Harlan had long been infamous for labor disputes and family feuds, but shortly after the sale, a protracted labor strike was captured in the 1976 Oscar-winning documentary film, Harlan County, USA. This mine, called Brookside, attained national notoriety in the early 1970s after my family sold it to Eastover Mining, a subsidiary of Duke Power, one of the country’s largest energy corporations. Brittle vines covered the old office building, the commissary, and the beer hall, which looked as though they could double as a movie set for a Wild West ghost town. I was climbing the mountain of my relatives’ former coal mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, walking the land where my grandfather worked for nearly forty years. Runoff flowed around my feet, gentle but quick.
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