REDNECK for true!

Let me begin by saying my last journal entry, albiet true, was done, tongue in cheek.  I am PROUD to be a coal miner's wife, coal miner's daughter as well as a coal miner's grand-daugther.  I've suffered the loss that the coal mines bring as well as the riches.  However, the coal mines is a cruel mistress.....it will give up its black wealth but extract its pay in the miner's health at the least and his life at the most.  I have lived to see both. The coal companys have not changed.  Not really.  A man is killed, family told, another man hired in his place without so much as a minute in production time lost.  The "company man" is still different than the coal miner.  Many a "company man" or "company suck" found out in the working ranks has been secretly given knee pads to let him know he's been marked and found out.   The workers are tighter than most covering each other's back.  If you don't believe me, recall the SAGO MINE DISASTER, in WV.  Brothers in the dark in a way no one but another miner could understand.  I am told coal mining gets into your blood.  I believe this.  I even considered going underground (as opposed to being a "stripper" up top) which totally freaked my mom to no end as the mines extracted her pay with my dad's blood just 10 minutes before quitting time leaving her a young widow with 3 young girls to raise on her own.  I vowed then, I would never be dependant on any man.   My daddy raised me well, the son he never had.  I can hunt, skin out the kill, fish, minor electrical, minor plumbing, lay flooring, etc.  I am told by hubby I should have been a man.  THEREFORE, it is with the HIGHEST PRIDE I am submitting to you the TRUE MEANING OF REDNECK.  It is not a derogatory term but one of great honor and spirit.  Read on and understand the pride......  Thousands of miners gathered in Marmet, a village on the Kanawha River ten miles upstream from Charleston, later that month. At that time, the main roads and railways from the Charleston area to Logan and Mingo Counties departed into the hills from that point. Labor leaders such as “Mother” Jones begged and even lied to the miners to prevent violence. However, the miners arrived and organized along military lines (many of them having served in the First World War.) They created a system of communication and passwords that no participant ever revealed, even to historians many decades later. In addition, to distinguish themselves from people uninvolved they wore red kerchiefs around their necks (perhaps providing the origin of the word “redneck.”) They also assembled commissary wagons and brought along clergy and medical personnel.  http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/coal-mine.htm