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Excerpt
OF
ALL THE lessons I learned when I built my rockets, the most important
were not about chemistry, physics, or metallurgy, but of virtues,
sins, and other true things that shape us as surely as rivers carve
valleys, or rain melts mountains, or currents push apart the sea.
I would learn these lessons at a time when Coalwood, the mining
town where I had lived my entire life, was just beginning to fade
away. Yet, as the fall of 1959 began, and the leaves on the trees
in the forests that surrounded us began to explode in spectacular
color, Coalwood's men still walked with a trudging grace to and
from the vast, deep mine, and its women bustled in and out of the
company stores and fought the coal dust that drifted into theit
homes. In the dark old schools, the children learned and the teachers
taught, and, in snowy white churches built on hillside cuts, the
preachers preached, and God, who we had no doubt was also a West
Virginian, was surely doing His work in heaven, too At the abandoned
slack dump we called Cape Coalwood, rockets still leapt into the
air, and boyish voices yet echoed between ancient, worn mountains
beneath a pale and watchful sky. Coalwood endured as it always had,
but a wheel was turning that would change nearly everything, and
no one, not even my father, would be able to stop it. When that
brittle parchment autumn turned into our deepest, whitest winter,
this and many other lessons would be taught. Though they were hard
and sometimes cruel things to learn, they were true, and true things,
as the people of Coalwood saw fit to teach me, are always filled
with a shining glory.
To me, there was no better time to launch a rocket than in the fall,
especially a West Virginia fall. There seemed to be a cool, dry
energy in the air that filled us with a renewed sense of hope and
optimism. I had always believed that our rockets were lifted as
much by our dreams as burning propellant, and as the lazy summer
faded and a northerly wind swept down on us with its lively breath,
anything seemed possible. It was also when the school year started
and I always felt an excitement stir within me at the thought of
learning new and wonderful things. Fall had other marvels, too.
At the Cape, we were often treated to V-shaped flotillas of migrating
Canadian geese, bound from the far north to places we had only read
about or imagined. We always stopped our rocket preparations to
gaze longingly at the great creatures as they winged their way high
overhead, and to listen to their joyful honking that seemed to be
calling us to join them. "If only we could," Sherman said once to
my comment. "Even for just a moment, to look down on our mountains
and see them the same as angels." Sherman always liked to remind
us that we lived in a beautiful place and I guess we did, although
sometimes it was easy to forget, especially since we'd never known
anywhere else.
Once, a rare snow goose, as purely white as moonbeams, landed on
the old slack dump, perhaps fooled by the reflection from the slick
surface of the coal tailings. We gathered around the great strutting
bird, awed by the sight of her. Then I noticed that her wing tips
were as black as the faces of Coalwood miners after a shift. O'Dell
said the reason for the black tips was so the geese could see each
other inside a white cloud. O'Dell knew a lot about animals so I
believed his explanation, but it got me off to thinking. How did
the snow geese decide what colors their feathers would be? Did they
all get together up north somewhere a million years ago and take
a vote? It was a mystery and the snow goose made no comment. She
just looked annoyed. When she tired of us gawking at her, she flapped
her wings and continued her journey, and I confess I was relieved.
I knew the snow goose did not belong in Coalwood. Some people, especially
my mother, said neither did I.
Our first rocket of the fall was Auk XXII-E. A serious little rocket,
it began its journey with a mighty spout of flame and tur-moil and
its shock wave rattled our wooden blockhouse as it climbed. I ran
outside with the other boys, but no matter how much I strained my
eyes, I couldn't see it. All I could see were clouds that went,
as far as I knew, all the way up to heaven. The seconds ticked by.
We had never lost one of our rockets, but I was beginning to wonder
if maybe this one was going to be our first. If it had fallen on
Rocket Mountain, buried itself into the soft black West Virginia
loam up there, maybe we had missed it. "Time, O'Dell," I called
nervously.
O'Dell looked at the stopwatch he'd borrowed last year from one
of the coal company industrial engineers and forgotten to give back.
"I think it's still flying," he said.
"Then where is it?" I demanded. We couldn't lose it. Like every
rocket we launched, it held answers we had to know.
Excerpted from THE COALWOOD WAY (c) Copyright 2000 by Homer Hickam.
Reprinted with permission from Dell Publishing Co. All rights reserved.
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