R. Saunders - Underground and Radioactive

I had my new gear, though, and thought I was ready for work underground. The truth was that, other than being more than willing, I was not ready when I showed up for my first day at Kermac Section 35.

With an armful of new gear, new clothes and boots, I reported to Shotgun’s office that first day when I should have been reporting to Mel Vigil’s office. That didn’t go well as Shotgun, looking annoyed, just told me to go see Mel and he’d get me started. Chain of command. Should have known that.

Mel was OK with me, although he still had that kind of bemused look. He told me I was assigned to Frankie Garcia’s crew and to find Frankie and let him know who I was, after which Frankie would assign me to various jobs. But first I needed one of those baskets, so Mel told me which was mine.

Leaving Mel’s office, I went out into the Dry, which was really alive with activity as a hundred men were busy changing into their work gear. I was told where Frankie Garcia was, so I found him and told him who I was. He gave me a token with my name stamped on it and instructed me to put myself on the out board, get a charged battery and headlamp from the charging rack, and then get changed. After that I was to report to him in the lunchroom on the 1–5 level.

Everyone who goes underground has his name punched or written onto a small metal token that is then hung on the “in” board or the “out” board. This signifies whether you are in the mine or out of the mine and helps to keep track of where everyone is. This is done underground too by way of a board in the lunchroom of whatever level you work on.

Next I went over to the charging rack where large batteries were stored and charged. The battery attaches to the miner’s belt. A cord with a headlamp attached is connected to the battery, and the headlamp is connected to the miner’s helmet.

At the end of each shift, workers return their batteries to the charging rack, where it takes a few hours for them to recharge. Many times batteries didn’t fully charge, leaving the user literally in the dark. More on that later, but for now just know it’s not a good thing to experience.

Tagged out and with battery and lamp in hand, I found my basket number. As luck would have it, my basket was located right between two of the most experienced miners at Section 35, Dobbs and Gibson. If I ever did know their first names I’ve long since forgotten them, but I only ever called them Dobbs and Gibson.

I was very fortunate really that Dobbs and Gibson, besides being highly skilled and experienced longtime miners, also happened to be tolerant of new guys, as they were both quite friendly that day in explaining to me how to raise and lower my basket.

It didn’t take long to change out into my new, never-used gear that presented quite a sight, I’m sure, with my new clothes and boots, shiny hard hat, and miner’s belt. As an extra added bonus to the amusement of the seasoned hands, I was wearing my brand-new, black, thick-rimmed safety glasses that, although very useful and adding significantly to safety, looked preposterous on a new guy and were rarely seen on anyone with experience.

It didn’t take me long to realize the proper way to wear safety glasses is to fasten wire around the arms and hang them from your neck—sort of like a librarian but much dirtier.

Of course a new hand discovered none of this until he walked out for the first time to the hoist, where he, in his greenhorn outfit, becomes the center of attention, or the exact opposite of what every new hire would aspire to be among a group of experienced miners, helpers, laborers, and others.

The worst of it was that because I was the only new hand my first day, there wasn’t anyone who could look more ridiculous than I did to deflect at least some of the unwanted attention. I definitely contrasted sharply with everyone else, from the most experienced hand to the guy in the middle of his second week.

Experienced hands wore hard hats that had been hit many times over on a daily basis. Their clothes were a kind of universal dark gray with the oil, grease, and grime so ingrained into the fabric that no amount of washing could get them clean.

All the experienced men wore their miner’s lamps draped around their necks until they got underground, where they would attach them to their helmets. Their miner’s belt usually sagged to one side partly because of the combined weight of the lamp battery and self-rescue device and partly out of a sense of a miner’s fashion. Yes, it was quite a contrast to see the old and new standing around waiting for a ride down.

In retrospect I should have been fairly upset with my pal Greg Hornaday for not telling me all the things I needed to know about what an underground worker needs to look like and wear. Later in my career, I found the look of the new guy to be one of the funnier, more entertaining sights we would see above ground, so I was pleased to have provided some comic relief to my associates during those first few days. So thanks a lot, Greg, but OK, I get it.

I’m sure that when I showed up by the hoist, someone elbowed someone and said under his breath something like what I always later said: “Oh my God, pard, look at this guy. What the hell is this?” What the hell is right.

I was, however, humbled to have suffered the burden of the new hand alone that first day, because it seemed from then on that first-time hires seemed to show up in groups of three or four. There they were, having found one another, huddled by the hoist in their own small group, one looking more absurd than the other. I always imagined I wouldn’t have been the most ridiculous looking of my group, but I’ll never know.

The appearance of a new hand waiting for his first ride down into the mine was certainly entertaining, but what I think most of the old hands found most amusing was their knowing what the new hand would be going through those first few days and weeks underground. Mercifully the old hands mostly stood quietly observing, being keenly aware of the angst the new guy was experiencing. It wasn’t a feeling you would wish on anyone but something the new hand had to accept and endure.

Later on when I saw new hands standing around on the surface, I always wondered if they’d make it. I do not so much mean whether the person could do the work, but whether they would panic when they got off the cage, and head right back up to the surface as sometimes happened.

I might have looked ridiculous the first day I showed up, but I was going to make it. I was sure of that.

Earlier I mentioned the headframes, and now I was getting my first close-up view of them. They sat directly over the main vertical shaft into the mine.

In the Ambrosia Lake area and in many other mining areas around the world, these are large triangular steel structures of fifty feet up to over two hundred feet. Although they can be made of wood, such as what was used in the earliest days of mining, or of concrete, at Ambrosia Lake, they were predominantly steel.

Depending on where a miner came from, I would hear the headframe referred to as a hoist frame, headstock frame, or simply the shaft. The function of the headframe is to provide support for the hoisting of people and ore. Large, heavy cable lies over wheels on top of the headframe, running back a couple of hundred feet or more to a large drum located in the hoist room, over which the cable is wound or unwound. Usually a single operator, or hoistman, is in charge of operating the raising and lowering of personnel, materiel, and ore by a system of clutches and levers.