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Speaker 1: This season, we're bringing you stories about people finding their
Speaker 1: professional stride by virtue of who they know, whether it's
Speaker 1: breathing new life into an age old profession, taking the
Speaker 1: reins and a family business, forging your own path with
Speaker 1: a new idea, or landing the perfect job doing something
Speaker 1: you'd never before even considered. In the deep hills of Appalachia.
Speaker 1: Linda McKinney has a very important job. She feeds people
Speaker 1: in McDowell County, West Virginia. The community has seen its
Speaker 1: share of hardship and food shortages in the wake of
Speaker 1: the coal industry drying up over the last thirty years.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath, Linda works day in and day out
Speaker 1: to make sure that the people of McDowell are fed
Speaker 1: while the community perseveres. Producer Otis Gray brings us the
Speaker 1: story as a beautiful potato you want to fly. It's
Speaker 1: a chilly, overcast day and I am in McDowell County,
Speaker 1: West Virginia, peeling potatoes with Linda McKinney. L I N
Speaker 1: D A m c K I N N E. Why
Speaker 1: we're in the warehouse of her food bank called Five
Speaker 1: Loaves and two Fishes. Linda just got this huge shipment
Speaker 1: donated to them, which is palettes and palettes of potatoes
Speaker 1: for a food give out that they have this coming weekend.
Speaker 1: That they're beautiful. Look at this and it was actually one.
Speaker 1: I'll picked up. Its shaped like a heart. So that
Speaker 1: tosion that's meant for me all gets donated here. Yes,
Speaker 1: and do you give it away? For free. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is all free. We don't sell anything here. Linda is
Speaker 1: a character. She's a short Italian woman with her hair
Speaker 1: dyed of fiery crimson red, and she runs this food
Speaker 1: bank with her husband, Bob, in the southernmost part of
Speaker 1: the state, right in the heart of Appalachia. Bob is
Speaker 1: still a mind safety and training instructor for the state
Speaker 1: mining Department. His income supports the two of them. Linda's
Speaker 1: full time job is to run the food bank and
Speaker 1: feed as many people as she possibly can here with
Speaker 1: whatever donation she receives from nonprofits and religious organizations. So
Speaker 1: you actually don't know all the time what you're gonna go. No,
Speaker 1: you don't. You know, we can't buy food. We don't
Speaker 1: buy food. We barely keep enough in our budget for overhead,
Speaker 1: and no one's paid here. No one's paid here. Like
Speaker 1: many places around here, McDowell has always been a cold town,
Speaker 1: but in the last few decades more coal has been
Speaker 1: imported from overseas, devastating economies like this and leaving them
Speaker 1: with a high unemployment rate, poverty and everything that comes
Speaker 1: with that. So sometimes people will show up and Linda
Speaker 1: doesn't have enough. That happened last month, we just didn't
Speaker 1: have the food. The third Saturday of every month, Linda
Speaker 1: and a group of volunteers do this food give out,
Speaker 1: and even in the coldest of weather, people in mcdowells
Speaker 1: show up as early as two am to wait in
Speaker 1: line for the noon distribution, because, for better or worse,
Speaker 1: let's first come, first serve. You can only feed so many,
Speaker 1: you know, and and we at one time we fed
Speaker 1: anyone that came, but the food got short, and h
Speaker 1: it scares you when you don't see food, and you say, God,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna feed these people? There's no food here.
Speaker 1: This Saturday is the next food give out in McDowell,
Speaker 1: a rural place where for many the choices can be
Speaker 1: to leave or to starve. Well, today we followed Lenna McKinney.
Speaker 1: She stands her ground and prepares to feed whoever she can.
Speaker 1: I'm a storyteller. I never had anybody played with when
Speaker 1: I was little, so I just made up stories and
Speaker 1: lies and played by myself and eat mud and grass
Speaker 1: and dirt, had a good old time by myself. I
Speaker 1: didn't have any cousins around that I could play with,
Speaker 1: and was raised basically by adults. And so you learn.
Speaker 1: I'm a storyteller. I've always been. I laugh all the
Speaker 1: time and never shut up. You know I'm in the building.
Speaker 1: When you hear I cackle, I'm sorry I cackle. Linda
Speaker 1: is a good talker. She was even a pastor for
Speaker 1: three years here in the same church she was born in.
Speaker 1: She loves the story of Five Loaves and Two Fishes,
Speaker 1: which is the story the food Bank is named after.
Speaker 1: It's the Bible passage in which Jesus takes five loaves
Speaker 1: of bread and a couple of small fish and breaks
Speaker 1: them to feed thousands, despite his disciples not thinking they
Speaker 1: have enough to give. I can just see him pulling
Speaker 1: that bread and slinging that fish. That's what I would do,
Speaker 1: you know. Being Italian, we throw a lot of things,
Speaker 1: so I just sling it everywhere. But you know, the disciples,
Speaker 1: which is all in a tissy because there wouldn't any food.
Speaker 1: But he showed him, didn't he He showed him. Linda
Speaker 1: was raised an only child, and like a lot of immigrants,
Speaker 1: her Italian father came to West Virginia to work in
Speaker 1: the coal fields back in the fifties, and they both
Speaker 1: lived in a house with her grandmother. My dad was
Speaker 1: a man of the house. He went to work every
Speaker 1: day at the mines, and my Norna and I had
Speaker 1: hunt a widow. Don't that raised me? Well? First thing
Speaker 1: they taught me to pull me up to a cook
Speaker 1: stove and taught me how to cook. She was born
Speaker 1: and raised to be a caretaker of sorts. So when
Speaker 1: the man who used to run this food bank was
Speaker 1: falling ill and asked Linda and her husband to take
Speaker 1: it over, she eventually accepted. This we call a bug,
Speaker 1: you guys call a shopping cloth in the warehouse. She
Speaker 1: pulls out a shopping cart to show me how they
Speaker 1: load up food for the families every month. First we
Speaker 1: look at our food and we count, and we're going
Speaker 1: to be able to figure up how many families were
Speaker 1: going to be able to food. This looks to me
Speaker 1: like we will be able to do anywhere from a
Speaker 1: hundred thirty five, maybe a hundred and uh maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty families. So what we'll do we'll come
Speaker 1: down through here and we'll start right here. So in
Speaker 1: the warehouse there's pallets and boxes neatly packed against the walls,
Speaker 1: and almost everything here comes from a humanitarian organization called
Speaker 1: Operation Blessing. If it was not for Operation Blessing, we
Speaker 1: would not have food. Each month they sent us a
Speaker 1: tractor trailer of food in that came mean this Thursday. Still,
Speaker 1: when there are disasters in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: like the recent floods in Puerto Rico, that means that
Speaker 1: Operation Blessing might send more there and less to McDowell.
Speaker 1: Right now, they are the pallets of potatoes. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of canned goods like soups and vegetables and noodles.
Speaker 1: There's syrup on top of a big pallet of pancake mix.
Speaker 1: Little Debbie's Cakes is actually a really big donor. And
Speaker 1: next to that there are boxes and boxes of ho hoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we got hos. And somewhere here I thank someone practices.
Speaker 1: They say these are delicious. Tell me what these are.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't eat sweets. Strawberry shortcake rolls? Yes,
Speaker 1: did they taste like a strawberry shortcake? I'm told a
Speaker 1: lot of sodas get donated here too. McDowell has landed
Speaker 1: in the spotlight before, kind of as a poster child
Speaker 1: for a down and out, cold town. What it looks
Speaker 1: like when Appalachian communities can only afford things like sugary foods.
Speaker 1: They were even featured on PBS a decade back for
Speaker 1: what journalists called Mountain do Mouth, where kids had their
Speaker 1: teeth rotting away from so much sugar. While a lot
Speaker 1: of this coverage was very graphic and highly polarized poverty porn,
Speaker 1: the health issues that come with the poverty here are
Speaker 1: very real. Life expectancy in McDowell is just sixty four years.
Speaker 1: The same lifespan is a lot of Third world countries.
Speaker 1: So Linda goes out of her way to procure the
Speaker 1: healthiest stuff that she can get. You know, you really
Speaker 1: need to take the good food you've got beans. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've come to show if you don't know how to
Speaker 1: cook beans. Some of the younger generation does not know
Speaker 1: how to cook beans. I'll show you how to cook
Speaker 1: the beans. I'll bring a pot of beans and item tasting. Okay,
Speaker 1: let me bring it out here. The next thing Linda
Speaker 1: does is she takes me over to the shelf with
Speaker 1: these clear plastic bags on it. She calls them school
Speaker 1: break bags. And what we do when we get food
Speaker 1: in anything that is small child size, we put them
Speaker 1: in these bags. Anytime there's no school any children that
Speaker 1: come here. We'll get a school break bag. For most
Speaker 1: of the kids around here, the school feeds breakfast when
Speaker 1: they come in early. They feed school lunch and after
Speaker 1: school snack. But on long breaks like Christmas, those three
Speaker 1: meals aren't there anymore, and the kids go back to
Speaker 1: homes with pretty empty pantries. I want to try to
Speaker 1: give a protein. You want to try to give a
Speaker 1: cereal something they can eat for breakfast. This is all snacks.
Speaker 1: You've got you some apple sauce, You've got you some juice.
Speaker 1: So you know, I may even throw some of those
Speaker 1: strawberry cakes we got, I think we've got I'll see
Speaker 1: some cheese. It's over there. Um. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: know you like you kind of get what you get
Speaker 1: in terms of donations. Do you ever like worry about it?
Speaker 1: Does a lot of this stuff have like tons and
Speaker 1: tons of sugar in it? Well, you know, in my world,
Speaker 1: some food is better than no food. M It's really
Speaker 1: hard to understand McDowell and the gravity of hunger here
Speaker 1: unless you've seen it up close. I'm from a rural
Speaker 1: place too, in Vermont, where a lot of people depend
Speaker 1: on food stamps and even hunting to get by, but
Speaker 1: this just it felt so different. There are some fast
Speaker 1: food places here, but even then there's no jobs, there's
Speaker 1: no money to buy that food. This is a place
Speaker 1: in a country of abundance where for a lot of
Speaker 1: people there is no food available. Period. When did the
Speaker 1: food get shore food got short into in when Walmart closed.
Speaker 1: That was our perishables. So that's why you would see
Speaker 1: You see the refrigerators, and you see the freezers, they're empty.
Speaker 1: They've been empty since Walmart left, completely empty. Um, I
Speaker 1: can turn the light on and show you in camp.
Speaker 1: She walks me to the back of the warehouse to
Speaker 1: this long row of about ten full sized freezers and fridges.
Speaker 1: She says, these were full of meats, fruits, eggs, yogurt,
Speaker 1: produce anything Walmart would give them. Now each one is
Speaker 1: completely empty. These were full of meat when Walmart was here,
Speaker 1: full of meat, any kind of meat that Walmart had.
Speaker 1: We had it. Each family got approximate three sometimes five
Speaker 1: big packages of meat. And in the fruits and the vegetables,
Speaker 1: we would put them in these trays and we would
Speaker 1: put them outside, and the people were allowed to take
Speaker 1: what fruits and vegetables they needed. You could pretty much
Speaker 1: fill these up more or less for free every week. Okay,
Speaker 1: well yes, and a lot of times if they would
Speaker 1: redo their meat cases, we would have to open up
Speaker 1: and give out the meat then because we had too
Speaker 1: much for the freezers. You had an excess of food.
Speaker 1: Ninety pounds is what we lost when they left us
Speaker 1: a year pounds. We'll get back to the story in
Speaker 1: a second. First, a word from Express Employment Professionals. A
Speaker 1: strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done,
Speaker 1: sweats over the details. This is you. But to get
Speaker 1: an honest day's work, you need a response, You need
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Speaker 1: production floor to the front office Express Nose Jobs you
Speaker 1: get to no Express find your location at express pros
Speaker 1: dot com or on the Express jobs app. And now
Speaker 1: back to our story. The local Walmart here was the
Speaker 1: only source of fresh food within driving distance, but no
Speaker 1: one here had jobs, so Walmart was not generating revenue,
Speaker 1: and in January two thousand sixteen, they closed. The day
Speaker 1: that I heard that Walmart was closing, I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1: And when they closed, they closed, They shut down and
Speaker 1: got out of town. After the demise of the mining
Speaker 1: industry here, Walmart was also the biggest employer. Now the
Speaker 1: building is just this empty concrete block with weeds growing
Speaker 1: through the parking lot pavement outside, adding to this feeling
Speaker 1: you get when you drive through McDowell, like you're in
Speaker 1: a ghost town. At one time we were a hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: We may hit nineteen thousand right now. When were you
Speaker 1: a hundred When the coal mines was booming in the
Speaker 1: fifties and the sixties, when I was little and my
Speaker 1: dad on got paid every Friday, we would go to
Speaker 1: every store. There were dressed stores, there were hardwares. There
Speaker 1: was a Kroger, There were grocery stores and restaurants. Home cooks.
Speaker 1: There's nothing. There's nothing. The entire town ran off of
Speaker 1: the profits from the coal mines for decades. A lot
Speaker 1: of people didn't even bother thinking about college here because
Speaker 1: they knew that they could go into the mines and
Speaker 1: get jobs that might pay up to ninety tho dollars
Speaker 1: a year and support their families. When the mind shut down,
Speaker 1: those jobs ceased to exist and there wasn't really anything
Speaker 1: to take its place. Mine runoff and compaction also made
Speaker 1: most of the soil here infertile and the water bad
Speaker 1: to drink, so falling back on farming was not an option.
Speaker 1: Parents have been forced to travel to nearby cities like
Speaker 1: Charleston defined work, leaving their kids to be raised by
Speaker 1: the grandparents, and a lot of these families move in
Speaker 1: together to save money, sometimes five families in one home,
Speaker 1: so grandma or Grandpa's such a security or pension is
Speaker 1: supporting those individuals in the house. That's not a good thing.
Speaker 1: A dollar only goes so far. These are the folks
Speaker 1: that will show up to Linda's food bank on Saturday
Speaker 1: knowing that they might not get what they came for.
Speaker 1: So hearing this story, you kind of have to wonder
Speaker 1: why stay. Um, it's just home, and it's it's like
Speaker 1: you're gonna sleep on somebody's couch or you're gonna sleep
Speaker 1: in the floor on a mattres. You just you pull
Speaker 1: your resources and you do what you have to do
Speaker 1: to feed your family. As positive as Linda is, you
Speaker 1: can tell that this work doesn't come without at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, Lord, sometimes you want to go home and
Speaker 1: curl up and cry. What comes on this? Especially with
Speaker 1: the children, Um, brace my heart. I mean they don't
Speaker 1: have beds to sleep in there. Some of them sleep
Speaker 1: on the floor, some of them sleep on the couch.
Speaker 1: Right now, we've got a sleeping bag drive going. Sleeping
Speaker 1: bags are awesome for children. They can get down in
Speaker 1: them and snuggle nowhere, no matter where. So we've got uh,
Speaker 1: we're collecting sleeping bags right now. Um. You know, if
Speaker 1: I see a need, I try to supply that need.
Speaker 1: How does it make you feel when you don't have enough? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not my fault. I know that,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's my fault. You know. I
Speaker 1: can go back to my days of my Norna. Never
Speaker 1: did anyone leave our house without food. My Noorna always
Speaker 1: made sure that the children were fed. There was never
Speaker 1: a day we had a gate and had a big
Speaker 1: old cow bill on it, and when I'd come through
Speaker 1: that gate, my Noorna knew I was home because that
Speaker 1: that cow bell we're boom boom, And as soon as
Speaker 1: I go up on the porch, my plate was on
Speaker 1: the table. I've ate every day. Every day. I do
Speaker 1: the best that I can do for my family and
Speaker 1: the best that I can do here for this county.
Speaker 1: There's been times that we've been really scared because there's
Speaker 1: no money in the bank, and then the food. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the food is not what we think we should get.
Speaker 1: But I always feel that it's not what we want,
Speaker 1: it's what God knows we need. And my husband and
Speaker 1: I are people faith um. We totally believe that when
Speaker 1: God does not want us here anymore, the lights will
Speaker 1: go off and the food will dry up and we'll
Speaker 1: go somewhere else, or we'll wake up dead. It's like
Speaker 1: that picture of that cat you're just hanging on, you know,
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen that cat just hanging onto the branch.
Speaker 1: It's what you do. You hang on. Every day, you
Speaker 1: hang on, you hang on. That's Saturday, the Gibbout was
Speaker 1: about to start. They're almost a hundred fifty families waiting
Speaker 1: on the lot for food. A group of volunteers showed
Speaker 1: up to help Lenda distribute, and just before noon she
Speaker 1: gathered all the volunteers around and started off the day
Speaker 1: with a prayer. All right, let's go to the Lord
Speaker 1: in prayer, and you've got to promise me you're gonna
Speaker 1: do everything orderly today. It makes it go a lot
Speaker 1: sweeter for all of us. Right, okay, Heavenly Father, we
Speaker 1: thank you Lord for this group that's come today. Lord.
Speaker 1: We asked that you just be with us, be among us. Lord,
Speaker 1: just take over today and let everything be done in
Speaker 1: a calm and mannerly way. We asked Lord that you
Speaker 1: spread this food as far as we can spread it,
Speaker 1: because you know we did go over in our numbers
Speaker 1: this morning. We asked that you be with us, that
Speaker 1: you give us peace Lord today. Lord's in your heavenly
Speaker 1: holy now that we priday this morning. By the end
Speaker 1: of the day, the food bank served a hundred forty
Speaker 1: seven families, almost five hundred people, and they even had
Speaker 1: enough food to spare for the next give out. Everything's
Speaker 1: good and we thank God, Miss Nondon, everybody doing for
Speaker 1: the county on maccal May God please every one of them.
Speaker 1: May haven't smiled upon me since I first started covering
Speaker 1: Linda's story. She's seen plenty of hardship, but she's also
Speaker 1: had a lot of winds. Arl alright, let's get you straight.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eighteen, Anthony Bourdain traveled to West Virginia
Speaker 1: for an episode of his show Parts Unknown. They contacted Linda,
Speaker 1: who made him a family dinner in her home and
Speaker 1: shared stories about the wonderful, tough people of McDowell. It
Speaker 1: was one of the last shows he recorded before he
Speaker 1: passed away. All Right name Shop. In this same year,
Speaker 1: television personality Micro organized the entire McDowell community to surprise
Speaker 1: Linda on his show Returning the Favor. It's a show
Speaker 1: that features extraordinary people that make a difference in the community.
Speaker 1: He organized a massive donation of food and fixed the
Speaker 1: food Bank's roof, which was in long need of repair.
Speaker 1: He liked her so much that they saved Linda for
Speaker 1: the season finale. Scottie, how did you laugh? Laugh? Scotty,
Speaker 1: that's too Hotty, Scotty in the hollar. Even with all
Speaker 1: the press that the Food Bank has gotten, Linda still
Speaker 1: wakes up every day and works tirelessly to secure donations
Speaker 1: and to feed the people of McDowell. She's just one
Speaker 1: of many people here who are using their circumstances and
Speaker 1: their hunger to make real changes, to choose to stay,
Speaker 1: to find creative ways to thrive when many others would
Speaker 1: throw in the towel. Okay, you don't need this. As
Speaker 1: long as she got. Ever since I've known her, Linda
Speaker 1: keeps telling me that Italians don't get sick, they just
Speaker 1: wake up dead. And she says that's probably the only
Speaker 1: thing that will stop her from doing what she does.
Speaker 1: But anyone who knows or might tell you that that
Speaker 1: might not be enough to stop Linda. McKinney Rocko see
Speaker 1: you next night. To see pictures of the Food Bank
Speaker 1: and of Linda, and to donate to their cause, you
Speaker 1: can go find them on Facebook under five Loaves and
Speaker 1: two Fishes food Bank Inc. We'll have a link on
Speaker 1: our website Express Pros dot com slash podcast that's also
Speaker 1: where you can see her videos with Anthony Bourdain and
Speaker 1: Mike Rowe as well for on the job. I'm otus Gray,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To On the Job, brought to you
Speaker 1: by Express Employment Professionals. Find out more at Express pros
Speaker 1: dot com. This season of On the Job is produced
Speaker 1: by Audiation and dread Seat Ventures. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Sandy Smallens. Our producer is Otis Gray. The show is
Speaker 1: mixed by Matt Noble at The Loft in Bronxville, New York.
Speaker 1: Find us on I Heart Radio and Apple Podcasts. If
Speaker 1: you liked what you heard, please consider rating or reviewing
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