I Have Some Things To Say (About Coal and Steel)
I recently read an amazing book, "Baker Towers," about multiple generations of a family during the coal industry's boom and subsequent bust in Western Pennsylvania. Reading it was like reading about my grandparents and their parents, and I had all kinds of feels at the end. Most of them were of the nostalgic kind — missing my grandparents, missing home, even though I'm just an hour away. Missing the kind of small towns I grew up around.
What I don't miss, though, and what probably no kid from coal country misses, is the actual production of coal.
Which leads to the disbelief and confusion I'm feeling by our new — here's that word again — nostalgia for "American manufacturing." Translation: coal and steel. I will argue with no person about their importance to our economy through the steel bust of the 80s. Yes. The America that we knew until the 1980s was built on coal and steel. But I can't wrap my brain around how anyone can listen to talk of bringing back these industries with anything but bemusement. Being nostalgic for my family is one thing. Being nostalgic for the glory days of coal and steel is something different altogether.
Take if from a kid from coal country.
My uncle hurt his back in the mines. His dad, my grandpap, was part of a team sent to search for survivors after a mine explosion in West Virginia. My friends' dads went months without pay during ugly strikes so they could get wages that justified the danger they put themselves in each day and the toll the work took on their health. Black lung. Emphysema. Chronic bronchitis. You name it, I know people who had it.
As a member of the high school marching band, I played my trombone on Friday nights between slag heaps in tiny towns that smelled like sulphur. Every drive to anywhere took you past strip-mining operations that left the land scarred and ugly. The air was fine when I was a kid, but had at one point been gross. Streams and rivers ran full of pollution. Until about a decade ago, no one would touch a fish pulled out of the river in my hometown.
The one thing I keep coming back to, though, beyond how awful these industries were for the people in them and the regions that relied on them, is that no one I grew up with wanted these jobs. And none of our parents wanted us to take them. You might argue that it's because we're lazy. But that's not it at all. We just wanted more.
You see, our grandparents and great-grandparents came from far off places and had to make a living somehow, so they literally broke themselves in the mines to GIVE THEIR KIDS BETTER LIVES. It took a while, but a few generations after they showed up here, their plan started to work. Maybe their kids got jobs in grocery stores, or became plumbers or teachers or secretaries. Then some even went to college and became engineers, scientists, lawyers and doctors. When I graduated from high school two decades ago, not one person in my class said, "Gee, I wish the mines were still hiring so I could get a job like grandpap had." No way. We all wanted more than that. Some kids went to vocational school and have done super well for themselves in the skilled trades. Others took jobs in factories and have been successful there. Some of us even get paid to write for a living, a job I'm sure my great-grandpaps never even contemplated.
And the thing is, when steel and coal finally ran their course, the people who wanted more came up with things like Amazon and Microsoft and Apple. Today, cities that were once dark at noon from smoke and soot are hotbeds for cancer research and organ transplantation. The great-grandkids of miners and steelworkers are designing cars that drive themselves.
You might argue that the new "meds and eds" (and tech) economy leaves little room for people who can't afford or aren't cut out for college. But I disagree. The US faces a critical shortage of skilled laborers — plumbers, electricians, carpenters and contractors that literally build the world around us. Medical technicians, care providers for the elderly. There are so many opportunities if we can just stop thinking about how great America was and focus instead on how amazing we are and could continue to be.
Now is not the time to go backward. Not when we've come so far. The world is a different place than it was even 30 years ago. And for that, I thank my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents. (Yours, too.) It's fine to feel nostalgic about the past. But we can't use nostalgia to fuel important decisions about economics. Nostalgia is perfect for books.
It is not perfect for governing.
What I don't miss, though, and what probably no kid from coal country misses, is the actual production of coal.
Which leads to the disbelief and confusion I'm feeling by our new — here's that word again — nostalgia for "American manufacturing." Translation: coal and steel. I will argue with no person about their importance to our economy through the steel bust of the 80s. Yes. The America that we knew until the 1980s was built on coal and steel. But I can't wrap my brain around how anyone can listen to talk of bringing back these industries with anything but bemusement. Being nostalgic for my family is one thing. Being nostalgic for the glory days of coal and steel is something different altogether.
Take if from a kid from coal country.
My uncle hurt his back in the mines. His dad, my grandpap, was part of a team sent to search for survivors after a mine explosion in West Virginia. My friends' dads went months without pay during ugly strikes so they could get wages that justified the danger they put themselves in each day and the toll the work took on their health. Black lung. Emphysema. Chronic bronchitis. You name it, I know people who had it.
As a member of the high school marching band, I played my trombone on Friday nights between slag heaps in tiny towns that smelled like sulphur. Every drive to anywhere took you past strip-mining operations that left the land scarred and ugly. The air was fine when I was a kid, but had at one point been gross. Streams and rivers ran full of pollution. Until about a decade ago, no one would touch a fish pulled out of the river in my hometown.
The one thing I keep coming back to, though, beyond how awful these industries were for the people in them and the regions that relied on them, is that no one I grew up with wanted these jobs. And none of our parents wanted us to take them. You might argue that it's because we're lazy. But that's not it at all. We just wanted more.
You see, our grandparents and great-grandparents came from far off places and had to make a living somehow, so they literally broke themselves in the mines to GIVE THEIR KIDS BETTER LIVES. It took a while, but a few generations after they showed up here, their plan started to work. Maybe their kids got jobs in grocery stores, or became plumbers or teachers or secretaries. Then some even went to college and became engineers, scientists, lawyers and doctors. When I graduated from high school two decades ago, not one person in my class said, "Gee, I wish the mines were still hiring so I could get a job like grandpap had." No way. We all wanted more than that. Some kids went to vocational school and have done super well for themselves in the skilled trades. Others took jobs in factories and have been successful there. Some of us even get paid to write for a living, a job I'm sure my great-grandpaps never even contemplated.
And the thing is, when steel and coal finally ran their course, the people who wanted more came up with things like Amazon and Microsoft and Apple. Today, cities that were once dark at noon from smoke and soot are hotbeds for cancer research and organ transplantation. The great-grandkids of miners and steelworkers are designing cars that drive themselves.
You might argue that the new "meds and eds" (and tech) economy leaves little room for people who can't afford or aren't cut out for college. But I disagree. The US faces a critical shortage of skilled laborers — plumbers, electricians, carpenters and contractors that literally build the world around us. Medical technicians, care providers for the elderly. There are so many opportunities if we can just stop thinking about how great America was and focus instead on how amazing we are and could continue to be.
Now is not the time to go backward. Not when we've come so far. The world is a different place than it was even 30 years ago. And for that, I thank my great-grandparents, grandparents and parents. (Yours, too.) It's fine to feel nostalgic about the past. But we can't use nostalgia to fuel important decisions about economics. Nostalgia is perfect for books.
It is not perfect for governing.
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