PIKEVILLE, Ky. _ The small green sign outside the employment center in this eastern Kentucky town said "JOB FAIR" and "TODAY!!" Inside, people hunched over applications for coal mining jobs in the western part of the state, and in Illinois and Indiana.
Cy Robinette and his son, Derrick, came out into the humid air. They had both been miners since high school _ 29 years for Cy, 47, and eight years for Derrick, 27. Now the coal industry had collapsed, and they were getting out.
"There's nothing here no more," Cy said, leaning against a railing. The corners of his eyes creased beneath his baseball cap. He and his son didn't have their hearts set on mining; they were hoping to land jobs at the Johnson Controls manufacturing plant near Cincinnati.
It's never been easy to make a living in central Appalachia's narrow valleys. Without coal, it's become a whole lot harder. Mining jobs were some of the best-paying in the area, and the industry supported an array of other professions, from truck drivers to personal injury lawyers.
Today about 9 percent of eastern Kentuckians are out of work. Thirty percent live in poverty, according to the most recent federal statistics. Rates of drug overdose deaths, cancer, diabetes and disability are high.
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to rejuvenate the coal industry by renegotiating trade deals and rolling back environmental regulations. That might bring back some jobs, but it won't bring back the employment levels of the 1980s or '90s.
Even U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and a leading advocate for the industry, said it's "hard to tell" if reducing regulation will bring back coal jobs.
So eastern Kentuckians are left weighing their options. Some laid-off workers are leaving and others are retraining for jobs in fields such as electrical work and nursing. But reinvention isn't for everyone. Some locals are too old, sick or poor to restart their lives somewhere else. And retraining isn't a surefire way to get a new job in a place where so few employers are hiring.
Local leaders have been doing everything they can to increase jobs in industries such as health care and retail and to attract new industries that pay well. Trump's election won't stop those efforts, said Pikeville City Manager Donovan Blackburn.
Devin Stephenson, president of Big Sandy Community and Technical College, a technical college with a campus in Pikeville, knows the region is racing against time.
"There is no question _ no question _ that we only get one shot at transforming this economy right now. We have one shot," Stephenson said.
