Each morning for the last 65 years, 93 years old Ed Shepard has walked to work to open up the Union 76 service station, in rolling hills of West Virginia coal country.

When he looks out his window, he can see a sweeping mural that shows what life in Welch used to be like. A United Cigars shop on one side of the street, a Western Union sign on the other. Lines of cars stretch into the distance. Even Shepard himself , who is as much a fixture of Welch as any of its buildings  is in the mural, a blue cap perched on his head. Shepard said in an interview , "There wasn't ten square feet in this town that didn't have a successful business in it, a business of every kind. No matter what you wanted or needed, you could buy it in Welch."

Now it's a place, people who live here said that politicians use as a convenient photo op and that the federal government has left behind, a sentiment common among white working class voters. 56% of non-college educated whites said that  the government in Washington does not represent them. According to a new poll conducted by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation. And two-thirds say they are dissatisfied with the influence people like them have on politics.

Locals referred to the once-bustling Welch as "Little New York," but now the town and the county around it are slowly slipping away. The storefronts have been  empty. The buildings and houses have been  crumbling with decay.

By Prakriti Neogi