A very accurate song. Long before I ever came into being, my Grandaddy worked in the coal mines until they fired him for lung problems (Black Lung) caused by the mining he did. A small Southern coal mining “town”, barely a dot on the map tucked away in the backwoods of nowhere. (Spent a good portion of my own childhood in that area.) And about the only means of obtaining essential living items was using the “Company Store”. And due to the pathetic excuse for wages the mine workers got paid, the debt owed to the store was always larger than the paycheck received. Those are the conditions in which my Mom and her brothers/sister grew up. And while most of my own childhood and teen years were often on the edge of poverty, they were still nothing like my Mom, aunt, and uncles had to endure.
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