R. Saunders - Underground and Radioactive

Having made my decision, I slowly shuffled my way back to the loading dock where, incredibly, Jackson was again asleep. I thought, Just great—now I have to wake him up and then fire him. So that’s what I did.

“Listen, Officer Jackson, sorry, but Mr. Carter says I have to let you go.”

“Let me go. I’m fired?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“But I have tuition and bills.”

Like that was what I needed to hear. I just said, “I know. Mr. Carter said I have to let you go.”

“I’m fired?”

“Yeah. I’m really sorry.”

“Damn.”

With that Jackson dejectedly gathered his books and coat and slowly made his way out of the building. It hadn’t been a good night for Officer Jackson or for Sergeant Saunders.

I returned to the sergeant’s desk, where, perhaps mercifully, Mr. Carter, having found what he had come for and being anxious to get back home and into bed, didn’t even want to visit another post.

Nor did he want to fire me. Jackson’s sleeping had been enough. Mr. Carter’s existence, and mine, for that matter, could now be more comfortably justified to corporate management. This proved we were doing something.

The incident with Jackson was something I didn’t enjoy, and I vowed to make some changes and look for something else to do.

There I was: a college graduate working graveyard shift, making $2.35 an hour, with a car on its last legs, and saddled with some responsibility I didn’t care for. That’s about the time I heard a knock on my door.

After graduating from Wesleyan, a friend of mine, Greg Hornaday,  had made his way to Grants, New Mexico, where he’d found a boomtown that proclaimed itself “The Uranium Capital of the World.”

When I heard a knock on my door one afternoon, there was Greg.

He had already started working underground with an outfit called Kermac. He worked at a place called Section 35 and already had some fascinating stories to tell of life underground.

The stories he told of the little city of Grants, New Mexico, made me think of the Wild, Wild West, which was appealing, and he was making what sounded to me like great money. I don’t recall what it was, but it was a lot more than the $2.35 an hour I was making working for Wackenhut.

He told me about the mine superintendent, Shotgun Buchanan, and how he needed more hands at the mine. I could have a job if I wanted one despite never having worked underground.

The prospect of being a miner sounded appealing, as did being out in the Wild West, having learned something of it from my old roommate Gary Mitchell, and so did the money I could make.

I thought it over for a day or so and decided that was the place for me.

It took me less than a day to pack everything up, tell Mr. Carter I was leaving, get rid of my car (which would never make the thirteen-hundred-mile trip), and prepare for a new adventure.

Never mind that I really had no job, no place to live, no car, and no money. This was too good to pass up.

It was a long trip out to New Mexico in Greg’s 1967 Chevrolet sedan. I’m not really sensitive to motion, be it in a boat or an airplane, but riding in a car with no shock absorbers was too much even for me. I threw up a couple of times on the trip out, so it wasn’t a great start.

Greg had arranged for us both to stay at the house of an acquaintance of his temporarily, so everything was set. For me that meant a sleeping bag on the floor, but Greg had been staying there awhile, so he had better accommodations.

While Greg had assured me that my hiring on at Kermac, a subsidiary of Kerr-McGee, was a done deal, I was still anxious to get out to the mine to take care of whatever formalities there were and get to work. I was especially interested in meeting the mine superintendent whom I’d heard so much about, Shotgun Buchanan. I didn’t know how one acquired a nickname like Shotgun, but it sure did sound interesting. Unfortunately, I never found anyone who knew or was willing to tell the real story behind the name.

Fortunately, Greg was working swing shift, so he was able to take me out to the mine, known simply as Section 35, bright and early Monday morning.

Most of the mines in the Ambrosia Lake area were somewhere between thirty and forty miles northwest of Grants via NM 605 and NM 509. Judging from the sheer volume of traffic, it looked as if there were a lot of workers at the many Ambrosia Lake mining and milling operations, and it seemed everyone was in a real hurry to get to work.

Traffic was mostly bumper to bumper the entire way along the two-lane road and at least seventy-five to eighty miles per hour. I thought, Not all these people can be running late, so if they really want to get to work in a hurry, that must mean their jobs are a lot of fun.

That kind of thinking showed a little naiveté. Nobody out there was in a hurry because their jobs were fun. It was the driving itself that was fun: part speed and part racing. After making the commute awhile, I came to understand that myself. The drive to work and back really was fun.

There were heavy ore trucks whizzing along among the cars and other smaller vehicles at the same speeds, hauling the end product of all the mining that was going on to one of several area mills, that were the initial processing plants for raw uranium ore.

I made a mental note to watch for ore trucks when it came to be my turn to make the commute, because getting hit by one wouldn’t have been good. At the same time, I noted that most of the land along either side of the road had no fences, yet there was plenty of livestock, mostly horses and cattle, grazing out in the distance. I wondered if any of the animals ever wandered out into the road, and if so what would happen.

Of course, various critters large and small did wander onto the road, and what happened was also not good. But that was a lesson in the future.

About halfway out to Section 35, the headframes above the mine shafts began to appear, dotting the landscape along either side of the road, some near and some off in the distance, each one indicating the location of a uranium mine. There were a lot of them operated by several different companies, including Western Nuclear, Ranchers Exploration, Anaconda, United Western Minerals, Phillips Petroleum, Homestake Mining, and, where I hoped my new home would be, Kermac Nuclear Fuels.

As vehicles kept turning off left and right to the various mines along the way, the traffic lessened until we eventually came to the Section 35 entrance, that was indicated only by a large metal gate.

The gate being open, we turned left onto a very rough dirt road and over a cattle guard. I supposed everyone simply had to memorize the route, because there were no signs indicating which headframe belonged to which mine. That turned out to be true, as I later missed the turn a few times before learning the way.

We stayed on that dirt road for a while, passing a couple of others, before the large headframe of Section 35 came into view, and we pulled into the large graded area that served as a parking lot.