FLEMING-NEON, Ky. (AP) – Barely a week after floodwaters swept downtown and left a foot of mud and twisted, gutted buildings along Main Street, an incongruous sight appeared: A flashing sign declaring JR’s Barber Shop “OPEN.”
As National Guard troops patrolled outside and volunteers on backhoes mounded up debris, J.R. Collins stood behind his barber chair, giving a touchup to one of his regulars. Like most in Fleming-Neon, Collins comes from a family built on mining – both his grandfathers worked in coal – and he has stayed in the close-knit town even as the industry shrank and others fled. Those who remain are determined to prove their community is about more than coal.
And they’ve come together to make sure Collins’ barber shop and other businesses reopen amid the devastating floods that have killed more than three dozen in eastern Kentucky.
“They were there with shovels and squeegees and water, and people packing, and kids helping,” Collins said above the din of air conditioning and a dehumidifier in his shop. “It’s good, hard-working people that like to help people out and got each other’s back.”
Fleming-Neon was once two towns: Fleming, a company town founded in the early 1900s by the Elkhorn Coal Corp. for the sole purpose of mining, and Neon, a former logging camp.