24 Hours in America
By Anna patrick
the new york times
october 16, 2018
Christine Sneberger Long got to school later than she wanted to. For most of her dewy morning drive, she had been stuck between coal trucks, crawling along a narrow and winding Route 46 after leaving her home in Mill Creek, W.Va.
She was headed to Pickens School, where she is the principal, health teacher and math teacher, and it’s a much longer commute — about an hour each way — than she used to make as a student here.
Tucked in the southwestern edge of Randolph County, the state’s largest in landmass, Pickens School has become somewhat of an oddity even in a rural state like West Virginia. Officials estimate that the bus commute for children living in the three remote communities that Pickens serves would take nearly an hour and a half one way to reach the next closest school. And that’s just too long to ask any child to do, Ms. Long, 53, said.
When she was growing up, she would get on the bus from her family’s home in the town of Czar. Her father was a coal miner, and she rode the eight miles through the next town over, Helvetia, a tiny village settled by German-speaking Swiss immigrants after the Civil War, before arriving at a school so small that it easily held the three communities’ children, kindergarten through 12th grade, in one building.
The old Pickens School ran on a coal furnace and well water, and in the winter the students would help shovel coal to keep the furnace running.
That building has been replaced with a tan, more modern facility, and the furnace is gone. The school has just 32 students.
Ms. Long’s recent morning began in the library with seven kids — the entire middle school, minus one absent child — staring back at her, all trying to talk over each other to get her attention.
“What are we doing in Friday’s class?” one student asked.
“Let’s make it through today first,” Ms. Long said.
They flipped open their health books and dove into a section on dating and relationships. Some students volunteered to read; others needed to be called on.
After they finished, the chatter rose, a way to pass the time before the next bell. “We went hunting the night before,” one girl said to Ms. Long.
Ms. Long looked at one of the boys, the one who had given her the hardest time about reading earlier, and said quietly, “Did you get Gumpy taken care of?”
“Yeah, he died yesterday at like 3:30, and then my mom and sister buried him after I left,” the boy said. “And Max, he’s been howling all night long.”
“Oh, misses him,” Ms. Long said.
After the bell, she walked back to her office and began proofreading the student handbook. It was due in the county office by noon. She started dictating edits to the school’s substitute secretary, Iris Davis.
“Her name has an ‘A’ in it,” Ms. Long said. “This here probably needs a space.”
The janitor, Ruth Anne, appeared in the doorway.
One of the air-conditioning units didn’t seem to be working. “It’s making a loud noise, and it feels really hot,” she said.
Soon Ms. Long was treading through the wet grass behind the school in her thick black heels, stopping at every AC to check its temperature.
She flipped a breaker on the unit near the cafeteria. Nothing. She asked the cook to keep an eye on it and let her know if it started up again.
Just a couple of hours earlier she had said, “It’s a rough trip over, but it’s worth it once you get here.” It was a reference to her commute and the rugged roads, but, with air-conditioners conking out and students to be comforted, it could apply to any number of things.