Think WV's Senate Seat Is Lost?

[jmowreader]

81. We're facing a "what will we do if we have no farm?" problem

This comes from a family history book I typeset for a customer a few decades ago.

The man's grandparents owned a farm and were going bankrupt from it. To save themselves, the husband went into town and found a good job. Then he sold the farm to his neighbor, who wanted it to expand his own farm, and used the proceeds to buy a decent house inside the city limits. Finally, he went back to his wife and explained what he had done.

His wife's first words were, "pa, what are we gonna do if we ain't got no farm?" She'd grown up on a farm, married a farmer, lived on a farm all her life, and couldn't imagine any other kind of life. Well...after she finally got moved to town and started keeping house there, she realized you could have a better life if you "ain't got no farm."

Applied to West Virginia: the people there understand coal is dead. Coal mining is historically a low-paying industry. No one's buying the coal they mine, there are tons of industries who could move to WV and totally revitalize the place, and very few miners want their own children to mine coal. But you tell these guys, "we will bring in new industries, close those dead mines and vastly improve your standard of living..."pa, what are we gonna do if we ain't got no coal mines?"