I loved your post and identified with much of it. My family are from Jackson County, albeit not a coal county.

You’d be surprised. For example, my grandmother’s house in Jackson County had a coal-burning furnace right up into the 2000's when, too old to care for herself anymore, she moved in with her eldest daughter and her house was torn down by one of my uncles, whose property that land had earlier become. And there were…

Bingo! You hit the nail on the head!