by Anne Trubek
In fairness, he knew I lacked any sense of practicality. I wasn’t thinking about a career in graphic design. I wanted something like Warhol, but you know … more manly. But I was young and I didn’t have an answer to his question, so I did what he did. I found a job working construction in the steel mills.
When my artist friends talk about the dangerous toxicity of things like cadmium red and sprayable fixative, I nod politely but inside I’m cracking up. During my time as a surveyor in the mills, traveling back and forth between what was then U.S. Steel in Lorain and LTV in Cleveland, I used to see water so polluted that nothing would float in it. I would see dead rats with tumors exploding out of their sides. The old-timers would tell me how much dirtier the mill used to be, before the hippies, before the EPA. The cars in the parking lot would be covered in red dust. Open your lunch box, red dust on the food. Spit, red dust. Cough, red dust. After a rain, the gutters were streaked with something that looked like dried blood.
When I was a boy, my father would come home from the mill and wash his face and hands in the sink; I would tell him about my small day and watch the water turn brown as it swirled. When he was done he would wipe his face on the towel and leave behind the imprint of a red skull; he couldn’t wash enough to get clean.
I had a romantic notion that such filthiness was what it meant to be a man. But after a few weeks in the mill, I started dreaming about cancer. There was a story about some geese that landed in the vivid green wastewater–retention basin and sank right to the bottom. I’d imagine my body after death, completely decayed, only a man-shaped pile of rust in my coffin.
Those dreams weren’t enough to stop me from going to work, though. From my late teens—in those days when we weren’t all pretending a college education matters—until my mid-thirties when I decided that a master’s degree in fiction and poetry would somehow make my life better, I kept willingly walking into mills and factories and industrial complexes. Usually these excursions would begin with a brief safety video describing all the ways one was likely to be killed inside. The names on the mills changed: U.S. Steel became USS-Kobe, and LTV, which the old-timers used to call “Good old Liquidate, Terminate, and Vacate,” closed and opened and morphed around before becoming ArcelorMittal. Each time the names changed, fewer people had jobs.
The name that has stayed with me the most came from LTV: the continuous annealing line. Annealing is a process by which steel is heated and then slowly cooled so that the metal will be tough. Imagine being annealed continuously.
In those spare moments when I wasn’t sweating a mortgage payment or trying to coax some education for my children out of the region’s essentially rotten school system, I pretended to be an artist. In school, I was only interested in art and English, and after graduation I clung to those two things as a justification for why I was wasting my life working construction all over northeast Ohio. I fancied myself as one of those artists who would speak for common people, never really imagining myself as one of the commoners. The most consistent thing in my life was the terrible impracticality of my art. I wrote novels and sent poems to The New Yorker. On job sites, I would collect materials and wire them into sculptures—it’s hard to be discreet when you’re wiring rebar and scraps from the carpenter’s forms into things that look a little bit like birds. Draw a little on the back of a pay stub, paint with a set of cheap watercolors from Pat Catan’s. If anyone asked, I would curse my art by calling it a hobby. To be a native-born artist in Cleveland, you must master the art of self-deprecation. You must not let the normal folks know that you have been thinking, now and then, about immortality.
Of course, the newcomers mean well. They have come from other places in the country where it’s too hard to be an artist; perhaps the grant money ran out, or the colleges are only hiring adjuncts. It could be that the inspiration just disappeared, as inspiration sometimes does.
Since it’s so hard to be paid to live as an artist in Cleveland, the aspirant lives somewhere cheap. This neighborhood usually features a housing project and some boarded-up factories. Someone calls an abandoned warehouse a loft. A few more artists show up, and someone opens a gallery. Soon there’s a coffee shop and a diner and a Laundromat. Other people who have artistic temperaments arrive; a few of them mean well, but most of them call themselves artists despite the lack of any real talent. They want to be artists the same way that sports fans want to play shortstop for the Yankees. Instead of skill, they have disposable income. They have investments and trust funds. The coffee shop becomes a Starbucks, the diner an Applebee’s. The prices in the galleries reflect what everyone’s calling the “growing importance of the movement.”
The first sign of the coming apocalypse is the art walk: the Typhoid Marys of gentrification. Developers show up, displaying all the sensitive charm of a multinational corporation. The first thing they fix is the parking situation. They refurbish the factories because that’s the kind of news that looks good in the arts section, and they evict the last surviving members of the original neighborhood, the old immigrants and housing project leftovers, because that’s the kind of story that appears in a blurb at the back of the city section. Rent goes up. The air is thick with the smell of money. Money smells like being neighbors with a bread factory. Sure, you want to believe that’s what heaven smells like. But really, breathing has become a long struggle against yeasty suffocation. Meanwhile, the artists can no longer afford to stay in the neighborhood, and nobody knows what happened to the people who lived there before—shadows remain, or a few splotches of paint in the background of somebody’s landscape.
But it’s all okay. There’s a lot of good space farther out on the West Side or the East Side, cheap rent, a Salvation Army. Everyone’s moving there.
It was never really about art. The artists wanted whatever it is that artists want (recognition, a solo show, a mention in a textbook, a cash award, a residency, a sabbatical, to be called a genius by people that other people call geniuses, anything but a job), and the gallery owners made a little money—which they used to pay back their loans, which means the banks made some money, and some developers got rich. People looking for ways to be young and hip and successful mortgaged ridiculously expensive townhouses and brownstones and bought pretty things to hang on the wall. Hanging things on the wall meant decorating the room. Contractors were hired, supplies were ordered, and workmen were paid. How it all trickles down so beautifully! I try my best to believe that, even if only by accident, some human looked at something made by another human and wondered what it all meant.
It’s all understandable, and it’s shitty, but I can get over that. What I can’t and won’t get over is how the artists swaggered into town like major leaguers going down to the minors on a rehab assignment. While I spent my time being afraid to want something beautiful, they actually went to art school. Some of them arrived here with a certain kind of fame. Some of them didn’t become famous until they saw what we’ve done to ourselves. Along the way, they dragged a few natives into the brief, burning spotlight. I try not to be jealous. But it’s too easy to hate the truly talented. Or the truly connected. Or the lucky.
It’s hard not to feel like the details of my working life became their art. All that beautiful decay, they seemed to say. Look at how wonderful this place used to be. Look at how terrible it all was. This region really says something about the world. This says something about our nation. I feel like I’ve lived here all my life!
I feel guilty for overstating the problem. Then I feel like I am not overstating the problem at all. They came and looked at my secret fears and told me how interesting they are, and how relevant, and how all that misery makes such a fascinating mosaic, if only I could step back and see how all the details have been arranged.
Yet none of them asked where the rust came from.
There’s no way of knowing in the end what matters more: the lives that those mills and factories supported or the art that only exists because those lives no longer exist. In the
end, it’s not the fact that I or my friends and family feel exploited. It’s not that the visiting artists were wrong or even that they were right. What most bothers me is that I wasn’t smart enough to exploit the situation for myself. The whole thing was happening all around me, and I was too busy watching what I imagined as real artists watch and document what I called home. All those moments of folly when I gave up my ambitions to pay the bills. All those things that flashed briefly beautiful before I pushed them aside. It all turned out to be art after all. I just missed it.
CAROLYNE WHELAN
King Coal and the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum
WILMA STEELE SITS ON HER screened porch and watches the last of the apples fall from her tree. It’s a beautiful, crisp day in Mingo County, West Virginia. Inside, there is still a faint dampness from when the house flooded as the result of nearby mountaintop removal, but on the porch, the dry air has that warm autumn smell of leaves and soil. Steele has lived in this region all her life, and her lineage traces back deep into the earth of Mingo County as far as she can follow it, like light in the abandoned mine shaft down the street. She is one of the founders of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum1, located in Matewan, Mingo County, and on October 1, as she accepted a Coal Heritage Award from the Coal Heritage Highway Authority on behalf of the museum, Don Blankenship wrapped up the first day of his closed trial.
Don Blankenship was also born and raised in Mingo County—his mother was a McCoy, a descendant of the infamous enemies of the Hatfields. He and Steele went to school together, but after that, their paths diverged: while Steele became a high school art teacher—and a member of her teachers’ union—Blankenship climbed the ladder of corporate coal, ultimately becoming the chairman and CEO of Massey Energy Company and, according to The New York Times, “one of West Virginia’s most feared and powerful figures2,” the kind of man who pumps toxic slurry back into the ground to save his company money3 and throws his breakfast if it’s not to his liking4. In April 2010, twenty-nine miners died as the result of an explosion at one of Massey’s mines, Upper Big Branch; Blankenship subsequently was accused of scheming with others at the company to violate safety rules and deceive regulators. The trial holding a CEO responsible for the deaths of his company’s workers was the first of its kind, and the results could set a precedent for future corporate leaders.5 Although the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum focuses on the history of the region, Steele believes that in light of the Upper Big Branch explosion and the trial, the historical narrative is applicable today.
“The mines used to own people by owning their homes, their stores, their churches, their schools,” Steele says. “Now, they don’t need to, because they own people’s minds. It’s much more psychological.” The coal companies donate money to the local schools, she says, so the teachers will endorse the industry. In response to reports of coal-based pollution and sick children, it was the teachers who wrote to the paper to discredit the accusations as liberal propaganda, Steele says, and it wasn’t until a reporter visited Marsh Fork Elementary School and with his finger wiped up a layer of coal dirt to show to the camera6 that the area finally started to take notice.
It wasn’t always this way. The region has a rich history of people banding together and pushing back against the industry, dating back to the West Virginia Mine Wars. The wars, which took place from 1910 to 1922—starting with the union aggregation that led to the first official strike in 1912—involved more than ten thousand miners who went on strike repeatedly over low wages and deadly working conditions. The West Virginia Mine Wars Museum chronicles it all, from the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 to 1913 (one of the worst conflicts in American labor history, with deaths from both malnourishment and hired guards) to the 1920 Battle of Matewan (also known as the Matewan Massacre), in which miners surrounded and killed seven detectives from the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency who had been hired by mine officials to issue eviction letters. The exhibits culminate with information on the 1921 Miners’ March that led to the Battle of Blair Mountain: with ten thousand miners on strike, this was the largest armed uprising of U.S. citizens outside of wartime, and federal troops were called in to break it up. Also included in the museum’s collection are artifacts from coal camp life, including a replica of the tent colonies where miner families lived when they were kicked out of their company homes for striking. The display curves around in a horseshoe of narrative, starting and ending at the front of the museum, reflective (intended or not) of the cyclical nature of labor movements in general, and of the current chapter unfolding under the omnipresent “King Coal.” If the museum narrative were to continue into the present day, Don Blankenship might have his photo in the museum in association with his own wars against laborers: In 1984, a strike at Blackberry Creek against Massey turned bloody and lasted more than a year. Blankenship, for his part, was largely concerned about his television, which, famously, was allegedly shot by pro-union forces.
The first displays upon entering the museum are bookshelves full of historic artifacts, presented without the austerity of glass cases, which keep a barrier between article and viewer. During a tour, Steele takes great care to explain the personal history of an oil lantern used to light the way for the miners. “My dad, he worked in the mine with all different people, and it didn’t matter where you were from and what you looked like—if you were union brothers, you were union brothers,” she says. “A couple years ago, he went to visit with an old friend from the mine, an African American man, and the friend showed him this old lantern. My dad told him his daughter collected old stuff like this to help preserve it, and the man said, ‘Then you give this to your daughter to look after and keep safe.’ So it’s here now, and to me its presence here in the museum is a tribute not only to my father and to that man, but to the friendship between them, that saw each other as brothers. Funny, isn’t it,” she muses as she puts the lantern back down, “this article that was created for safety was really just another thing that could have blown up in their faces.”
There is a lot of love in the museum that has gone toward making that part of history clear: the role all people had in the labor strikes and mine wars. A picture of a white woman and an African American woman sitting in the kitchen of a factory house is on proud display, and indeed, many of the group photos of union members and of families—including the ones that show people peeping out of the holes slit in tents by the Baldwin–Felts agents hired to destroy the shelters—show people of all backgrounds.
* * *
The building where the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum is located was rented for a year and a half prior to the museum’s opening. As in much of Matewan, the building is one of the original structures of the town, and still contains bullet holes from the shoot-out between Sid Hatfield, a union sympathizer and the police chief of Matewan during the Battle of Matewan, and the mine’s hired guards. Most of the museum’s founders had been working together on the project for two years, with creative director and exhibition designer Shaun Slifer joining the team when the space was rented about six months later. Slifer has been installing exhibits for a decade in museums, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Frick Art & Historical Center, and others; he also has worked on projects from a people’s history perspective in the past, including Pittsburgh’s Howling Mob Society signs, which were featured in the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Additionally, he presented on the National Conference for Historic Preservation, and co-edited the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative’s Firebrands: Portraits from the Americas, published by Microcosm.
“It is a bit strange to think about a museum coming together so quickly, especially when in Pittsburgh the museums are these official and long-standing establishments,” Slifer says. “But there was a lot of work behind the scenes before we got to the place we are now.” While the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum may have opened its doors relatively quickly, the same techniques and attention to detail went into the design of this small storefront museum as in those
larger-budget spaces. Everything is archival and, once a visitor has entered into the horseshoe past the initial open shelves, the displays all have Plexiglas cases. There are videos of historic newsreels as well as oral histories playing from a parabolic speaker. There is also much to read at each display, and large quotes in vinyl dance along the walls to help guide the narrative.
Prior to the creation of the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum, co-founders Kenny King and Wilma Steele had been a part of the modest Blair Mountain Museum, which has since closed. Both have impressive personal collections of artifacts collected over the years, often handed down from their parents and grandparents, and these treasures, among many others, can be seen now at the tiny museum. King, in fact, may have the world’s largest collection of such artifacts, many of which are quite rare; in addition to familial treasures, he actively hunts down items of this era using a metal detector. Among his collection at the museum are bullet casings and clips from a number of guns, including .45 ACP shells for a Thompson submachine gun (also known as a Tommy gun), which would have been brand-new at the time and owned by law enforcement; he also has scrip that reads, “Good for one loaf of bread,” which is paired in the museum display with a rare milk bottle (fresh milk would have been inaccessible to most mine workers).
While there is something about the artifacts that feels profoundly American, many items sing of the rich cultural heritage brought overseas by immigrants seeking a better life and finding themselves in the hollow of Matewan. One display at the museum specifically showcases such multicultural relics, though the nods to the miners’ homelands can be seen in so many of the photos: kilts and embroidered vests with paisley designs, the clothing of people holding on to their past while working to create a brighter future. That these cultures persevered is ironically the work of the mine owners themselves, who, according to historians of the museum, purposefully kept each culture apart. As immigrants came off the boats in New York, they were offered jobs at the mine, given places to live in their own area of Matewan, and assigned to a shift where they worked according to ethnicity of origin. Cultures were not shared and other languages were not learned, all of which was a tool of the mine owners to avoid unionization—when the miners didn’t know each other, they could resent each other and animosity could grow, which kept them from finding common ground for demanding fair wages and safe conditions.