Rocket Boys by Richard Newton

There is coal beneath the surface in West Virginia. It is below the Appalachian mountains and it is under Paul Groves' skin. After 43 years down the mines, often in tunnels just 36 inches high, shards of the black stuff are permanently embedded in his back.

He sits beside me at the church lunch I've gatecrashed. Nobody seems to mind my intrusion, for they are well aware that there are few other places to eat in Bramwell on a Sunday. This little town, prettily set within the embrace of the Bluestone River valley, was built with coal money. In its heyday, nineteen millionaire mine-owners had lavish homes here. The mansions still stand, but the mines have closed and the town has declined.

Reverend Walker Smith, sitting opposite, shows me the indelible coal streaks across his forearms. "'Fore I 'came a pastor, I was twenty-four years in the coal fields," he says matter-of-factly. Now aged seventy, his feet and hips are bearing the cost of his stooped shuffle through the tunnels, and his breathing is heavy with black lung, the miner's disease.

"Don't be gettin' the wrong idea, though," he tells me after I have listened grim-faced to his inventory of ailment. "Sure it was tough, an' many fellas died down there, but I wouldn't change a thing 'bout my life."

"Amen to that," Paul Groves chips in. "The daily work was hard, but we held together as a community 'cause of it. Them's good people at the coalface. Kind you don't find elseplace."

For a boy growing up in one of the tight-knit Appalachian mining communities, there was rarely any doubt that he would follow his father into the lamp-lit world beneath the wooded hills. In the 1950s in Coalwood, 20 miles west of Bramwell, that appeared to be Homer Hickam's destiny too, until one evening he watched Sputnik scud across the night sky.

What happened next is recorded in Homer's memoir, Rocket Boys, and in the subsequent Hollywood adaptation, October Sky. In précis, Homer and five teenage friends, armed with 'an almost limitless lack of knowledge', formed the Big Creek Missile Agency to build rockets to rival the Soviets.

"First thing we did was blow up my mom's rose garden fence," Homer recalls. They persevered, and were soon thunderously launching home-made rockets almost six miles into the sky above Coalwood. Their efforts gained recognition at the National Science Fair and earned them a way out of the mines. Homer ended up working for NASA.

The boys left Coalwood in the nick of time, for the mine was in trouble. At its height, it had employed nearly 5000 men and the town, which was wholly owned by the Olga Coal Company, boasted four stores, four schools, two churches, a barbershop, a theatre, a railway station, an ice plant and a slaughter house.

"In the fifties, there was 877 homes here," says 82-year-old Red Carroll. "I know, cause I hauled garbage from every one of 'em." Standing on the flattened slag heap that served as the rocket launch site, he proudly sports a baseball cap emblazoned Rocket Boys Dad. His son, O'Dell, was one of Homer's cohorts. "One day I tried to start my garbage truck but it was dead. Them boys had took the battery for their rocket."

We are accompanied by Red's 79-year-old friend, Bill Bolt, who always empathised with the boys' underlying motivation. "When I came back to Coalwood after fighting the Japs in the Pacific, I thought these mountains'd swallow me up," he confesses. "I wanted out, but after four days I returned to my job in the machine shop. Never got round to leaving.

"Kids'd always be hanging round the workshop wanting bikes and such like fixed. Then came Homer with his rockets, usually during evening shift so we could work on them without been caught by our supervisors."

The machine shop has fallen to dereliction. Since the mine closed in 1989, the population of Coalwood has ebbed to around 400. Around the fringes, the place appears fairly healthy, with neat houses and tended gardens. But the centre of the town is in decay. Many of the old company houses stand abandoned, the windows broken, the wooden porches rotten. We amble through forlorn front yards.

"You be careful there, Red," Bill says, glancing up at an unkempt rooftop. "You know what happened to you in October Sky."

Red breaks into wheezy laughter. "Got my head sliced off by a falling slate - least, that's what they said 'bout me in the movie. Apart from that, I reckon the movie was about 80 per cent true to life; the book was 90 per cent."

In a lock-up garage beside the Country Corner grocery store, which stands opposite Homer Hickam's old house, Harold 'Pick' Hylton has gathered together a collection of Rocket Boys memorabilia, including the desk used by Homer's father.

"I always thought that Homer, as a boy, was kinda distant. A bit nerdy, if you will," Pick says (his nickname is short for 'pickle', though nobody - not even he - can remember why). "But he's done fine for himself, that's for sure."

Perhaps Coalwood itself will benefit from the Rocket Boys' story, and from the two sequels Homer has written, The Coalwood Way and Sky of Stone. There are ambitious plans to turn the Hickam house into a museum, and to develop a host of community and tourist facilities, including a bed and breakfast.

For now, the nearest bed and breakfast is in Bramwell, though it is fully booked during my visit and I am kindly taken in by the Shahan family, who live nearby in one of the former millionaire mine-owners' homes.

The Shahans ended up in Bramwell by accident. "We were just passing through and happened to see a sign saying 'Auction'," explains Michael, a doctor. "We thought it was for furniture, but it turned out that the house itself was for sale." Their successful bid of $150,000 bought them a magnificent mansion that comes replete with a ballroom on the third floor. "I can't think of a more magical place to raise our two young daughters."

Between Bramwell and Coalwood, the countryside is relentlessly hilly. The road wends queasily from valley to valley, dipping and rising through dappled woodland. This new-growth forest is beginning to conceal the traces of decades of heavy industry.

"Now that there's no longer coal dust lying atop of everything, you can see how beautiful this country really is," says Red. "Back when the coal trains were running, sometimes you couldn't see your buddy 'cross the street." Now that the dust has settled, the Appalachians are returning to lush wilderness.

Despite the closures and lay-offs, West Virginia's coal industry has never been more productive. In 1997, 182 million tonnes were extracted, surpassing previous records. The Black Wolf mine, which burrows into a hillside close to Coalwood, is typical of the sleek new operations. It employs just 17 people. "The mine's good for another 27 years," the foreman tells me. "S'long as the top holds out."

"Yeah, the top of a hill can cave in on the tunnels real easy and with no warning," says ex-miner Pete Logan a few days later. We are sitting in a 'man-trip' - an open train - preparing to enter the Exhibition Coal Mine at the town of Beckley, 30 miles north of Bramwell. I can already feel the gulf of cool air gushing from the mine portal.

Once inside, the temperature fixes at a constant 58F. Water from the previous week's heavy rain drips from the ceiling. As we rumble deep into the hillside, stopping from time to time, I can imagine what miners like Paul Groves and Walker Smith had to endure each day.

The air, stirred by ventilation fans, tastes stale. When Pete flicks out the electric lights, we are plunged into inky darkness and ringing silence. Down here, if your headlamp failed, you would have to feel your way out through rugged tunnels that are too cramped to stand up in. "Sometimes there's only enough room to crawl," Paul Groves told me.

After half-an-hour underground, we trundle towards the exit. Somewhere deep within the network of tunnels, another man-trip clanks along the rails, trailing a ghostly echo. We round a corner and face a perfect square of daylight. I inhale fresh air.

We emerge, blinking, into a world in which colour is suddenly restored. Having sloughed the oppressive confines of the mine, instinct takes over. My first impulse is to gaze up, at the sky.

EPILOGUE: It never rains but it pours. On May 3, 2002, heavy rain caused devastating floods and mudslides in Coalwood. Ninety per cent of homes were inundated, many to the ceilings. Just as the town was looking towards the future, back to square one.