Young people in Kermit, West Virginia have few places to go on a Friday night — no movie theater, bowling alley or mall — so they often wind up setting bonfires and tossing back beers in the pitch-black woods of Marrowbone Creek.

After New Orleans’s destruction, politicians and commentators predicted that Hurricane Katrina would force the nation to focus on the plight of poor people. If that were to happen, this swath of lush, green central Appalachia, where President Lyndon B. Johnson launched his “War on Poverty” more than 40 years ago, would once again be a prime candidate for attention. It leads the nation in disabilities, deaths by preventable diseases, toothlessness and prescription drug abuse, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mingo County’s poverty rate, 29.7 percent, is slightly higher than that of pre-Katrina New Orleans. Coal is the big industry, but mining jobs are as rare as luck. People make do any way they can, such as by junking.

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