flap of their books. They both, after moving far and away from Pennsylvania, came back to it, to the place they clearly were much more interested in escaping. Characters in their books do the same. What is it about some Pennsylvanians that they just can't stay the fuck away from the place they were raised? It is obvious that I feel it too and I want to know what that means, what's the pull back to such a place mean?

Be Fierce! Be a Warrior!

Dear Ira,

If you didn't know already...

...I fucking love you.

xoxo

s.

NYTimes Article: Coal Country Looks to Natural Gas

I get excited* when things that I know and love get mentioned in a national and international newspaper.

I get even more excited when it's a place that I know like the back of my hand.

The article is actually a depressing, quick look at the ever-declining anthracite coal industry and local government buildings looking to switch to natural gas (cheaper) to heat them. This means I probably shouldn't be so excited to see it on the "front page" of the NYtimes this evening but it points towards the main issue that I am/was interested in when I was making Coal Hunkie and the things I still think about and pay attention to when I go back there.

*It's more of a "Hey lookit! Someone's paying attention!" excited than a glee-filled excitement.

Finally.

I nearly burst into tears when I heard he claimed the nomination.

While I know November is a long way off, here's to the next 4-8 years of change. Here's to a post-Bush United States. Here's to hope.

"America reinvented that paradise, described so briefly and vauely in the book of Genesis, called it Suburbia and put it up for sale."

Target Practice (Look Hard for it!), Wedgewood Drive, West Allentown.

Despite being all over the place about making work the last few months, I've been thinking about three key motivating factors for making a sprawling, semi-coherent body of work about what it means to live, work and die in a landscape that has no here and therefore, has no there.

Or, in other words, what it means to live in the generic, consumer-driven, suburban, car-centric United States.

One: I recently finished James Howard Kunstler's Geography of Nowhere.

Two: I'm moving home, to Allentown, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

Three: I drive everyday, for one hour (if traffic is good) on a major interstate, I-93.

I am tentatively calling it "This American Landscape" in private but it probably can't be called that. So I'll go with "Nowhere Places and Nothing Towns".



Green Green Grass that Grows Unnaturally All Around, Wedgewood Drive, West Allentown.

Although it was written 15 years ago, The Geography of Nowhere is, among many other things, a very precise, scathing commentary on the history, evolution and proliferation of Suburbia in the United States. It examines the landscape it produces, the physical, and psychological, and predicts the probable outcome of living in an unsustainable lifestyle that has been constructed around the car. Most importantly, in my case, it gave me a barrage of ideas to roll around in my head, to apply to my personal experience and to observe in real life.

I think of place as Lucy Lippard says in Lure of the Local: "Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person’s life. It is temporal and spatial, personal and political. A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It is about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there." I can feel the subtleties of places when I go somewhere that has those layers. I can feel the distinction of Here or There. But my body, heart and brain also know when I am in no place, where the layers of human interaction and connections is virtually non-existent. I think that lack makes a place Nowhere.

So, I've been thinking a lot about Nowhere.

See, I grew up in a place that is very much There. It is a definable town, not only by it's borders but by the way it functions in it's layout. There are local, community supported businesses in it's downtown area, it's mostly walkable and it's got a very distinct, albeit quiet, history. It is very much a Here place that is distinct because it is Northumberland, Pennsylvania. It obviously has no interest in doing away with the notions that make it "Small Town America". It is also about 15 miles from the nearest interstate, which I will get to in a bit.

At 13, my parents and I moved to Allentown, Pa. More specifically, a housing development built by Field Stone Associates L.P. in Upper Macungie Township. Old Towne, which is neither Olde nor anything like a Town, is a planned community of wide, curving streets, small lush lots and houses of 23-2500 square feet with nearly identical floor plans. It is vast. It is also indistinguishable from most of the other housing developments that have sprung up in the Lehigh Valley and probably elsewhere in the U.S. Disconnected from places of commerce or culture, save a strip mall at the main entrance to the development, one can't really get anywhere outside of Olde Town without getting in a car and driving there.

Surprise.

It is no wonder I spent most of high school disoriented, stressed and saddened. Without four wheels and six cylinders, I was pretty much stuck. I couldn't take a mischievous walk around town with friends (I didn't have any in the neighborhood), get a piece of pizza, or spend time in communal areas which were, in summer, front porches and big yards. The front porch of the houses were merely a decoration, a gesture of Olde-ness instead of an extension of living space. The yards were a face to passer-bys to say "Look at how lovely my yard is." It had no history except the time frame of it's development. I was living in a place that was, for all intensive purposes, Nowhere and I was freaked the fuck out.

And then I forgot about how weird it was until I determined that my next course of action in life was to move home, get a job, pay off some debt and figure out what's next. Now that I know that I'll be living in that same nowhere place, I am distressed and conflicted. I became even more distressed and conflicted after finishing Kunstler's book two days before I was to go home for Memorial Day weekend. Driving the streets I learned to drive on, I had a feeling I've felt only a handful of times prior. It shows up in my stomach, a disorienting feeling of being somewhere geographically but being nowhere at the same exact time. It happens to me when I drive on big vast interstates that I've never been on before. It happens when I drive on new roads that cut across the old roads that I know like the back of my hand.



Exit/On Ramp 32, I-93, Medford, Ma

It also happened to me the first time that I drove to and from my (temporary) job in Methuen, Ma. It is 25 miles from Medford and is a straight shot on I-93 Northbound. I drive in the opposite direction of the traffic (thank the Good Lord) that's coming into Boston in rush hour. While I've sat in really bad traffic on the Masspike numerous times, I was awed by the sheer amount of cars barely creeping along in the southbound lanes. I was also awed by how far away the traffic into Boston stretched. I was dumbfounded by the mere thought of having to do that every single day.

I also got that creeping feeling of being Nowhere with a bunch of other people who were headed to Nowhere to work and to live. As Kunstler says "There is little sense of having arrived anywhere, because everyplace looks like noplace in particular." The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, all 46,837 miles of it, is utterly Nowhere. You can get to a Here or a There but while traveling, you are Nowhere. You can travel through or around a place, like Toledo, Ohio or Hartford, CT but one doesn't really experience anything about that place at all; no local culture or cuisine, no people, nothing. One just passes right on by, onward to the next exit.



Mystic Avenue, Medford, Ma.

Since I moved to Medford, I-93 permeates my life. I have to drive on, around or under it when I want to go anywhere. I can watch the traffic from my bedroom window. I can hear the rush of cars in my apartment with the windows open. I've never thought of and been so aware of a road in my entire life like the way I've become aware of I-93 in the past few months. Growing up, the interstate was a far away, rarely thought of unless there was a vacation to be had. The concrete and asphalt of such a road rarely entered my vision.

And now, it's sort of all I can see. It is very much in my day-to-day routine. What I'm having trouble with is how something that is Nowhere has become such an integral part of my life. How does one live with and in Nowhere and be okay with that? Is there detachment? What does that do to one's sense of self and place? What about history? What about the present? What about the future?

I do what most Americans do when they live in Nowhere: I travel to a Here or a There in order to reconnect with place so that I can feel like things are normal, that this lifestyle of Nowhere is normal.



Aerodynamic! Moreland Street, Medford, Ma.

I, unfortunately, don't have such styling digs in which to escape.

That said, all of that above is a lot to think about. It is a lot to photograph. There is a lot that I am missing or haven't had the chance to think about. Scratching the surface, putting the ideas down, framed by pictures, is one way I can start to make sense of all of it. It is also the way that I will be able to live, temporarily, Nowhere and be able to cope with it.

I listen to the cars up on the interstate from my kitchen and wonder about the exits that those cars are barreling towards with such speed. I think about their passengers, their houses, their lives. Are they headed towards Nowhere? Or are they headed towards a There?

Which Side Are You On?

A few Mondays ago, I watched Harlan County U.S.A., a documentary directed by Barbara Kopple. Released in 1978 and filmed between 1973 and 76, it is a powerful chronicle of a coal miner's strike in Kentucky. 180 miners fought against Duke Power Company for about a year to obtain rights like health benefits, sick days, running water and toilets in their company owned homes and better pay. Kopple lets the people tell their story of the strike, through their actions and words and also uses the music of the area, bluegrass and country, to convey their lives.

It's a really powerful and moving film. The story that's told is complex but the film does a good job of telling it. It is strange to sit and watch and to remind one's self that what the miners and their families were being put through weren't eradicated by contemporary life or the massive boom in the economy post WWII. I had to constantly remind myself that it was filmed in 1973, not 1930. Kopple makes sure that you side with the miners

That said, I keep up with "local" news from where I grew up and where my family still resides. In 2006, a miner was killed at R&D Coal Mine outside of Tremont, PA. There have been articles in all three local newssources about the owner, mine supervisor and another miner being charged with involuntary man slaughter in the death of the miner, which is rare for anyone to be charged with anything following a mining accident.

Interesting.