sarah slone: the people here are very good. they d give you the shirt off their back. come together in times of tragedy or anything. anthony: christian values means something here. they are practiced on the street and in the home. linda: most of you ve all got your potatoes, right? anthony: linda runs 5 loaves & 2 fishes , a food bank that holds many of the lives here together during tough times. 16,000 people walk through these doors annually, in a county of 20,000. bob: gracious god, we just thank you for this day that we re able to give food out again, this is not a regular give-out. watch over us and protect us, help us to keep cool heads. father, we pray over the food we re about to eat, for the nourishment our body is blessed, in the name of christ, amen. group: amen. linda: this is our home. we love it here. we re very close to our church. everybody knows everybody. they re all dying now, but we re still hanging on, aren t we, honey? bob: yeah. [ laughter
linda: yes. anthony: naples area? linda: came here in 1923 trying to strike it rich in the coalmines. my mother died when i was five, so we went to live with my nonna, and the first day i was there she pulled me up to a cook stove. this is a dish that my nonna cooked during hunting season, with squirrels. these aren t squirrels. this is chicken. anthony: dinner is a not untypical expression of hard scrabble appalachian practicality linda: now i don t measure anything, so nothing has a recipe here. anthony: and neapolitan roots. linda: basil. anthony: home kitchen gardens, hunting, and gathering. linda: these my dad would call pisellis, it s peas. mm, making mama dance. [ laughter ] now, this is what i m famous for in these parts. have you ever had spaghetti pizza? no, you haven t. don t say you have. [ laughter ] the tomato sauce was made with joel s tomatoes at the food bank. we harvested those yesterday and i made all the spaghetti sauce. anthony: nearby, joel
anthony: those are some grim statistics. linda: yes. anthony: the coal that came out of this area built america, right? linda: yes. bob: mcdowell county alone was called the billion-dollar coal field. and the people that were in charge at the time didn t take advantage of all that money in case something did happen to the coal mine. justin: the cool thing is that west virginia is developing a strong entrepreneur movement that a lot of people don t know about. like with joey, he started a hydroponic growing. i mean, not blaming others for their problems, just trying to solve their own. a lot of people, it s really doing a lot of good that we don t hear about. linda: this is our pumpkin pie cake. have you ever had a pumpkin pie cake? joel: you probably won t like it, so i ll take your spot. [ laughter ] bob: we got spoiled. the last coal mines i worked at i made base salary was $94,000 a year. i also taught vocational school and most of the kids i had said, well, i
alan: the town of welch, when it was booming, the sidewalks were so crowded there would be traffic backed up like a mile. you couldn t find a place to park. we had three hospitals, had a taxi cab stand, had, like, three jewelry stores. it was just a wonderful place. anthony: the rest of the country took a lot of money out of these hills over the decades. billions and billions of dollars. and when it became cheaper, or more convenient to pull the coal we needed to power our electrical grids, and to make our steel elsewhere, this is what was left behind. but this is not a poverty porn show. do not pity the people here, who despite what you may think, are not unrealistic about a return to the glory days of coal and better times. linda mckinney: i drank coffee from the time i could walk. they put coffee in your bottle. coffee or wine. [ laughter ] anthony: linda mckinney is a true daughter of appalachia. she raised her children here. linda s husband, bob mckinney, is a long-time mi
nearby joel runs an organic hydro uponing farm that supplies the local school system. linda runs five loaves and two efficiency, a food bank that holds them together in tough times. god, we thank you we re able to give out food again. it is not a regular givout. watch over, us protect us. help us to keep cool heads. father, we pray over the food we re about to eat for the nourishment of our body. bless it in the name of christ. amen. the coal that came out of this area built america. yes. right? mcdowell county alone was called the billion dollar coal field. the last coal mines i made, base