The school board meeting was uneventful. I flopped down in my cubicle at the Charleston Daily Mail with a handful of notes, planning to bang out a quick story and head home for the evening, but as soon as I started writing, I heard a voice over my shoulder: an editor. Something about a mine explosion in Boone County. I knew what would come next.
“Zack, could you check it out on your way home?”
That newsroom was filled with some of the smartest, most talented people I’ve ever known. But bless their hearts, not one of them ever grasped the geography of Boone County, WV. The coal mine in question was almost an hour away from the small bedroom I still occupied in my parents’ home.
I didn’t bother correcting anyone. I had worked for the newspaper less than a year, but I’d learned one important lesson — sometimes questions aren’t actually questions. News had broken, and someone was going to put it back together. Tonight, that was me. I grabbed a few pens and a notebook, hopped in my Chevy Cobalt and headed toward Montcoal, WV.
It was Monday, April 5, 2010. I was a greenhorn reporter for a small daily newspaper on the verge of extinction, but I would spend the next four days huddled alongside journalists from around the world as we waited to discover the fate of the 29 men still inside the Upper Big Branch Mine.
The media was not allowed anywhere near the mines, but government officials requisitioned a local elementary school to serve as a media center. Three-letter networks turned classrooms into newsrooms. The cafeteria became the briefing room. A few times a day, we would gather at the lunch tables to hear from the governor and federal mine safety officers, who would show us maps of their rescue efforts. The TV people would then rush to their satellite trucks for live reports. The newspaper journalists would sit down to clack out stories on laptops connected to the school’s painfully slow wi-fi.
Between briefings I’d head out with a photographer into the surrounding communities to collect whatever stories we could.
Over four days, we interviewed a retired coal miner and Korean War veteran as he lowered the flag in his front yard to half-staff. We talked to a housewife whose husband would have been among the trapped miners had he not changed shifts the week before.
“He was pretty shook up,” she told me. “He said, ‘This may do me in. I may retire.’”
We visited churches that kept their doors open all night offering food, fellowship and prayer for anyone who might need it. While no miner’s families stopped by, plenty of rescue workers and journalists had.
“We’ve got hope,” one parishioner told me.
For four days, everyone tried to have hope. But just after midnight on Friday, the world learned all the miners were dead.
Rescuers had hoped four of the men made it into a safety bunker, but the bunker was empty. It turned out that the blast had killed everyone instantly — crews had overlooked four of the bodies on the first day of the rescue efforts.
I called in sick. Not my proudest moment as an ink-stained wretch, but I couldn’t make myself get out of bed. The adrenaline that hurled me through the preceding days sputtered out, and the crushing weight of reality settled in.
One miner had gone to my high school. Two went to my church. Suddenly it felt like a mountain was bearing down on my chest. The grief kept me horizontal. I kept my curtains drawn and my lamp dark.
Sometime that afternoon, my girlfriend decided to try lifting my mood with some music. She opened iTunes and queued up a Jack Johnson live recording I’d never heard before.
Mother, mother ocean,
I have heard you call.
I’ve wanted to sail upon your waters
Since I was three feet tall.
You’ve seen it all.
You’ve seen it all.
In the most unexpected way, I felt the weight on my chest begin to shift. I wasn’t sure why, but this was exactly what I needed. And I wanted more of it. Thankfully, Jack mentioned in the intro that the song was a Jimmy Buffett cover.
I knew about Jimmy Buffett, of course. I’d heard “Margaritaville” on the oldies station and seen his restaurant of the same name. I’d heard his verse on Alan Jackson’s “Five O’Clock Somewhere.” I just never considered there might be more to the guy than an eternally lost shaker of salt.
That evening, I downloaded the Songs You Know By Heart compilation and found songs like “He Went to Paris,” “Come Monday” and Buffett’s own version of “A Pirate Looks at 40.” Over the coming days, I dropped a line into his back catalog and discovered album cuts like “In the Shelter” and “Tin Cup Chalice.”
Not all the songs were masterpieces, but on every album, I found at least a few tracks that buoyed my soul. Buffett’s music became all I listened to. I built a playlist of my favorites that I played in my room and in my car and in my cubicle.
The national news crews packed up and headed to the next disaster, mostly leaving local media to cover what followed: the funerals, federal investigations and court cases. But with those songs guiding me like a towboat through the shoals, I didn’t run my ship aground again.
It might seem silly to ascribe that much meaning to songs about boats and mixed drinks. But as any Parrothead will tell you, this is more than just tiki bar background music. There’s something deeper happening. Listen to enough of Jimmy Buffett’s songs and you discover he’s in on the joke. He knows the lifestyle he sings about is unattainable, even for him.
Years grow shorter, not longer
The more you’ve been on your own
Feelings for movin’ grow stronger
So you wonder why you ever go home
He knows the escapism he offers is temporary. But that doesn’t make the escapism any less important.
Years later I picked up Buffett’s 2004 novel, A Salty Piece of Land. My copy has sand between the pages from its time in my beach bag. In the afterword, he reveals both his parents died while he worked on the book. That loss — along with the September 11 attack, which also occurred while he was writing — “made me realize more than ever, we don’t just enjoy our escapism. We need it,” Buffett wrote.
Reading that, it suddenly didn’t feel strange anymore that I found solace in Buffett’s music in the aftermath of a coal mining disaster. The more I thought about it, I realized this need for escapism is built into the coal industry itself.
Each June, every unionized coal mine shuts down for two weeks. This yearly “miner’s vacation” is written right into the United Mine Workers of America’s contract.
Some miners use this time to stay home and catch up on repairs. Others take odd jobs to make extra money for their kids’ school clothes. But I’d say for the majority of coal mining families, “miner’s vacation” is synonymous with “Myrtle Beach.”
It’s been this way for generations. According to my parents and in-laws, it was impossible to go anywhere on the Grand Strand in the ‘60s and ‘70s and not run into someone from back home. And while union jobs are largely gone, the annual pilgrimage to “the beach” remains as much a part of coalfield culture as pinto beans.
Myrtle Beach during miner’s vacation is like a hillbilly version of Mardi Gras or Rumspringa. It’s a release valve for the stress built up over the last year. It’s the one time of year you don’t set an alarm clock. You get sunburned while napping in a beach chair. You go have a big meal at a seafood buffet and then get ice cream afterward. You let your kids waste pocketfuls of money on rigged arcade games. It’s the one time of year that putt-putt golf sounds like a good idea.
I’ve often wondered why so many coal miners head for the beach when they get the chance. Does spending every working day in the dark lead them to seek out a place where they can see the sun from dawn to dusk? Does saltwater clean away coal dirt in a way Lava soap can’t?
But really, I think a Myrtle Beach vacation simply offers Appalachian folk a relatively affordable opportunity to escape into a Buffettesque existence, if only for a week or two. There are no bills to pay. There is no grass to mow. There are only fish to catch and cold beverages to drink.
We attempt to hold onto that feeling after vacation is over. It’s why you see “Salt Life” and “Friends of Coal” stickers sharing real estate on truck windows. We fantasize about retiring and moving to the beach, so vacation will never have to end.
Feelings for movin’ grow stronger
So you wonder why you ever go home
For Appalachians, home is a hard place to be. The mountains seek to crush us. The water tries to poison us (if the opioid manufacturers don’t get to us first). We love this place, but we also know it might kill us.
So while we can’t really imagine leaving it for good, we’ll try to escape if given the opportunity. Even if it’s just for a week. Or the length of a Jimmy Buffett song.
Illustrations by Emma Goldenthal @ephem.mmera
