A long time ago, in valleys squeezed between mountains that reached into the heavens, the workers of the mines in a place named Sorrows pushed through the snow and rain to provide for the needs of their families. They descended into the depths of the earth, a place where many wouldn't dare go, to dig out a living in a dark dimly lit place where some never returned. Paid pennies for their back-breaking work, they often supplemented the needs of their families by growing gardens and raising livestock. It was a common sight in the valleys along a lazy river that snaked through the mountainsides. Whatever it took to make it through to the next year was the motto of the valley people of Sorrows.

With this backdrop of honest, dedicated people as the environment, I was born in 1948. My name is Samuel McDuff, a direct descendant of the McDuff clan or at least that was what my grandparents told all of us grandchildren when we were youngsters gathered on the back porches where Grandma snapped green beans. She called it snapping and stringing. I guess she called it that because after she snapped all the beans or broke them apart into smaller pieces, she strung them on threads and hung them from the top of the porch boards to dry.

My father, Wallace McDuff, was a quiet man of short stature. I often asked him if I’d be taller than he was and he replied that it ain’t how tall a man is that makes him a man. He said it’s what’s inside the man that makes him a man. I eventually stopped asking him that question and took lessons from how he lived. He eked out a marginal living alongside the other men in the area in the mines owned by men who wouldn’t come to visit their investment or dare allow themselves to be lowered into the depths that were darker than pitch black where black gold waited to be harvested.

In these mining coal camps where we lived as children, my imagination came to life.