I’ll throw a little dig here and there about Trump because I don’t like him. “And we don’t agree on it, so I don’t say nothing, or we’d get at it. “There’s a lot of Trump lovers,” she said about the people she works with, most of whom she counts as pals. Polls of Pennsylvania voters show the former vice president leading Trump by about five percentage points. But Cindy figures that all they have to do is wait for them to fall down or get to the point where they will have to be demolished, then get them for next to nothing.Ĭindy, 54, said she doesn’t talk politics in this town in Schuylkill County where 70% of voters went for Trump in 2016, even though Trump won Pennsylvania by only a little over 1 percentage point four years ago and now faces a tough challenge from Biden.
The sons and Mike keep teasing Cindy that they should buy them up. Several row houses surrounding the Gavals’ home are collapsing. Warning signs and an American flag painted on a pallet punctuate a fence in the town. This is the story of an American family and an American town, both struggling with what they once were – and what they will be. Far from the streets of protest and the halls of power, the Gavals nonetheless find their lives intersecting with this moment of American crisis from Mahanoy City, a small town that gets smaller every year. This year, the country almost seems at war with itself, over politics and the coronavirus pandemic, race and the economy, climate change and energy. Trump slams Biden in his birthplace ahead of Democratic nomination speech.īut even though they’re deeply rooted in Mahanoy City, they’re also a minority in this region: voters who didn’t support Donald Trump in 2016 and who won’t vote for the Republican president in November, in a town where Trump signs sprout everywhere and no Joe Biden signs are to be seen, even though the Democratic nominee for president grew up in another blue-collar town, Scranton, an hour away. U.S coal mining industry seeks wide-ranging coronavirus bailout. coal-fired plants closing fast despite Trump’s pledge of support for industry. Justin took a job at a plastics plant after driving gun trucks down ancient alleys in Afghanistan while serving in the Army Reserve. Today Michael volunteers as a coach, but he dreams of leaving, if he can whittle down a mountain of student debt.Ĭindy is from Shenandoah, 10 minutes away, and has recently returned to work sorting goods at an Amazon warehouse near here after taking months off to protect the family during the coronavirus pandemic. Both Mike and Michael played on the high school football team, the Golden Bears. The two generations of the Gaval family, Mike and Cindy and their sons, Justin and Michael, are woven into the fabric of Mahanoy City. And for people in this area, this has been their whole life.” “But on the other hand, people have got to work. It makes you wonder: Are you doing the right thing?” said Gaval, 56, a husband and father of two sons. “With climate change and how the industry I work in is contributing to that, it could be somewhat of a struggle, especially if you have kids.
One of the many houses displaying political flags in Mahanoy City, where Trump signs proliferate and Biden signs aren’t to be seen. Trucks carrying anthracite and its byproducts constantly run back and forth through town, coating the old row houses that line the main street with a layer of gray dust.īut the glory days of coal are long gone, and Gaval wrestles with its legacy in heating not just homes and boilers, but the planet. His hometown is a place made, and unmade, by anthracite, the coal that fueled the Industrial Revolution, provided heat for millions in sprawling cities, spawned rail networks and still heats homes in Mahanoy City.
For 30 years, he’s worked at the plant, which supplies power to the local prison and the grid before that, his grandfather was a miner who blasted massive seams of anthracite and brought it to the surface. Gaval would be the last person to call himself a coal critic. Mike Gaval looks out from the Gilberton coal-fired power plant down the valley to Mahanoy City, the town he grew up in, and up the hill to the wind turbines spinning on the horizon. Mike Gaval, his wife, Cindy, and their sons, Justin and Michael, spend time in the newly renovated back yard of their home in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania.
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