“A spotless house is the sign of a wasted life.” ~ Unknown
long walk home
On daddy-daughter day, the first place we went was Leatherwood coal camp in the far reaches of Perry County, very near the Leslie County line. They’ve rerouted the main road so that you can’t actually drive through what remains of the coal camp, and what remains of the coal camp is a few blocks of the old commissary and one concrete footer of the coal tipple. That’s it. Nature has taken back everything else. The enormity of it is lost in the photos. You really just have to be there. The Kudzu demarcates the line along the hillsides where the company houses used to stand; where miners raised families like dad’s; where children played in coal dust, gangs of rough boys in knife fights, and little girls trying to keep their white dresses white. The old two-lane road still leads into the deep valley if you’re willing to take it. It, too, is being swallowed by kudzu, down to only one passable lane now. At the commissary ruins there’s a road that turns into the hollow where most of the miners lived, and it leads to where the schoolhouse used to be. Twice dad said to me, “You can’t believe what a thriving, busy place this was.” It was the place Mamaw Terry called “the end of the world,” but there were thousands of people in the coal camp, all trying to survive the best way they could. My twin uncles were born in Leatherwood. Dad was baptized in the creek of Big Leatherwood (a small community about four miles away). He would walk the ridge to Cutshin where the deep swimming hole was, and sell cold Cokes for a quarter to the miners coming out of the ground. It was his first business. There are a hundred stories in the family about this place. It feels like hallowed ground as wildflowers and cattails take back what was theirs. It was moving to be in this place and imagine what it must have been like; what dad’s life must have been like in those days.
Leatherwood Coal Camp from the bypass
on the hillside
from the school to the house
swallowed by kudzu
into the valley, toward the commissary
all that remains
where once there were train tracks
2 Responses
I remember Leatherwood, the train tracks and the school and our home.
[…] Kentucky that only have a few company houses still standing. Some have been wiped off the map, like Leatherwood where dad lived when he was a young boy. It’s very, very sad to see these once vibrant cities […]