re: #124 HappyWarrior

My grandmother is honestly stumped why anyone would want a lifetime in the mines. Her dad didn’t work in the mines out of love for the mines. It was one of the few jobs he could do.

The honest answer is most of these guys want those jobs because they’re the best they’re likely to secure with little or no formal education past a high school diploma/GED. The factories are going away and farm jobs are not steady enough to make a living off of unless you own part of the farm. In a big city they might be able to get menial jobs doing manual labor, but out in the small towns or Appalachia, even those jobs are hard to come by. So they take to the mines for the same reason their daddies did and their daddies before them: Because it’s a job that’s steady, pays well enough, and you don’t need to be smart to do it.