2008 February archive at the BioTour Vagabond Journal

Heading South from Tuscaloosa, Alabama we pulled off the highway at a truck stop just over the border into Mississippi. With an old toothbrush and some biodiesel, I scrubbed the fuel filters, brushing out the particles of food from the metal screen. Alan spun off the final filter and replaced it with a fresh one. Nando grabbed the long handled squeegee/brush and wiped the gray highway dust from the windows. Jenny slept inside the bus, having just finished her shift behind the wheel.

“Whatcha got goin’ here?” a truck driver asked Fernando. The name “Joey” was stitched into the breast of his faded blue stripped shirt.

“We’re a sustainability education non-profit touring the country on this bus running on vegetable oil,” Nando answered pointing toward the bus with the dripping brush.

“You’re really running on vegetable oil?”

“Yeah, we use waste cooking oil from restaurants.”

“I want to buy y’all some dinner. They make a mean burger and fries here. The name’s Joey.”

“Fernando.” The two shook hands.

After waking Jenny for dinner and washing up we found Joey slowly carving away at his rib eye and picking at fries.

“Order what y’all like. The burgers and fries are good,” he repeated.

Yielding to local wisdom, we had Joey order four cheeseburgers with fries. We asked him about his route and his home over sodas. The waitress soon brought our dinner. Sinking my teeth into the burger I remembered I am an omnivore and how much I miss eating meat. Joey shared with Nando and Alan his experiences as a truck driver.

“Well I’m from ‘round the Gulf, least my folks are but I been haulin’ all over the country. My folks lost their home in the flood, but my wife and my step son live up north ‘round by here. My step son’s goin’ through a tough time. There ain’t much for him to do but get in trouble, and I’m tryin’ to help my folks out but they got me haulin’ so many miles I can’t be around as much as I’d like.”

“I appreciate what y’all are doing with global warming and all. We need to get off oil.” He said that he’d sure like to see some of those green jobs come to Mississippi.

His family lived in the Gulfport region and Katrina took their home. His parents were older and losing health and he worried for their well-being in a post-Katrina gulf region. After exchanging a few stories, Joey put down his fork and knife,

“You know, you guys are all right”, Joey stated. “What are your plans for Thanksgiving dinner? We aren’t terribly rich or anything, but my wife does cook a mean turkey and we’d love to have you all over.”

Before we could answer Joey’s generous and considerate invitation a lone uniformed soldier sat at the table next to us. The young man looked curiously at the odd assemblage of people at our table.

“Would you like to join us?” Jenny asked.“Sure,” he replied.

There were two conversations going at once. Alan and Nando spoke with Joey. The other conversation was between Jenny, Jake and me. Jake asked what we are up to and we told the BioTour story.

“Where ya headin’?” I asked.

“I’m driving back home to Alabama in a few days. I am driving my mom’s gas guzzler SUV, 93 octane. Gas is damn expensive!”

“Where have you served?”

“Most recently I was in Guam. I’m on leave right now. Don’t know where I am heading next. Maybe back to Iraq. I don’t know. What about you?”

“We’re heading to New Orleans from Tuscaloosa.”

“I served in New Orleans too, during Katrina. It was crazy.” He began telling the story in an excited mechanical fashion with the authoritative manner that I’d seen before when listening to soldiers tell their stories. “I was one of those guys on the bridge telling everyone to turn back. I’m sure y’all heard about it on TV.”

“What bridge was that?”

“It was a bridge New Orleans residents were trying to cross so they could get back into the city to search for their missing relatives. We were there to prevent them from going back. You know, I understand why they wanted to get over that bridge. I do. It’s family and they’re missing and possibly dead. But, if I let them go back in then there are more people missing and that makes our job harder. So I am on the bridge saying,” his tone became stern as if giving military orders, “‘I am here to keep you alive. I cannot let you cross this bridge.’” He paused for a moment. “New Orleans has gotten a lot better since I was there. People don’t often see the improvements. But, it’s still got some ways to go.”

He broke away from his story to take a sip from his root beer.

“What made you decide to join the military?” I asked.

“I was in ROTC when September 11th happened. Then one day, someone put a pipe bomb in school. Right then I enlisted.”“The guy who planted the pipe bomb, his mother was a Muslim,” he said with matter of fact tone, as if to imply, ‘Not all Muslim’s are terrorists, but…’

“I have done some reconnaissance missions for a few weeks at a time in Iraq. I don’t know if I’ll be ordered back or not.”

The conversation shifted to lighter topics. We all sat and talked life. During a pause in the conversation Jake put down his burger and said,

“You know, thirty-five years ago you wouldn’t have seen this: a soldier, a truck driver, and a bunch of environmentalists all sitting down together for dinner at a truck stop in Mississippi.”

‘It’s even a rare scene today,’ I thought to myself. I then looked to the table next to ours. There, a large black man, also a truck driver, sat alone. He kept his eyes away from our table and his demeanor sent a message of ‘I’m fine alone.’ Nando asked if he’d like to sit with us. He kindly refused. I got the feeling that some boundaries still remain strong in the South.

We left Washington, DC, where energy policy decisions are made and drove out to West Virginia where folks bear the consequences and the true cost of our “cheap” energy. After a night in Charleston and some live music from a Detroit metal band, and some local hardcore funk (the lead musician had “BASS” tattooed across his knuckles) we roused ourselves early on Saturday morning to join a local college class at a Lutheran Church for a short seminar on mountain top removal coal mining.

Judy and Lorella—a couple of tough silver haired coal miner’s daughters, wearing T-shirts that read “Save the Endangered Hillbilly”, showed us a film depicting effects of Mountain Top Removal Mining Coal Mining on the communities of Appalachia. The two women showed video, interviews with other West Virginians, and described the consequences they have seen themselves—tap water running grey, families falling ill to cancer and asthma, nearly 500 mountains blown up; over 700 miles of streams buried in rubble, and the poverty in Southern and Central Appalachia standing around thirty-percent.

“If coal is so good for West Virginia, then how come we’re so gosh danged poor?!” Judy hollered indignantly.

“The folks of Appalachia are cut off from the rest of the country. People think that we’re a bunch of uneducated hicks and hillbillies. That image dehumanizes us and makes it easier for people to accept the way the coal companies treat us,” continued Lorella, then led us up to Kayford Mountain, an MTR mining site outside Charleston.

A dirt road cut through a forest of brilliant autumn colors—yellows and orange leaves with glistening black trunks. Appalachia is home to some of the most biologically diverse temperate forests in the world. The rising peaks and sinking valleys gave way suddenly to a wall of crushed rock and sparse grass. “Valley fill,” Lorella pointed out. “They gotta dump all that rubble they blew off the mountain tops somewhere, so they fill in the valleys. They’ve filled thousands of streams all across Appalachia.”

“They say we need coal, Ha! Once that coal is gone, it’s gone forever and all we’re left with is the pollution. We need clean water to drink.” Judy followed.

Stepping up a mound of the broken rock we looked over the huge chasm where an ancient mountain had once stood and swallowed hard looking down at a wasteland, a gaping wound in the earth.

“The trees are clear cut, the topsoil scraped away, and then comes the dynamite. It takes centuries to build up that soil, then they throw a little grass seed on it and say it’s ‘reclaimed’. That land ain’t never gonna recover. Least not in my lifetime,” Judy exclaimed with disgust. “All this for that tiny seam of coal” said Lorella pointing toward a thin black line on the wall of gorge.

”The laws are written by the coal companies and all the politicians they got in their pockets—from the Governor up to the President. The people here ain’t got no say, no rights. You heard of a ‘Banana Republic’ before? Well this here’s a coal republic and violence against people who stand up ain’t no joke. Y’all be careful with that bus a yours.”

***

The next morning we found ourselves in the tiny town of Sylvester, West Virginia, little more than 100 people, five churches, one bar, and an enormous Massey Energy coal processing facility. After exploring the town on a quiet Sunday morning we all wandered back to the bus, where we met Jimmy—a stocky fifty five year old, bald head and a Swisher Sweet cigar in his teeth. Jimmy is a retired railroad worker, a hunter, gear head, and native to West Virginia. He took a liking to E and enjoyed having people listen to his stories, tidbits of folk wisdom and his jokes—“Y’all went to college? Yup I got two PhDs myself…post hole diggers that is.” We spent the next couple of days in his care. We parked the bus behind his home, shared meals his family, rode in the back of his pick-up through nearby mining sites, and even accompanied him bow hunting in the surrounding mountain forests.

Jimmy displayed many of the internal conflicts and contradictions we met in Appalachia. When walking through the mountains Jimmy seemed at home, having an affinity with nature.

“I spend all day in these hills, just listening. When you listen you notice things, ya see what I mean. Ever since I was a boy I been here. It’s a shame to so much of it go.”

When the conversation would shift to mountain top removal coal mining, there was a disconnect from previous conversations. “Man’s gotta make a living. Don’t he? I won’t even take the money from Massey when the city makes ‘em pay everyone in the town.”

“Don’t you think he owes the people of this town something for getting wealthy off the minerals of this land that belong to everyone?”

“He puts people to work. People need jobs and if he isn’t mining this coal someone else will. He does it cheaper. People make a fuss and don’t realize that things change.”

Many West Virginians are proud of their mining heritage, the long hard hours in the mine to providing for their families and providing the energy to “keep the lights on.” Many people defend coal mining against outsiders who they assume, often rightly, know nothing about their situation.

Jimmy also sees his hunting grounds being destroyed and neighbors out of jobs. Hidden from his view over the first rise of hills are the wastelands that cover thousands of acres. He says that a man’s got to have a job but as machines and dynamite replace miners the jobs dwindle and the unions disintegrate along with mountain-tops.

“A man’s got to be smart and look out for himself, ya see what I mean,” he says. But Jimmy also has a young son and is concerned about what kind of a world he will inherit, and though we had plenty of differences of opinion, this concern we shared.