Coalwood had a distinct role for each person who lived there. In order to live in the town, it was required that the head of the household work for the mine in some capacity. The exceptions to this were the teachers at the Coalwood School. Even the preachers were company men!

A memoir is, as its title implies, a memory of long-ago events. In his note in The Coalwood Way, Homer wrote: "Memoirs are tough things to write. How can you remember what somebody said or did forty years ago? I donąt have an answer. All I know is I do. Iąve changed a few names and disguised some other folks to protect them but, otherwise, this is pretty much the way it happened, I swan." We suggest a discussion of the current popularity of reading memoirs. Also see the Coalwood, WV section for photos and biographies of the real people in the book.

Homer has always said he used the rockets as a metaphor to tell the true story of life in the coalfields of West Virginia but he also had something else in mind, a weaving of many allegorical themes that begin loosely connected but are gradually wound tighter and tighter until they become as one. Can you spot those themes? Homer gets lots of glowing fan mail from "reluctant readers" who had the book recommended to them, but thought they wouldnąt be interested, then they stayed up all night reading it.

Homer (Junior) believes that the core to all his Coalwood memoirs is the conflict between his parents.

Dreama was an outsider who saw Coalwood as a refuge from the tough little mining town of Gary. Ginger grew up in Coalwood and saw it as just the place where she lived. Her parents were also in the upper strata of social life in Coalwood. Ginger's aspirations took her far past the little town while Dreama's were centered on it.

The annual social events in an industrial town such as Coalwood came to have great meaning to the people who lived there. During the late 1950's, the mining company in Coalwood was gradually evolving from benevolent dictator to mere employer. This is illustrated by its selling of the houses and stopping its support of events such as the Christmas Pageant. Coalwood's people were changing their attitudes as well. They were starting to see an end to their relationship with the company and becoming more independent.

Homer never knows who's going to show up in his autograph lines to tell him how much they enjoyed this book. They vary from astronauts to coal miners to just about everybody, young and old.

Elsie still loves Quentin. Whenever they're together, Homer (junior) is relegated to the sidelines while they talk. It is an interesting chemistry between the two. It might be because Elsie sees Quentin as someone very much like herself - extremely talented but born to circumstances that never allowed her to fully reach her potential.

Homer wanted to write about those feelings because he's aware so many teen-agers and adults are fighting forms of depression today.

This is one of those underlying themes to the book, that destiny is one of life's grandest mysteries.

The pageant was where Homer was headed during the entire book. There, he was able to wrap all his themes into one moment.

Naturally, as Homer's wife, I'm glad he didn't!