Mill Workers And Coal Miners

I've been thinking lately about our families and the blue collar roots we came from. Michael, born in North Carolina, his mother, his aunts, and his grandfather ... all worked in the mills. Mill workers in the 50s and 60s in North Carolina worked long, tedious jobs. Some of it was piece work. Michael's mama told me she used to sew the toes in socks and the bibs on the front of men's overalls until her fingers bled. They worked for little pay and virtually no benefits. But they believed in the American dream and they all wanted a piece of it.

The coal miners in my family were virtually the same kind of worker. Black lung and being buried alive were among the number one health issues, I would imagine. Working below the earth had to be a scary and thankless job. And lets not forget, just plain damn depressing. Ever think about it? Talk about no windows! Shifts of men worked twenty-four hours a day. Add on top of the job hazzards, the union issues ... it was a tough time to raise a family.

I look at the "Happy Days" Hollywood tends to paint. The "Rock around the Clock" and "On Blueberry Hill" days. We can glamorize the 50s with James Dean and Natalie Wood, even try to bring it back with movies like American Graffiti and Grease ... but when I talk to the people that really lived and worked during those turbulent years ... I see an entirely different story.

Vietnam ... Civil Rights ... Women's Lib ... Cold War ... Transportation Expansion ... Kennedy and Johnson ... new tax laws ... and all the modernization of that time period, whew, think about it. The list goes on. My point is, the growth of America was painful on the laborers, the farmers ... the little people. Their sons were still dieing in a war somewhere in Korea and then Nam. It didn't necessarily get any easier for mom and pop. But it was on the backs of these people that our nation built its economy and politicians promised "better days ahead." It infuriates me to see some sonofabitch in D.C. want to farm out our jobs to Mexico or China. I'm sure the old mill workers and miners have rolled over in their graves a time or two.

I can't dramatize it all here. Not in this one little blog. But I want us to think about our families, where they came from and the work they did so that we could have opportunities they never did.

Mill workers and coal miners were only a small part of the work force in those days, but they were my family. And I'm very proud to be their descendant.

Blessings to you and yours.