The year was 1978 and Jeff Himes lived in a boom town where everyone lived well, courtesy of King Coal. The ink was barely dry on his high school diploma when he got the call to the mine where he would toil 40 hours a week deep beneath the earth in exchange for a healthy paycheck and unbeatable fringes.

“Hundreds of families were benefiting,” he recalls of those halcyon days in the heart of Pennsylvania. The shops thrived, the tax base was plump and life was good. As a society, he recalls, “We banked on that industry.  (continued...)