Published: May 03, 2008 11:58 pm      

A coal mining family

Challenge of work, family, time worth the effort

Every workday afternoon, John Crump says goodbye to his family, drives to the Kingston Resources coal mine in Mossy and begins the 45-minute descent underground.

There he operates a continuous miner — a 72-ton machine whose rotating teeth tear chunks of coal out of the wall and deposit them on a conveyer belt. Crump’s job puts him at the leading edge of coal mining. From here, the coal will be transported hundreds of miles away to power plants and generate electricity.

Crump’s job is deceptively simple.

“All I do is sit in a bucket and push buttons,” he said. But the work is dangerous, highly skilled and stressful. He works in a confined space beneath a low ceiling of rock and must be constantly alert at the controls of the powerful machine.

“It takes a lot of concentration,” he said. “If you take your eye off it, you could cut yourself or somebody else.”

It has taken years to learn the job, and Crump admits he is still learning. During his training, Crump picked up hands-on training with the continuous miner whenever he could.

Now, as an experienced worker, the company expects him to mine as much coal as possible.

“If you aren’t mining the coal they want, you are the first person they talk to,” he said.

Crump works a 50- to 60-hour week and returns home after midnight each evening. His wife, Ashley, worries about him when he is a few minutes late walking through the door. She knows the work is dangerous. And there is no cell phone reception hundreds of feet underground, so he cannot call if he is running late.

His job keeps him away much of the time, especially when he works overtime.

“We don’t get time together,” Ashley said. “Weekends are about it.”

At first, the couple had to adjust to being a coal mining family. When Crump started in the mines five years ago, Ashley was pregnant with their first child, Makayla.

No one in Ashley’s family had worked in the mines and she was nervous about her husband going underground.

“It was a big adjustment,” she said, “because we didn’t know anything about it.”

Now, Makayla is 4 and has a little sister, Alexis, and the family has adjusted well to the lifestyle.

The family has a comfortable home with a large yard, and Ashley enjoys being able to stay home with their children.

They have four dogs that run around in the yard and play with their daughters. In his free time, Crump likes to hunt and fish, and has enough disposable income to support both activities.

Jobs in the coal industry pay well, between $18 and $30 an hour, and Crump’s family has health insurance paid by the coal company.

“This is normal for us,” Ashley said. “We’ve done it ever since we’ve been married.”

But despite their comfortable lifestyle, she wishes there was another way for them to make a living. Her husband works long hours, hundreds of feet underground.

“If there was another way, I would go for it in an instant,” she said. “But there is just no way to make up that income. We would both have to work, and there would be day care costs.”

Despite the challenges of the job, Crump likes being a coal miner. He comes from a mining family. His father works in another mine, while his grandfather and his grandmother are retired coal miners. At family gatherings, coal mining is the main topic of discussion.

Like his ancestors, John is proud of the work he does, and expects to make it a career — for himself and his family.

“It’s pretty well respected. Not too many people can do it,” he said. “We can provide for our kids the way we want them to live.”