-HM Poorest Counties Still Losing in War on Want
Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times
TWIN BRANCH, W. Va. - When people visit with friends and neighbors
in southern West Virginia, where paved roads give way to dirt before
winding steeply up wooded hollows, the talk is often of lives that never got off the ground.
I
"How's John boy?" Sabrina Shrader, 30, a former neighbor, asked Marie Bolden one cold winter day at what
Ms. Bolden calls her little shanty by the tracks."
"He had another seizure the other night," Ms. Bolden, 50, said of her son, John McCall, a former classmate
of Ms. Shrader's. John got caught up in the dark undertow of drugs that defines life for so many here in
McDowell County, almost died of an overdose in 2007, and now lives on disability payments. His brother,
Donald, recently released from prison, is unemployed and essentially homeless.
"It's like he's in a hole with no way out," Ms. Bolden said of Donald she drizzled honey on a homemade
biscuit in her tidy kitchen. "The other day he came in and said, 'Ain't that a shame: I'm 30 years old and
carrying my life around in a backpack.' It broke my heart."