Tina Parker
Ruby’s Ride
Ruby’s Ride
Tina Parker
What’s Ruby doing with a Mustang, what with all the bills she can’t pay. But then again
who could blame her for buying a shiny thing. Seven years of waiting for her widow’s
death benefit. Years and years of work trying to pay off the debt. Let’s say it was owed
to her, for all that wastaken, for the recruiting: the pretty posters of high paying jobs,
the “model” coal camp ads. They left their home in Virginia behind, put their trust in
U.S. Steel, and moved over the mountain to West Virginia. Wages not high enough to
afford dental care. Outhouses while the rest of the country had indoor plumbing. Not
enough money from all that work to pay for their children’s photos in their school
yearbooks. Doesn’t it seem just her due to buy a slick new car. To drive that Mustang
over to Welch where she worked in the cafeteria at Doctors Memorial Hospital. She
had a Union, and they hit the bricks fierce, with all the rage of husbands and sons
took too young, all the rage of losing grown children to big cities and factories up
north. The big wigs could scarcely leave the hospital after work. The striking workers
would jerk the watches right off their wrists. Watches that kept time for the hours of
work, for the years they’d wait for what the company owed them. Her Union was a
place to unleash her righteous anger, the Mustang her middle finger.
“‘Ruby’s Ride’ is for my granny Ruby. It’s inspired by a place that is complex and misunderstood: the coalfields of West Virginia where resources have been extracted, leaving the land stripped and the people survivors of this very different form of combat.” —Tina Parker
Tina Parker is the author of the poetry collections Lock Her Up, Mother May I, and Another Offering. A native of Bristol, Virginia, with roots in the West Virginia coalfields, Tina is a long-time Kentucky resident who feels most at home on a hairpin curve. Follow her on Instagram @tetched_poet.
