by Jared Logan, Blerds Americana Consultant

It’s the holidays and I’m home to see my family.  I’m visiting my old hometown, Coalville, U.S.A.  Man, what a terrible place.  Everyone here is pretty miserable.  Except my family.  We’re doing okay.

My dad is a manager at the New Wal-Mart.  It’s about four miles from the Second Old Wal-Mart on Route 10.  The First Old Wal-Mart is on Interstate 8, nearly ten miles from the other two. They’re talking about building another Wal-Mart once my Dad’s Wal-Mart gets up and running.  But there’s a problem.

My Dad’s new Wal-Mart is about 948,000 sq. ft.  It’s big!  But only sixteen people work there.  All managers.  It’s going to be hard for sixteen people to man such a big store, especially during the holiday season.  Right now they have to use motorized ziplines to travel from one department to the other.  Even with that high-tech solution, it will be impossible for sixteen people to zip back and forth between all 28 departments in time to help customers in need.  What are they going to do when the customers inevitably start to riot?  Who will don the riot gear and bludgeon the unruly customers with billy clubs?  Who will man the giant air-gun that blows rioting customers out of the front doors of the store?

Why won’t anyone work at the New Wal-Mart?  My Dad and the fifteen other old managers that work at the store have put up Help Wanted ads all over town.  It seems ludicrous that the people of a town hit so hard by unemployment would be reluctant to grab up the new jobs available at my Dad’s Mega Super Wal-Mart Ultra-Center.  But it’s true. Nobody wants to work there. 

Why?

All the men in Coalville used to work in the coal mines.  Here’s a factoid: Coalville got its name from its chief export: coal!  Every inch of the town used to be covered in black coal dust.  The houses were covered in coal dust, the mountains, the trees, the pets.  Even all the babies were covered in coal dust. 

Everyday all the men would come home covered in coal dust and they would enter their coal-dust-stained houses and kiss their black-faced (from coal dust) wives.  The wives would feed them casseroles that were coated in coal dust.  “There’s something in this casserole…” the husbands would say, “I can’t quite put my finger on it…”

“It’s coal dust,” their wives would say.

  Then they would go into their sooty coal-stained living rooms and watch sitcoms on coal-stained television screens while their blackened babies cried in their coal-dust-stained cribs.

Sometimes they would forget to feed their babies because of forgetfulness brought on by coal poisoning!

But mostly everyone was happy.  Until one day, all the miners went down into the mine and noticed that there was no coal left.

“We need to dig deeper!” said Big Mitch, the foreman.  But they had already dug too deep.  The men of Mine 49 had hit the earth’s core and four miners had been melted and consumed by its 5000 degree molten center.  The Men of Mine 126 had discovered a subterranean civilization of eyeless cave people descended from the remnants of the Roman Empire.  That was causing problems.  And the men of Mine 491 had hit Hell three weeks ago, the literal biblical hell.  Nearly seventeen of those miners were burning in eternal torment because they had taken a wrong turn in the northwest shaft.  Yes, these miners had already dug too deep to dig any deeper.

They checked every nook and cranny for coal.  They dug sideways, downways, clockwise, counterclockwise, and up and out again.  There was no coal anywhere.  Finally, Big Mitch made an announcement.

“As you all know,” he said, “The mines are now empty.  There is no coal left anywhere.  None.  We have run out of coal.”  The miners nodded in agreement.  “Well, the RichWhite Corporation, the company that owns this mine, isn’t going to sit and do nothing.  They are going to do something about this.  They are going to face this problem head-on–”

He was interrupted as all the miners cheered, but then he continued

“–By firing all of you.”

Shocked silence.  Denial.  Then realization.  Then booing! Screams of anguish!  A couple of guys yelled out “How am I going to feed my family?”

“I’m getting to that,” said Big Mitch.  “You are all hereby instructed to go and get computer skills and then work at a Wendy’s.  Or something.  I’m reading this right off the memo the RichWhite corporation sent me.  So, we’ve followed their orders up ’till now.  I suggest we keep followin’ ‘em. Now who’s with me?”

Big Mitch was beaten to a pulp and then dropped into the Great Coalville gorge.  He survived, but with brain damage, and now serves as the Coalville Town Ding-a-Ling, going by the stagename “Braindead Mitch.”

The miners tried to adapt to the new world order. They all signed up for a computer class at the local community college, but the computers only frustrated and baffled them. “How am I supposed to work this thing if it doesn’t have a release valve?!?” Eddie Salvo, formerly of Union Local 231, would scream, shaking his Compaq Presario in a white hot rage. Bob Mundley, formerly of union shop 1051, poured gasoline all over his computer. When the instructor asked him why he replied “I couldn’t figure where to put the petrol in.” And Pat Kingsbury, Union Shop 333, put a pickaxe right through a 19″ flat panel monitor before unremorsefully quipping “Well, I guess that ain’t where the coal comes out.”

Some of the miners got jobs at the new Borders bookstore that had just opened down in Fairtree Junction, about forty miles away. “Awright you Pussies!” you’d hear Craig Farnsworth (formerly Union Local 983) scream as you sipped your mocha latte in the cafe, “We got four palettes of non-fiction, four palettes of Black Studies, four palettes of Gay/Bi/Les Erotica, and six palettes of New Age Paperbacks and Tarot Card Sets sittin’ in the stockroom! I want all this shit on the shelves and ready to sell by noon or your ass is mine!!” Sometimes he would add, always shouting at full volume, “Last one to finish shelving his palette is Princess for a Day and we’re gonna write faggot on his forehead in permanent marker!” Eventually Craig’s superiors decided that the Borders brand identity didn’t really jive with his management style and he was fired, as were some of the other miners.

Unable to find gainful employment that utilized their skillset to its utmost, most of the out-of-work miners were forced to go on Assisted Living. Every month the goverment sent them a check. The money from this check was usually just enough to barely squeak by, feeding their family with a little left over to buy a pair of socks or rent a movie at Blockbuster. The amount on the assisted living check was also, coincidentally, the exact amount of money a man would need to get drunk every single day of the week until his next assisted living check arrived. A lot of the out-of-work miners opted to use their checks in this fashion, rather than going through the complicated rigamarole of budgeting out every dollar to feed their needy families. Their wives were forced to become the breadwinners, taking employment as cashiers at Fashion Bug and JoAnn Fabrics.

Eventually the Mayor of Coalville, T. Willy Tompkins, noticed that there was an unemployment problem in Coalville. He noticed this about three years after the mines had all closed. His heart full of compassion for his indigent constituents, Mayor Tomkins signed a couple deals with the Wal-Mart company and began an annual tradition. Any time unemployment got too high in Coalville, he just opened a new Wal-Mart.

This worked to stave off the unemployment plague for a while. A lot of the miners got jobs at the first Wal-Mart he built, and still work there today. A smaller number of miners got jobs at the second Wal-Mart he built, which was even bigger. Some of them still work there. Finally, the Wal-Mart my dad works at was built, and it was the biggest one yet. And, as I explained before, nobody wanted to work there.

Desperate to find out why, I stopped off at a bar called Cecil’s over on the Peg Hollow Road. I had been told by my father that a great number of the out-of-work miners liked to drink there, using their assisted living checks. I interviewed several men, but the man who impressed me the most was an out-of-work miner named Travis Feeley (formerly Union Local 1081). When I handed Travis a Wal-Mart Help Wanted ad and asked him why he didn’t go get a job up at the new Supercenter, this is what he said to me:

“I could do that, I suppose. I could go get a job up there at that Wal-Mart and spend nine hours a day lugging gardening equipment up and down aisles and smiling at customers and ringing up sporting goods purchases and doing price checks, all for a little more than minimum wage.” He belched and took another swig of his beer. “Or,” he said, “OR! I could I sit right here on this stool…and get drunk.”

When I told him that I thought the latter option was a tad irresponsible his only response was “Son. I am fifty-two years old.” And then he got a far-off look in his eye and wouldn’t speak to me anymore.

Why won’t the miners get jobs at my Dad’s Supercenter? I am uncertain. Why do they prefer to sit on their butts and get drunk all day? I couldn’t tell you. My family and I agree that it’s damned irresponsible of them. But we also can’t deny that there is a sadness in this town, a sadness that came the day the coal dried up. And, much like the disease known as Chlamydia, it is a stubborn and infectious sadness that refuses to go away. It will take many long years of treatment to salve this wounded town. And it will never be as happy as it once was, when coal dust covered everything, and the air was filled with the sound of coughing on every street and in every household.

04/12/2006
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