Donovan Kelly
Crummy But Good Writer with a Lighter Touch
I don’t know much about coalmines. Most of what I do know comes from old timers like Tom. Tom only speaks the truth. I, however, don’t hear so good and don’t remember so well. What’s worse, I’m given to write what words roll most easy downhill to the paper. So anything true and good in this story belongs to Tom and everything else, well I guess that’s on me.
Tom was picking banjo at the Bridge Restaurant in Hancock, Md., about two winters ago. A man as thin and worn as his banjo strings playing a nice country tune, sad and happy all at the same time, if you know what I mean. Then the song sorta stopped and Tom just started to talk about growing up poor in the Depression.
“Only we didn’t know we were poor because everybody else was in the same fix. What with six kids and a Daddy out of work, you can imagine how high off the hog we ate. Shoot, we didn’t even eat low off the hog,” Tom said with a small grin. “We only ate what grew on the trees, got caught in our traps or swam in the creek. Sometimes a bass would get on the fishing hook by mistake, but more likely we ate minnows.”
As Tom talked, I had been eating a big plate of fried eggs, grits and country ham, but I stopped. Had this feeling like my belly was suddenly full of minnows.
“A job opened at the mine and you know I took it,” Tom continued, not worried a bit about my belly and seeming to drift off somewheres by himself. “Took it for 10 years. At first a new man is extra careful about everything in the mine, trying to keep all his options open should a tunnel collapse. After awhile, you get down to two options. Run or don’t give a damn.
“When you start choosing ‘don’t give a damn’ then every time the mine begins to rumble, you know you’re headed for trouble,” Tom said. “ But back then life could get so bad that it was really hard to give a damn, really hard to get your legs arunning even when the walls were falling in.”
I think I got Tom’s words mostly right. I know they come back to me whenever I start fretting about nothing. Whatever little problems I got, they sure are better than a belly full of minnows. Knowing that keeps me arunning.