We can't get Junior killed...

 

It’s hard for me to imagine being more anxious about starting a job than that spring day I sat at the end of a wooden bench just outside the bathhouse of the Montour #10 underground coal mine.  I had just finished my junior year at Penn State as a Mining Engineer major, my gut had been telling me for over 3 years that I had to get some real underground experience before I graduated.

 

For students in the Mining Engineering program, there was a requirement to undertake a 6-month internship within the mining industry to earn their degree.  As such, I fulfilled that obligation by doing a six-month stint with Consolidation Coal in their Engineering Department the prior year.  I could have returned to the Engineering position but I knew that having some underground experience would greatly enhance my resume.  More important to me was the simple fact that since the moment I decided to become a Mining Engineer, I had this calling within me, an inner desire, to get firsthand experience of working underground.  I was that kind of a guy, I had to get my hands dirty, I had to apply what I was learning in the classrooms in the field. 

Yes, I had been underground once before as part of a surveying course, it was basically a one-day tour of an underground limestone mine just outside of Penn State.  By coal mining standards, it was a pretty tame experience, with no methane, no coal dust, 20-foot tall ceilings, (in the mining industry we call it a roof), and 40-foot wide tunnels (that we call entryways or entries).  In general, limestone or hard rock mining, although dangerous and difficult work, was nothing like underground coal mining.  Whether it be the physical nature of the material or the fact of working in a methane-laden atmosphere, traversing flooded entries, or working in 3-5 foot tall seams, underground coal mining was unique. Layer on top of all that, the tensions or conflicts between the miners and the managements, it put underground coal mining in a category all by itself.  

I sat there on the bench in my worn jeans and heavy work shirt, standing out amongst the other general laborers, not so much with my youthful look, but rather with the bright red hard hat I was wearing.  The red hard hat, aka red-cap, signified that I had less than 90 days of underground experience.  It was a safety feature that let the other miners know there was a “newbie” in the area.  It also signified that a red-cap worker could not operate any machinery.  So I sat there hiding my nerves on the dirty, worn, and tired bench with three other general laborers waiting for the Shift Foreman to assign us our work. 

Montour 10 was one of forty or so mines that Consolidation Coal owned and operated.  It was located about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, near the town of Library, and it mined the Pittsburgh Coal Seam.  Based on the rusted-through steel members of the rail facilities and the condition of the bathhouse, it looked like it was started or opened around WWII, making it at least 10 years older than me.   The mine produced high-grade metallurgical coal that fed the coke mills up and down the Monongahela (the “Mon”) and Alleghany Rivers.  

 
The Shift Foreman, a crusty old man, who looked like he hadn’t had a bath, nor his clothes washed, in about a month stepped over to me and said sternly, “Son we expect a day’s worth of work for a day’s pay, you’ll be working with Paul today”.  At this point in my life, I was 20 years old, 6 feet tall and 160 pounds, lean and mean (as Bob Seager would sing, “like a rock”), and was no stranger to hard work,  but still, that phrase is seared into my brain.   

I was anxious and nervous, but I was also well-versed in the use of a shovel, pick and sledgehammer, I had the thick calluses on my hands to prove it.  I had no inkling of what kind of work would be required of me for that shift or the remainder of my six-month stint. 
My head was flooded with questions: could I handle the darkness, what would it be like working with essentially a flashlight on my head, what would the air be like, what would it smell like, and how would the union miners accept this college kid?  Hundreds of other thoughts ran through my head, the least not being, “What if I couldn’t hack it?”.  I had three years invested in being a Mining Engineer, would it all go to waste?  I had to get underground to bring an end to these questions.

 
A short-scraggly old man, looking more like a railroad hobo, walked up to me and said, “You’re with me, come along”.  He had a noticeable limp, hadn’t shaved in a week, and was carrying a thermos bottle.  A second glance at him made me realize that he looked exactly like Festus of Gun Smoke fame.  Like the Shift Foreman, he too hadn’t seen a bar of soap in over a month.  I guessed he was in his 50s but with a dirty unshaved face, he could have been anywhere between 40 and 60.   

By now the bulk of the mine’s workforce of over 100 workers had proceeded towards the underground mine’s entry.  They climbed into their mantrips and headed down the slope.  Montour 10 was a slope mine, a description used to describe an underground mine where the coal seam intersected the surface, thus it did not have a shaft with an elevator.  I grabbed my miner's lunch pail with its shiny bright new aluminum exterior.  It made a sharp contrast against the other workers' lunch pails that were dented, tarnished, dirty, and covered with union stickers.  As I started to follow “Festus”, two other miners joined up with us.  One was a middle-aged man, of regular build named Paul, and the other was a young man, Ben, maybe 8 to 10 years older than me, he was built like me, a little on the tall slender side.  They didn’t say hello or anything to me, but I quickly gathered that the four of us were some kind of a crew and would be working together for that shift. 

We walked across the supply yard, carefully ducking under the live trolley wires, and into the mine along the main entry.  The main entry had rail tracks just slightly off the centerline to the left.  It was a typical rail system with medium-duty iron rails and wooden railroad ties, the kind you see hauling freight and passengers around America.  The rail system was the backbone of this underground mine, it transported the men and supplies and more importantly, it was how they brought out the coal.   The locomotives and mantrips that used these rails were a low profile type so as to fit in the 5 to 6-foot tall coal seam.  They were powered by the 300-volt DC power trolley cable, 1.5 inches of bare, un-insulated solid copper which was hung from the mine’s roof via ceramic insulators.  We walked on the wide side of the rail, more commonly called track, specifically on the right side; the pathway was about 4-5 feet wide, just enough for two men to walk side by side. 

The energized trolley wire was on the other side, the wide walkway and the 4-foot wide tracks providing some degree of safety.  The total width of the entryway was about 14 maybe 15 feet. The coal seam was about just under 6 feet tall, with the protruding roof bolts and cross beams holding up the roof it created an effective working height of about 5 feet.  Just enough to make me have to slightly bend my back or neck to avoid bumping my head.   But that was ok since I had to keep the headlight on my hard hat focused down by my toes.  After a minute or two I began to realize that if a locomotive or mantrip came down the rail it would be a tight fit.  At that point, safety, specifically my safety,  trumped all the questions floating in my head.  

The pace was quick, after about 500 feet into the mine, the morning sunlight had diminished enough that we all turned on our headlamps.  For this novice miner, walking underground, along the uneven terrain, in a pitch black environment, using the headlamp on your hardhat as a flashlight was a general thrill.  Yes, I am one of those types of guys who would think a situation like this was fun.  Now my biggest fear was that of falling flat on my face and embarrassing myself.  

We walked for another 10 minutes and I began to feel a little more comfortable with the underground surroundings.  From my mining courses, I recognized the cross cuts intersecting the track entry and assumed the pattern of these blocks of coal was optimized for roof support.  After a few more minutes it was obvious that my slower, more tourist/cautious gait was not going to keep up with the others, now I began to worry about getting left behind.  Maybe that was their intent, some form of a 1st day on the job joke for the newbie.  Just about when I was about to admit defeat and cry out, “Hey guys hold up”, I heard a rumble in the distance. 

As if my senses weren’t already on overload, with the high voltage line on the left, the dark damp environment, uneven footing and just generally being my 1st time in an underground coal mine, now I was hearing a growing rumble coming from within the mine.  Within a second I realized it was not a roof fall or explosion, but rather something was coming at us on the rails.  The track bent off to the right in a downward fashion, it wasn’t hard to see the flicker of the locomotive’s light hitting the far left corner of the roof.  The light and the noise were growing, I surmised the situation and thought of all the TV or movie scenes where some unsuspecting teens found themselves in a railroad tunnel or along a rail bridge in the same predicament.  But I thought the wide walkway would be enough and I could just lay tight against the side of the coal pillar and be safe.  That's when I saw a hard hat headlight walking back towards me in a hurried fashion.  It was Pual, with no pleasantries or any sense of urgency, who said “We got a trip of loads coming out, we need to duck into this manhole”.  

With that, we took a few steps backward and I realized that in the 90-foot-long pillar of coal, there was a 5-foot wide, maybe 3-foot deep cut in the coal, just enough for the two of us to squeeze into.  By the time we positioned ourselves into the cut-out, the 30-ton locomotive with its trip of loaded railcars, full of freshly cut coal, was upon us.  About twenty 10-ton coal cars whooshed by, the edge of the loaded cars seemed to be about a foot from my nose.  I now realized that the rail cars were much wider than the tracks.  If I had laid against the coal pillar I may not have been squeezed by a rail car but I could have easily been hit by some of the dangling wooden posts hanging out from the sides of the coal cars.  It was a little scary but I never felt anxiety, worried or panic.  Maybe, just maybe I liked this excitement.  No doubt this little event helped reaffirm in my mind that working underground was in my blood.  The trip of loaded cars went by and Paul stepped out and started walking back into the mine, no words, just actions, no BS, no hype, no snide comment, just a “get back to work” attitude.  Just another example of why I wanted to work underground.   

We caught up to “Festus” and Ben who were sitting back in a crosscut, maybe 20 feet in from the rail track, much-much further back from the rail line than what Paul and I were just a few moments ago.  They got up and started to walk with us.  I could hear Paul say to “Festus”, “Blackie, we can’t get Junior killed on the first day”.  That’s when I learned Festus had a name, “Blackie”, and that my nickname would be “Junior”.  We walked for at least another 30 minutes before we stopped.  

We were deep into the coal mine; we had traversed way too many turns and twists for me to remember how far we had come.  Now I had a new fear, I had to make sure I never lost sight of the other three because there was no way I would ever be able to find my way back out to the surface.  We stopped at a cross-cut, there were a few crude benches on the right side up against the coal rib, clearly, this was a marshaling place for this crew.  The others took off their heavy, mainly corduroy coats and hung them from a roof bolt with their lunch pail.  I placed my jacket on a piece of 4x4 wood (cribbing) and put my lunch pail beneath it.  Blackie came over to me, briskly grabbed the pail, and said “You need to keep that off the ground, the rats in this mine are so big they can eat right through the metal sides”.  This would be the first of many, many jokes Blackie would say to me over the coming months, sometimes testing my nerve and always playing off my inexperience.  Eventually, I would learn that he was the funny guy, the comic and that Paul was the straight man in this duo. 

 

I surveyed the immediate area, not an easy task with the small headlight on my red cap.  There were stacks of railroad ties, a pile of 30-foot-long sections of track, and numerous 5-gallon buckets filled with rail spikes, bolts, and nuts.  Now I knew my destiny for this day, I was on the track crew. 

For the rest of the shift, we worked on laying track.  It was just like you would see in the movies, we carried the railroad ties on our shoulders for about 100 or so feet and dropped them on the ballast/recycled slag.  After we laid about two dozen of them down, we would then haul in a 30-foot section of rail.  We would take turns using a sledgehammer to drive in the rail spikes.  I was no stranger to a sledgehammer, but it would be weeks before I could drive a 6-inch spike with just one blow.  We probably laid about 90 feet before Paul said, “It’s time for lunch”. As hard as the work was I was not tired at all.  This gave me some inner comfort, that physically I could stand my ground with them.

  
We went back to where we laid our coats and lunch pails.  Although I was warm from the workout, they all put on their jackets, clearly they knew something I didn’t.  They sat down on a bucket or piece of cribbing, about 10 feet apart from each other, close enough to talk, but far away from each other to stake out their own domain.  I could tell Paul had a pastrami sandwich, while Ben had some kind of stew, not from seeing them, it was too dark for that, but from the smell.  No doubt when you are underground your senses are all on full alert, listening, seeing, feeling, and smelling for anything different.  It was at this point that I realized that Blackie didn’t bring a lunch pail; he just had his thermos with coffee in it, or at least that’s what I assumed was in it.  Although the outside temperature was in the 70s, the 50-degree air in the mine combined with my sweat, created a chill within me, so I put on my jacket.  There wasn’t much talk among the crew, after they finished their lunch they turned off their cap lights and took a 10-minute snooze.  Of course, I was too excited to take a nap.  I just sat there and observed the surroundings. 

After about 15 minutes, Paul stood up and said, “Time to get back to work”.  We spent the rest of the afternoon laying about 90 more feet of track plus shoveling slag around the railroad ties.  Hard work, but not as intense as the morning.  After a few weeks of working underground, I realized that I worked just as hard hand digging out the basement of our 1800s farmhouse during my high school years.

 
At the end of the shift, the walk out of the mine did not have the drama of a trip of loads coming by, but it gave me some time to reflect on what my 1st shift underground was like, what I learned, and what I accomplished.  As we made the final turn on the track entry, I looked up from watching my toes and saw that small glimmer of sunlight in the distance.  It signaled more than the end of the shift; it acknowledged that I had survived my 1st shift underground.  It’s a memory I have never forgotten, in today’s vernacular, one would say it was the moment I affirmed my calling or passion.  

After we reached the surface we punched out our time cards and I headed into the bathhouse to take a shower.  Like I mentioned earlier this mine was old and the shower facilities looked like it.  I quickly realized that the grout in the tile on the floor and walls was not colored black, it was from the mold.  I was assigned a hanging basket (no lockers here) but I didn’t bring a lock to secure my clothes or valuables from the next shift.  So, I skipped the shower, washed my face & neck, changed my shoes, and headed to the parking lot with the 100+ other miners. 
Before I knew it I was back at the summer apartment I shared with two other Penn Staters, tired but not sore.  I had a healthy appetite that evening and went to bed early, there was little time for reflection, but I knew it was a “good day”.  The last thing I remember was double checking the alarm clock for the next day’s 4:30 am wakeup.

  
*****

There would be many other events, experiences, stories, and memories from that six-month stint.  I not only learned how to lay track, but I was also educated on what fish plates and frogs were, how to use a spad gun, install brattice/vent curtains, build cribs, install breaker posts, build stoppings, how to use a safety lamp, and most importantly:  how to sound a roof and what lock-out-tag-out means. 

I carried my share of cinder blocks, timbers, railroad ties, bags of rock dust, amour and wooden ties, roof bolts, and glue cartridges.  I shoveled tons of coal and slag.  How could I ever forget that Blackie taught me how to play baseball with a pocket knife, which we played almost every lunch.  But I never learned how to chew tobacco or use snuff, boy could Blackie chew and spit that “to-bacca”.  

I did face a few life-threatening events, including being electrocuted and almost crushed to death.  Stories for another day.  It was hard work by any standard, but I truly enjoyed it. There is a sense of pride, one of accomplishment in “putting in a day’s work for a day’s pay”. Looking back, it turned out that Blackie and Paul were really my first mentors, and honestly, probably the best mentors that I had over a 40+ year career.  

At the dinner hole, after a few weeks, the track crew eventually did strike up some conversations.  Blackie was a second-generation Italian; he spoke Italian very well; he had a wife that he adored, no children and he loved his red wine with dinner.  Paul was an ex-Middle School English teacher, he found the work, and money, provided by the mine more rewarding.  Both were the silent type, strong in character but light on words.  Ben was a high school dropout, quite the chatter one in this group, he had a great sense of humor. We shared many jokes and stories, a friendship developed bonded by sweat and coal dust. 

++++

I worked as a card-carrying United Mine Worker of America on the track crew most of the summer. Occasionally I got “drafted” by another Foreman to: put up posts or build cribbing in the old returns, move power cables, shovel spilled coal, install stoppings, or help load/unload supplies.  By the end of my stint at Montour #10, everyone at the mine knew who Junior was.  

On my last day, Blackie tried to slip me $100, but I absolutely refused it.  He and Paul gave me something far exceeding anything that could be captured with money. But I could tell by his voice that it was important to him that I take it, in a way it symbolized that he & Paul would always be helping, maybe guiding me as I went through my career. 

It took another 3 months to “sweat out” the black dust that was embedded in my skin pores.  No doubt, my time at Montour #10 laid the foundation for my mining career.  It established my work ethic and my deep commitment to safety; I learned a lot and I grew up a lot during that stint underground.  Yes, I probably reflect back on that time a little too often, but I don’t consider that a bad thing.