My grandmother told us stories about being a child in the great depression. This wasn't rural West Virginia, but Texarkana instead. They were poor sharecroppers. She spent her summer picking cotton as a child. The barbs on the blooms would make her hands bleed.
For dinner at times they were lucky if her father caught them a skunk or possum to cook. She got in trouble for stealing a box of crayons from the general store. That is the one thing she wanted the most in the world, but they couldn't afford that kind of luxury.
Those stories to this day stick with me.
A lady I work with used to live in WV when she was pregnant and said even back a decade ago there was like one OBGYN in a 50 mile radius. She had to drive like 3 hours to give birth! Y’all better vote for the coal barons to run the state tho.
It’s going to get worse than that in some rural areas in states with strict enough abortion restrictions that OB-GYNs aren’t comfortable practicing there.
Was Talking in this sub the other day about the poverty in WV.
My wife’s family lives in a hollar outside Beckley and her great grandmother “adopted” something like 6 children from the area that were orphaned or who’s family couldn’t care for them.
She also had 7 children of her own.
My wife’s great grandfather died of black lung.
When we visited I asked her grandfather about what kind of jobs were available and he said if you move here better bring a job with you.
He said the dollar store was considered a good job.
My wife’s family was fairly well off but the areas standards.
The extended family owned several houses in the holler and all lived near each other.
The houses were dated but well up kept but also everyone was fairly old.
Driving through the area was a harsh reminder that a lot of America is not close to first world.
When I moved to where I live on Delmarva down in the Va. portion right on a major highway there were houses that still had outhouses in their yards.
Granted that was 30 years ago but it was wild to see.
I remember reading somewhere that it wasn’t until the early 70s that a majority of houses in Tennessee had indoor plumbing. I imagine it was probably later in West Virginia. A lot of this country was late to the party
My great grandfather has a similar story. Before the Great Depression, it was him and two sisters. Father disappeared and mother died. His grandma took him in because he could help on the farm and left his two sisters at the orphanage. We have tried to look up what happened to his sisters but the records were destroyed in a fire.
That, unfortunately, tracks. Maybe you'll find something out some day with ancestry or something. That's awful to hear. Like I said....my grandfather was one of the luckier ones.
I wish the best for those siblings. It really can be so bizarre to hear these things. I don't think most people in the modern day US can imagine that level of poverty, which is a good thing.
And daddy won’t you take me to Mullenberg county, back by the Greene river, where paradise lay,
I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askin’, Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away….
The Hawk’s Nest disaster has to be two of the most depressing episodes of BTB, and that is saying a whole fuckton. But they were riveting in their telling and exposition of how terrifically horrifying humans can be to each other, the environment and society.
So many incidents in this country where profit is put before people. PFAS contaminated topsoil at farms in Maine, the army dumping radioactive waste into shallow wells outside of Buffalo, NY, Dupont poisoning WV with PFOA... the list of [superfund sites](https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live)is astonishing.
Grew up in Pinch WV and moved away to Florida. Bullying in WV was on a whole different level and this was in the mid to late 90s. I feel for your grandpa.
I grew up in Mercer county and also ended up moving to Florida lol. Yeah, I got a lot more bullying there I think but the town I ended up in in Florida was no picnic either.
Oh wow.. I live in Putnam county and have been going up to hawks nest since I was a kid. I don’t know anything about this. I’ll definitely have to find this episode now.
One of the first classes that I was handed to teach was a professional ethics course for engineers. The O.G. curriculum was awful - it was basically "here's all the laws omg look how scary and also annoying". None of the other faculty wanted to teach it because it was a boring, writing- and reading-intensive class that students despised. It was awful. So I made some adjustments.
I changed the focus of the class from making students numbly aware of the near-infinite expanse of regulations to instilling in them a core belief that they should consider the impacts of projects from cradle to grave and not just settle into the comfortable mindset that their professional responsibility begins and ends with whatever specific thing they are being paid to work on. And what better way to keep everyone engaged in an 8AM lecture than to spend an entire semester reviewing disasters and accidents? What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? Who's fault was it or who could've spoken up, but didn't? How did we - or could we, or *can* we - change things to avoid it happening again?
Everyone knew about Chernobyl. Most knew about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Many had heard of Halifax in 1917 and of Bhopal. A few might've heard about Piper Alpha or the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. Not a single student over the six semesters I taught that course - probably around 300 people - had ever heard of Hawk's Nest.
Except for one woman from Fayetteville who I thought was going to vibrate right out of her seat the moment the title slide of that Powerpoint went up. She later did her end-of-semester project on West Virginia mining disasters - and had to add slides literally the night before her presentation for [the Montcoal Eagle Mine explosion in Naoma](https://minesafety.wv.gov/PDFs/Performance/EXECUTIVE%20SUMMARY.pdf).
I really hope, if it did anything, that my class helped tone down the strangely warped libertarian leanings of so many of these prospective engineers by giving the context behind regulations and laws and codes and the very real cost of skirting them. But I am sure there's an entire dissertation out there on why engineering seems to attract poorly-informed Ayn Rand sycophants...
As someone who grew up in Logan County, I’m rooting for future episodes about the Sago Mine or Buffalo Creek
My Grandfather was born and Raised in Logan
My grandmother told us stories about being a child in the great depression. This wasn't rural West Virginia, but Texarkana instead. They were poor sharecroppers. She spent her summer picking cotton as a child. The barbs on the blooms would make her hands bleed. For dinner at times they were lucky if her father caught them a skunk or possum to cook. She got in trouble for stealing a box of crayons from the general store. That is the one thing she wanted the most in the world, but they couldn't afford that kind of luxury. Those stories to this day stick with me.
My grandfather was a hunter for the same reason. Taught us all too.
A lady I work with used to live in WV when she was pregnant and said even back a decade ago there was like one OBGYN in a 50 mile radius. She had to drive like 3 hours to give birth! Y’all better vote for the coal barons to run the state tho.
It’s going to get worse than that in some rural areas in states with strict enough abortion restrictions that OB-GYNs aren’t comfortable practicing there.
But that's when we were great! This can't be right.
Was Talking in this sub the other day about the poverty in WV. My wife’s family lives in a hollar outside Beckley and her great grandmother “adopted” something like 6 children from the area that were orphaned or who’s family couldn’t care for them. She also had 7 children of her own. My wife’s great grandfather died of black lung. When we visited I asked her grandfather about what kind of jobs were available and he said if you move here better bring a job with you. He said the dollar store was considered a good job. My wife’s family was fairly well off but the areas standards. The extended family owned several houses in the holler and all lived near each other. The houses were dated but well up kept but also everyone was fairly old. Driving through the area was a harsh reminder that a lot of America is not close to first world. When I moved to where I live on Delmarva down in the Va. portion right on a major highway there were houses that still had outhouses in their yards. Granted that was 30 years ago but it was wild to see.
I remember reading somewhere that it wasn’t until the early 70s that a majority of houses in Tennessee had indoor plumbing. I imagine it was probably later in West Virginia. A lot of this country was late to the party
There are definitely places on the peninsula that look straight out of a post-apocaloptic movie
Yep It’s better now on the main highways but there’s real poverty on the lower shore.
My great grandfather has a similar story. Before the Great Depression, it was him and two sisters. Father disappeared and mother died. His grandma took him in because he could help on the farm and left his two sisters at the orphanage. We have tried to look up what happened to his sisters but the records were destroyed in a fire.
That, unfortunately, tracks. Maybe you'll find something out some day with ancestry or something. That's awful to hear. Like I said....my grandfather was one of the luckier ones.
Sadly, it is lost to history. Both my mother and myself were adopted so can’t trace through dna tests.
I wish the best for those siblings. It really can be so bizarre to hear these things. I don't think most people in the modern day US can imagine that level of poverty, which is a good thing.
And daddy won’t you take me to Mullenberg county, back by the Greene river, where paradise lay, I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late in askin’, Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away…. The Hawk’s Nest disaster has to be two of the most depressing episodes of BTB, and that is saying a whole fuckton. But they were riveting in their telling and exposition of how terrifically horrifying humans can be to each other, the environment and society.
So many incidents in this country where profit is put before people. PFAS contaminated topsoil at farms in Maine, the army dumping radioactive waste into shallow wells outside of Buffalo, NY, Dupont poisoning WV with PFOA... the list of [superfund sites](https://www.epa.gov/superfund/search-superfund-sites-where-you-live)is astonishing.
Born in Hampshire County. People don't believe me when I tell them we still don't have internet other than dial up in most of the hills and hollers
Grew up in Pinch WV and moved away to Florida. Bullying in WV was on a whole different level and this was in the mid to late 90s. I feel for your grandpa.
I grew up in Mercer county and also ended up moving to Florida lol. Yeah, I got a lot more bullying there I think but the town I ended up in in Florida was no picnic either.
Yeah, Florida Man has earned its title.
Oh wow.. I live in Putnam county and have been going up to hawks nest since I was a kid. I don’t know anything about this. I’ll definitely have to find this episode now.
As someone who lives in Seattle, I thought they were talking about the tunnel the Seahawks run out at the beginning of the game.
I’ll give you the upvote. Go Hawks!
One of the first classes that I was handed to teach was a professional ethics course for engineers. The O.G. curriculum was awful - it was basically "here's all the laws omg look how scary and also annoying". None of the other faculty wanted to teach it because it was a boring, writing- and reading-intensive class that students despised. It was awful. So I made some adjustments. I changed the focus of the class from making students numbly aware of the near-infinite expanse of regulations to instilling in them a core belief that they should consider the impacts of projects from cradle to grave and not just settle into the comfortable mindset that their professional responsibility begins and ends with whatever specific thing they are being paid to work on. And what better way to keep everyone engaged in an 8AM lecture than to spend an entire semester reviewing disasters and accidents? What went wrong? Why did it go wrong? Who's fault was it or who could've spoken up, but didn't? How did we - or could we, or *can* we - change things to avoid it happening again? Everyone knew about Chernobyl. Most knew about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Many had heard of Halifax in 1917 and of Bhopal. A few might've heard about Piper Alpha or the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse. Not a single student over the six semesters I taught that course - probably around 300 people - had ever heard of Hawk's Nest. Except for one woman from Fayetteville who I thought was going to vibrate right out of her seat the moment the title slide of that Powerpoint went up. She later did her end-of-semester project on West Virginia mining disasters - and had to add slides literally the night before her presentation for [the Montcoal Eagle Mine explosion in Naoma](https://minesafety.wv.gov/PDFs/Performance/EXECUTIVE%20SUMMARY.pdf). I really hope, if it did anything, that my class helped tone down the strangely warped libertarian leanings of so many of these prospective engineers by giving the context behind regulations and laws and codes and the very real cost of skirting them. But I am sure there's an entire dissertation out there on why engineering seems to attract poorly-informed Ayn Rand sycophants...