Hi, Shirley. I enjoyed reading your experiences visiting a coal mining patch. When I was growing up and for years after, it seemed like a normal childhood, and in many ways it was. Grandparents, parents, uncles and aunts, cousins, friends. We went to school and church and if anyone gave us a penny, we went to the post office to buy candy and if it was a whole nickel, we went to the company store and bought ice cream. We kids ran through town (there was a place we weren't allowed to go for some reason) and visited people. Some of the men routinely got drunk on Saturday night and beat their wives and children. Most did not. By law, grandpap said the mine owners had to leave 1 dollar in their pay check after deducting the company store bill. Even if it didn't pay off the bill. So he saved that dollar and placed it in the offering plate when a preacher came to town, usually once a month. That was in normal times. During strikes, everything changed. A man told me about 20 years ago that his father was a steel worker in Johnstown and they were hard men, but coal miners on strike scared the <stuff> out of all of them. They were wise. I do remember a peaceful KKK parade during one strike. Strike breakers had been imported to work the mines and the strikers were angry. But the men individually became different. Frustration, anger, fear, hunger, alcohol. And then add World War II and the young men disappearing to fight the enemy -- the Germans and Japanese bayonetted babies and we kids had to hide if they came to town--and the air raid siren sent us hiding under our desks, or at home, pulling the black out curtains closed. I learned so many years later of the fear the imported miners (scabs) felt. They were so desperate for work they faced the wrath of coal miners with weapons. And then had to face the fear of a KKK parade. Oh my. Memories, memories. Shirley Maynard Hampton, VA My father died at age 95 with a mild case of black lung. He said his grandfather did, as well. His grandfather was so ill he couldn't even talk. Dad had cancer and when we took him to an oncologist, the doctor said his father was a coal miner in West Virginia and he would do everything he could. But at 95, dad was tired. My uncle died of black lung a few years ago. He was tired, too. Thank you for dedicating your life's work to miners. I never noticed the odor of the slag heap, just the smoke and threat of falling through if we were foolish kids. But the blackness in the air, oh my. We couldn't blow our noses without black coal dust filling our hankies...no paper hankies at that time...and we would rush, children and adults, to take the laundry off the line when we knew a train was due. When my lung began collapsing for no apparent reason in the 1970's, the doctor said it was possible black lung was the root problem...not just the miners were exposed and we children had more tender, more susceptible lungs. **************It's only a deal if it's where you want to go. Find your travel deal here. (http://information.travel.aol.com/deals?ncid=aoltrv00050000000047)