She wanted me to understand that these towns and their streets once told a different story, one unlike the\u00a0suffocating rust, slivered\u00a0glass, and dust. These streetlamps, she said, illuminated company stores, bustling taverns, and the youthful faces of a town that, in its prime, really was beautifully gilded.<\/p>\n
In those days, on those vibrant streets, the\u00a0white-painted buildings\u00a0lay nestled, the sleek white\u00a0cars\u00a0slumbered, and\u00a0complimenting\u00a0white\u00a0clothes clung below\u00a0white smiles. But many who lived there knew that pristine picture stood atop anything but white.\u00a0Beneath those\u00a0polished streets stretched the murky black caverns, where\u00a0the\u00a0blackened faces and bodies labored their lives for black gold.\u00a0Many yet, buried among that\u00a0black rock, their lifeblood. That life was difficult, often brief for the miners\u00a0and their families\u00a0she explained, but there was something raw, something real to be found in those towns, a distilled vision\u00a0of life and death.\u00a0Our dreams, their costs.<\/p>\n
But dreams, like veins, can run dry. And when the coal dried up, so did many\u00a0towns. The price became too high, the dreams too far. Some held on, clinging to something, maybe anything, while others\u00a0fled, chasing dreams anew.<\/p>\n
Now, standing in one of those\u00a0towns, kicking a stone along a desolate sidewalk, passing boarded windows, it’s\u00a0hard to imagine the streets she described. The motion, the life. Where have those dreamers gone? What is a dream worth, and will the next end like\u00a0this?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She wanted me to understand that these towns and their streets once told a different story, one unlike the\u00a0suffocating rust, slivered\u00a0glass, and dust. These streetlamps, she said, illuminated company stores, bustling taverns, and the youthful faces of a town that, in its prime, really was beautifully gilded. In those days, on those vibrant streets, the\u00a0white-painted buildings\u00a0lay nestled, the sleek white\u00a0cars\u00a0slumbered, and\u00a0complimenting\u00a0white\u00a0clothes clung below\u00a0white smiles. But many who lived there knew that pristine picture stood atop anything but white.\u00a0Beneath those\u00a0polished streets … <\/p>\n