There is nothing complicated or ephemeral here folks. Gurney had it pretty close. Just a little knowledge is needed. Billy Edd Wheeler, the gifted songwriter of "Coal Tattoo" is from Boone County West Virginia. Every mineable coal seam in America has a name. For whatever reason there are nine "Pocahontas" seams. It was (is) commonly referred to as "Pokie". Pocahontas 9 was referred to as "number nine". It was, "number nine coal".

When Wheeler was a boy in West Virginia some coal was still being mined by "shooting on solid". That meant that explosives were used to blast the coal free from the seam. It was common for coal fragments of various sizes to embed themselves in the bodies of the miners. Unlike most men of today, they didn't run to the emergency room or file a claim against the company. The wound healed and the embedded coal could be seen through the skin, much like the ink of the current day tattoo "artist". "A little more and I'd been dead" meant that had the coal penetrated much more it would have entered their brain.

Nothing less...nothing more.

I've shoveled the number nine with a number four and loved every back breaking minute of it. Go chew on that.

Thank your lucky stars for the men and women who mine the coal to make your life easier.