THE MAGIC AND THE MISERY
Inside a school gym in Smithers, W.Va., Mormon missionaries were giving out used clothing to poor families. Inside the town's senior center, volunteers ladled free lunches to the indigent elderly while cartons of surplus butter, flour, pork and peanut butter were lined up for distribution to the unemployed the next day. Inside his police car, though, Eddie A. Long, the mayor of Smithers, was smiling. He was driving me to see the thing that was going to save his depressed little city, maybe even make it flourish.</br></br>But first he took me on a tour of town. It didn't take long. The downtown area is only a couple of streets. There's a TV repair shop, a dance studio, a Christian bookstore, a movie rental place and a few other shops, some of them boarded up. Plus eight churches and seven bars.</br></br>"Smithers used to be a booming town back in the '40s and '50s," the mayor said. A retired meat cutter, Long, 59, wore a blue baseball cap over his gray hair and puffed on a cigarette as he drove. "We had two theaters, two or three grocery stores, a bowling alley - and of course beer joints," he said with a grin. "They'll always be here."</br></br>Back in its heyday, Smithers was a thriving coal town with more than 3,000 residents. But now, Long said, "the coal mines is played out around here" and the population has dwindled to maybe 2,000 - more than two-thirds of them, he estimates, either retired or unemployed.</br></br>"They'll walk the streets, come in and see if I got anything for 'em," Long said, driving the police car slowly through town. Sometimes, he lets the unemployed work off their garbage and sewer bills. "I'll have 'em sweep the streets, pull up the grass. If they can do mechanic work, I'll let 'em work on the police cars." Other than that, a good many Smithers residents eke out a living on unemployment or Social Security checks, federal black lung payments, surplus foods, free lunches - and the lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer. "They fish, they hunt, they grow gardens," Long said.