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Page 1 - The Language This Page

Page 2 - The Region and the Mines

Payer Family Genealogy

S F Payer (1) Bio
From History of Schuylkill Co.
1907

History of McAdoo,PA
ZerbeyCollection

Donauschwaben (Danube Swabians)  Links to the German settlers of Hungary 

Carpatho-Rusyn Home Page

Slovakia Home Page

June Meyer's Recipes Hungarian-German Cooking

Julius Payer Explorer 

McAdoo, PA US Census and Map

Lehigh Valley Railroad
The LVRR. Main railroad, long time ago, throughout the eastern mid-Anthracite Region.

Central Railroad of New Jersey -- Route maps, terrain, history of Anthracite Railroading

Early Railroad Maps

Pottsville Republican Newspaper of the County Seat of Schuylkill Co. Republican slant, (of course) and a number of broken links.

Even more peculiar is the Hazleton Standard~Speaker newspaper website.

Some good pictures and stories at the
Lehighton Times Leader Newspaper

Local Patch Town Map

Magnified Patch Town View

The Lattimer Massacre.
A bloody and crucial episode in the US Labor Wars.

Canals and Railroads in the Mid-South Anthracite
Also a good eclectic technology page.

Mauch-Chunk/Jim Thorpe, PA (1).
Historic. Asa Packer's (Lehigh University, LVRR), hometown.
Mauch-Chunk/Jim Thorpe, PA (2).

Lehigh University Alma Mater #1; This institution in Bethlehem, PA, which city see at link below.

Similarly for the Lehigh Valley, and see the 'Moravian Putz'. Links at Bethlehem page .

THE PA DUTCH:

Pennsylvania Indians Pennsylvania places have an inordinate number of names derived from the following:

The Susquehannock Impressive and scholarly website for the four above.

Map in Indian Times

Schuylkill County Chronicles Broken Link from 'Pottsville Republican' website

Home Page

 

Home Page Top of Page Page 2- The Region and the Mines

Coal Region Commentary - The Language

`When _I_ use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful
tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor
less.'
`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean
so many different things.'

('Through the Looking Glass', Chapt. 6, Humpty-Dumpty, By Lewis Carroll)

The Double Eagle Flag

We spoke many languages in the Coal Region:

Donauschwaben Grandfather Stephen F. Payer had a good education in Europe before he departed for the USA as a fifteen year old in 1882. So he was able to speak, read and write at least five languages in addition to American English. I'm told that when one of these failed to work, he could get by in Latin, talking to the priests. Even so, times being what they were, he started off in the USA as a breaker boy but soon became a prosperous businessman in the McAdoo-Hazleton area.

(In addition to the following, see the Genealogy, and family links at left). More regional Schuylkill County genealogy and history links are on the Home Page.

Paternal Grandfather, Stephen F. Payer

S F Payer (1) Bio    From A History of Schuylkill Co., Schalk and Henning, 1907

A View of Eperjes (Old Hungary), Presov today.
The Austro-Hungarian Empire
Picture Tour of Old Hungary

Breaker Boys

This dynamic man started and ran a number of general stores in McAdoo, Tamaqua and Pottsville, managed a steamship ticket agency and an insurance agency, and helped found a few churches and local private banks in addition to serving as local justice of the peace. My Magyar Marko coal miner grandparents did not have his education, still Hungarian, Slovak and German were spoken and understood in their home in Beaver Brook, PA where they settled. Although most European immigrants to this part of the country came from common beginnings it was not uncommon that they should speak several languages. That was the nature of their European Austro-Hungarian environment.

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Maternal Grandfather, Ernö Marko
The Hungarians
More on Beaver Brook, PA

This situation was especially so in that part of the kingdom of Old Hungary from whence they came. What is now Eastern Slovakia was once home to at least a dozen ethnic groups living more or less peaceably side by side. Among them were the south Poland Lemkos, Galician (Galitzian) western Ukrainians, Rusyns, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Hungarians and many Germans. At that time the population of Austria Hungary was almost one fifth of German origin. When this group reached the USA and mixed with the Irish slightly earlier arrivals, and the still earlier Pennsylvania Germans, English, Welsh and Scotch we had a linguistic and cultural microcosm of Europe captured in a relatively small local region. One of the results of this enforced proximity is a peculiar cosmopolitanism that still persists.

click picture for larger view

Payer Family Genealogy

The Coal Region idiom discussed in this essay is not my family's Hochedeutsch, or High-German, or even Pennsylwanische Deitch. It's a cosmopolitan, democratic, polyglot mixture of some of the European dialects, some Irish derived slang, and names evoked from the peoples' work on and under the ground; And here in northeastern Pennsylvania it's delivered in a hard, clear New York City-ish accent.

Shenandoah-Centered 'Coal-Speak' Web Site

Thus:

Doopa, Dupa: I'm glad that the Coal-Speak Web Site, finally included that one. I didn't see it there for quite awhile. Now go see the TAD, ( link below, to an Alternative Dictionary, run by a Norwegian), for the Polish derivation (in the Polish TAD). The TAD is not for the prissy and the faint of heart. Nor is it for the Sister School crowd. See just about every rough colloquialism for fundamental matters in many languages there. The Hungarian section makes the Polish look like choir-angels. 

A major threat from mother's uncles: Behave, or I'll stick yer ears between yer Doopa!

Polish 'Alternative Dictionary'

'Heyna' -- I grew up with it (the word heyna). This word was odd to me even then, there at the northern extreme of Schuylkill County. The word was endemic, indigenous, in general currency in the entire Hazleton-McAdoo area. It was kind of like an extra added statement of expected affirmation, as: "That's a real boonda of a Dragline, heyna?" It might also be a transposition of the Pennsylvania Dutch 'Saaay', as in, "Hey Villi, hey Choe, dot's such a big pile of chickens, Saaaay". A 'Down Easter' might mirror it with Aye in his, "We got a big ketch of lobsters today, Aye"?

Boonda ... Bunda: (Maybe only McAdoo). Something big, enormous, humongous. A Fat Lady, Fat Man: "What a big boonda". Anything big, overlarge or 'just too much': "Awww, that's just such a big boonda". The 'oo' is sounded like the 'ou' in should.

One Pig and He's a Pan: Phrase used to describe an upstart, overreacher, or one too full of himself. Pan is Polish for prince or nobleman. Sounds better in Polish and literally means, "Give him one pig and he thinks he's a prince".

Drug: Dragged.

Dragline: Big Boonda of a power shovel. It drug the rocks and slate up on the coalbank. The grabber bucket wuz big enough to swalley a pickup truck. But not the Euclid-Style (Yookie) truck shown in the second link below, although the dragline shown is a big one.

Yookie Truck
Enormous Yookie Truck

Swalley: To swallow.

Wrench: To rinse.

Cousint: Cousin. I grew up in Beaver Brook, not knowing that 'cousin' didn't have a last 't' until I was 10 or so.

Skookle: The County Schuylkill.

Bros, Broz: (Perhaps McAdoo only) 'Brother', as in "Me an' my broz went pickin' huckleberries down at Delano." 

Minced Ham: Ordinary bologna. Minced ham and mango sandwich is bologna and green peppers. 

Mike Sherbalya: Maybe only McAdoo, but it was used like "Go Tell it to Sweeny", ie, "Go tell it to Mike Shabala"; Or dismissively, where you'd tell an annoying kid to go find Mike Sherbalya and give him a message ...

Shakey Johnny: McAdoo only. A local (retarded and probably cerebral palsied) fellow, whom we would now denote as disadvantaged in this era of political correctness. He was in his 20s or so; Rambled about town all day dressed in a flannel shirt, bib overalls, and dirty Keds sneakers, saying "Yeika, (eggs?), Kielbasi!" He did not have good muscular control and he shook and waved his arms about, and scared the little kids. The 'big guys' used him to scare the little ones: "Hey, we'll get Shakey Johnny after you!" See also Mike Sherbalya.

Rickets: Almost any kind of physical deformity was 'the rickets'. We were warned to eat our vegetables else we'd get the rickets. The one or two dwarves in the area had got the rickets.

Cripple: Self explanatory but not much heard in these politically correct times. Every town had a few. Usually they were older coal miners whose legs had been blown off by a dynamite shot or crushed in a rock fall. In Hazleton one or two legless cripples scooted along the sidewalks of Broad Street on devices much like a wide skateboard. They sold pencils.

Bummin': Nobody in McAdoo went Halloweening or Trick-Or-Treating. We went bummin'. Music players, (I won't say musicians), newly arrived in the Junior High Band took their barely learned school instruments and made the rounds of all the saloons on Halloween Night. You could make $1 or more in any given barroom. It is now that I admire the fortitude and good will of those hardy listeners/drinkers on that night. Of course they were all the neighborhood guys but one has to respect their endurance and tolerance.

Buminy: (Beaver Brook) --- A kids' shanty clubhouse built out of scrap sheet iron, concrete blocks, other scrap found around the railroads and mines. Usually they were set up in the woods just off some old mine road. The little kids were too small to build the really livable ones. The big guys built better ones to go smoke and play cards in.

All Saints' Day: To honor the dead the night after Halloween night. That day all the townsfolk would decorate their family graves with lighted candles held in votive light glasses. Some displays were really colorful and pretty and the all the graveyards had a festive air on that night. It was usually bitter cold but families would gather at the grave sites, gossip a little in the dark early November night and then go home.

Now, in no particular order:

"Modger": Magyar, pronounced 'mudge-yar'. A Hungarian. They speak the Magyar language. It is not at all Slavic. The language is Ugro-Altaic and is more closely related to Finnish and slightly to Turkish. The earliest of them came from Central Asia to what is now Hungary with Attila the Hun. See some of the Hungary links on this site to get an idea of the un-European like nature of the language.

European or not, they've since contributed a great deal to the world's supply of Nobel Prize winners, especially in advanced mathematics and physics, and many other notables. [Link thanks to Laszlo Lukacs-Nagy of Hazleton, PA].

The Magyar people coalesced into what is now Hungary during the reign of their chieftan Árpád, another raider from the East in the Ninth Century. They were Christianized under King Stephen in the year 1000, and from then on fought like the devil against the later Tatar/Mongol excursions into the West. Because of its unsheltered location on the great Eastern European plain Hungary remained the Eastern Front for several more centuries. It was depopulated in the Turkish wars against the incursion of Islam in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Because of its service against the Turks the kingdom of Old Hungary occupied a strong position in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In order to resettle the land, the Holy Roman Emperor offered land grants and tax abatement to settlers to come and rebuild the place. A large number of hardy South German (Schwabian) pioneers and veterans of the Turkish wars took up the offer, thus comes the Donauschwaben, the Hungarian-German connection.

Csardas: The folk dance of Hungary, pronounced 'chardosh'. It's different from the Polish polka in that it has several sets of at first almost morose, then romantic, then accelerating two steps, ending in a wild two step whirl. The Polka is usually one fast three-step and the Oberek is a slower waltz like version of that. Franz Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia is a grand and glorious rendition of a simple csardas. The Hungarian composers Bartok and Kodály modernized these dances past listenability. We played them all in our polka band.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph !!, Exclamation of maternal dismay, Like Oy Yazu

See also 'Aii Istonem', Hungarian for O God !

See also 'Matka Bozha', Slovak for Mother of God !!

See also 'Bozhe Moy', Russian for MiGod !!!

See also 'Jesu Christu' ... (Self Explanatory).

'Gospodi Pomiloi', Pronounced as 'Ghospodi' ... Lord Have Mercy, the main prayer of supplication of Eastern Orthodoxy. It's usually shortened to Aah, Hospodi!, and used something like our O Lord! ...

GMB: Gaspard, Melchior, and Balthazar, the Three Kings of the Christmas Season. On the Feast of the Three Kings in the first week of January, the (Roman Catholic) Priest came to bless the house. He inscribed these initials in chalk over a prominent door lintel. This was a very 'holy' moment. This was serious business. The kids kept their mouths shut while the ceremony was going on.

Gaspard, Melchior, and Balthazar
A Story about Blessing the House

Greek Christmas: Not Greek, but Byzantine Catholic or Russian Orthodox. We got to celebrate two Christmases, the 'Greek' one, aka Rusyn, a week later than the Roman Catholic, usually on the Roman Catholic Feast Day of the Three Kings. When a 'Greek' met another in this season his greeting was: "Christos Razdajetsja" -- Christ is Born! You replied: "Slavite Jeho" -- "Glorify Him!"

Oplatek (Polish/Slovak) ... The Blessed Host served at Christmas Eve Supper.

Kolach: A Hungarian, Slovak, Ukrainian pastry, a sweet bread with several typical fillings, walnut, lekvar (prune) or poppyseed. Usually featured at holiday time.

Kifli: Hungarian. Small, light-dough-wrapped pastries with fillings of lekvar or walnut; Typically made along with kolach at Christmas and Easter time.

Baba: Grandmother, or old woman.

Down the Line: Shenandoah, (Chendo, Shendoor, Shenandoar), Ashlun (Ashland), Shmokin (Shamokin), the whole damn Anthracite Coal Field south and west of McAdoo. (Hazleton and we are in the dead center). The reverse counterpart is Up the Line, ie, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, etc. 

Trucker's Rest: Region-famed (or notorious) whorehouse in Haddocktown, another suburb (patch) right to the south of McAdoo on old Rte. 309. As I grew older and started to travel, I found it was known as far away as Texas.

Boodie, Budie: (The 'oo' again sounded like 'ou' in 'should'). Outhouse. (Maybe of Hungarian derivation, I never heard it outside of the McAdoo home town and Beaver Brook). See a similar word here. There was no toilet paper; We used yesterday's newspapers. 

Scobber: A fast, efficient huckleberry picker. (See Kootch). Also see more here ... and The Mushroom Hunter.

Kootch: A select, and hopefully kept secret huckleberry spot. You got yourself a good kootch and you could fill a 5 quart coffee can in an hour, maybe. A good picker was called a Mountain Scobber. Whole families did this and some did better than others. The Fessick family of McAdoo was a family of Mountain Scobbers!

The Derrick: Beaver Brook regionalism. Beaver Brook is right over the boundary in Luzerne County. This derrick was a standpipe that held the Beaver Brook water supply. It was a strange looking, black tarred tank on a wooden scaffold that held pumped up water from a pond where we caught tadpoles and 'Sunnies' in midsummer, and smelled the sumac and the juneberries.

Shit-Kicker: A farmer, usually Pennsylvania Dutch (aka Heevaa-Haavaa, possibly from the singsong lilt of that dialect). Few 'Dutchmen' went down into the mines around this part of the county ... there were maybe a couple around Pine Grove, or on 'down da line'.

Hunky:  Variants: Hunkie, Bohunk, Hunyock, Yonko -- A disparaging name given to the arriving immigrants of Slavic and Hungarian descent; It was probably derived from the earlier arrivals' abysmal ignorance of, and distaste for the later immigrants in their corruption of 'Hungarian' to a term applied to all later arrivals. 'Mick' was reserved for the Irish. An interesting latter day twist here is to see hunky's further transmogrification to the Ebonic Honky, and applied to all white folks.

Zhido, Zheedo: A Jew. His name was Adler. The hucksters, (see page 2, 'Region and the Mines'), came to the patch towns to hawk vegetables and groceries. Similarly, the zhido came in a little '40s style panel truck to sell women's and kids' clothing. This name was not applied as a term of contempt ... not at all. In a way there were connotations of respect and a more than a little envy in its use. Here was a self employed man with a clean and safe job, a truck of his own, independent of the coal operators, whose wife never had to worry about a rock fall in the mines. It was not until I was much older that I learned its true derivation.

Irish -- Lace Curtain vs Shanty: The shanty variety was a penniless immigrant. He/she became Lace Curtain when he got himself situated and began to get a decent wage.

Slavisch: Or Slovish. Or Slawvish. A variation on Slavic. What the local Irish, Italians, everybody not of Slavic descent, (and even some of those) called the Slovak, Ukrainian, and Byzantine churches. Or called the Slovak and Rusyn peoples.

Italian Police Dog: (Hazleton only) -- A goat, Billy, or Nanny.

Cat Eater: (Hazleton again). Irreverent Italian name for Tyroleans.

Tiroler: Hazleton Tyrolean for 'Tyrolean'.

Tyroleans --- Also see the links at the left hand side of the page.

Da Rooshans: The Russians, as in the wry, rueful statement: "Da Rooshans'll never bomb us out; Looks like we awreddy been gone over." --- Because of the landscape we saw whenever we looked around. This was some slight consolation in the early Cold War days.

The Rusyns: Not the Russians --- but pronounced Rooshans. Immigrants from (take your pick), northwest Ukraine, south Poland, east Slovakia; Whom we usually called Greek Catholic, because they considered themselves Byzantine Catholic. Greek Catholics are Roman Catholics but instead of following the Latin tradition they celebrate an Eastern Slavonic (English, now) Liturgy in an Eastern-Church environment (more like Greek, rather than Russian).Their churches display the Byzantine Cross, of three crossbars with the lowest slanted, and the typical onion domes of Eastern Europe and Russia.

Not true or 'White' Russians, but like the Russian Orthodox, they blessed or crossed themselves three times. This perplexed us Roman Catholics, who felt once was enough and three times was overkill. We felt that they had to do it so many times to get it right; Also, it looked suspiciously like they were brushing away the flies. They incessantly, promptly and piously retorted that we had it wrong and that they were holier than we were ...

Carpatho-Rusyn Home Page
Slovakia Home Page

As far as blessing oneself was concerned, this was a most common practice all over the Coal Region. You were supposed to do it when you passed in front of any Catholic Church, even if nobody was looking. You were given special dispensation if the church was Protestant, but we had nine Catholic Churches in McAdoo and only one lone Protestant building.

The churches of the McAdoo locale in the past and present

Pysanky, Pisanki: Easter eggs decorated in the Slovak or Ukrainian style, sometimes wonderfully ornate. The egg was not hardboiled but hollowed by putting a tiny pinhole at each end, then blowing or sucking out the egg. The designs were made by a wax masking process where the wax design overlay shielded the egg from the dye. Then that wax was scraped off, another design applied, and then another dye color. Some eggs took weeks to complete and are minor works of art.

At Easter Time, a Rusyn greeted another with: "Christos Voskres!" (Christ is Risen!). Your reply was: "Voistinu Voskres!" (Indeed - He is Risen!)

Pysanky works of art

Ya Nyeh Zhnyoo ... Phonetic spelling, Russian or Ukrainian of 'I don't know' ...
'I don't understand' is Ya Nyeh Ponneemyoo, but the latter was not heard as much. The local 'Irish' folk sounded particularly funny repeating these ... Most especially so the lady grade school teachers, who were all Irish. These Ladies never could quite get it right. 

Yookie, or Ukie: McAdoovian for Ukrainian. Also for the big strippin' dump truck.

Nos Dorovye, (Na Zdrowic): (Phonetic, Russian or Polish) -- Good Health! A drinking salute. [Thanks for the correct Polish, Redneckem.] 

Polish Names: See James Michener's book, Poland, for a good chapter on this; Also the link to Slavic Surnames above. He weaves that difficult language into the fascinating plot of his historical novel about the progression of the two families, Buk and Bukowski, living smack on the Eastern Front throughout the centuries. In Hungarian, (or Russian), what-you-see-is-what-you-get, (if you know three dozen diacritical marks and can twist your tongue around your back teeth). Not so in Polish. McAdoo examples: 

Krzyicki --- Pronounced 'Krshevitsky'. The K almost silent.

Przyboroski -- Pronounced 'Prshevborowsky'. The Pr almost silent.

... Or something like that. 

Bad enough for the ethnics, the 99% Irish, mostly spinster-school-marm grade school teachers could never handle them.

Crystals:

1. Quartz crystal specimens found in the same places as Selfer Diamonds.

2. Pastry, something like PA Dutch Funnelcake but a lot lighter. Made from deepfried cookie dough, or the like. The Hungarians know it as (phonetic), Forgotchfonk !!

Gum Boots: Miner's boots. Thick soup is 'Gumboot Soup'. Most likely from the Hungarian Majgomboc.

See Majgomboc in June Meyer's recepies

Sulfur: When a coal stove backs up this is the smell you get in the kitchen. Or when you dampen it too much (see the following). An occurrence of sulfur might happen once every couple of years from a buildup of chimney soot, usually on a cold, wet January day. You called Jakey Morott, the local coalstove man to take the stove or chimney apart and get rid of the soot.

Pea Coal:  Or chestnut, or buckwheat. Coal sizing grades. Pea coal was the size of gravel and was usually used in the kitchen coal stove. Chestnut was the size of a small egg, more suitable for the larger cellar coal furnace. Buckwheat was rice sized and was used in automatic stokers when that innovation came along in the '40s.

'Dampen' the Stove: Prepare or set the coal stove for the night. You did this by 'setting the draft' to low, ie moving a damper lever so that much air was kept from the fire; Also by laying on a thicker layer of pea coal to almost bury the glowing red coals. This kept the fire slow burning all night and you didn't have to wake up to tend it. Early next day you 'burned it up', ie, did the inverse sequence to get the stove ready for cooking and heating water. Once bathing and laundry water began to be heated by the kitchen coal stove in the attached fire-back and stored in the nearby boiler, when a lot of hot water was needed in a hurry you blasted the fire: Damper full open, light layers of pea coal constantly applied. It was easily possible to heat the entire stove front top lids to a cherry red.

Even throughout the '40s, Beaver Brook did not have all homes equipped with centrally heated hot water, much less gas or electric heat.

'Rake' the Stove (Furnace): Move another stove lever back and forth to rock the grates to send the powdery anthracite ash to the ash-bin directly below the grates. This was usually done once or twice a day and especially when you burned the stove up. The ashes were put in large ash buckets or tubs and sent out to the 'ash man' once a week or so. Anthracite coal ash made a good non-skid coating for the eternally icy sidewalks.

Coal Stove - 1
Coal Stove - 2

Black Cat Stove Polish: For the cast iron and nickel kitchen range and the heatrola in the middle room.

Yellow-Soap: Laundry soap. Fels-Naptha usually. See washday under this site's Beaver Brook heading; Occasionally a foulmouthed kid got his mouth washed out with this. The neighbor kids got to watch.  That was fun!

Sad Iron: Before clothes pressing irons were heated by electricity they were heated on the stove top. The aptly named, heavy sad iron had a quickly detachable handle. Two or three irons were kept heating on the stove so as to have one always hot and ready for use. With a flick of the thumb one disconnected the handle from the cooled iron and attatched it to a hot one.

From the Eckley Miners' Museum

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Shanty: Enlargements to the home 'company' house. Most houses had several shanties.

Flit: Bug killer spray. Kept in the shanty along with the others. 

Bosak's Horekyvino: Popular cure-all patent medicine sold in my grandfather's store. The alcohol content was quite high.

Bumble: Swelling on the head, hit by a goonie: See Goozie in the Shenandoah Coalspeak site.

Hokker, Hawker: Big phlegmy spit. "G. got put outta class and hadda go see Miss Ferry when he spit this big hokker on the floor." In passing, remember how the miners blew their noses; No handkerchief was necessary or used; A flip of the hand was. Along the same lines: 

Ringworm and Nits: Lots of this affliction back in grade school; Both required the unfortunate kid to come to school with a miner's handkerchief tied on his head like a bandanna. We also had a lot of green-teeth. There was no fluoridation back then and a lot of people didn't much believe in teeth brushing.

Pisdabeds:  Dandelion flowers and leaves. (Beaver Brook only, [I think]). So called because if you picked too many dandelion leaves for dandelion salad you'd pisdabed.

Baccia ma Cul: Kiss my Ass! Hazleton area. Lots of Italians and a few Tyroleans, (Yankee Italians), up there.

Stroontzy: ('oo' like 'ou' in should, or the 'u' sound in Buddah), shitty; (Italian)

Hunky Dory: But here it was also a placename. It was a remote coal patch west of Beaver Brook and east of Sheppton. Hunkydory was long gone to stripping even before my time, as were the nearby Honeybrook, Yorktown, Sawmill, Slackersville and Green Mountain. It was located near the eadwaters of what finally becomes the beautiful Catawissa Creek, which latter starts life as a polluted ShitCrick from the McAdoo sewerage system. Here in town (McAdoo) it is nothing more than a dry drainage ditch most of the year, ironically named 'Celebration Creek'.

And we had many of the latter; Black Creeks they were called locally. There must have been scores of Black Creeks in the coal fields. The coal operators used fresh water to wash the coal before shipping. The silted black waste water was sent to the closest stream. Mine drainage tunnels drained the sulfur leached water from the lowest levels of all the mines. This bitter reddish-gold dilute sulfuric acid was sent to the same place and thus most Coal Region streams were rendered toxic and unfishable. The region's municipalities, up to the largest, saw no reason to do else with their sewerage ... So "They made a desert, and called it Progress", (paraphrasing Tacitus, from his Histories).

It is noteworthy that few memorials to this greedy hegemony were ever erected ... or now remain in the Coal Region; We see one or two libraries, a building here and there bought by state taxpayer funding, a few crumbling, short-storeyed 'skyscrapers', abandoned to decrepitude and kept erect via State and US conservation grants... Now it's left to the people of the region to do and undo what they can, helped a little by an influx of government environmental funding, and still plagued by a myopic yet opportunistic breed of local civic leadership.

The Coal Barons ripped and ruined the land, poisoned and destroyed the streams, and cared nothing for pollution. They took much and left little. The cleanup and revitalization of the land has, as usual, been left to the people ... the taxpaying Public. Reclamation will take another hundred years or more.