Where the Road and the Day Both End: Memories of Benedict and Bonny Blue
"When I see Ina Pruitt’s The End of the Day, I don’t just see a painting; I see my Dad.
He would come home from the mines covered in a thick layer of coal dust, his dinner bucket heavy in his hand. The ritual was always the same: boots off on the porch, followed by the heavy miner’s belt and the helmet with its carbide lamp. Inside, my mom would already have a big galvanized wash tub filled for him. We didn't have running water then, so that tub was his sanctuary after a long shift underground.
For those who could afford it, the town had two bathhouses. I remember walking down the street and seeing the men filing into the separate bathhouse entrances at Gurney Tester’s or Worley Gibson’s barber shops. Gurney and Worley kept those showers hot and ready—a small luxury in a hard-working town.
These 'dead ends' I've been photographing at Benedict and Bonny Blue were once the places where that dust originated. Today they are quiet, but in my mind, I still hear the heavy boots on the porch and the sound of water hitting the wash tub."
A Dedication to the Men of the Mountain
This post is dedicated to the miners of St. Charles, Benedict, and Bonny Blue—the men who spent their daylight hours in the dark so their families could live in the light.
To the men like my father, who carried the weight of the mountain on their shoulders and the dust of the coal in their skin. To those who stood in line at Gurney’s and Worley’s, and those who bathed in galvanized tubs by the heat of a kitchen stove.
The gates may be closed and the roads may end in gravel, but the grit, sacrifice, and character of the St. Charles miner are etched forever into the bedrock of these hills.
They are gone, but they are not forgotten.
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