conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book about Coalwood, Rocket, Boys entitled The Coalwood Way?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Coalwood Way: It is now 1959.\nThe Rocket Boys are still perfecting their handmade rockets and, as high school seniors, preparing for their futures.\nHomer is determined to prove to his father that he is college material, but with the mine perilously close to running out of coal and shutting down, the prospects for the future of any of Coalwood's children is bleak.\nMiners have lost their jobs and homes, public services have been cut to residences in the outlying areas, and Homer's father is faced with initiating an extremely dangerous and controversial new mining method in order to save the town and the mine from oblivion.\nHomer's mother feels increasingly cut off from her husband and the townspeople as her role as the mine superintendent's wife places her at odds with the wives of the union workers.\nOptimism is hard to come by in the bleak winter months of the last year of the 1950s, and Homer is overcome with an overriding sense of gloom with his future so uncertain.\nThe faith and hope of these hard working people, however, form the basis for an uplifting memoir, as Sonny and his friends resurrect the Spirit of Christmas when Coalwood need it the most.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Coalwood Way
  MEMOIRS ARE TOUGH things to write. How can you remember what somebody said or did forty years ago? I don't have an answer. All I know is that I do. I've changed a few names and disguised some other folks to protect them but, otherwise, this is pretty much the way it happened, I swan.
  OF ALL THE lessons I learned when I built my rockets, the most important were not about chemistry, physics, or metallurgy, but of virtues, sins, and other true things that shape us as surely as rivers carve valleys, or rain melts mountains, or currents push apart the sea. I would learn these lessons at a time when Coalwood, the mining town where I had lived my entire life, was just beginning to fade away. Yet, as the fall of 1959 began, and the leaves on the trees in the forests that surrounded us began to explode in spectacular color, Coalwood's men still walked with a trudging grace to and from the vast, deep mine, and its women bustled in and out of the company stores and fought the coal dust that drifted into their homes. In the dark old schools, the children learned and the teachers taught, and, in snowy white churches built on hillside cuts, the preachers preached, and God, who we had no doubt was also a West Virginian, was surely doing His work in heaven, too. At the abandoned slack dump we called Cape Coalwood, rockets still leapt into the air, and boyish voices yet echoed between ancient, worn mountains beneath a pale and watchful sky. Coalwood endured as it always had, but a wheel was turning that would change nearly everything, and no one, not even my father, would be able to stop it. When that brittle parchment autumn turned into our deepest, whitest winter, this and many other lessons would be taught. Though they were hard and sometimes cruel things to learn, they were true, and true things, as the people of Coalwood saw fit to teach me, are always filled with a shining glory.
  TO me, there was no better time to launch a rocket than in the fall, especially a West Virginia fall. There seemed to be a cool, dry energy in the air that filled us with a renewed sense of hope and optimism. I had always believed that our rockets were lifted as much by our dreams as by burning propellant, and as the lazy summer faded and a northerly wind swept down on us with its lively breath, anything seemed possible. It was also when the school year started and I always felt an excitement stir within me at the thought of learning new and wonderful things. Fall had other marvels, too. At the Cape, we were often treated to V-shaped flotillas of migrating Canadian geese, bound from the far north to places we had only read about or imagined. We always stopped our rocket preparations to gaze longingly at the great creatures as they winged their way high overhead, and to listen to their joyful honking that seemed to be calling us to join them. "If only we could," Sherman said once to my comment. "Even for just a moment, to look down on our mountains and see them the same as angels." Sherman always liked to remind us that we lived in a beautiful place and I guess we did, although sometimes it was easy to forget, especially since we'd never known anywhere else.
  Once, a rare snow goose, as purely white as moonbeams, landed on the old slack dump, perhaps fooled by the reflection from the slick surface of the coal tailings. We gathered around the great strutting bird, awed by the sight of her. Then I noticed that her wing tips were as black as the faces of Coalwood miners after a shift. O'Dell said the reason for the black tips was so the geese could see each other inside a white cloud. O'Dell knew a lot about animals so I believed his explanation, but it got me off to thinking. How did the snow geese decide what colors their feathers would be? Did they all get together up north somewhere a million years ago and take a vote? It was a mystery and the snow goose made no comment. She just looked annoyed. When she tired of us gawking at her, she flapped her wings and continued her journey, and I confess I was relieved. I knew the snow goose did not belong in Coalwood. Some people, especially my mother, said neither did I.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I chuckled. "It doesn't work that way. The mine roofs are held up with posts or roof bolts when they take the coal out."
  The last coal car finally trundled past followed by its red caboose. A man on its back platform raised his hand to us. "Sonny, are you mad at me?" Ginger asked. "Betty Jane said you wanted to ask me to the Christmas Formal and, to tell you the truth, I would go with you if I could. But I can't. I promised Stuart I'd go to his formal at Welch High. It's on the same night as Big Creek's."
  I was in a fatalistic mood. "You ever want anything," I said, "just call on me. I'll be there like a rocket."
  Ginger walked back toward the Owl's Nest and the Dugout. I watched her and then turned back to the Dry Fork River. I leaned on the bridge rail, listening to the low grumble of the coal train already miles down the valley. By now, I thought, it was probably passing Miss Riley's house. I hoped Jake was visiting her.
  I DROVE MOM to church the next morning. Icicles hung from the roofs of the houses along Main Street Row, and I saw a thin layer of ice coating the creek when we went over the bridge that led to Coalwood Main. It didn't look like it was going to get much above freezing all day. Snow clouds hurried overhead, spitting occasional, indecisive flurries.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I chuckled. "It doesn't work that way. The mine roofs are held up with posts or roof bolts when they take the coal out."
  The last coal car finally trundled past followed by its red caboose. A man on its back platform raised his hand to us. "Sonny, are you mad at me?" Ginger asked. "Betty Jane said you wanted to ask me to the Christmas Formal and, to tell you the truth, I would go with you if I could. But I can't. I promised Stuart I'd go to his formal at Welch High. It's on the same night as Big Creek's."
  I was in a fatalistic mood. "You ever want anything," I said, "just call on me. I'll be there like a rocket."
  Ginger walked back toward the Owl's Nest and the Dugout. I watched her and then turned back to the Dry Fork River. I leaned on the bridge rail, listening to the low grumble of the coal train already miles down the valley. By now, I thought, it was probably passing Miss Riley's house. I hoped Jake was visiting her.
  I DROVE MOM to church the next morning. Icicles hung from the roofs of the houses along Main Street Row, and I saw a thin layer of ice coating the creek when we went over the bridge that led to Coalwood Main. It didn't look like it was going to get much above freezing all day.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I realized that I wasn't in a debate but in the midst of a typical Elsie Hickam discussion, which meant she was telling me whatever she wanted to tell me and then I was supposed to do exactly what she said. I fumbled for a response but only managed a feeble question. "How's Chipper?" I asked. It was the best I could do while I tried to think of some way out of her box.
  Chipper was the meanest squirrel who ever drew breath. Even so, I liked him, mainly because he usually took great care to bite my brother before he got around to me. "How's the beach?" I asked, still flailing.
  And with that, perhaps thinking of the money she was spending on the long-distance call, she hung up. I sat in the booth for a while, the receiver still in my hand. When I looked up, I found Butch watching me with a worried expression. "Trouble?" he asked.