Riding With Larry

By John Wessel-McCoy

The group traveled with Larry Gibson up to the Stanley Heirs Park Land Trust (Larry’s home) on Kayford Mountain. Larry hadn’t realized we were the people he was meeting with today. Apparently Evelyn or Abe, the organizer from OHVEC (Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition), arranged the meeting. And so Larry was surprised and pleased to see us back exactly one year from our first encounter – with new people in our group to bear witness to his struggle against the coal operators and the horrible reality of mountain top removal.

The whole group caravanned with Larry leading the way, and a few of us rode in his truck. He asked that those riding with him pay attention to what he had to say so that we could share with the rest of the group later. Here are some of the notes from the ride.

First of all, Larry stated that in the 1940’s, there were about 750,000 mining jobs. Around 1960, that number had fallen to about 260,000. Today, there are less than 30,000 jobs in the state. According to his figures, that means that there are only 4% of the jobs there once were. (Yesterday, in Matewan, Donna Mae placed the job attrition along similar lines. She claimed that there is more coal being mined and produced today in West Virginia than in any other time in its history. Yet the industry provides 1/15 of the jobs that it once did back in the middle of the 20th century.)

Who’s to blame for the loss of jobs? Larry says that environmentalists and activists like himself often get the blame, but he points out that, well before anyone was talking about the environment, the industry itself was mechanizing and adopting new, less labor intensive mining techniques.

Mile after mile, through the hollers of Cabin Creek, we would pass small clusters of buildings, and Larry would describe what once existed. Passing through Eskdale, he told us how this town once thrived, with a city council, a police force, a fire department, a high school of up to 1500 students, 18 stores (not one but two shoe stores), and two movie theaters – now all gone. What remain are just a few run down houses and the crumbling foundations of where buildings once stood. The ruins of coal tipples, explosive bunkers (for dynamiting in the mines), and a pay house dot the torn up rail road bed that runs parallel with the road. Mine entrances that once swallowed 650 men everyday now are sealed shut.

Yet, regardless of the clear local economic devastation, the coal in these hills still yields unbelievable profits for some. Larry had a math problem for us to figure out. At present, how much coal can be hauled out of a hollow in one working week (six days)? To begin with, Larry told us that his father worked as a loader, and was good at his job. He could load onto a train car about 50 tons of coal in a days work. The mechanized process that exists today can load three times that amount in 60 seconds. One coal car can hold about 140 tons. And about 300 cars are filled and leave the hollow every day. The going rate for a ton of coal goes for between $60 and $80. So, how much coal in dollars does Massey haul out of one site in the course of a six day week?

140 tons X 300 cars/day = 42,000 tons per day X 6 = 252,000 per week X $60/ton = $15,120,000

…And that’s just what coal leaves on trains. I couldn’t keep up with the Larry’s figures on the coal that gets hauled out by trucks (leaving about every three minutes).

And with all of this profit, the company has shown absolutely no regard for the jobs it has eliminated and the lives of workers lost. To illustrate some of the attitudes he encounters, Larry told us about a conference he attended concerning nuclear energy that was hosted in a church. There was in attendance also a man who was both a nuclear physicist and an ordained minister. This man stood up at one point and stated that, concerning worker causalities, some “collateral damage” is necessary in order for the nation to maintain a comfortable standard of living. After hearing nonsense like this from such highly educated men, Larry stood up at this conference and said “Some of you with educations ought to be ashamed of your education to say the things you say.”

At what cost do we do the things we do? Above ground mining in proportion to the number of its workers has claimed a statistically higher number of lives on the job than the notorious decades of below ground mining. 550 lives have been lost in the relatively short time that above ground mining has been around – for what purpose? In fact, just yesterday, in a mine nearby, a driver was dumping waste into the slurry when his truck tipped back and dragged him down into the toxic waste.

Millions of acres of ruined land have yet to be reclaimed – despite legal mandates. The companies evade their responsibilities to restore the land they have ravaged. The job of land reclamation could employ thousands of people for generations to come, but how is it in the interests of coal companies to pay for this work – especially when it is so easy to squirm out of any legal responsibility? If the job ever gets done, it will be on the taxpayers dime.

As we made the steep climb up Kayford Mountain to Larry’s home, Larry told us about how the mining company had bulldozed a family cemetery of his just this past year – a cemetery with ancestors dating back more than two centuries! Once 250 souls rested on top of this mountain; now only eleven graves remain in tact and the bones and stones of the rest are now scattered in the debris of the valley fill below.

Larry said that when this happened, on the day it happened, he was lucky to have been busy giving some people a tour. Had he been alone that day, not having the obligation to maintain his composure in front of his visitors, he says he might have thrown all the years of struggle and hard work away with one desperate act. Larry is a man of exceptional courage, but on that day, he almost was beaten. Luckily, through his grief and despair, he found strength to carry on. Larry says that the coal companies have taken just about everything away from him, except the fact that he is right and the cause he is fighting for is right.

And because of the faith he has in his cause he acts and speaks, “with lightning in my feet, fire in my belly, and thunder in my words.”