Our first stop in Beckley was the Exhibition Coal Mine, which includes admission to the Youth Museum. We drove into a mini-town (still in the center of Beckley) with buildings – a church, house, etc. It was almost hard to find the museum to enter. Once inside we purchased tickets for the coal mine tour. Departing every 30 minutes, we had 25 minutes to explore the museum upstairs.

At the top of the stairs, wide rectangular, black and white photos of entire coalworkers greeted us. Along the walls, montages displayed various themes with a placard explaining the items. One was rudimentary medical instruments used by the doctors – even if you didn’t need a doctor, the item was deducted from the miner’s paycheck – lunch pails – which were metal and had three horizontal compartments – the bottom was for water, then the food and on top was for pie/dessert. I guess you’d need pie every day to deal with those working conditions. Another montage showed tools – one with a tool you hooked on to your stomach to drill and a picture of a miner using it. Another display case showed miner’s id tags that were used to show who was in the mine.

The curator announced the “boarding call” so we walked outside to the depot where we sat on two – open air trolley trains. Leroy announced, “Ready for work?” The older, skinny man was a former miner and his father had been too. He drove us in into the black tunnel lit every few feet with electric lighting. I thought we’d go down, but instead we were horizontally inside the mountain. (more…)