Harlan County

LEGACY OF DESPERATION

The Coal Mines

Harlan Gas is a sliver of land, with railroad tracks running through,
between a tall hill and a fork of the Cumberland River. Around Harlan, they
call it a bottom.

The houses in the former mining camp, named for the Harlan Gas Coal Co.,
are broken down. Mobile homes come and go with foreclosure and relocation.

Harlan Gas is the sort of place where, on a gray day, it's hard to imagine
that the sun ever comes out. It's also the sort of place where sons follow
in their fathers' footsteps.

John Perkins, a man with calloused hands that look as if they could break
rock, supported six kids and a wife there.

They lived in a three-bedroom mobile home next to the railroad tracks, and
got much of their food from tending a garden and raising chickens and pigs.

"Hell, we never had nothing back then," said David Perkins, the youngest of
John Perkins' three sons. "You know, we wore rags to school and everything
else. There was no new clothes or nothing like that."

For years, John Perkins' money came from going down into the darkness of
the coal mines.

He quit the mines, he said, after breaking his left leg twice, and then, in
1980 or 1981 -- he can't remember which -- he broke a wrist.

John Perkins turned to driving a coal truck full time.

By the time David reached the fifth grade, he was spending many of his
after-school hours shoveling coal for his dad.

But the family couldn't make ends meet with the coal truck alone. John
Perkins started bootlegging alcohol into Harlan's "dry" territory.

That didn't bring in enough money either, so he began selling marijuana
too, John Perkins said.

"It's hard to explain why a man does things," he said.

He offered one reason: "Buying clothes."

John Perkins said he had only four or five customers.

In 1986, he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possession with intent to
sell more than 8 ounces but less than 5 pounds of marijuana.

He was sentenced to a year, and got probation less than two months later.

A note on one court record said John Perkins dropped out of school in the
eighth grade and was illiterate.

His son was little different.

When he was 15, David got his girlfriend, Daisy Brogan, pregnant, and he
dropped out of ninth grade at Harlan High School in 1982.

David's father went to speak with the principal. "Dad had to tell him why I
had to leave -- because I had to start a family," he said.

He left school unable to read or write much beyond signing his name.

David and Daisy moved in together. He made some money stuffing advertising
inserts for the local newspaper and continued shoveling coal for his father.

Daisy had a miscarriage. David was hired by Dairy Queen, where he worked
for about a year. At 16, he started working in a coal mine. There wasn't
any paperwork because David, a minor, was working illegally.

"He was really scared for a while, then he kind of got a little better with
it," said his mother, Anne. "I didn't want him to, but he had to make a
living."

A daughter, Angel, was born in 1984. Another girl, April, came in 1986.
David and Daisy were married later that year.

In 1987, David was riding out of the mine on a conveyor belt at quitting
time, lying on his belly. It was something he'd done hundreds of times
before. That day, when he tried to get off, he was slammed into a metal pole.

An examination of his right knee found damage to the joint, and Perkins
began receiving injections to block nerve pain.

"The doctor told me I couldn't crawl anymore -- and that's all I could do,
work the coal mines," Perkins said.

He was 21 years old, and he would never again hold a regular job. He began
receiving federal disability benefits in the early 1990s. A decade later,
that monthly check was just $540.

There was a constant scramble for cash. Like his father, Perkins had a
choice to make.

He was arrested in 1989 on a misdemeanor charge of trafficking marijuana
after selling an undercover state police trooper three joints for $6. He
pleaded guilty and received a 90-day jail sentence, which was probated.

In 1996, he was charged with having a misdemeanor amount of marijuana --
less than 8 ounces in a plastic baggie between the cushions of a sofa. The
charge was later dismissed.

On paper, Perkins looked like just another nickel-and-dime pot dealer, if that.