a town on the tug
Feb 6, 2006
I was born in a little knock about town by the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. Some time before people came along the Appalachian Plateau was carved up for residency by the mountain waters. Not the second-run kind that Dewey got liquored up on at 160 proof; but the kind that leaked into the river basin and bathed his grandfather’s daddy on a Saturday night.
Indians washed there once. Named places like Horse Creek, Possum Branch and Beartown, then somebody ran them off and the miners came and never left.
A Hill Country full of black gold. WV style. Scratch the surface, any surface, and there it is. Feeding families and making widows.
The coal basin.
A kid could get lost in it.
It had happened before.
