Poverty’s Price

I’ve always ran away from poverty, using it as a trampoline to launch myself off onto better things, turning my back on its existence refusing to accept its misery.

In 1942 I was born and bred in a mining community a small village called Silksworth with the pit at one end and the long arm of the law, the local cop shop at the other. An ugly mile of grimy colliery houses, Blind Lane, so aptly called; lay in between, all uniformly belching clouds of deathly smoke in to the impoverished atmosphere. Behind them ran the pits railway, which was the local playing area for our young, where a dear friend lost a leg being ran over by a train. Adding to this depressing scene was the infamous pit waste heaps. The continuous stench of sulphurous fumes rising from the hot ash was forever polluting the air in our small village. Often causing major health hazards and creating dangers for our vulnerable children. However this was partially controlled later and sprayed with the dirty water pumped up from the mines. I often wondered which was worse as neighbouring villages suffered the continuous drone from the electrically operated pit pulleys, as they menacingly ran their gruesome gauntlet swinging dangerously in the air, leaking its foul odour of unsightly substances, carrying unwanted by products to the North East coast. On arrival the pulley automatically swung out like a hopping in a fairground, around the u shaped bend, dispersing its contents from a great height into the North Sea, silhouetting the natural beauty of the area with a never ending flurry of filth.
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