Coal Mine Revisited

What I remember the most about growing up in Coal Mine were the crooked bleached out streets around my neighborhood. To me they epitomized the whole world, and when I was very young I was convinced that -like those streets, the whole world was washed out and sleepy.

If I close my eyes I can still hear the chorus of cicadas drowning out the steady lull of the irrigation pipes in the surrounding farmlands. This sound will always take me straight back to Juarez Street to where I grew up, back to the smell of dirt and grass, and the cool dark nights where I lingered late outside under the stars.

Rumor has it that at one time, when it was really quiet, you could hear the muted sound of workers toiling down into the coal mines. It was something usually told by the older residents of the community, those that had lived in Coal Mine their whole lives, and had seen a strange thing or two. Of course, the noises were gone by the time I was born.  I use to sit up in the china berry tree that grew in our front yard  and just listen to the dead silence in hopes that I would catch the faint clank of a pickax far below. But I never did.

Whenever the older residents would recount the legend their faces would sag with longing, as if they were sad that it no longer occurred. To them the sounds were just memories from another time.

Whenever I would inquire about the noises I was always told that they belonged to men who had died when a tunnel collapsed back when the mires were operational. To this day I have never researched whether or not this is true, however, with the dangerous conditions of working underground being as they are I’m sure this was something that did happen from time to time.

Here and there I would catch snippets of hushed talk that the tunnels were still somewhere below. Whenever adults would talk seriously about it they would claim that as kids they knew someone who had actually found  the old entrance and had actually gone down. Of course, whenever I would chime in wanting to more about the entrances the adults would change to subject abruptly.

When I was older I began to ask about the mines again. This time I was told that the entrances were hidden and no one knew where they were at.  Nobody except Coal Mine’s oldest residents -people who had actually had parents that had worked in the mines, knew where the locations were. By the time I was old enough to be seriously interested in Coal Mine’s history most of those residents had taken that secret to their graves.

Once, when trying to track down more information about the mines, I was told by a family member that they heard of someone owning an old ledger from the mining company that listed the names of workers along with where the entrances of the different mines were located. This was exciting news for me, but when I further investigated about this ledger I ended up coming out empty handed. Perhaps at one time such a book did exist, but, just like the ghostly sounds of the miners on a hot still day, it was just another memory out of time.

Like any small town in the world Coal Mine has its own stories and its own ghosts. I grew up with the paranormal, as did my parents, and so on, and so on. Everyone I grew up with in Coal Mine had stories. One of my grandmothers said that as a child she use to remember seeing the local priest walk up and down those same crooked roads that I walked tossing holy water and praying aloud. I have heard so many stories. One day I am going to put them down in a book. I feel a strange sense of obligation to do this. I left my heart on those crooked streets. My childhood, the never ending summer days, the stories…everything lost in the glare of maturity.

I am going to share some of those stories. Keep an eye out for them.

 

 

A Transition

From where I sat I could see out into the backyard. By now the sun was climbing high over the treeline that surrounded the neighborhood. The sunlight was starting to bleach the trees, ready to heat up the whole city…but for now, my backyard was dark and shady.

A stray cat passed by, uninterested at the two black birds that were pecking at the ground for insects. I yawned at the sight and turned back to my cup of coffee.

Every morning I watched as the sun drank up the shadows, a little sad to see them go. I know that’s ridiculous but when the temperature reaches the high nineties I no longer care. I personify them and pine. From the haze in the sky I could already tell that it was going to be a hot day. I nodded to myself, suddenly numb from the thought of the day’s events, and finished off my coffee.

What is the meaning of today? Forget the meaning of life, that’s too broad anyway, but somebody comment on the meaning of individual days. Do they even have meaning? Or are they insignificant? I think these thoughts as I gather up my book bag, my mind trying to remind me about a million things at once.

Perhaps each day is a blank slate, the brush strokes of our actions giving meaning to what once was a void. Maybe.

Old Ghosts

The Sunday blues…heavy and already setting in. Outside the window the street is empty save the droning chorus of the cicadas in the trees. The sound of them always makes me think of my childhood, growing up in the small annexed region of Coal Mine.
Coal Mine sits on U.S. Highway 81 and the Missouri Pacific line in southeastern Medina County. At one point in its history it use to part of Lytle, but today it stands alone and forgotten on the outskirts of town.

I grew up in Coal Mine. It’s where I skinned my knees and built my forts. It’s where I shared my secrets, dreams and fears to the dark quiet places that only small children seem to find. It’s where I mended my first broken heart.

In Coal Mine there is an old cemetery that I use to frequent a lot as a kid. It stands at the end of a long crooked dirt road, dotted on both sides by small quiet homes and dead trees. When you reach the end of that road there is a small patch of land that serves as a parking lot during a funeral. Overhead, massive trees block out the sun. In spring I use to come to this place all the time. It was- and last time I visited- still is, a very cool and dark place.

At the cemetery gates there are two small statues of Saint Peter. One of them is chipped and broken, one of his hands shaved off. Their mournful faces watch you as you walk through the entrance, and cry out to you as you leave.

The cemetery is very small. At its center there is a large wooden cross, faded and rotting from the Texas sun. The Jesus figure on it is worn and featureless.

The interesting thing about this cemetery is that everyone buried there is family, or life long neighbors. My great-grandparents are there. Coal Mine is a tight knit community, and so is its cemetery.  However, this is not the case anymore. Coal Mine is, and has always has been, plagued by a serious issue concerning its cemetery.

To keep the history of this issue short and respectable I will simply describe it as this:

Coal Mine is named aptly after the real coal mines that use to be in operation there in the late 1800s. Workers for the mines built several camps near by where they could live. Eventually these camps would come together and form what would later become the place where I grew up.

Many years later, when the mines closed up and moved, many of the original workers stayed behind.  They had raised families in these camps, adding to them as the years passed. Eventually the camp turned into a small community, complete with a main plaza, a dance hall, a Catholic church, and at least two schools. According to the Texas State Historical Association site, Lytle annexed Coal Mine in 1969, and there were about 100 people living at the Coal Mine site in 1983. This was the year that I was born. Much had changed by the time I came into existence, but that itself is another blog.

The little patch of land that is now the cemetery was actually donated to the people of Coal Mine by Mr. and Mrs. Carr, who were owners of one of the mining companies operating in the area. The main issue at hand is that the descendants of the Carr family argue that the cemetery indeed was donated to Coal Mine, but the road that leads to it, was not.  Many times as a child I can remember being scrutinized for walking to the cemetery. I have heard stories from neighbors who have been told that they have no right on the road, saying that it’s private property. Really? How fucked up is that? Strange but true.

Another Issue:

The only way in and out of Coal Mine is a railroad crossing. As a child I can remember being late to school many times because the train had ended up stopping at the entrance, blocking everyone’s way out. Residents of Coal Mine have been frustrated over this for many years, asking the question: What are we to do in an emergency situation when the train has trapped us in? They have been asking that question since before I was born and they are still asking that question to this day. Near the cemetery there is a private road that leads out into the city of Lytle. Many have asked, why can’t this road be opened for use? However, the owners have denied them, saying that, in case of an emergency Coal Mine can request that the road be opened up, and if the owners are home at the time of the said emergency, then residents can safely evacuate out into the city. This is still an issue today.

My family moved away from Coal Mine when I was twenty, but by then it no longer felt as close as it did when I was a child. The house that I grew up in has been torn down. I remember the day  that I went with my father to clear it out for any left over pieces we might have left behind. I remember looking at all of the empty rooms, seeing the mental phantoms of me and my siblings playing, running, yelling. A great sorrow had swept over me, and in one of the back rooms I cried. To this day, cleaning out our old house was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

There are still old families in Coal Mine, remnants of the original community, but to me it will never feel the same. I often tell my wife that I think I left my heart in Coal Mine, and it’s something that I will always feel. I’m haunted by the childhood I had there, the endless summers, the rainy days. Someday I will return, but in what form? I close my eyes now and I can still see the road where I lived on, baking in the heat. The sky is bleached and brittle, and the cicadas, they’re droning forever in the trees.

An Afternoon of Sighs

 

We drove out to Lytle today. On the way I sang Beatles’ songs out loud in an attempt to get my three year old daughter, Azura, to join in, but she didn’t. She smiled at my effort but was too busy watching the passing landscape as we made our way down I-35 towards the place where I grew up.

Beside me my wife checked her make-up in the mirror. She joined my daughter in watching the passing cars and sighed to herself. To her, Lytle was the country. She grew up in the city and Lytle’s small schools and mom and pop stores appeared quaint to her. She likes the idea of a small town where everyone knows everyone.

“It’d be a good place for Azura to grow up,” my wife had said. “I wouldn’t feel so worried about her in a small town.”

I agreed with her. Growing up in a small town I remembered feeling safe and isolated from the world, but at the same time I also felt sheltered- mainly because I was. As I got older I couldn’t wait to leave town.

Continuing on I could see a sign post for Lytle approaching. In the backseat my daughter was getting that sleepy look from the motion of the car and I smiled at the sight of her.  I yawned to myself and brought my attention back to the road.

I always get an odd chill whenever I visit my parents. It’s the town. As soon as I pass that ‘Welcome to Lytle’ sign I’m always hit with the oddest sensation that I’m traveling back in time. I guess all people must feel that way whenever they visit their hometowns. It’s a strange belief that the whole town froze to a stand-still the day you said goodbye, just waiting for your return to thaw out and resume. It’s how I feel sometimes, but I know that it’s not true.

Instead, sometimes I don’t even recognize the place. There has been so much new development to Lytle that it sometimes forces me to pause to make sense of how much has really changed while I was away. Sometimes I will stare longingly at a new building and sigh at the memory of what use to be there. Not because I had any connection with what use to be there as a child, but because sometimes I feel sad to see things change. I guess I’m just sentimental like that.

We when we finally arrived into town I began to point things out to my wife: places that were no longer there, places that I couldn’t believe were still there, falling apart in the harsh summer heat.

I sighed to myself and reclined back in my seat.

“I really like the houses out here,” my wife said to me.

I sighed and nodded to myself as I watched the houses pass by.

“Me too,” I said with a thin smile. “Me too.”

My Two Pennies

I poured myself another cup of coffee and glanced out the window over our sink. The morning looked quiet and peaceful but I could already see the vapor trails of the day’s heat lying low on the lawn.

My wife had just left for work about ten minutes ago and when my phone went off I thought that she was calling to tell me that she had forgotten something.

“Did you hear about the shooting in Colorado?” she asked when I answered.

My mind automatically went to Columbine and I opened my IPad to see what she was talking about. I had just been using Skygrid to go over the recent news and I had not seen anything about a shooting.

My wife told me that some 24 year old had opened fire in a crowded theater at a midnight showing of the Dark Knight Rises.

“The radio is saying twelve dead,”  she said to me. “Most of them young.”

My first reaction was to check my twitter feed to see what everyone else was saying about it. If anything was going to be current up to the minute it would be Twitter.

“People even brought babies to the theater,” my wife said.

Both her and I strongly believe that very small children have no place in a loud movie theater, and my first impulse was to make a comment about how irresponsible it was to drag babies to the movies, but I didn’t.  Everything put aside they weren’t to blame for what had happened. That gunman was.

My wife and I hung up and I went back to the living room to sit down and read more about this gunman story. This was so tragic. No one was saying that the shooting was terrorist related so I figured it must have been another Columbine situation.

“Colorado,” I said to myself. “Why do so many violent shootings happen there?”

I began to muse over the suspicion that the shooting was an inside job. People have speculated that the Columbine shootings were orchestrated by the federal government in an attempt to scare us into willingly giving up our gun rights. They say the same thing about 9/11 and the Patriot Act.

“Anything’s possible I guess,” I said to myself.

One article had a witness saying that they had seen the shooter come in through the exit wearing what looked like a gas mask.

“Holy shit,” I thought. Did the gunman come in to the theater dressed as the character Bane? How else could he have come in with a rifle, shotgun, pistol, and smoke grenades without being noticed? Well, if he dressed as Bane it’s possible. Gas mask to hide his face and a trench coat to hide his weapons? That’s how he must have done it.
I felt sick to my stomach. No one would have suspected it. He was just another movie goer dressed up in costume.

Another article featured amateur footage of the theater being evacuated. I watched it and shook my head when I saw that there were small children there, and many of them in costume. One man was being escorted out by a paramedic. His shirt was covered in blood and all around him you could hear the mixed noises of crying, panicked muttering, and general conversation. It was too real, to close to home for comfort.

The articles say that the shooter gave himself up peacefully and went quietly with the police when they arrived at the scene: 12 confirmed dead, 50 injured.

Before we had hung up my wife had made a comment about how she was afraid to go to a midnight showing now. She’s been to them before. So have I. However, at that moment when she said that her and I both felt that something had changed, that something was never going to be the same again. We weren’t going to stop going to the theaters but now we would always have this warning in the back of our minds. Perhaps it was always there, for this isn’t a completely new thing. There have been other incidents and there will always be other incidents.

I shake my head at these thoughts and drink my coffee with a sigh. Outside the sun climbs higher in the sky and I know it’s going to be a hot one.

Thunder with no rain…

It starts as it stops, and visa versa. The long drawn out growl, the smell of water on the brittle breeze…it’s all there, but now, almost an hour later, there is nothing.

The house is asleep.  Only me and the whir of the computer fan are up to listen to the far off chatter of sirens. Still up…no sleep, no need to go back there and try that again.