Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal

Judy Bonds: The Endangered Hillbilly

Judy Bonds The Endangered Hillbilly My people, darker than God sometimes, I see you in the shade of mountains, and if I burned a piece of coal to see you better, I would burn the darkness from it, but the darkness would return behind the nearest object; it starts on the other side of where the light runs out, but let’s agree that is the harder side, where darkness makes another kind of light. —Maurice Manning, “Why Coal Companies Favor Mountaintop Removal” There’s a heaviness that hangs over the town of Whitesville, West Virginia. Like the fog from the nearby Big Coal River, it seeps through the streets, past the empty storefronts, on up the mountainside to the rows of houses that overlook the town. It has become the invisible resident, a testament to the flight that has taken place over the years even as the profits of the mining industry have soared. Many of the buildings on the main street are vacant, pocked by broken windows boarded up with plywood. Only a few businesses barely hold on: an auto shop, a law office, a motel. The sign for a local diner boasts hot fried baloney sandwiches, an Appalachian staple. Inside, a handful of people gather at the counter for their midday dinner. Even in the midst of the laughter that trickles out onto the street, one can hear the exhaustion. People in Whitesville are tired. Although the town is located within Boone County, the leading coal-producing county in the state (and the county with the most mountaintop removal mines), Judy Bonds,Whitesville,Westvirginia. Photo by Silas house. JuDy BOnDS 1 nearly 30 percent of residents live below the poverty line.1 Ever the faithless lover, coal has left much of Whitesville high and dry. “This town is dying,” Judy Bonds mourns in the storefront office of Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW). “Growing up here in the sixties, this was a pretty booming town. My mother tells me that in the forties it was even more booming. The more coal we mine, the poorer we get.” Such candor has made the fifty-seven-year-old grandmother a controversial figure around Whitesville and beyond. Coming from just up the road in Birch Holler, Bonds is used to taking her share of knocks. Her fierce hazel eyes and commanding voice are clues that she is descended from tough stock. It’s something that has sustained her as the outreach coordinator for CRMW, a grassroots organization devoted to stopping mountaintop removal. “I have the reputation of being a pretty angry person who speaks her mind,” Bonds says. “Sometimes the words don’t come out right. If it’s a spade, I call it a spade. That’s who I am. I can’t apologize for that. I lost my diplomacy a long time ago.” Bonds was raised to speak her mind. The daughter of Oliver “Cob” Thompson and Sarah Easton Hannah—“pronounced ‘Hanner,’” Bonds is quick to point out—she is proud of her country upbringing in the Coal River Valley, where her family has lived for ten generations. “My first memories was of my father and grandfather plowing the field above my home,” she recalls. “I remember the smell of the rich, beautiful black earth. That’s how it is in Appalachia—you are the mountain and the mountain is you.” Bonds also remembers playing with her father’s mining gear and finding one of his paychecks, made out for only fifteen dollars . That discovery, perhaps more than any other, put a nagging doubt in her mind about ethics in the coal industry. Her father’s pay was barely enough to provide for her family, she says, let alone to compensate for the risks to his life and health. “I remember walking up and down the railroad tracks at night with a pillowcase picking up lumps of coal so that we could stay SOmEthIng’S RISIng 1 warm,” she shakes her head. “My memories of coal are not good memories.” Bonds doesn’t recall ever hearing her father grumble. “It was my mommy who complained, who railed and ranted against the company and the industry and how they treated the miners and the people. My mother was the one who talked about Matewan and Mother Jones and John L. Lewis.”2 Her mother was also responsible for making sure her father finally received his black lung benefits...