R. Saunders - Underground and Radioactive

James, as with the other helpers, swore he wouldn’t work in the stope again. The geologist took a more pragmatic view and attempted to explain the light to us as possibly being static electricity generated by the shifting ground.

“You see, uranium is a metal, and if large slabs of it grate against each other, it could cause static electricity,” he explained.

Now he had me laughing. “Oh, bullshit,” I said.

“No, it’s true; it could happen, and maybe that’s what’s going on.”

I didn’t know much about geology, but slabs of shifting uranium ore causing static electricity? I wasn’t buying that, and even if it were true, I had never heard of static electricity remaining stationary for extended periods.

After the shift, the geologist, James, and I went to see Shotgun. James explained how he wasn’t working in a haunted stope, and the geologist explained his theory of the earth moving, possibly causing static electricity.

I think in the end Shotgun cared as much about whatever the mysterious light was as I did, which is to say, not at all. It wasn’t bothering anyone and, other than causing one helper after another to flee the stope, wasn’t hampering production.

If I had been on the hook with Shotgun, I was off it now. I could get back to work, albeit with yet another helper.

So it was that the era of the mysterious light in stope 812 continued on with a new helper being assigned to me, this time one of the best I ever knew.

It was April, and the weather was changing on the high plains of west ern New Mexico. The wind begins to blow nonstop around then, and for the next two months, it howled relentlessly twenty-four hours a day.

I did all I could to keep the blowing dust out of my home and car, but nothing seemed to work, as the ultrafine particles blowing off the desert collected in every nook and cranny.

The cacophonous roar of the wind wore on my psyche, slowly driving me to distraction. The area surrounding Grants and Milan is a wonderfully scenic area of New Mexico, but that wind I could have done without.

Going underground was my only respite where, on the 1–5 level anyway, there were only pleasant breezes and uniform temperatures. Spring, summer, fall, or winter, it was always between sixty-five and seventy degrees.

During the windy season, I returned home from work one afternoon, and there waiting in front of my house was Greg Hornaday. He’d been the one who brought me out to New Mexico and to the fine job at Kerr-McGee Section 35.

Some months earlier, Hornaday had left Grants, possibly to return to Illinois for a break or maybe Wyoming to mine. I don’t recall which. When he left he hadn’t been very specific about his plans, so I might never have really known.

I was well entrenched when he decided to leave, so it wasn’t as disappointing as it might have been a few months earlier. He had always been a nice guy with whom I got along well. But being fairly satisfied with my progress at work and having access to many stories, fascinating characters, and more money than I thought I’d ever need, I’d contentedly gone on alone.

Now Hornaday was back, and it was good to see him, but I was especially happy to have someone to have dinner with on that particularly day and to escape the maddening wind. One way to do that was the Holiday Inn restaurant and bar.

Over the years I’ve described Grants in any number of ways. Depending in what context the question is asked, I’ll talk about how Grants looked like a boomtown in old western movies, with cowboys or miners running wild in the streets, and suggesting automobiles be substituted for horses in the conjured image. If it never got that wild, it still makes for a decent story and a good picture. It also more accurately conveys my and many of my fellow miners’ state of mind.

I might also answer that Grants represented the excitement and romance of the old West. There was plenty of excitement, but with a man/woman ratio of about ten to one, there wasn’t much romance for young, single guys. That’s what made meeting Ana Maria all the more implausible.

The Grants Holiday Inn restaurant and lounge was at the time one of the more popular high-end spots in town, geared more toward visiting mining company officials than miners. Executives from Kerr-McGee, Homestake, Ranchers, United, Philips, and many other companies stayed in the hotel and relaxed in the restaurant and lounge, making it a very busy place and, far different than the saloons I was used to. There was always a conversation going on that more often than not had something to do with mining somewhere in the world.

Greg and I drove over to the Holiday Inn and before dinner took seats at the bar, where I’m sure we discussed something about what he’d been doing and where he’d been, but I don’t remember any of that conversation. I probably didn’t hear much of what he said anyway because behind the bar was a beautiful bartender, Ana Maria.

It was early, there weren’t many people at the bar, and Ana Maria was quite friendly and talkative—a real treat since there hadn’t been many women around to talk to for quite some time, it seemed.

A real beauty, Ana Maria had moved with her family from Guadalajara to Grants. Her father, a true patriarch in every sense, had since passed on, leaving his eldest son to run the family business. He and his brothers owned a successful exploration drilling company in Grants and were doing well. Ana Maria, still living at home, was making her own way working in a variety of jobs including the one at the Holiday Inn tending bar.

I was pleasantly surprised that she spoke more than a few words to me that night. I picked up the accent right away, and when she asked who I was, I changed my name to Rogelio on the spot. Having taken some Spanish in high school and college, I felt confident that I could pass myself off as Mexican.

It was ridiculous, I know, but Ana Maria, good natured as she was, went along with the joke, and we had a nice enough conversation so that by the time Hornaday and I had to leave, Ana Maria had agreed to maybe meet me at the stock-car dirt track the following Sunday afternoon. Maybe was good enough for me.

There weren’t a lot of things to do for recreation around Grants at the time other than rodeos, enjoying hikes in the nearby mountains and stock-car racing. There was a dirt track just northwest of town where races were run almost about every Sunday during the summer months. The track had little if anything, in the way of spectator seating, so many of us would drive our vehicles up to the fence that ringed the track for a nice up-close view of the racing action.

There were several miners in the area who liked to build and race modified stock-cars, most of which looked more like former demolition derby entrants. Nonetheless, the races at the small, quarter-mile track attracted decent crowds on Sundays.

New Mexico allowed no alcohol sales on Sunday at the time, and a few enterprising souls showed up with cases of beer that they would offer for sale to racing fans. The price for a beer was ridiculously inflated, but people paid it.

I had noticed that many beer-drinking mine workers were very poor planners. Rather than double their beer purchase on Saturday and save half for Sunday, they either drank it all on Saturday or forgot about Sunday altogether. Fortunately for them beer was available on Sunday in spots. For example, there was a business in a small village aptly named Budville about twenty-five miles east of Grants off I-40 that illegally sold beer on Sunday for double the regular price. First-time customers had to be shown the way to a side window on a crumbling adobe structure where the transactions were made.

Not being a beer lover, I only showed up at the track from time to time for the exciting racing and now for the possibility that Ana Maria might appear.