For those who travel between State College and Pittsburgh, the drive, made mostly on two-laned, pot-holed roads, is scenic only in the growing months when a flourish of forgiving foliage overtakes gutted and gullied strip-mined hillsides.

And here, in Cambria and Indiana counties among the Allegheny Mountains, exist hundreds of small coal-mining towns, sprinkled throughout the shadows of Paleozoic valleys like airborne dandelion in the spring.

Many of these towns wear the names of Catholic saints -- St. Boniface, St. Augustine, St. Benedict. Other towns reflect early industry -- Fallen Timber, Tunnel Hill, Coalport.

But none of these towns can escape the destiny of being shaped by coal: the primordial mix of trees, shrubs and vines that stewed in swamps for several million years before settling into seams of complex carbon compounds that eventually became the life support systems of these towns.

Most of the people in these towns can't escape the destiny of being shaped by the coal mining industry. Like dealing with the devil, miners always know they can lose quickly and mercilessly -- hearing, sight, thumbs, toes. A good back is almost a requisite sacrifice.

Miners trust actions over words and believe in human domination over machines; they also know that timber cracks, and longwalls can collapse.

I grew up in one of those mining towns named Barnesboro, which was founded in the late 1800s by Thomas Barnes, an Englishman from Lancashire who lived in Philipsburg and made his mining fortune during the late 1800s.

Barnesboro was settled by Poles, Italians and Slovaks, who claim racial diversity by the existence of the Polish Legion, The Sons of Italy and the Slovak Club.

I'm told that the mine bosses deliberately recruited miners from different European countries to prevent the workers from communicating and organizing. But the miners did. Barnesboro was a town heavily populated and influenced by the United Mine Workers.

Recently though, the number of Pennsylvania miners has decreased dramatically, and there isn't much that anyone can do about it, not even the UMW.

In the past three years, more than 3,000 miners in a two-county area have lost their jobs. Some people blame politicians; others blame foreign coal. But the area's product, bituminous stock, a metallurgical coal used for producing coke in the steel-making process, is known to contribute to acid rain.

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A few miles down the road from my parents' house lies another small town named Marstellar. The people who live here call it Mosscreek, while any native knows it is pronounced "Mosscrick."

Janice Greenawalt and her husband Tom, a laid-off miner, and their two children live here in a partially-renovated company house.

Almost every house in Mosscreek looks like the one next to it since Mosscreek grew in the early 1900s as a typical company town that provided residents with regulated goods from the company store and identical row houses.

Janice tells me she grew up a few houses down the street, and that one day in 1961 when she was six, her mother moved the entire family there -- lock, stock and barrel -- while her father was at work in the mines because the houses on this row (called Bosses Row in the 1940s) had indoor plumbing.

When I go to meet Janice for the first time, I contend with the remnants of the March snow. The road to her house is unpaved, gouged and uncleared. No guardrails.

The embankment on the side slopes down a gentle 100 feet or so. Even in first gear, my car sashays back and forth. Some of the ruts are so wide my car can't straddle them.

Two cars sit in Janice's front yard. A blue Chevette has its hood open with the air filter housing pulled out. Neither car runs today.

Janice greets me on the porch, which is constructed of unfinished particle board. She leans on a cane. A hip-replacement operation in November limits her mobility. She tells me since Tom's been laid off, they have good days and bad days. This is not a good day.

Janice is in her early 30s, but if she didn't have a few streaks of gray, I would guess early 20s. She wears no makeup and has distrusting eyes.

She's trained as a beautician, but never worked because when Tom was making good money in the mines, they decided her place was at home, especially since one daughter suffered from chronic asthma.

She says she regrets not working when she could have, but she can't do much these days anyway.

Tom works as a supervisor at the Seldom Seen Vally Mine, which is a local tourist spot. But he can't find a full-time job. Recently, a machine shop in the area advertised for full-time machinists for $4.00 an hour. Thirty jobs were available. Five hundred people applied.

Tom wants to take some courses, but if he invests money in a class and the unemployment office calls he would have to take the job. Otherwise, he'll lose his unemployment. He's taking a home course in small engine repair. In a mine accident a piece of steel banding lacerated his face; Tom is legally blind in one eye.

Tom and Janice raise collies. But their female, Gypsy, lost her milk and the recent litter died. Tom couldn't get home because of the ice storm last week, and Janice couldn't get out to the pens because of her hip. They also lost the $1,000 the litter would have brought.

The Greenawalt's story isn't much different from those of other laid-off miners in the area. Janice has little faith that the mines will come back; but she has immense faith in God, without which, she says, she wouldn't have been able to survive this long.

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Both of my grandfathers were coal miners. Both had black lungs. I grew up knowing both the perils and benefits of being a miner.

One grandfather used to tell me that in the 1930s miners saved crumbs to feed the rats in the mines. After awhile, the rats would show up at lunchtime expecting to be fed. When the rats didn't come, the miners knew a cave-in was imminent.

The rats aren't coming back.