Excerpt from forward to the history of the Hawks Nest tunnel construction, disaster...incident.
Did I intend to write a book? Not initially, although in retrospect a journal entry
from October 7, 1999, reveals how completely my perceptions were colored by the
tunnel’s history:
October 7, 1999: Stripped bare overnight, the earth. Shorn of her garments, her
leaves-of-many-colors. Now, simply pure form. Spine, vertebrae, bones threatening
to pierce her fragile skin. Ridges, angular and sharp. Ancient streambeds etching
space between anorexic ribs.
I turn away, shocked at this vulnerability. Thinking of my own mother, I yearn to
share this image with her. She would understand my reaction to such essential rawness.
I shiver. From the cold, damp wind—or the memory of last evening’s read, too
graphic to forget?
“…And typically the workers presented a falling off of weight, a considerable
amount, in a very short time. The men got down so they had no flesh left on them
at all. As they express it down there, the men got so they were all hide, bone and
leaders, which means he is just skin and tendons and looks like a living skeleton.”1
Her grandma always said she had “the blessing”, and to always use it for good, but sometimes there is shame in fame if a person can’t handle it. Don’t let the Boo Hag ride ya
"The Great Teen Fruit War, A 1960 Novel" involves conflict between the Blues (sons of blueberry farmers) and the Reds (sons of peach growers) in a southern New Jersey agricultural community.
