My maternal family lived in southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia for multiple generations. Neither my grandmother nor my mother had fond memories of the coal camps, and after my grandfather died my grandmother (a colorful and remarkably strong woman) pulled the entire family, including her own parents and siblings, out of the coalfields just as soon as she could.

Granny BB (as we called her) refused to go see the movie "Matewan" with us. "Why would I want to be reminded?" She wasn't thinking so much about the union wars, but about life in the coalfields.