By John Burtis
Sunday, January 8, 2006
It is often said that the really tough guys are the ones who get up and go to work every day. Without doubt, it is a group of really tough guys who go down into the mines everyday, out of sight and out of mind to too many of us, we who live in the day light and only think of them when something goes haywire, underground, in a faraway state.
Coal mining is a dangerous business and, like structural firefighting, results in a strong bond of friendship and equally powerful ties of brotherhood. Firefighters never have to ask each other if the other members of the engine or truck company will come back for them if something goes wrong. They know they will and it is therefore foolish and a waste of time to ask about this unwritten rule. This principle, though invisible, and emblazoned on every rig and in every bunk room, just as it is in every heart, says they will all come back or they will all die together. The same rule holds for miners.
Like firefighters, miners are generational. Grandfathers and fathers pass down skills and knowledge to kids. Just as firefighters walk into firehouses and flames together, so the miners walk into locker rooms and the deep mines together, in a day to day fight against gravity, the vagaries of coal seams, the pockets of poison gas, and the perils of sudden explosions. And knowing the risks, they either return to the surface or die together. You just never know when the day might come.
Imagine the men huddled together in the twilight, illuminated by the fading yellow light of their helmet lamps. Calmly waiting for the help they knew the unwritten rule meant was coming or for their death. And here we find the incredible fearlessness instilled in them from their years underground. No one ran. No one went to pieces. Nobody was abandoned or left behind. No outlandish Hollywood histrionics. They stayed together and died together, a band of brothers, united in friendship.
As Randal McLoy, Jr., lies gravely ill, he is blessed with the support of his wife, Anna, and that of all his entire extended family and the prayers of his friends. All the relatives that could make the trip have headed for his bedside in Pittsburgh. Prayers for his recovery are floating up from all over his county, the country and probably the world. His survival may just be the miracle so earnestly prayed for.
And here the psychic break between the liberal view of America and what it means in Upshur County, West Virginia, could be no starker, as today's liberal leaders are family averse, decidedly anti-religion and certainly disdainful of the traits of manliness. His fellow miners', his family's and his neighbors' path diverges from the secularist liberal hopes for America and demonstrates all the values which they are fighting against in America today.
In our post 9/11 world, we might think of dropping a cake off at our local fire station, but we'd never think of dropping in for a beer at a local tap room while passing through coal country. And it's our loss. Because we can never be exposed to too much quiet bravery and daily courage, rub too many elbows with those who exhibit such traits, and look into their tired but steely eyes. For by doing so, we'd notice what's missing in the eyes of the jaded fat-cat politicians speaking to us from rote, the local blow-hards and braggarts telling us of their vast exploits, or the Hollywood stars, whose own appearance of indomitability is an artfully manufactured edifice of camera angles, make-up artists and witty dialogue writers.
Real conversation, the spoken words of men facing death with a stoicism born of years of silent preparation, requires no team of scripters, but flows quickly from the heart and is to the point.
"Tell all I see them on the other side…it isn't bad."
Yes, there are still areas of the old America left alive. Places where folks work hard for their bread, love their kids, protect and defend each other and where families and friends rush to the side of the fallen and the sick. Locales where neighbors and friends leave baked goods on kitchen counters in unlocked homes when somebody's down on their luck. Places where the power of prayer is still viewed as a real operational process beseeching a higher power to intercede with those in the hour of their need. Just like the towns where we grew up.
And that is the lesson of Randal McCloy, Jr. His survival and the terrible loss of his friends has again shown us the real America, the good old USA which, in the space of a few generations, has vanished from the NY Times, much of the evening news, the lips of our Democratic politicians and most of the magazines. Shame on us for letting it go so easily.
You'll notice that the press conferences are full of reporters' questions seeking blame, finding ways to point fingers, assessing fault and looking for scapegoats. No one among the reporters asks about the miners, their faith, their personal code, what it means to be a miner, their families, or how they are coping.
Blame is easy. Writing about faith, real courage and bravery is the hard part and requires thinking outside the liberal box. And since much of today's reporting has nothing to do with work and everything to do with parroting the same clichéd and shopworn lines as laid down by the repetitious liberal politicians, who at the same time garnered the same expressions from the newspaper or two of note, we can expect nothing more strenuous.
Bless those in Upshur County, West Virginia, who have lost so much. Bless them all.
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