Snowflakes and Dragons and Other Reasons To Be Thankful

This was a short work week, with no classes on Good Friday. So why did it wear me out so much? Oh, yeah, the A to Z Challenge. Holy cow, that thing's a bear! My poor, little ol' Ten Things of Thankful posts just get a lick and a promise. Here's this week's list:

1. It snowed on Monday. Yes, snowed. Just big, fat flurries, but still snow. And while three months ago, I would have put this on my TToT as a thankful that there was enough snow to cancel school, in the third week of April, it goes on here as being thankful it didn't stick.

Snowflakes hitting my windshield.
THIS IS NOT RIGHT, PEOPLE.

2. We made two awesome crafts at preschool this week. Since it's Holy Week, and since we are a Christian preschool, it was time to put the cute egg and bunny crafts aside for something a little more Jesus-related: 

Liquid water colors painted over strips of
masking tape in a cross shape.

Peel the tape off when the paint is dry.

Pre-K craft. We did the handprint with them,
then they did the rest.

3. The last one counted as two.

4. The College Boy had no classes Thursday and Friday of this week, so I fetched him on Wednesday afternoon. We brought home most of his winter clothes (no sense in jinxing anything, even though I'm not superstitious, but, hey, just in case) and ate supper at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant we found AND LIKED. Unknown restaurants are a crap shoot, even though we looked it up on Tripadvisor and checked the reviews first. Because under Joplin restaurants, Chick Fil A is listed as the #3 restaurant in town. I mean, Chick Fil A is GOOD and all, but #3? Really, Tripadvisor?

5. That one counts as two as well, doesn't it? Of course it does!

6. Two Easter parades and egg hunts in two days at preschool with no mishaps.

7. I accompanied my son to a job interview in a neighboring town. Or rather, I rode shotgun with him to an interview. He can't find his way out of a bag, so since he had never been to this town, I went along as navigator. We left early enough to go a little further to the south and get some pictures for my A to Z post P is for Picher, Oklahoma. He was a complete sport, driving around the abandoned town, stopping the car so I could get pictures. It's a good thing we had to go on to the interview next, because I could have stayed there for hours, taking pictures, as I am fascinated with the place. It spooked him, however, and he swore he could smell lead in the air (you can't, but it was imaginative on his part).

8. That was two, I'm sure of it.

9. Driving home from the interview (where I sat in the car and played Candy Crush, lest you worried if I truly accompanied my son TO the interview), we came up behind...a dragon. Kid you not. My son was once again a real trouper so I could get pictures, because, well, it was a DRAGON (Go faster! Slow down! Get a little closer! Not that close!).

Imagine Dragons....

10. The A to Z Challenge is over halfway challenged! 

This Sunday is Easter. Christ is risen; He is risen, indeed!

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P is for Picher, Oklahoma

In 1873, in the southwest corner of Missouri, the town of Joplin was established as a mining town and quickly became the hub of the Tri-State Mining District, which also included southeastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. Lead and zinc were first surface mined and eventually deep mines were dug underground, with approximately 75% of what is now the city undermined. 

Across the border into Oklahoma is the town of Picher. Established in the early 1900s when the most productive cache of lead and zinc were discovered, it became the leading producer of lead and zinc in the Tri-State District. By the end of World War II, most of the mines were closed. 

When all mining operations ceased in the 1960s, what was left behind was mountains of mine tailings, also known as chat, and ponds used to process ore, called tailings ponds. Groundwater that had previously been pumped out of the mines was allowed to fill the shafts, mixing with mine waste and contaminating the area water supplies. Mining waste in the area creeks oxidized, causing the water to turn a rusty red color. 

The mountains of chat were playgrounds for the children of the area, and lead dust from the chat piles blew across the town. The residents swam in the contaminated creeks and tailing ponds and drank water from contaminated wells. By 1996, nearly 35% of the children of Picher tested positive for lead poisoning; the national average is 2.2%. The miscarriage rate was nearly 25%, compared to a national average of 10%. An Army Corps of Engineering study showed 85% of the town, including the school, which housed kindergarten through 12th grade, to be severely undermined and in danger of collapse. 

The town with the chat mountains in the background,
before the government buy-out.

In 1983, Picher was declared a Superfund site and considered the worst environmental disaster in the United States, covering 40 square miles. (Superfund is the federal government's program to clean up uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.) It is expected to take at least 35 years to remove the mountains of chat, some of it to be used in road paving, the rest moved to a controlled hazardous waste site ten miles away.

In May of 2006, a $60 million federal buy-out plan was announced. The government paid families to relocate and bought their property. The population of Picher had declined, from a peak of over 14,000 in the mining heydays of the early 1920's to 2,500 in 1967, dropping to 1500 in 2008, and to 20 by 2011. To make matters worse, a tornado touched down in May of 2008, damaging or destroying 150 homes (about half the town), killing 7 people. 

Schools are the lifeblood of small towns, and Picher fought to save theirs. Although the voters defeated a plan to annex into nearby school districts, eventually there was no choice, and the class of 2011 was the last class to graduate from Picher-Cardin School. The school enrollment, which was around 340 students at the time the buy-out was announced, had dwindled to 49; the graduating class had 11 students.

The post office closed in May of 2009; City Hall a few months later. The municipality was officially dissolved in November of 2013. Demolition work began in early 2011; today, few buildings remain.

But the mountains of chat live on, as do the rusty, red creeks.

And it is sad.

Some of the chat mountains are 20 stories tall.

Interested in more of the story? Following are two previews, the first from PBS Independent Lens: The Creek Runs Red; the second from filmmaker Matt Myers, Tar Creek.

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