Inside Appalachia - First Impressions 🇺🇸

the way I'm going to take you is through the mountains and that's where it's deep deep Appalachian deep deep Appalachia this was like the Hub of the community when they started shutting the coal mines down it just what was up here you're doing your own thing out here no Sheriff down here no problem that's right this is really hard to wrap my head around because we are in the middle of nowhere and then people have money for this side oh yeah you can make six figures easy easy at 18 years old this is your holler holler people if a husband got killed in the mine she had seven days to remarry stay cooked perfect the coal industry died here and then everyone just left quickly these electric cars are getting charged Off the Grid and that's mostly cold I guess West Virginia people are just so used to having a negative shadow cast on us and it's not that way at all good morning guys here in Bluefield West Virginia deep in the heart of Appalachia and today we're meeting up with a local named Jimmy and Jimmy said he can get us out to the surrounding area here some of the former wealthy towns with old money and some towns that have decayed to only a few people living there and bring us into coal country because that is what built this part of Appalachia so let's do this get in with Jimmy get a better understanding of what life is like here this whole entire Block's coming down for economic development they're going to tear it down I guess rebuild new buildings here there's so much asbestos and they're ready to come down these things are old old they're beautiful though like from the front side that one's beautiful so this was just thriving what 30 40 years ago there were people everywhere it was one of the biggest hubs in Coal country to come through Bluefield because you're finally getting kind of out of the mountains and it's easier to get cold out than this if you look down that way you can see cold moving still yet oh cool moving on the railway okay so it's still happening you still get some coal um not like it was though I mean even back in the day the horse and buggy it was just it's a coal mining town was just full of people in life some people are hanging on huh yeah furniture shop okay so Jimmy fair to say this is the heart of Appalachia uh where we're at yeah this area Avalanche is a big mountain chain it's one of the old exact worlds and it's here's the thing it's super hard to Define because technically you can say it's from Georgia to Canada right up to Quebec like technically I grew up in Appalachia in Vermont right but I don't look at myself as Appalachians right but when you look at your identify as Appalachian that would be these states right West Virginia Kentucky Tennessee right North Carolina Eastern Kentucky of Southern West Virginia parts of Tennessee but I'll show you in a little bit when we get up here where the West Virginia Virginia line is and you can see the difference if you want to film some of this this is actual cold coming through when we get on down here you'll see how many railroad tracks were side by side they've ripped out a bunch of them because we don't have the coal we used to but I remember coming over here you could count like 20 30 24 sets of rails all the way across my father was a coal miner he uh for years until he just couldn't do it anymore his e double black lung now so uh he has breathing problems like a lot of people in this area have breathing problems just being down in the mines year after year your lungs taken in yeah a lot of uh the people that I see come through the hospital work have breathing problems not even being in a coal mines at one time there was so much coal that it's in the air it's in water that's one good aspect of the industry declining right like the yeah and no I think it's more of a catch-22 we relied so much on it in this area it's just devastating now and you have a lot of just Wasteland houses and things where nobody lives right but it was the main by far the main economic oh Lord yeah it was everything it was I don't think anything wasn't affiliated with coal this is beautiful Jimmy what are the prices of some of these houses here they run anywhere from 60s to 100 000 60k for a two bedroom two bathroom three bedroom two bath basement it's just because so many people have moved out whether the yeah well they never went up okay this right here this is the Virginia West Virginia state line where we were at down in Bluefield yep down in that area now the way I'm going to take you is back around and we'll go through the mountains into Wyoming County they may be two or three thousand people live in a small town but on the outskirts of it there's 10 or 15 000 that live in the mountains and hollers and every 100 yards 200 yards there's a place where you turn off and go up a holler up on the side of a mountain and and that's where it's deep deep Appalachian deep deep Appalachia people out there a lot of them never never even leave right right they have no reason to leave thank you this is matoka I don't think revitalizing this would do any good it's pretty rough now there's some good people from Atoka don't get me wrong there's some excellent people from down here this place was really hard hit by the coal industry see the one of the coal Bridges going across yeah the bigger homes down here that you'll see on the Main Street right here they were the bosses houses and the one of them is probably medical my grandpa's house was a doctor's office so they were bigger like these are but then you get into the smaller houses as most of your workers okay there's the sheriff's department I mean it's just a little tiny building I gotta say Jimmy it doesn't look too bad most of uh the town and stuff was over in here and it's it's gone most of it see all the old buildings and stuff oh right let's let's cruise over there downtown matoka yeah what's left of it the coal industry died here and then everyone just left quickly a lot of people lift some people stayed uh they said everywhere you look at though nobody really lives in towns they all live in the hollers that Branch off right okay there's one there's one shop up here kind of like a ghost town in it but then this one looks great 1978 coal software oh yeah what what's the story that one is that one's doing well everyone else be I own um computer place where they make computers and stuff like that oh just recently shut it down the man that do you live it used to be pretty oh you can tell until a month ago the people were in town destroyed them uh we're making a video about Appalachia you mind sir okay thank you so you live out here my mommy leaves up on um Bailey Street okay so how long ago was it when this was just thriving is that like 30 years back I'd say the 80s and into the 90s there used to be like some bars and it used to be like four or five bars and like there used to be a movie place and oh wow a pharmacy and a Piggly Wiggly and all kinds of stuff and then like when they started shutting the coal mines down it just just died off and then for the past I'd say seven years drugs took over everybody my boss they own the old school they're trying to redo everything right now yep and uh try to bring backs up to the community you know yeah it happens that way I guess everywhere so you're saying this was just destroyed not long ago they just showed these buildings down a month ago what was in them at least an apartment build I hear all of them once the kelowna's owned them they started doing that demolition thing to tear down stuff they shut them down so they could tear them down okay and then everybody just gravitated to it to like you know the copper the wood and all that to guide you make no money I guess yeah yeah it used to be a really nice town like my whole family was from down here and then it just they're still good people here that try I bet but it's kind of hard to try when you got cool did you see a license plate New York yeah and in their family right now they're real you guys know everyone here huh yeah everyone knows everyone yeah it's a good thing sometimes sometimes it's a bad thing because everybody knows your s thank you all the best it's interesting so this one place is still here with it being a Friday and it's not open it kind of makes me wonder if it's still there AC units on so someone's living up there I'd say residentially there's probably a lot of people still live in these buildings right well that's interesting what she said they just destroyed those in the last month thank you look at this your typical back alley yeah so you can see how people are very defensive over coal yeah like when that goes away then you get this one thing it's yeah this is exactly what you get the alternative out here is what outside of coal where we started today in Bluefield you're working at the hospital right there's something but out here you'd probably have to drive to Princeton to work right because as you know it's only a little bit down the road a lot of people live here work at the hospital very small percentage still working coal mines at ATVs are the way to go here to make quick money or to put up people that are coming from out of town see the side by side yeah those are legal on the highway now anywhere so they're trying to make a transition over to making that one of the biggest industries here okay and uh like airbnbs Cabins Rentals lots and lots and lots of people come from out of state to ride because it's some of the best ATV riding in the world they used to be houses all over the top of the hill and all over this mountain it's all grown up and gone I remember seeing like 50 houses through there how does that make you feel uh I hate it for the people that live here because the people are so good I mean when your buddy came here to film this he said oh everybody's kind of won't talk to you and stuff that's probably further from the truth if especially probably if you they see you somebody you know that they know or something they'll probably Crown you around you when we get to Mullins this is Wyoming County we're topping into Wyoming County there's not a traffic light in the county uh we don't have red lights fair to say this is one of the most remote parts of the state yes absolutely this in McDowell County probably your two most remote ones this is uh the old football field in high school I held but most of the high school's gone but that was part of the high school there but they consolidate it looks like somebody lives there and got a dog tied up lives in the high school it looks like it every damn this is where all the four-wheelers and stuff come in and this is how they've actually made money doing this they got extra gas tanks okay they got big screen TV indoor dining it's just it's got bathrooms so these are for all the tourists these are for the four-wheelers and stuff that come in yeah okay and then some people ran out little cabins and stuff here and there this is kind of like Bud holler it doesn't go that far back in here but this is kind of like a hollering it's like a mini hauler yeah everybody here knows everybody it used to be really beautiful down here I mean so the church is still functioning I'm not sure if that one is or not this used to be the elementary school when I was a kid it was in perfect shape we used to play here my cousins grew up in that little white house right there so when you grow up out here saying one of these haulers you finish High School are most kids getting out or most kids staying they're going they're getting out of town yeah there's a lot more opportunity outside you'll see some of the remnants of the coal industry see this okay yeah who are the big players here oh god there were so many of them but that's a lot of people were cut they stay a little bit upset about the way the coal companies did they come in and they pretty much robbed everybody of the resources you know the coal they took it out and they took it with them and they didn't leave anything in return for all you know people made a decent wage and stuff for years but then after that you know they pulled all their health care you could get black lung they didn't take care of the people but all their money was spent elsewhere in New York and right big towns and cities and yeah and Nicole was running the power plants in the country right a lot a lot of them right the cold from here to see there's all kinds of different grades of coal the hardest being anthracite anthracite's the hardest coal that you can get and it's mostly mined in Pennsylvania Northern West Virginia places like that it's really really hard hard coal okay okay the next great down is bituminous and it's a little bit softer cold but it's the best burning and cleanest coal or not it ain't cleaner than anther site but it's Clean Coal it's not dirty coal and it all comes from here and that's what this country was built upon us by two minutes coal so they came in and they made all this money off this coal and then when they left here's what you get okay so do people people feel like they've been forgotten oh absolutely yeah they were fueling the country basically right absolutely once were they weren't needed this is what you get okay and your lungs are toast for the rest of time that's exactly right this is where my mom and dad want me to put their ashes my mama's born right down the over the hill here and my dad's from bud so they want their ashes spread off this bridge they were a lot more tracks coming in than that right there they used to be stacked all the way side to side I was going to turn right here my grandpa that's his old house it was the hospital for the coal mines at one time that was oh really yeah this is uh itman this is the coal mining camp this is a lot of the original houses that were here and the coal mines are still here like all these houses are coal mining houses this is The Old Company Store and now we get out I'll show you around to it oh wow that was The Old Company Store right here this is The Company Store as in grocery store hardware store everything yeah it's owned owned by the coal miners Edmond Cole company owned this my grandpa worked for him for years the coal companies would print their own money and it was called Script and you couldn't just go anywhere and spend your money you couldn't go on Myrtle Beach vacations or anything like that you had to spend your money at the company store that's the only place your money was good at your salary comes from the coal company and they they printed their own currency and you had to use it here or you come by you just couldn't go anywhere else to buy it it was useless you're stuck here yep each phone company paid you by that script that's criminal yeah it's criminal when did that stop oh that was way back in probably late 1800s so that's when you had a lot of immigrants coming over doing it right and so they're just they're stocked Yep they're basically uh you're you're pretty much almost uh I guess enslaved you would have to spend all your money by at the coal company they printed their own so they're not out anything and you had to live in these small houses that he built for you would they do anything like uh do community events try to make you feel proud and really happy about your community because this is a nice building I mean I don't think they did back then I think it was pretty much just work live and die how you guys doing y'all want to be on film are y'all guys from here in Florida huh back in the woods yeah happy happy camper Virginia how do you like the best Virginia West Virginia oh I like this better than home you do I'd move here in a heartbeat never 20 can I I grew up here a matter of fact right up on this hill oh did you yeah that's awesome I was telling him about the script I remember this I caught the tail end of this still being open I remember coming in as a kid but uh the script was over by then but still yeah they had uh everything he was jacked up twice as what it was in Marlins so if you bought anything from the Country Store you're gonna pay out the ass for it what got me is you're sitting there and if your minor gets killed in the mines they had seven days to remarry and it's like whoa what wait wait or they had to get move out of there yeah so they're in their houses and the coal miners own those houses the coal mine owns those houses so everything goes through the houses and that's what you do but if a husband got killed in the mine she had seven days to remarry or she was of course she was gone they took offers they wanted a man in there to be mining they packed up all their stuff and they took it to the city limits and left it yep that's how they done it exactly yep it's sad I mean that but that's the way it was I barely remember when they last had businesses in here but I know about nine or ten years ago they had a post office there in that building okay but I don't think this one's ever been redeveloped or anything but I was really young probably five or six years old seven cool building they had a homeless shelter in that too for a while they had elevator in it you remember when this was all functional yeah we'd come in here and buy stuff yeah like what just a meal bread eggs do you remember the workers that worked here yeah were they in uniforms or how they looked nah they just wore uh like coveralls and everybody came out that I mean everything was black except for their eyes and her teeth all the coal miners yeah the black is your shirt just covered I mean everything animals so this place was busy oh this place here when I was a kid it probably was more busy back in the older days but as a kid there was people in and out here all the time this was like the Hub of the community I remember people up on this balcony here would do the books and there were desks up there and they would do the books for the mining companies and stuff and you can hear them up there chattering along with other typewriters and stuff right I mean you're not that old what are you 42 I wish yeah I'm 42 for the camera I'll be 49 in July yeah so it's really not even that old this looks like it's been out of business for a long time but it's not that long ago well yeah probably I mean it's just crazy how fast things complicated here's the 35 40 years but things Decay so quickly they do because of this climate it's so humid wow that's old what was up here you get a postcard yeah that was her old old old Governor years and years and years ago Gaston Caper look at him that's funny it was founder was the Coal Company for people sort of a love hate like as in it was their income and their livelihood but then it was hey get your what do you call it script and you can't go anywhere and use it anywhere and you'd probably hate the person that's doing that to you I'd say they probably weren't too fond of it but that's what what choices do you have when you're enslaved into something you don't have a choice go to work it's the only way you're going to feed your family right I mean what else do you do you can hate or complain about it but they probably just shoot you so now I'm trying to understand if I grew up here if my family was here multiple Generations my father worked in the coal mine he endured that let's say now we're in 2023. and I have people telling me like looking down on me for being from coal country or being involved with coal right that's got to be tough I'd say some people are fake I mean I guess West Virginia people were just so used to having a negative shadow cast on us and it's not that way at all I guess it would be hard knowing that everybody perceives you as a inbred or and I don't think everyone does it's just uh Bank woods and uneducated right is it the people are different it's a different vibe totally yesterday I was at a little place off the side of the road for dinner spaghetti meatballs homemade meatballs I sat and talked with a local he got up to leave he had to leave earlier than me yeah when I went to pay they were like he's already paid yeah you'll get the like that type of that's like some you don't see that much these days I gotta say foreign what is that it's a roll of paper this could be the kind of paper they printed or script out of but I think that was the currency most of their currency was coins though that's what people kept or coins okay and each one of if I had some I'd show you but each one of them had a hole punched in it it's like it was the size of a quarter but it'd have a like an A or a moon or something punched into it so they knew it was authentic and it came from their coal mine very hard to you know reproduce it or counterfeit it this is all shipping and receiving and uh when they bring everything in it was kind of protected from everybody they could leave stuff out overnight stuff and lock this main door down here but yeah this is was it wild back in the days like wild west type stuff gunfights where it was pretty pretty nailed down like I'd say you had a few people that were wild yeah and they even mentioned no names or anything like my dad but my mom was a deputy and my dad about her he was incarcerated your dad Met Your Mother and he was a prisoner yeah he has not been in any trouble Cynthia but uh he's got skills yeah yeah Dan was he was a little while back in these days but what was he in prison for he wasn't in prison just jail oh what was he in jail yeah probably fighting or drinking or something what was this uh this was a post office in a bank at one time it's where you come in and get your script or whatever get paid they give you a pay slip I believe I'm not sure on how it's the way it actually went but they give you a pay voucher and you came here to get your script and then you went there to buy your groceries or whatever you needed this is still a pretty good shape now this was the they had a homeless shelter here I think of 90s 94.95 maybe okay I'm guessing why is nobody squatting this now do you think that's a lot of homeless people want to live in West Virginia I mean if I was going to be homeless I want to be near somewhere I could get something to eat somewhere I could yeah right I've seen zero homeless people here we have them it's just you don't see it though you don't see it it's not as common as like big cities and stuff West Virginia's hate mountaintop removal it's the people that own the land the outside investors they sell a whole Mountain they come in and just rip the top off of it for a coal and it's usually a cheaper coal and it burns a lot faster and a lot nastier so is there a lot of that outside money coming in buying the land and then they bought it years ago like that one up there that was a that's a small piece of it if that is one but it scars the land permanently when I was a kid this River used to almost be black all the time it's finally over the years has cleaned itself out and gotten rid of a lot of the sludge and stuff in it so how is the environment out here overall or that's that's tough to say or now they're running raft trips on this one or knutrients it's a lot better than what it used to be which is good that's the good aspect I mean call it cold I don't know much about it it burns dirtier than natural gas obviously right well I have two views on them everybody wants to go electric and oh it's going to be so good for the community and the world and the environment but where do you think that electricity is coming from right coal and gas right it's still that's where we're still getting our electricity from now if we were all solar or even with dams and rivers and stuff it still doesn't make enough energy so that's what you're talking about yeah just someone comes in blasts off a mountain that one's in operation though that's in operation it ain't that old okay so it's really hard to grasp like you're destroying the environment for the economy obviously people have to live if I grew up out here and that was my only option I'd be driving that dump truck to or doing whatever it took right how dirty it is terrible for the the roads and just everything stays dirty all the time right so but the world's better with less coal fair to say not really I mean West Virginia is not I mean right uh I guess that is your double-edged sword you know like that's good for the people but is it bad for the environment well yeah it's bad for the environment but the way they're doing it now is a lot dirtier and harmful to the environment than what it was when you had coal miners underground pulling that out from four miles deep interesting so this Mountaintop stuff is actually worse oh it's a lot worse I don't know a lot of people that are for that unless you were rich and you had uh so why is why is that allowed because uh your politicians okay they allow it that's how it works and nobody knows about it nobody cares about it but us and you're never going to hear anybody say anything about it either unless you come here now coming up here we have one of the new coal tipples this has been here less than a year what's a temple a temple was where the cold all comes together and it gets processed and sent out to other places okay this thing is it so that's that's servicing that Mountaintop we just saw probably that's all brand new a year ago maybe a year and a half ago this was none of this was here now this high school here is the Consolidated one Consolidated as in there were many now there's just one there's just one this is where I would have graduated at if I were to graduate 99 or later but it's it's a good sized school there's a lot of kids that go there so how far out does the uh does this stretch as far as kids from what 10 20 30 miles out come along yeah they can have a commute of how long an hour hour and a half School Bus yeah a lot of times if you live in a holler your parents will take you to the end of the highway and there's a bus stop there that you'll kind of Wade in okay that's the way it was and you know any holler I've been around that everybody drops you off at the end of the holler you walk a lot of kids walk now we're coming into New Richmond it is the actual cold Camp too it's just where people's left and yeah but I mean we still have people living I have a cousin that lives here because they're in Appalachia they're so deeply rooted to family and land right so you don't want to go even if you see it going downhill although it's the way most people are here they don't like I mean they don't mind you coming in yeah as a stranger they'll open you know have open arms for you but for us to go somewhere that's not so much we did that the people would rather stay here now if you grow up in a family that's been here many generations you leave stayed in New York City do they look down upon you no at that point no they I don't think people are as judgmental here I mean people have been through so much here living here that I don't think anybody judges anybody now they do look down on drugs and people are strung out and stuff but I think it's everywhere I mean right I think society's just getting to a point where they're tired of the drug problem and stuff and the problems that it that it carries with it yep but uh it's hard to take a West Virginia out of West Virginia but if you get them out you know a lot of times they show up but I know one guy I know one guy Jimmy that has a girlfriend down in Atlanta yeah and uh you might have to just be leave West Virginia you may have to we'll just see what happens put me on it's fun but she's worth it though I mean she'd be worth moving to West Atlanta this is where I grew up at you have a huge courthouse in the middle of nowhere beautiful this is the jail they built it in 1930s and they built this in 1916. this is my the place where I played at and I did my homework at the county jail every day I mean we're really deep in now yeah this is this is about as deep in as you guys did you get in Appalachia where you're removed well Kentucky has some places too right yeah Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky this was a hot babe for politics back years ago if you landlocked uh or got Wyoming County McDowell County in your pocket you had all Southern West Virginia tied up even though it was just a few electoral votes still a lot of money down here that they wanted to hold of right and so it's really interesting cruising through all of these different towns how they all have some have decayed to that that one where we saw the lady right I mean that was like gone this is coming back so that's just how it is in Appalachia that's how it is some making some don't this being the county seat kind of oh that's hot yeah so there's some government money coming into here yeah probably and do you notice in um with drugs like it gets a hold of some people and then that sort of like grows in friend networks family networks and then like sometimes we'll have a lot more of a drug problem than other towns I think so yeah does that work yeah when it hit here the town next to us in Oceana the pharmaceutical companies are being sued for pumping drugs into that big I mean big Pharma Oxycontin problems Oxycontin right they were selling more in that one town than any place in the whole state more Oxycontin there than anywhere any place in the state and that would that was the pill Mill situation stuff coming up from Florida and we come here and the people here would I mean everybody was on drugs over there at one time and that's gone down yeah it's gone down I mean they've cracked down on it as far as law enforcement and stuff but but all the doctors were in on it or how did I think everybody was in on it that was Cash Cow and when was that the biggest like 10 years ago it was probably 2 000 yeah around 2000 2005 2006 somewhere around there okay what's crime like out here right now do you think uh well if it's related to drugs and stuff I'd say I know it's on a decline I don't think it'd ever get really got out of hand much okay I mean this is I've seen a lot of sheriff's cars and a lot of police cars around here I think they've stepped it up a lot in God we trust how important is religion out here these days when I was a kid it was big everybody went to church not so much anymore I think religions kind of fell everywhere though it's not just here but even in the you consider yourself the South here no uh okay what do you consider yourself West Virginian you're your own yeah we uh you weren't Confederate you weren't Union we weren't Confederate reunion we kind of got caught in the middle of it and pick a side so the Mason-Dixon Line went under us and went above Kentucky so when under you meant meant your reunion yeah we were considered Union but you didn't think of yourselves as Union I think we were just west Virginians man we were still coal mining and being used by coal companies we didn't really care you said no internet that's what it said what's that like out here in these parts um you just get used to it sure there are a lot of towns here without internet yep a town like this has Wi-Fi internet in it or you can get Wi-Fi and it's probably Sky High when we go remote here and you're saying these haulers where lots of people oh you want to get no cell service and you will not have internet so people what did they watch TV out there oh they ride bikes and or ride motorcycles and four-wheelers and build fires and drink beer and right but they're not online at all no now I'd come over here and go ride with one of my friends for the weekend and uh I have no cell service from the time I hit Wyoming the top of the uh heard of mountain I had you from the time I hit that in the Wyoming County I don't have nothing all weekend which is kind of nice to hear trees about it come on somebody's got an interesting intersection huh yeah well we don't have any red lights like I said no red lights no internet in a lot of the county yep there's even a place in West Virginia called a green banks that has these huge telescopes and they look like satellite dishes and then the whole entire town you're not allowed to have a cell phone on at any time I guess they're reading stuff from outer space and all kinds of stuff but you're not allowed to have a selfie it's against the law to have a cell phone in that town this is a key Rock it's a holler so haulers for those that don't know how would you explain it it's just a road off the main road where people live at and inside of a valley you'll go between the mountains and it stays right in the bottom of the valley until you run out of Valley or it comes out somewhere I'm really surprised we're super remote look how good the pavement is yeah they paved this about two years ago a year ago my uncle lived in this house my dad's other brother that's his garage but he lived in the house behind this now this will have to turn around but this is a holler holler this is the real hauler this is a holler yeah so a lot of people doing their own Gardens and whatnot they do their own Gardens they maintain their land you'll get up here and you'll be like they're so far up in here why do they mow their grass nobody's ever going to see it so everyone knows everyone people here we go some deer yeah that's why I don't drive new cars right there right they're everywhere hero well it looks delicious do you hunt them no no I did when I was when I was younger right look at these big Gardens yeah so would you say it's a good Community back here or oh yeah everybody in this holler knows everybody they know who they are when they come what time they work if they work outside of here what time they come home so if someone comes in from out of town driving up here everyone knows it's not yeah from here and they're like people look out for each other yeah they do and now probably not so much now but if we were back 20 years ago and we were in an unknown car coming up this road they were most of the time on a um what they call it a the landlines that everybody's connected a party line okay sorry I couldn't think of it but the party line if the lady at the beginning of the hauler was on the phone and the lady at the end of the holler wanted to use it this lady had to hang hers up so she could get through it was all party line so everybody had the same phone number but it rang different like the woman at the beginning would have one ring the guy the next guy would have two rings the next guy would have three that's just 20 years ago probably 20 30 years ago yeah all right so we had to turn around quickly up there we probably couldn't win much further than that most haulers aren't real real long oh they're not a mile mile and a half now the key Rock the one we're going back to and finishing up coming out it's about three four or five miles through okay but uh it's a holler as well it's just a little bit better paved holler and this one ain't bad a lot of them are dirt or some people never leave West Virginia I mean there's some people it goes out of their holler maybe once or twice a year and that's it yeah you think some of these people living here would leave once or twice a year yeah they'd probably go to Myrtle Beach oh really Myrtle Beach is uh the West Virginia Hawaii Myrtle Beach South Carolina everybody's like oh let's go to the beach Myrtle Beach I'd say a good percentage of people from West Virginia have never been on planes have never really been outside of the state of West Virginia I mean if they do it's usually Tennessee to Gatlinburg or they go to Myrtle Beach and besides that they don't go nowhere some people go to DC every once in a while if you want to see a big town go to DC so if you grew up here you spend all your life here and then all of a sudden you go to New York City that's got to be a nice whole shocker oh man I tell you what let's go into another country right for me when I left here I'd been out of the state a few times quite a few times as a child but living outside of West Virginia like the first place I was in was Texas and that was for basic training yeah and then I went from here to South Carolina to Shaw Air Force Base South Carolina and I met people from all over the world it just it's a culture shot you glad you did it oh I love yeah yeah definitely and I'm glad I got to travel the world and but I tell you it's definitely a culture shock because you're used to people being one way all your life and then all of a sudden people ain't the same you know when you get in a crowd of different people right this is your holler holler people so what are people here just for example what are they doing for work they don't they live on chicks like uh food stamps food stamps government checks some of them and some of them don't I mean some of them own their own property up here and some just decide not to leave key Rock I mean they want to stay here but usually if their house is pretty dilapidating stuff usually they live on a check they're disabled or older or they can live off how much up here do you think oh if you own the property I mean hell you could live off a hundred and two hundred three hundred dollars a month easy I figured you were thinking you know I'll run down everything yeah it was especially out here I thought the further out we would we would get the more rundown it would be that's just a stereotype now there's going to be some rough spots but it's like it everywhere that's beautiful look at all this grass yeah that's what I kind of wanted to bring you this way because this is what it really is it's stereotypically you would think people playing banjos on their front porch and yeah where is that yeah I want to see someone they don't have that not happening what about blue Bluegrass I want to hear some bluegrass I can Kentucky you're more you're more likely to run into holler people like that in Kentucky and you are West Virginia that's why I was glad to do this video because there's such a misconception living in Kentucky for 25 years they always made fun of West Virginia because they knew they were worse than we were close so they would always try to put us down I'm like no it's not that bad I've seen some rough places in Kentucky I mean especially Eastern Kentucky it was hit a lot like this was I can say we've had a little bit better because you know just some of our leadership and our government's been a little bit better and they've tried to do better things but what keeps this place different from all the other places is pride I love being here and being from here and just raised to be a good person most of your people here you'll hardly ever find a nasty hateful mean self-centered person here in this area not in southern West Virginia unless they're strung out on drugs or something there were 29 minors that got killed in the upper Big Branch it was an explosion probably I can't remember the exact date of it over 10 years ago but uh one of the friends I went to high school with and a guy that was Keen to me somehow through family or something down the road died in it but these are some of the coal miners that's died inside the coal mines well it's too bad there are a lot of a lot of blank bricks to be filled you know yeah well it's gotten safer over the years but it's still not as safe as it could be it's still a dangerous occupation 27 years in the mine is that what that means I believe so yeah what's the average lifespan in the mine it just depends everybody's lungs are different some uh will work 10 or 15 years and get black lung and some work 25 30 years it just depends on your body and how it takes it why don't they wear a mask it'd be like trying to thread a needle with mask on well the goggles on you can't do it it's just right you can't be working in cold and working as hard as you do which I've never done it before but these guys get down there and you just can't do your job with the mask on a respirator you just can't do it now the ones that do do it I don't know how they do it but they're it's one of the hardest jobs in the United States is a coal mine it's physical down there very physical some of them working coal you know listen that neuro machinery and that's all the leeway you got I mean when you get four miles deep that cold scene may not be that tall so you're crawling and all kinds of stuff to dig cold you're like with a pick down there picking up no no they got a machine it's a miner that goes in and they ride the minor Inn and they got to keep it lubed they got to keep the coal on the Belt there's a big Bell that goes they blow it up down there oh yeah they use explosives still yet wow but the miner does most of it I believe I'm not a coal miner so don't take my word on it it's never too late no no no no so this town is sort of in between huh yeah half alive it's trying to yeah but this one's really big for the four wheelers and stuff like that this is a good hub for them to come in off the trails let's go see if we can get some grub oh yeah this is your buddy's restaurant yeah excellent food hello hey okay 2015 mines went to yeah they were leaving West Virginia so fast but U-Haul was taking van loads of people out bringing their U-Haul equipment back so more people could leave yeah mine's like now just they're wide open they're hiring Red Hats new new hires and put them on day shift because what are Red Hats inexperienced minors rookies yeah guys like me I could get a job tomorrow class you have to go take a class yeah rent a ship pretty much and you have to you have to spend time with them experienced minor before six months I think you can get your experience Minor's card so jobs are coming back yeah they're everywhere like anywhere else everybody's having trouble finding help how much are they paying in this area 30s today I found out we got a couple of boys on the job it's going down to Coal Mountain yeah do some type of contractor they're paying him 50 bucks an hour well the highway there's no highways coming through yeah that's probably what it is right now things are booming I mean it's so is that like you see it good for a few months and then it might take a turn down or it's like it's going to look good for years or you don't know hard to tell how does coal work the uh analysts say that this cold room is going to last a while because of the electric cars and people talk about green energy and these electric cars are getting charged Off the Grid and that's mostly cold okay the big power plants in this region of the country are cool most of them some other gas they substitute natural gas but most of them are cold if we put all the electric cars on the ground today on solar and gas and wind it failed and if we're going all electric cars which I hope most of them do I'll never buy one Road job or truck is that a truck driver no what's a road driver sorry did you come down to copen Expressway no no you already come down I came across mountains I worked on the last six miles of this road job okay some of these Road jobs that are going in now is some of the stuff that was planned Under the Kennedy Ministry and they're just now getting to them Larry Pineville you went to Welch Yeager they're pretty secluded so this Road's going in and it should open a lot of access up to them that helps with call getting it oh yeah moving the coal for the trucks sure because now it's all two lane roads they're gonna put a highway through there wow a lot of excess up for people see you guys you guys grew up here I grew up in Mingo County's down I've traveled all over because of the work I've been in seven different states in the last six years you like it the best in Western Virginia you can live the American dream out here if you want you can buy a home for pretty cheap get a job pay your bills or no you can live way above them medium six figure salary no no I mean high school diploma most of them don't even require that anymore but if you got good work and and you know don't care to lay in their work you can make six figures easy easy at 18 years old wow right out of high school or even not even out of house and you're saying they're just they can't fill the jobs in Wyoming they have a summer program for their kids if their kids are over 18 years old and the parents work at the mines they will send them to get their surface card and work them through the summer so they can pay for the college okay what's the big Downfall with working in the mines black loans I mean you name it you just you're by the time that you're able to retire you retire because you have no choice when you guys retired usually early 60s at the latest I know a bunch of them that they go home and sit on the porch and maybe live six months after that yeah if they quit working that's it how do how do the miners feel about the mining companies in general because in the past in the days of the scripts right where you basically were like had to buy whatever they wanted it was legal as slavery legal isolated it's gotten better obviously since then but is there still like a hard uh divide between the two no not so much that's not what I'm saying um they had a lot of trouble back in the 80s with the with Union and companies and things like that yeah my grandpa my dad I worked in the union and there was more trouble between the company and demand on those jobs than pretty much anywhere but no today it's if you work and you show up every day they're they're tickled to have you the tree's pretty good anymore you got rid of companies like Massey that didn't I didn't like them as well I know they have some pretty shady dealings which is why they're not business anymore but no for the most part they treat you good Southern goal barbecue it's a mustard base uh South North Carolina it's kind of a sauce our regular barbecue just a regular sweet barbecue but it is very good I literally put it on everything sting and honey barbecue if you want something a little bit of a kick okay we got steak people living cheap bacon cheese loaded mashed potatoes fair to see fully loaded yeah and no you can't have a bite here we go and put the spicy kick good deal that's what you need oh you want me yeah so this is a standard pulled pork sandwich in these parts yeah that's for Jason's it is Jason ever does everything he wants his customers happy mm-hmm is it good good deal very nice you know very simple I like that yep right to the flavor stay cooked perfect Jason's uh business again the rebel Smokehouse what happened during coven was uh they found that West Virginia was a great place with a lot of outdoor activities so vacations for a couple years ended up being here it's a lot of people that are like us and I joke with them all the time I say I know when I opened my mouth you can hear banjos playing in the background but it doesn't matter whether you're from from you know one of the larger cities or or from from farmlands out in the midwest it doesn't matter it's our type of people it's family people it's blue collar people it's the type of people that like this type of of vacations where you know they're out riding side besides or gear kids or the type of guys that like to get out I'm sure and with their family they're family people so yeah so we've had a lot of luck I guess those folks also have the lodging here and we have no problem you have logic oh okay great escape lodging so you've seen a huge uptick in the last few years when you say uh the property is owned by land companies Coal companies right not necessarily land companies came over the railroad Lang companies keep property for things like for four coal mines to at least out property for coal mines logging industry and things like that so they think of property in more 500 year spans and 100 Year spans like we can see so who owns the land companies well they're owned by like the Georgia Pacific large large companies that they're just hedging their bets down the road they're going to pull some resources and they do I mean that's what they do here I mean that's what they do around there it's their property and all their rights and means it's their property so we're fortunate that they lit the half of the Court Trail systems run on their property okay and what you hear you have two types of riding here you have the legal type of riding which is what they call Outlaw riding which is still yet on their properties just in places that have not been sanctioned for for the trail we're next in the ride how do you guys feel about the big say land holding companies or corporations buying up a lot or controlling a lot of the land they've been here since since we've been here I mean the property that we have is property that you know they pretty much have decided that we we can have I mean it was theirs at the beginning so these towns wouldn't exist without it without this is a railroad town here a lot more culture okay yeah so that's why they're here to begin ladies do you side by side hey everybody okay everybody okay silly questions you're outlawed trailing it you want to say that on camera nobody cares nobody okay so it's normal to outline there's a lot of trails yeah since we were kids before they were called out loud yeah okay things are getting a lot easier it's been a blessing to us but when I have filmed with a tourism bit industry the highway that came from Raleigh County down to the southern part of the state has opened us up to the rest of the world you know there's so many parts of the country that can't imagine not having a four-lane Highway close to their home we just we've been so secluded so long it just uh it's really made a big difference in the way we live here so it's been a blessing that's great to hear because I would have thought things were just deteriorating going down down further down absolutely not right now the coal markets through the roof like you know the type of coal that they these guys mind around here and there was some coal miners sitting there having dinner yeah um you know they're they're proud of what they do but it's high Met cold it's the type of coal that you use in in steel manufacturing not like power not power plants like steamco it's a it's a good stuff it goes it's used in steel manufacturing as in part of the process of right so when they take their iron ore or anything iron and make it into steel yes that's when they heat it it has to have a a type of coal that burns hotter to produce steel so you might I'm not an expert on steel manufacturing but there we go steam call so we have we have a metallurgical coal here yeah it's measured by the BTUs okay when they burn the rbtus will burn out the grates in the power plants the steam cold markets really went down a lot here in the last little bit steam color I think selling for around 50 60 a ton metallurgical Coal Sales around 270 and up so what were you saying about cold Wars and uh the only U.S citizens getting bombed by the US government the largest conflict since the Civil War was the Battle of Blair mountain in Logan County I'm going to put this right here is that right yeah um you had Union coal miners fighting company coal miners and it was a conflict to the point of the U.S government actually deployed the National Guard and actually ended up dropping bombs on our own people the local West Virginians were women hands down so they got their way with the bringing the union into the area at the time but that's that's the largest conflict on U.S soil the workers went on strike they didn't want to go to work it was um it was when the time ended where the company script it was given to the men from the company they had to use that they lived in company houses they had to pay rent to the company they could only use that money at the company store and usually at the end of the pay period they owed more than what they made they had to buy their own tools from the company underground miners had to buy their own blasting tools blasting equipment dynamite and such but everything was the purchased from the company so they got their own money back most people owed more than they would have ever worked off it was just a legal form of slavery and that resulted in bringing in the the umwa you're not a Mine Workers of America and those companies didn't want them here so they hired gun thugs bald one Fest detectives they called them but they were just gun thugs and they they're still finding shell casings from belt fed fully automatic weapons and these local boys were kicking their hind ends with what they had home that time it cost more to replace a mule than it did a man they used meal to pull coal cars off from underground it cost them around 200 to replace a mule if it got killed man got killed they gave his widow 50 bucks put her out of the company house her and her kids under any circumstances they were evicted immediately wow so how much does Cole mean to you it's it's everything one one coal job represents another eight jobs in this state other than the Hatfield McCoy trail which has brought in a lot of money but this that's all there is here you're either a school teacher a nurse or a coal miner right if you make a substantial living here what they want to know if you want to ride a side by side no it's a wagon wheel with them but they'll drive us the place where all the four-wheelers are and stuff do we have time we got plenty of time it's back in the world this place where yeah we went we went to school with these kids that live in this area there was an hour-long bus ride it is truly in the middle of the Woods this was all strip mined a lot of people came up here since it was flat ground and we don't have any flat ground anywhere they came up here and built houses on it so 30 years after 30 35 40 years after these strips then you can build on it but uh I mean who wants to live on a flat area on top of a mountain I guess these people do interesting so why 30 years you just have to wait for nature to retake it's well they should retake it because it's all gravel when they're done with it just bust a gravel and stuff that's true that's the only flat piece of land I've seen all day yeah but a lot of people come up here I mean there's some really nice houses and places up here this is where the wealthy live yeah some of the wealthy live up here on top of the mountain yeah like I mean they're beautiful houses this is really hard to wrap my head around because we are in the middle of nowhere yeah on top of you're in these towns that are a lot of them are decaying empty storefronts and then people have money for this oh yeah well the one of the first ones to build up here was Doc Whalen he was a psychiatrist and he had a absolutely huge house but they tore it down it was right here but there's an airport here it's a private airport yeah and it starts right here and it goes out and goes off a cliff at the end of it does anyone fly out of it anymore I don't think so if they do I wouldn't know it these ladies could tell you probably so these ladies this is their house yeah so these are the ladies we met at the bar at the bar yeah at the uh Jason's these things are pretty Gucci out huh there's a lot going on here he's added a lot to this there's heat yeah it's your husband's yeah all right that was uh what was that an hour in probably probably about 45 minutes yeah 45 minutes in this is out in the middle of nowhere absolutely nowhere now when I was a kid we used to come up here but for different reasons we'd just get a campfire and a bunch of kids sneaking beer and drinking and yeah yeah I mean usually when you come here it's packed foreign just get away from it all like no rules apply here because where are you you're just in the middle of nowhere right there's zero Sheriff I think that's what people like about it no cops just ride any way you want to while I'm wide open who are the people that come out here mostly vacationers locals pretty much vocational and I was telling him it's usually packed yes I'm surprised like crazy I mean like the whole place is starting miners vacation so it's hard to tell where everybody's at right what's Miner's vacation July Fourth week why do you call it minors because that's when they all get their vacation almost every coal mine shut down the week of four yeah okay so all the coal miners get a good extended break right now yes right now and then this is crazy we're like literally an hour in in the woods how'd you come up with the idea to start this out here me and her got together and we owned another bar and we decided we owned the land so we just let's build one we built them but aren't you I built build it well yeah it works how's business right right busy as ever you've made your American dream happen amen you're doing your own thing out here no Sheriff down here no comp that's right and they're expanding yeah we're putting a new one in where uh hey Jerry wrote 11 miles from here who's your best customer all right what else do you want to say sir before we bounce well we love everybody we're grateful for anybody comes in here and does business with us that was so cool of the ladies taking us out there yeah that was cool to see the outlaw because that is like a separate world out there it is I mean you're talking 45 minutes out in the woods I'm in Bluefield I'm thinking okay now I'm removed then next level is out here and then next level is Outlaw right and that I mean even this is secluded I mean you're still seven eight ten miles from town an old Runway I was told by a friend that people would be very closed off to me in a camera oh yeah in these parts a surprise just wasn't that way today at all like everyone was very friendly yeah everybody here is like it and they always have been I just did Outsiders they come here that's why they love to stay you're very proud people absolutely yeah and rightfully so well thank you I appreciate it all right good stuff thanks a lot man no problem anytime all right guys you want to say it until the next one no I go ahead all right you do it myself good stuff Jimmy

Channel: Peter Santenello

Views: 177,806

Keywords: appalachia, appalachia documentary, appalachia vlog, appalachian culture, people of appalachia, appalachian people, appalachian history, growing up in appalachia, appalachian life, west virginia, inside appalachia, life in appalachian mountains, appalachian way of life, peter santenello, outlaw trails west virginia, hatfield mccoy outlaw trails, hatfield mccoy trails, hatfield mccoy, appalachian lifestyle, coal mining, coal mining west virginia

Id: h9lSZlDJAC0

Length: 63min 40sec (3820 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 08 2023