Michael Blankenship, age 19

Majestic, KY

I doubt I'll go to college. I guess I got this job, and I don't want to make time for college... I started working, and then after that I pretty much knew I would want to work the rest of my life instead of going to school.

I got my first job when I was sixteen years old. Because I was worried, I thought I was going to be a daddy. You get scared, so I thought, I'm not going to be scared no more. I'm just going to get a job and that way if something does happen I won't be in as bad a shape then, if something did happen.

I'm lucky to have this job 'cause they pay really good: $15.50 an hour... most miners only get forty hours a week and here we get sixty hours a week and on overtime that pays real good money... time and a half. I guess while I'm young I don't have to sleep as much as an older person... We start at six every morning... and we work six days a week... sixty-eight hours a week...

One of the biggest things that's ever happened to me would probably have to be my girlfriend, and it changed my life from where I was doing basically, just things for me, now it's things for me and her both. We're planning to get married... We've been going out a little over three years... She's nineteen too. Meeting her made me want to raise my own family, have a great job, do everything for, you know, her and me and the family, that's what I want.

My dad worked in the mines for twenty-two years in West Virginia, and then he hurt his back so he's disabled now. He's at home. We don't get to do as many things as we used to because of his back and because I work a lot of hours. Some days he's in pain and some days he's not. Some days I come home and he's trying to get into the house and he'll just fall over. Some days he's walking around fine. In the future I would like to be a foreman here at a mining company... Maybe superintendent. I'd like to be a superintendent, or maybe even a mine inspector. I would like to do any one of those.

My biggest fear is dying, while the emotion I feel most is probably love.