R. Saunders - Underground and Radioactive

One day I told Al how glad I was that the day was almost over. Belying his nineteen years, he told me we would never have that day back, so, no, it was not a good thing the day was over. That was the Al Friedt credo and how he lived and worked.

Al worked so hard there were times I stood watching and laughing inside as he literally ran from place to place in the stope. I thought Al was the kind of guy that would make a great ballroom miner. He moved so fast I don’t know that a slab would ever be able to catch him. The speed at which Al worked combined with his enthusiasm made it appear to me that he was headed for the stratosphere of the mining elite one day, and I doubted he would be with me long.

Still being on the twelve-hour shift and seeing as we got along so well together, Al and I decided we would try carpooling. So Al who lived in Grants, wouldn’t have to drive all the way out to San Rafael, I drove into Milan on the days Al drove and parked my El Camino in an empty lot.

It was quite a sight when, on the first day of Al’s week to drive, he drove up in his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. It was a slant-back, dark-green machine with some distinctive features.

The rear end had been lifted to an almost ridiculous level, and to such an extent that in order to stay seated on the inclined passenger seat, I sometimes had to brace myself with my hands on the dashboard. The nose of the car was pointed into the ground, and just getting into the car was an ordeal. I learned to open the door and hold it with my right hand; then, putting my left hand on the dashboard, I slid in and pulled the door closed all in one motion. It was the only car I have ever had to fight my way inside.

Once in and semi-seated, I looked around the interior and noticed that everything in the car was covered with a fuzzy fabric of some kind. It was on the seats, the dashboard, the instrument cluster, the rearview mirror, the steering wheel, the rear seating area, the arm rests, and almost every other part of the passenger compartment. He topped it off with fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Considering Al’s humor allotment, I might have been taking a chance, but without thinking I blurted out, “It’s a Fuzzmobile. Have you thought about fuzzwall tires?” From then on it was the Fuzzmobile.

The Fuzzmobile had seat belts, so although we seemed to be going down the road in a position somewhere between sitting and standing, it was possible to stay fastened into the passenger seat.

I had a lot of fun riding in the Fuzzmobile, and no matter how much I kidded Al about the car, he never objected. If I pointed out a spot in the car that he might have missed fuzzing over, he would have some fuzz on it the next time I saw it. He must have had quite a supply of fuzzy material at home. I never did convince him to go with the fuzzwalls, though.

Even with Al, who I liked, I never could get comfortable in carpooling. So, despite my love of the Fuzzmobile and recognizing Al as being one of the safer drivers of my carpool experiences, I went back to driving myself to work.

The Fuzzmobile was not long for the commute out to Ambrosia Lake. Shortly after I stopped riding with Al, he either had an accident in it or decided to quit subjecting the car to the abuse of the long commute.

Al replaced the Fuzzmobile with one of the all-time classic vehicles in commuting history.

Al lived at home. I think his parents must have charged him quite a lot in rent because, although he was making good money for a nineteen-year-old, he always seemed to be broke. As a result, he replaced the relatively luxurious Fuzzmobile with one of the worst-looking, used-up, broken-down pickup trucks I’d ever seen.

At one time the truck had probably been a 1960s Ford, but it was hard to tell as all the identifying emblems were gone. Most of us at the mine agreed that it had the general shape of a Ford, but we had no idea what model it might have been.

Whatever interior insignia had come with the truck was long gone, along with the paint, bumpers, tailgate, and grille. Al covered the exterior with several cans, more or less, of black spray paint.

Though not exactly the chick magnet that the Fuzzmobile was, the truck did run and made the sixty-mile round trip to and from the mine every day with no problem, except for one.

The commute out thirty miles to Ambrosia Lake went by way of Route 53 in Milan to Route 334 to Route 509, all two-lane roads. What wasn’t being mined was mostly open-range ranch land.

There is a long, flat sweeping curve along Route 334 that, if you were going slow enough to look, opens up into a beautiful panorama of the surrounding desert. Few miners were interested in savoring beautiful vistas while on the way to or returning from work. The speeds at which commuters traveled the long curve in the road put a good deal of centrifugal stress on both vehicle and occupants. I was always holding on to something in an attempt to stay seated through this curve during my time commuting with Boots, for example.

After my shift one afternoon, it so happened that Al was right behind me as we left work and drove down 509. He was still there when we made the turn onto 334. I would usually make the trip at a conservative eighty to eighty-five miles per hour. Al’s truck could hardly make eighty-five miles per hour, but he had managed to keep up, and as we entered the long, sweeping curve, he was still behind me.

Halfway through the turn, I looked in my rearview mirror, and there I saw Al’s right front wheel bouncing off down the road, over a small hill, and onto range land, where it continued in high arching bounces until it bounced out of sight.

To my amazement Al was still right behind me, cruising along at eighty miles an hour on three wheels. I was laughing so hard it was blind luck that I didn’t run off the road. He never stopped. He had enough weight on the left side of the truck to keep it upright, so he kept on coming all the way around the curve but then had slowed considerably, and I lost sight of him. I couldn’t let this one go, so I turned around and went back.

Al’s truck, now off the road on the shoulder, rested on what was left of the right front axle. The axle had broken off. That will happen when a wheel turns on bearings that have been screaming for grease for a month. Al said he didn’t know what the noise was, so he’d kept on driving.

Al was a level-headed, even-tempered guy who rarely got upset about anything. The twelve-hour shifts were exhausting week after week, but he never complained about it. As in any job, if you get tired, you make mistakes. Mining is one of the occupations in which mistakes can carry a high price tag, so we all tried to keep them to a minimum.

I was doing a good job looking after Al, but he worked so hard and fast it was difficult. Considering the combination of fatigue and the speed at which we worked, something was bound to happen, and it did.

Our stope was looking good. We continued to enlarge it until it was four stories of timber sets. We were filling the chute on a regular basis and making decent money. I always gave Al four hours of contract time, so he was happy, and I was happy with my thirty dollars an hour. All in all, we had a good working stope going.

Remembering how Cal rarely let me drill, I made it a point to teach Al as much as I knew about drilling, letting him drill rounds now and then. He picked it up quickly and loved it as much as I did.

One day we were working on the third level. We had blasted out the ore on the first two levels but hadn’t mucked it because our chute was full, and as usual I was having a hard time getting a motorman to pull it.

We had a large muck pile going, having blasted out two stories’ worth. In the meantime, we could still go up to the third level and keep drilling and blasting.