Stand Down

Phil saw his shadow. I think in WV, we’re all living under a shadow as two more miners were killed yesterday in two separate incidences. There was a third incident which did not have any fatalities. These two accidents were in the county I grew up in, within a few miles of the homestead located on Rt. 3. Black Castle Mine is located on Rt. 3 and the tipple stretches out from one side of the road to the other. My grandparents lived in Drawdy, so I saw a lot of Black Castle or whatever name it went by that week. My neighbors work in those mines, my cousin, and two friends. One works at Black Castle on the 6 p to 4 a shift, so he wasn’t there when the accident happened. (Black Castle is a surface mine, by the way) If you would like to see where Nanner grew up, you an go here and on the left hand side there is a list of featured videos. The one entitled "Mine Stand Down" has about 10 minutes of news commentary with a lot of shots of Boone County. When they showed the shot at the Peytona Church, I was thankful they spelled all of the words on the board right, even though its not grammatically correct. That’s just me. I don’t want my home state, much less my home county, looking bad on national news. I haven’t been in that area for almost two years. Since my grandfather’s death, I haven’t had much of a reason to travel that particular stretch of highway and I was just amazed at the changes the surface mining has made to that area. But that’s a rant for another day.