same here,ice and snow allows me to have an excuse to do doughnuts in the parking lots
"honestly officer,i hit my breaks and went into a slide"
"yes officer,it is possible to do 360 degree slides"


"Was that a good place to park? Didn't you think that my car might slide out of control and hit your car where you left it? Why did you leave your car right there? It was a given that on an ice covered parking lot someone was going to come and do donuts."

Consider it done. I copied your poem and sent it off to my angel of the day.
Thank you.

Congratulations on cooking your eggs without a broken yoke. Starting a day with that sort of accomplishment is enough to make anyone have a good day.

Thank the Lord that our temperatures have stayed above the freezing mark. There has been over an inch of rain. It would have been one wallop of an ice storm had the thermometer dropped just two degrees. The Lord is good! I worked Saturday, if we had been iced out of work today, I would not get paid overtime for my day of extra work. Lord, let it only rain.

I felt compelled to ask several people yesterday at church what they thought about angels. I asked each if they had seen angels, if they had a mental picture of what an angel looked like, if each of us had an assigned angel. I asked if only people who were saved had an assigned angel to those who responded with the guardian angel answer.
All morning and again in the evening service, I would ask each of the people I talked to. I guess I started up some thought. It was a thought provoking subject to be asking about. Each person I spoke to had their own way of thinking about and believing in angels. I feel richer today for having talked to some of my friends about angels.

Waiting for light to come to this new day. I have faith that Light will come. I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Wow!

JB Working
JB was working, standing on the side of the bogger, left hand forward, towards the ore pile. The bogger runs forward and back at the command of his right hand. Right hand towards the ore, takes the bogger back. Right hand back, brings the bogger towards the ore. The left hand controls the bucket. Left hand back and the bucket comes up, over the bogger and empties into the rail car behind. Put the left hand forward and the bucket comes back down to the scooping position. The bogger runs on a short track, at 90 degrees to the working rail line. JB works the machine into the ore with the right hand, gets a good scoop full, then raises the bucket with the left hand as he backs out with his right. As he backs, the bucket comes up. The airlines bend as the bogger moves back. The bucket passes over in front of JB's face, and as the bogger gets back to the waiting rail car, comes into position to dump over the back of the machine. A quick jerk of the right hand, stops the backward motion of the bogger and the scoop empties into the rail car.
The ore is coming down through a shaft, and JB is mucking it out as it comes down. The ore comes in various sizes and shapes, the bogger can pick up a two-foot square rock, but it is not good strategy to load a rock that big. All of the ore has to go through the grizzly, a grid of heavy steel, one-foot squares. The rock can be bigger then a foot in one direction, but it has to be able to go through the grizzly. The rocks too big for the grizzly can be popped up here where JB is working. If they get down to the grizzly, it is a sledgehammer and crowbar to get them down through the grizzly, no explosives down there. There is an electric light over the grizzly, and any popping done there would put out the lights. Up here in the working area there is no light other then the light on his helmet, without the helmet light there is total darkness, a darkness no one ever sees on the surface.
So JB mucks all the finer dirt out, filling one car, moving the train down, and filling another car, until a fresh charge or ore comes down, with it several large rocks. The bigger boulders will have to be drilled and set, the medium sized ones, still too big to go through the grizzly will be plastered with plastic explosives. So starting with the biggest of the new rocks, JB starts drilling, setting up the airline from the bogger on the air drill. The weight of the drill does most of the work. JB just has to hold it so it will drill downward. If the rock where too big to be drilled downward then the “airleg” would have to be used, a piston, with compressed air from the air line which will push the drill into the rock. But for the most part gravity will do the pushing, with a lot less effort. Drill two holes in the biggest rock. Anything bigger then a refrigerator gets two holes, bigger then a VW and it gets three, bigger then that and it won't fit down the shaft to get to him and it will have to be broken up above, before he ever sees it.
The fresh boulders take five holes, two in the two biggest ones, and one in a smaller big one. Each hole is about 18" deep, or into the center of the rock
whichever is more. To make an 18" hole the 2-foot bit will do the whole job.
To go deeper, start with the 2-footer, get it in there good, then take it out and put on the three-footer. There are four and five-footers there as well, but better not to use them if you don't have to, they get stuck and bent very easy when they are that long and are that far into the rock.
Charge the holes first. One stick for each, the smallest might do with less. JB has to pay for the explosives he uses, but he also has to work any too big ones down the grizzly, so better to use enough than to have to fight with them, or have to come back after a pop and have to reset and pop again. Having the hole in the correct place so the charge is in the center of the mass of the rock helps to ensure the resulting chunks will be small enough. The pay is by the amount of ore making it to the surface. The more you get out the more everyone gets paid. So, a stick for each hole, then the dets, and the mud. The fine silt mud in the trench is just the thing to be sure the bang stays in the hole. Then set up the plastered ones. A det in each; wired in series. The electrical charge going from one to the next to the next, never in parallel. If you put both the pos and neg to one charge, and again to another, there would be no way of telling if one charge had gone off or if you had a det still live in a piece of rock you are whaling away on with the sledge hammer. So, the dets are in series, the pos to one charge, to the neg of the next until you have a loop going around with each charge in the loop. Now if one goes off, they all do. The pos and neg you end up with are then connected to the det main wire, a wire running on the far side of the drift, along with the airlines, running back down the line to where the popping generator is. Both lines connected securely with a twist. A check to be sure everything it out of the way of the blast, the bogger is left with the bucket all the way up to keep any rock from getting behind it on the track.
Everything all set, get on the train, the loco, and head down to the popping
generator. The popping station is where the popping generator is located. This is at the switch in the tracks, about 400 feet from the work site and around two curves.
Up the other line is where the other work site is, about 500 feet away.
Stopping the train up above the switch, (keep the train between you and the
blast; it will stop a lot of the percussion from getting to you.) JB goes to
the detonation generator. Overhead in the airline there is a quarter-turn valve. Making sure his ear protection is on, good and snug, he turns the quarter turn valve. A train whistle sounds, 200 pounds per square inch in a four-inch airline, there is a two-inch whistle. It is loud enough that anyone close enough to be effected by the explosion should be able to hear the whistle. With the shrill blast of the horn continuously going, JB hooks the neg wire to the generator, then starts cranking on the handle as fast as he can. The little green light on the end of the box lights, still cranking away as fast as he can, JB touches the Pos wire to the terminal and quickly puts booth hands up over his ears and pushes at the muffs to his head. There is a dim flash as he touches the terminal, then a thud and then the wind. Just a sort breeze, and reach up and turn off the whistle. (If ever the whistle kept going after a pop, it would tell others there was something wrong. The one setting off the charge was not able to turn off the horn.)
After a pop, it is a good idea to go down to the grizzly and dump the cars, the gases in the area after a pop will give one a screaming headache. Better to go down and dump the cars and let the ventilation pull the air through and clear out the area.
It is a ten-minute train ride down to the grizzly. The grizzly is the first
light you come to as you come down the line. Until then the light on the helmet is all the light you have. The cars dump best when they are filled to the top, so they are a bit top-heavy. There is a trigger on the far side of the car, one foot goes on that, then rocking back and forth, the tip car is tipped over and the ore goes down on to, and hopefully through, the grizzly. Any pieces too big to go through have to be worked by hand, hit with the sledge and maneuvered with the crowbar, until they go down through the grizzly.
When the four cars are empty, it is time to go back and see how the popping went. The loco pushes on the way back up. The cars are light and will jump the track if you get going too fast, but it is up hill going back, and you get to know where you have to slow down a bit, at the switch by the popping generator is one place to slow a bit. Hit that switch at full speed and you'll have a derailed train to put back on.
Getting back up to the work site is a good idea to stop a bit short, you have four cars in front of you, and you can't see very well. If something was blown out on to the tracks, it is better to stop and get it off the track them to run into it or over it.
Hook the airlines to the bogger, and put it back up near the ore. Bring the train up and put the car closest to the loco just behind the bogger and you are ready to start mucking again.
The shifts come and go this way, popping and mucking, dumping tip cars and working the material down through the grizzly, four trains before break, and maybe three after is a good day, (there are a lot of days where something goes wrong and less then that happens.) Last thing of every shift you pop, this gives the on-coming shift a fresh start, and it gives the air, time to clear.
One thing about this practice of popping last thing, every shift you come on, you are coming into a work area where someone else has popped. Did they all go off? Where did they leave the extra sticks?

JB Working
JB was working, standing on the side of the bogger, left hand forward, towards the ore pile. The bogger runs forward and back at the command of his right hand. Right hand towards the ore, takes the bogger back. Right hand back, brings the bogger towards the ore. The left hand controls the bucket. Left hand back and the bucket comes up, over the bogger and empties into the rail car behind. Put the left hand forward and the bucket comes back down to the scooping position. The bogger runs on a short track, at 90 degrees to the working rail line. JB works the machine into the ore with the right hand, gets a good scoop full, then raises the bucket with the left hand as he backs out with his right. As he backs, the bucket comes up. The airlines bend as the bogger moves back. The bucket passes over in front of JB's face, and as the bogger gets back to the waiting rail car, comes into position to dump over the back of the machine. A quick jerk of the right hand, stops the backward motion of the bogger and the scoop empties into the rail car.
The ore is coming down through a shaft, and JB is mucking it out as it comes down. The ore comes in various sizes and shapes, the bogger can pick up a two-foot square rock, but it is not good strategy to load a rock that big. All of the ore has to go through the grizzly, a grid of heavy steel, one-foot squares. The rock can be bigger then a foot in one direction, but it has to be able to go through the grizzly. The rocks too big for the grizzly can be popped up here where JB is working. If they get down to the grizzly, it is a sledgehammer and crowbar to get them down through the grizzly, no explosives down there. There is an electric light over the grizzly, and any popping done there would put out the lights. Up here in the working area there is no light other then the light on his helmet, without the helmet light there is total darkness, a darkness no one ever sees on the surface.
So JB mucks all the finer dirt out, filling one car, moving the train down, and filling another car, until a fresh charge or ore comes down, with it several large rocks. The bigger boulders will have to be drilled and set, the medium sized ones, still too big to go through the grizzly will be plastered with plastic explosives. So starting with the biggest of the new rocks, JB starts drilling, setting up the airline from the bogger on the air drill. The weight of the drill does most of the work. JB just has to hold it so it will drill downward. If the rock where too big to be drilled downward then the “airleg” would have to be used, a piston, with compressed air from the air line which will push the drill into the rock. But for the most part gravity will do the pushing, with a lot less effort. Drill two holes in the biggest rock. Anything bigger then a refrigerator gets two holes, bigger then a VW and it gets three, bigger then that and it won't fit down the shaft to get to him and it will have to be broken up above, before he ever sees it.
The fresh boulders take five holes, two in the two biggest ones, and one in a smaller big one. Each hole is about 18" deep, or into the center of the rock
whichever is more. To make an 18" hole the 2-foot bit will do the whole job.
To go deeper, start with the 2-footer, get it in there good, then take it out and put on the three-footer. There are four and five-footers there as well, but better not to use them if you don't have to, they get stuck and bent very easy when they are that long and are that far into the rock.
Charge the holes first. One stick for each, the smallest might do with less. JB has to pay for the explosives he uses, but he also has to work any too big ones down the grizzly, so better to use enough than to have to fight with them, or have to come back after a pop and have to reset and pop again. Having the hole in the correct place so the charge is in the center of the mass of the rock helps to ensure the resulting chunks will be small enough. The pay is by the amount of ore making it to the surface. The more you get out the more everyone gets paid. So, a stick for each hole, then the dets, and the mud. The fine silt mud in the trench is just the thing to be sure the bang stays in the hole. Then set up the plastered ones. A det in each; wired in series. The electrical charge going from one to the next to the next, never in parallel. If you put both the pos and neg to one charge, and again to another, there would be no way of telling if one charge had gone off or if you had a det still live in a piece of rock you are whaling away on with the sledge hammer. So, the dets are in series, the pos to one charge, to the neg of the next until you have a loop going around with each charge in the loop. Now if one goes off, they all do. The pos and neg you end up with are then connected to the det main wire, a wire running on the far side of the drift, along with the airlines, running back down the line to where the popping generator is. Both lines connected securely with a twist. A check to be sure everything it out of the way of the blast, the bogger is left with the bucket all the way up to keep any rock from getting behind it on the track.
Everything all set, get on the train, the loco, and head down to the popping
generator. The popping station is where the popping generator is located. This is at the switch in the tracks, about 400 feet from the work site and around two curves.
Up the other line is where the other work site is, about 500 feet away.
Stopping the train up above the switch, (keep the train between you and the
blast; it will stop a lot of the percussion from getting to you.) JB goes to
the detonation generator. Overhead in the airline there is a quarter-turn valve. Making sure his ear protection is on, good and snug, he turns the quarter turn valve. A train whistle sounds, 200 pounds per square inch in a four-inch airline, there is a two-inch whistle. It is loud enough that anyone close enough to be effected by the explosion should be able to hear the whistle. With the shrill blast of the horn continuously going, JB hooks the neg wire to the generator, then starts cranking on the handle as fast as he can. The little green light on the end of the box lights, still cranking away as fast as he can, JB touches the Pos wire to the terminal and quickly puts booth hands up over his ears and pushes at the muffs to his head. There is a dim flash as he touches the terminal, then a thud and then the wind. Just a sort breeze, and reach up and turn off the whistle. (If ever the whistle kept going after a pop, it would tell others there was something wrong. The one setting off the charge was not able to turn off the horn.)
After a pop, it is a good idea to go down to the grizzly and dump the cars, the gases in the area after a pop will give one a screaming headache. Better to go down and dump the cars and let the ventilation pull the air through and clear out the area.
It is a ten-minute train ride down to the grizzly. The grizzly is the first
light you come to as you come down the line. Until then the light on the helmet is all the light you have. The cars dump best when they are filled to the top, so they are a bit top-heavy. There is a trigger on the far side of the car, one foot goes on that, then rocking back and forth, the tip car is tipped over and the ore goes down on to, and hopefully through, the grizzly. Any pieces too big to go through have to be worked by hand, hit with the sledge and maneuvered with the crowbar, until they go down through the grizzly.
When the four cars are empty, it is time to go back and see how the popping went. The loco pushes on the way back up. The cars are light and will jump the track if you get going too fast, but it is up hill going back, and you get to know where you have to slow down a bit, at the switch by the popping generator is one place to slow a bit. Hit that switch at full speed and you'll have a derailed train to put back on.
Getting back up to the work site is a good idea to stop a bit short, you have four cars in front of you, and you can't see very well. If something was blown out on to the tracks, it is better to stop and get it off the track them to run into it or over it.
Hook the airlines to the bogger, and put it back up near the ore. Bring the train up and put the car closest to the loco just behind the bogger and you are ready to start mucking again.
The shifts come and go this way, popping and mucking, dumping tip cars and working the material down through the grizzly, four trains before break, and maybe three after is a good day, (there are a lot of days where something goes wrong and less then that happens.) Last thing of every shift you pop, this gives the on-coming shift a fresh start, and it gives the air, time to clear.
One thing about this practice of popping last thing, every shift you come on, you are coming into a work area where someone else has popped. Did they all go off? Where did they leave the extra sticks?

I see I have made several mistakes. You are my proof readers. Please read this and point out the errors I have made. I see that the time of day is wrong in one place. Help me out here, criticize my writing.


Peko Mine
The fan was running in the swamp cooler on the roof. Just the sound of the fan had a cooling effect as JB came into his cabin. It was another hot day. It was 110 degrees in the shade, not as hot as it gets on a really hot day in January, but still, it had been a warm walk coming back from the air-conditioned mess hall.
The camp at Peko Mine was laid out in rows. There were six rows of cabins, each row had about a dozen identical 12x12 wood-framed cabins. They were all built up on four-foot stilts, letting the cooling air run under the floor.
JB took his paycheck out of the back pocket of his jeans. He threw it in the bed and sat down at his makeshift desk with the Olivetti typewriter. The duct from the swamp cooler came in right over his head raining cool air down on him.
For the next forty-five minutes, he was bent over his portable typewriter, telling a story about the fixed wing gliding he had been doing. He had constructed the story in his mind as he worked in the mines. So it was easy for him to just sit down, and in as long as it took him to type it, tell about the thrills of being pulled up in to the sky in the two-seater no-engine aircraft. He told of the counterclockwise corkscrew effect as they climbed up on the column of hot air coming off the black till field of mine tailings.
As he took the sixth page out of the Olivetti, he thought about reading what he had written, but then he looked over on the bed and saw his still unopened pay check. He put the pages in an envelope that had about a quarter of a ream of pages in it, sealed it up and put a sticker on the front of it with his father’s address in the States. With his paycheck, he would have enough to mail the package of writings off. In it was all the writing he had done since he got to the mines a month ago.
He cut open the envelope with his penknife and took out the pay slip. The dollar amount was a pleasant surprise. The pay slip was for $1,212.42. That was Australian dollars, they were worth about $.82 US dollars, but that was still a pretty nice little paycheck. The pay stub said that in two weeks he had worked 104 hours. He had been paid bonus for “deep work”, bonus for shift work, and an earned tally on the tonnage of 1,786 tons. He was charged $356.23 for his Mine Store bill, and the Det Room had charged him another $298.99 for the explosives, dets and drill steels he had bought. His base pay before bonuses was $2.34 per hour. After all was taken out, he was left with over $1,200. That was pretty good wage for two weeks work! He reflected… that was pretty good. His rent was free in the mining camp. His meals were all free in the mess hall, four meals a day, not bad at all. He wondered weather he might have enough for a cheep car, or better yet, a motorbike.
The sun was right down at the horizon, a big red ball setting on the shrub-covered desert. It would cool off as soon as the sun had set. The Mine Store was open until eight, JB decided to take a walk down there and cash in his pay slip. He took his writing envelope and headed down to the bottom end of the camp, away from the mess hall where the Mine Store was in the corner of the camp compound furthest from the smelter.
The smoke and steam were going straight up off the smelter. All the lights were on in the fading light. They were running three shifts a day these days. The Peko Mine smelter processed not only the ore from Peko Mine, but from Juno Mine as well, where JB worked. The two mines were 9 miles apart on the surface, but underground, it was said that the two were connected. Peko mine was a shallow mine, less then two miles deep.
JB had never been down in Peko mine. He tried to imagine it in his mind’s eye. It was a sloped shaft, not vertical and horizontal like the Juno Mine was. There were trains that brought the ore to the surface from the Peko mine. There was no mineshaft, it was just a drift that started at the surface and went down into the earth at the slope that the trains could manage. The trains had the third rail that had holes in the rail. A cogged wheel ran in that rail. The rails going down into the Peko mine where standard gauge, the rails were 4’6” apart. That was considerably bigger then the little 2’ gauge that JB worked with down in Juno mine. At Peko, the trains were wide and low. He had seen the railcars going down the descending drift. He had been offered work in Peko, but the pay was not as good. JB had asked the man he had hitched into town with “I have never worked in the mines, what job should I ask for?”
The driver of the Ute had said, “You want to earn a lot of money in a short time do you?” He was talking to JB as he piloted the Ute up the Stewart highway, a 40-foot wide swath of smoothed gravel. He had picked JB up at Wauchope.
“I am not sure what job I can do.”
“Well, why don’t you just ask for the highest paying job they’ve got?” That was just what JB had said when he was asked by the man at personnel. “I want the highest paying job you’ve got!”
The recruiter for the mines had laughed and said. “You can’t have my job, but I will give you the next best thing.”
That was how JB had landed the job he had now, Powder Monkey for Juno Mine. He was thinking as he felt the envelope in his back pocket, he was earning pretty good money. Working six and a half miles down, was no different from working forty feet down, he had been told. Once you leave the earth’s surface and start down underground, it really doesn’t matter how far down you go. It makes a lot more difference how hard the rock is. Juno was good solid rock. Working in a drift in hard rock can be compared to drilling a hole in a two by four. The sides and back won’t fall in. In soft rock, it is like drilling a hole in a pile of sand, you have to support the sides and back everywhere. The further down you go, the more weight there is on those supports. Even though Juno was one of the deepest mines in the world, it was still just as safe as working in a shallow mine like Peko. Working in the mines was not SAFE work. Two men had gotten killed over at the smelter two days ago. They had gotten up on a pile of ore that was being fed through a grizzly. They had been trying to free up the flow so the ore would run down through the grill of the grizzly. They had freed it up all right, not only the ore went down through the bars, they had been swallowed up as well. Both men had been killed before there had been time to even go for help.
Red had lost three fingers in Juno. He had been bogging, and got too far into a drift that intersected with a shaft. A rock had fallen down the shaft and hit his hand as it rested on the controls of the bogger. Sort of like being caught between a rock and a hard place, only the rock had reached terminal velocity in it’s descent down the shaft.
Then there was the Powder Monkey who JB was there to replace. He had not been injured or killed, he had quit after the rookie he was training, had been killed. They had been hauling some ladder sections up to the head of the drift. They had been lying over four rail cars. The rookie had been on the inside of a curve when the train came by. The Powder Monkey was operating the train from the Loco that is always on the downhill end of the train. The Rookie had been told that whenever a train had to pass him while he was in a drift, he was to lie down in the piss trench. There, there was enough room for the train to go by without hurting him. The rookie had hugged the wall, still standing. When the ladder sections came around the curve, they sliced him in two. (“That will teach him to lay down in the piss trench when a train has to pass him in a drift!”)
But the money was good. JB had $1,200 and he had all his meals paid for and a place to live. All he had to do for that money was work getting rock out of a hole six and half miles deep.
The Mine Store was a corrugated tin building with a big swamp cooler on the roof. It was a long building; perhaps 120’ long and 40’ from front to back. It was in the corner of the compound furthest from the dust, smoke and sulfur smells of the smelter. Above the door was a sign, “No money. No problem, Sign for it” This mine owned store was the only place to get anything short of taking the mine van into Tennant Creek, 22 miles to the east. They had a variety. They had one of the best assortment of gloves of any store anywhere. They had clothes, guns, ammo, alcohol free beer, snack food, a limited selection of groceries. If the mine didn’t raise it, all food had to either be flown in, or come in via the Stewart Highway from either Alice Springs to the south or Darwin to the North. The railhead was over a hundred miles to the west, not a lot got to Peko mine from the railway.
JB picked up a six-pound box of pellets, and took it and his envelope up to the counter. The pellets were for pistol club. Two nights a week the club would meet at the indoor range at Juno Mine. They would do target practice. JB found it cheaper to buy the pellets then to buy a gun. He had worked a deal with the shop foreman, if JB supplied the ammo, he would share his target pistol with JB. The rule in the Mine Store was that you couldn’t cash your check there unless you made a purchase. JB didn’t think the postage for his writing would be enough of a purchase, and he needed the pellets for pistol club. He hated to buy anything at the Mine Store. It seemed like that was just giving your money right back to the mine. If you bought enough there, you could work for nothing. They would let you buy on credit, then it would be taken out of your check before you saw it.
He was given a hefty stack of twenty-dollar bills.
The next day was Saturday. JB had worked the last two Saturdays, and he wanted to work this one as well. The way it worked was if you went down standing in front of the Mess Hall, all breakfasted and ready for a day’s work at half past six, they would then bring the mine van around and they would say how many men they wanted.
Well, this Saturday, JB was there, all fed and ready to go, but when the van came, they only wanted seven men, there were ten standing there. The driver asked, “Anyone want the day off?” JB looked at the others, no one was saying anything. He decided to take it. “I can take the day off, is there a van going to town later?” “Yep, I’ll be running in about eight, after I get all the men straightened around?”
“Be standing here at eight.”
JB was sort of elated as he walked back to his cabin. He had a day off, he had not had many, just Sundays. It was hard to get work on Sundays, but he had worked all the Saturdays except one since he had started. He was going to go to town and see what he could see.
The van let him off in front of the centrally located saloon. JB had no desire for the saloon. He needed to keep his wits about him. He didn’t need to go spending money on beer and girls.
There was a used car dealer up on the north edge of town. The Van driver had told him he might be able to pick up a cheap car there. JB walked down the gravel sidewalk, if you could call it that, along the front of the shops. The last place on the way out of town was the car dealer. He had a sorry collection. Some had flat tires, some had dust on them so you could hardly see the color of them. The ones in the front row were all clean and spiffy. On the far end of the front row was something that caught JB’s eye right off. It was a fire engine red, Holden Convertible. JB could just see himself tooling around in that with the top down. He went over to look at it.
“How much you looking to spend?”, came the thick Australian accent from behind him.
“Not a lot. How much you want for this car? Does it run?” JB looked at the dealer, wrinkled straw hat and pants tucked into his boots.
“Son, every vehicle in this lot runs, they all got here didn’t they. I don’t have a tow truck. They all drive in here on their own steam. Now, how much you looking to spend? How much you got?”
JB looked around the lot. He could see that the dealer was right. They had all been driven here. Each one made it this far and then was sold. Some took the bus the rest of the way, no doubt, some were lucky and flew out. But the vehicles all stayed here to find new owners. It was a 750-mile dirt road to the nearest city of any size. That was the northern port of Darwin. Most of these cars would have come up the Stewart Highway from the south. That was a 1,400-mile trip, and about 900 of that, was on gravel roads. All these cars, vans truck and bikes had made that trip.
“You want that convertible? It will cost you four grand. That, my friend, is the steal of the day. You could take that car up to Darwin today and get twice your money back.”
JB looked around the lot for something he could better afford. “You got any motorbikes?”
“I think I might have just the unit to fit your budget. It just came screaming in here last week. It has been through our shop and has had everything on it checked, tightened, and filled. She is ready to ride out of here. What do you think, a thousand dollars and she is yours!” He was now standing over a 750 cc Suzuki motorbike. It had a yellow tank and was more streamlined then any bike JB had ridden.
“Does it run?” The dealer reached down and hit the start button. The engine came to life. He quickly turned it off. “This would be quite a ride!”
“I can give you five hundred for it.”
“If you can come up with six hundred in cash, I will let you have it.”
JB bought the bike and the dealer was good enough to throw in the helmet the rider had worn into the lot and left behind. It was one of those helmets you climb in to rather then put on. It came right down to his chest.
As he was riding the bike out of the lot, he noticed that it was a bit unwieldy. It wanted to go straight. It was not too good at turning. It went right up through the gears and JB looked down at the south end of Main Street and saw he was doing just 75 mph. This was no dirt bike. This was a street bike. There was no pavement closer then Katherine to the north. That was the start of the paved road running into Darwin. It was two hundred miles to the north. Then the pavement coming out of Alice Springs was just a day’s ride to the south. He was going to have to ride on the gravel mining roads and the Stewart Highway. JB headed south out of town. The Stewart Highway is the only north-south road coming up from the populated areas of the south and going into to Darwin to the north. There was traffic on it. JB would scoot right along on the quick to accelerate bike. When he saw oncoming cars or trucks, he would slow right down. There was a shower of dust and chunks each time he passed a truck. Even the cars had a plume of dust in their wakes. About the third time a truck passed him, he decided to turn around and head back into town. He would take the less traveled road out to Peko.
He noticed on the odometer as he came back in to town that he had already put 50 miles on the bike. He was getting the feel of the bike. It felt good as the day warmed to have the breeze as he rode along. The bike did not like sharp turns, but at a good clip, it would handle quite well. It was designed for riding at highway speeds, only they had not thought of the Stewart Highway when they made highway speeds. Going through town, he slowed right down and ran through some of the back alleys of the town, behind the main street. The bike didn’t like being in the tight quarters of the alleys. He got out on the road to Peko Mine and opened it up. He shot up to 110 mph in no time.
Having never owned a car or any vehicle in the area, he didn’t know the road very well. JB was cruising along when he saw the road had a sharp bend in it. He leaned into it, and pulled that bike for all he was worth, the gravel was good and tight, and he was just able to hold it all together around the bend. He noticed that he could corner better if he let it have a bit of throttle in the curves. If he was slowing, it was hard to get her to come around. He could see the smelter at Peko off in the distance. He was still ten miles from home. He came to the turnoff got and onto the gliding strip. He decided to go out there and ride around the strip. Maybe someone would be out there gliding. The strip was almost paved, it was fine mill dust that had been cemented together somehow so it was like a seamless concrete runway. It was a great surface for the big Ute to pull the plane up along. The Ute would start slow, then as quick as he could he would accelerate up the strip. When the cable to the glider got to a certain angle, the cable would drop. If they wanted, the pilot could manually drop the cable before that, about the best was to bring the nose right up and climb for all you can while you have the power of the Ute pulling you up. It is like a kid running with a kite.
No one was out there. JB stopped at the hanger, and the strip went off to the east from there. It was all a nice smooth surface. JB accelerated down the strip just as fast as he could. He found he had no room to jump into third gear. He was already at the end of the strip. He slowed as quickly as he could. At the end of the strip was a turn around area, then the desert beyond. It was quite a feeling to be barreling into a hazard as fast as that three cylindered bike could take you.
The rest of the way back to Peko, JB whet slower, just sort of let the bike idle along. He got back to his cabin and got off the bike for the first time since he had gotten on it at the dealer’s yard. He parked it right in front of his cabin and went in to write all about his new toy.
He was writing when some of the others who had not worked today came around to have a look at it. JB went out to bask in the glory of his new toy. Someone asked him how much gas it took and how many miles to the gallon he got. JB had not looked in the tank. The dealer had said that everything was filled. He opened the fuel fill and saw the bottom of the tank. It wasn’t dry, but there was not much fuel left. He had done less the 80 miles. The only place to get fuel at the mine was at the mine store. They charged four dollars a gallon. (Hey, it had to get there somehow, and trucking fuel on dirt desert roads is no picnic!)

I see that the spacing errors and typos I corrected came out as new errors, sorry about that. I still have some work to do on this one.

Peko Mine
The fan was running in the swamp color on the roof. Just the sound of the fan had a cooling effect as JB came into his cabin. . It was another hot day. It was 110 degrees in the shade, not as hot as it gets on a really hot day in January, but still, it had been a warm walk coming back from the air-conditioned mess hall.
The camp at Peko Mine was laid out in rows. . There were six rows of cabins, each row had about a dozen identical 12x12 wood-framed cabins. . They were all built up on four-foot stilts, letting the cooling air run under the floor.
JB took his paycheck out of the back pocket of his jeans. . He threw it in the bed and sat down at his makeshift desk with the Olivetti typewriter. . The duct from the swamp cooler came in right over his head raining cool air down on him.
For the next forty-five minutes, he was bent over his portable typewriter, telling a story about the fixed wing gliding he had been doing. He had constructed the story in his mind as he worked in the mines. So it was easy for him to just sit down, and in as long as it took him to type it, tell about the thrills of being pulled up in to the sky in the two-seater no-engine aircraft. . He told of the counterclockwise corkscrew effect as they climbed up on the column of hot air coming off the black till field of mine tailings.
As he took the sixth page out of the Olivetti, he thought about reading what he had written, but then he looked over on the bed and saw his still unopened pay check. . He put the pages in an envelope that had about a quarter of a ream of pages in it, sealed it up and put a sticker on the front of it with his father’s address in the States. With his paycheck, he would have enough to mail the package of writings off. In it was all the writing he had done since he got to the mines a month ago.
He cut open the envelope with his penknife and took out the pay slip. The dollar amount was a pleasant surprise. The pay slip was for $1,212.42. That was Australian dollars, they were worth about $.82 US dollars, but that was still a pretty nice little paycheck. The pay stub said that in two weeks he had worked 104 hours. He had been paid bonus for “deep work”, bonus for shift work, and a earned tally on the tonnage of 1,786 tons. He was charged $356.23 for his Mine Store bill, and the Det Room had charged him another $298.99 for the explosives, dets and drill steels he had bought. . His base pay before bonuses was $2.34 per hour. After all was taken out, he was left with over $1,200. That was pretty good wage for two weeks work! He reflected- that was pretty good. His rent was free in the mining camp. His meals were all free in the mess hall, four meals a day, not bad at all. He wondered weather he might have enough for a cheep car, or better yet, a motorbike.
The sun was right down at the horizon, a big red ball setting on the shrub-covered desert. It would cool off as soon as the sun had set. The Mine Store was open until eight, JB decided to take a walk down there and cash in his payslip. He took his writing envelope and headed down to the bottom end of the camp, away from the mess hall where the Mine Store was in the corner of the camp compound furthest from the smelter.
The smoke and steam were going straight up off the smelter. All the lights were on in the fading light. They were running three shifts a day these days. The Peko Mine smelter processed not only the ore from Peko Mine, but from Juno Mine as well, where JB worked. The two mines were 9 miles apart on the surface, but underground, it was said that the two were connected. Peko mine was a shallow mine, less then two miles deep.
JB had never been down in Peko mine. He tried to imagine it in his mind’s eye. It was a sloped shaft, not vertical and horizontal like the Juno Mine was. There were trains that brought the ore to the surface from the Peko mine. There was no mineshaft, it was just a drift that started at the surface and went down into the earth at the slope that the trains could manage. The trains had the third rail that had holes in the rail. A cogged wheel ran in that rail. The rails going down into the Peko mine where standard gauge, the rails were 4’6” apart. That was considerably bigger then the little 2’ gauge that JB worked with down in Juno mine. At Peko, the trains were wide and low. He had seen the railcars going down the descending drift. . He had been offered work in Peko, but the pay was not as good. . JB had asked the man he had hitched into town with “I have never worked in the mines, what job should I ask for?”
The driver of the Ute had said, “You want to earn a lot of money in a short time do you?” He was talking to JB as he piloted the Ute up the Stewart highway, a 40-foot wide swath of smoothed gravel. He had picked JB up at Wauchope.
“I am not sure what job I can do.”
“Well, why don’t you just ask for the highest paying job they’ve got?” That was just what JB had said when he was asked by the man at personnel. “I want the highest paying job you’ve got!”
The recruiter for the mines had laughed and said. “You can’t have my job, but I will give you the next best thing.”
That was how JB had landed the job he had now, Powder Monkey for Juno Mine. He was thinking as he felt the envelope in his back pocket, he was earning pretty good money. Working six and a half miles down, was no different from working forty feet down, he had been told. Once you leave the earth’s surface and start down underground, it really doesn’t matter how far down you go. It makes a lot more difference how hard the rock is. Juno was good solid rock. Working in a drift in hard rock can be compared to drilling a hole in a two by four. The sides and back won’t fall in. In soft rock, it is like drilling a hole in a pile of sand, you have to support the sides and back everywhere. The further down you go, the more weight there is on those supports. Even though Juno was one of the deepest mines in the world, it was still just as safe as working in a shallow mine like Peko. Working in the mines was not SAFE work. Two men had gotten killed over at the smelter two days ago. They had gotten up on a pile of ore that was being fed through a grizzly. They had been trying to free up the flow so the ore would run down through the grill of the grizzly. They had freed it up all right, not only the ore went down through the bars, they had been swallowed up as well. Both men had been killed before there had been time to even go for help.
Red had lost three fingers in Juno. He had been bogging, and got too far into a drift that intersected with a shaft. A rock had fallen down the shaft and hit his hand as it rested on the controls of the bogger. Sort of like being caught between a rock and a hard place, only the rock had reached terminal velocity in it’s descent down the shaft.
Then there was the Powder Monkey who JB was there to replace. He had not been injured or killed, he had quit after the rookie he was training, had been killed. They had been hauling some ladder sections up to the head of the drift. They had been lying over four rail cars. The rookie had been on the inside of a curve when the train came by. The Powder Monkey was operating the train from the Loco that is always on the downhill end of the train. The Rookie had been told that whenever a train had to pass him while he was in a drift, he was to lie down in the piss trench. There, there was enough room for the train to go by without hurting him. The rookie had hugged the wall, still standing. When the ladder sections came around the curve, they sliced him in two. (“That will teach him to lay down in the piss trench when a train has to pass him in a drift!”)
But the money was good. JB had $1,200 and he had all his meals paid for and a place to live. All he had to do for that money was work getting rock out of a hole six and half miles deep.
The Mine Store was a corrugated tin building with a big swamp cooler on the roof. It was a long building; perhaps 120’ long and 40’ from front to back. It was in the corner of the compound furthest from the dust, smoke and sulfur smells of the smelter. Above the door was a sign, “No money. No problem, Sign for it” This mine owned store was the only place to get anything short of taking the mine van into Tennant Ccreek, 22 miles to the east. They had a variety. They had one of the best assortment of gloves of any store anywhere. They had clothes, guns, ammo, alcohol free beer, snack food, a limited selection of groceries. If the mine didn’t raise it, all food had to either be flown in, or come in via the Stewart Highway from either Alice Springs to the south or Darwin to the North. The railhead was over a hundred miles to the west, not a lot got to Peko mine from the railway.
JB picked up a six-pound box of pellets, and took it and his envelope up to the counter. The pellets were for pistol club. Two nights a week the club would meet at the indoor range at Juno Mine. They would do target practice. JB found it cheaper to buy the pellets then to buy a gun. He had worked a deal with the shop foreman, if JB supplied the ammo, he would share his target pistol with JB. The rule in the Mine Store was that you couldn’t cash your check there unless you made a purchase. JB didn’t think the postage for his writing would be enough of a purchase, and he needed the pellets for pistol club. He hated to buy anything at the Mine Store. It seemed like that was just giving your money right back to the mine. If you bought enough there, you could work for nothing. They would let you buy on credit, then it would be taken out of your check before you saw it.
He was given a hefty stack of twenty-dollar bills.
The next day was Saturday. JB had worked the last two Saturdays, and he wanted to work this one as well. The way it worked was if you went down standing in front of the Mess Hall, all breakfasted and ready for a day’s work at half past six, they would then bring the mine van around and they would say how many men they wanted.
Well, this Saturday, JB was there, all fed and ready to go, but when the van came, they only wanted seven men, there were ten standing there. The driver asked, “Anyone want the day off?” JB looked at the others, no one was saying anything. He decided to take it. “I can take the day off, is there a van going to town later?” “Yep, I’ll be running in about eight, after I get all the men straightened around?”
“Be standing here at eight.”
JB was sort of elated as he walked back to his cabin. He had a day off, he had not had many, just Sundays. It was hard to get work on Sundays, but he had worked all the Saturdays except one since he had started. He was going to go to town and see what he could see.
The van let him off in front of the centrally located saloon. JB had no desire for the saloon. He needed to keep his wits about him. He didn’t need to go spending money on beer and girls.
There was a used car dealer up on the north edge of town. The Van driver had told him he might be able to pick up a cheap car there. JB walked down the gravel sidewalk, if you could call it that, along the front of the shops. The last place on the way out of town was the car dealer. He had a sorry collection. Some had flat tires, some had dust on them so you could hardly see the color of them. The ones in the front row were all clean and spiffy. On the far end of the front row was something that caught JB’s eye right off. It was a fire engine red, Holden Convertible. JB could just see himself tooling around in that with the top down. He went over to look at it.
“How much you looking to spend?”, came the thick Australian accent from behind him.
“Not a lot. How much you want for this car? Does it run?” JB looked at the dealer, wrinkled straw hat and pants tucked into his boots.
“Son, every vehicle in this lot runs, they all got here didn’t they. I don’t have a tow truck. They all drive in here on their own steam. Now, how much you looking to spend? How much you got?”
JB looked around the lot. He could see that the dealer was right. They had all been driven here. Each one made it this far and then was sold. Some took the bus the rest of the way, no doubt, some were lucky and flew out. But the vehicles all stayed here to find new owners. It was a 750-mile dirt road to the nearest city of any size. That was the northern port of Darwin. Most of these cars would have come up the Stewart Highway from the south. That was a 1,400-mile trip, and about 900 of that, was on gravel roads. All these cars, vans truck and bikes had made that trip.
“You want that convertible? It will cost you four grand. That, my friend, is the steal of the day. You could take that car up to Darwin today and get twice your money back.”
JB looked around the lot for something he could better afford. “You got any motorbikes?”
“I think I might have just the unit to fit your budget. It just came screaming in here last week. It has been through our shop and has had everything on it checked, tightened, and filled. She is ready to ride out of here. What do you think, a thousand dollars and she is yours!” He was now standing over a 750 cc Suzuki motorbike. It had a yellow tank and was more streamlined then any bike JB had ridden.
“Does it run?” The dealer reached down and hit the start button. The engine came to life. He quickly turned it off. “This would be quite a ride!”
“I can give you five hundred for it.”
“If you can come up with six hundred in cash, I will let you have it.”
JB bought the bike and the dealer was good enough to throw in the helmet the rider had worn into the lot and left behind. It was one of those helmets you climb in to rather then put on. It came right down to his chest.
As he was riding the bike out of the lot, he noticed that it was a bit unwieldy. It wanted to go straight. It was not too good at turning. It went right up through the gears and JB looked down at the south end of Main Street and saw he was doing just 75 mph. This was no dirt bike. This was a street bike. There was no pavement closer then Katherine to the north. That was the start of the paved road running into Darwin. It was two hundred miles to the north. Then the pavement coming out of Alice Springs was just a day’s ride to the south. He was going to have to ride on the gravel mining roads and the Stewart Highway. JB headed south out of town. The Stewart Highway is the only north-south road coming up from the populated areas of the south and going into to Darwin to the north. There was traffic on it. JB would scoot right along on the quick to accelerate bike. When he saw oncoming cars or trucks, he would slow right down. There was a shower of dust and chunks each time he passed a truck. Even the cars had a plume of dust in their wakes. About the third time a truck passed him, he decided to turn around and head back into town. He would take the less traveled road out to Peko.
He noticed on the odometer as he came back in to town that he had already put 50 miles on the bike. He was getting the feel of the bike. It felt good as the day warmed to have the breeze as he rode along. The bike did not like sharp turns, but at a good clip, it would handle quite well. It was designed for riding at highway speeds, only they had not thought of the Stewart Highway when they made highway speeds. Going through town, he slowed right down and ran through some of the back alleys of the town, behind the main street. The bike didn’t like being in the tight quarters of the alleys. He got out on the road to Peko Mine and opened it up. He shot up to 110 mph in no time.
Having never owned a car or any vehicle in the area, he didn’t know the road very well. JB was cruising along when he saw the road had a sharp bend in it. He leaned into it, and pulled that bike for all he was worth, the gravel was good and tight, and he was just able to hold it all together around the bend. He noticed that he could corner better if he let it have a bit of throttle in the curves. If he was slowing, it was hard to get her to come around. He could see the smelter at Peko off in the distance. He was still ten miles from home. He came to the turnoff got and onto the gliding strip. He decided to go out there and ride around the strip. Maybe someone would be out there gliding. The strip was almost paved, it was fine mill dust that had been cemented together somehow so it was like a seamless concrete runway. It was a great surface for the big Ute to pull the plane up along. The Ute would start slow, then as quick as he could he would accelerate up the strip. When the cable to the glider got to a certain angle, the cable would drop. If they wanted, the pilot could manually drop the cable before that, about the best was to bring theo nose right up and climb for all you can while you have the power of the Ute pulling you up. It is like a kid running with a kite.
No one was out there. JB stopped at the hanger, and the strip went off to the east from there. It was all a nice smooth surface. JB accelerated down the strip just as fast as he could. He found he had no room to jump into third gear. He was already at the end of the strip. He slowed as quickly as he could. At the end of the strip was a turn around area, then the desert beyond. It was quite a feeling to be barreling into a hazard as fast as that three cylindered bike could take you.
The rest of the way back to Peko, JB whet slower, just sort of let the bike idle along. . He got back to his cabin and got off the bike for the first time since he had gotten on it at the dealer’s yard. He parked it right in front of his cabin and went in to write all about his new toy.
He was writing when some of the others who had not worked today came around to have a look at it. . JB went out to bask in the glory of his new toy. . Someone asked him how much gas it took and how many miles to the gallon he got. JB had not looked in the tank. . The dealer had said that everything was filled. He opened the fuel fill and saw the bottom of the tank. It wasn’t dry, but there was not much fuel left. He had done less the 80 miles. The only place to get fuel at the mine was at the mine store. They charged four dollars a gallon. . (Hey, it had to get there somehow, and trucking fuel on dirt desert roads is no picnic!)

32 degrees and rain here in Western Maryland. No ice yet, thank God.

LOL, It didn't take that long to write.

Bogging

38 miles east of Tennant Creak, Northern Territory, Australia.

JB is twenty-three years old, built solid, at just under six feet. He
weighs just about two hundred pounds, he is tanned and muscular. His hair is brown, shoulder length, tied back with a blue bandanna. He
sports a long beard, confined mostly to the point of his chin. He is dressed blue jeans, and a T shirt that advertises a hotel in the Philippines and a pair of red sneakers.
It's a Saturday Morning, just before 5 a.m., the air is clear and warm, it will be another hot day on the surface, good thing he will be working underground today. Today is an overtime shift. He has worked through the week, 10 hours each day. Today will be something different, no mucking and bogging, today will be maintenance and resetting of equipment for the coming week. JB is thinking about what he might be asked to do in the mines today. Each Saturday is different. Last week he ran the clam and mucked out the sump where all the water runs into the very bottom of the mine. The water carries mineral-rich silt into the sump, and there is a clam there. Every once in a while someone uses the clam to muck out the sump and send the mineral-rich silt and muck to the surface. That had been interesting and somewhat challenging. Sending the clam into the water, closing
it on a mouthful of muck. then pulling it up to the waiting cage. All this by operating four levers and a peddle on the floor. The ore car, that hangs beneath the man cage, had been brought all the way to the bottom, 100 feet below the lowest working level. The muck was released into the waiting ore car on the lift.
Sometimes on a Saturday, there will be work on the surface, in the shop or running the crusher. The crusher job is one of the few surface jobs that are not taken by the union miners. The job entails watching over the crusher and examining the material being crushed. Making sure no steel or explosives go through the jaws. Some of the rocks need a helping hand with a bar to go through the jaws. The weather is the biggest factor of working on the surface. It gets to be 110F often in the heat of the day. The weather underground is always about the same. It will be about 70F, there will be a drafty wind going steady all the time. In places it will be raining all the time.
Saturday breakfast at the mess hall is a good one. They are all good meals at the mess hall. The cook had baked bread and the place smelled of the freshly baked bread coming out of the oven, mixed with the smell of the wood fire steak cooker, grilling steaks and chops. This morning for breakfast JB selects a good sized steak, a couple a chops, four eggs cooked to order, over easy, one slice of bacon, a sausage, and a bowl of the cooks’ baked beans (the beans will give you power when the rest is gone). He takes his tray to the table where Liffy is
sitting, and goes back for a big cup of strong tea. On the way back to the table JB grabs a small loaf of the fresh bread and sets it on the table between him and Liffy.
Liffy is 22, has short red hair, so curly it is almost kinky. He's all muscle from the work in the mines, and he is wearing a dirty Irish football shirt with the arms cut off. Where the arm holes are on the T shirt, you can see the edge of a tattoo, chest size, of a clipper ship, a four masted clipper in full sail, and over the tattoo there is a cloud. The cloud was caused by an accident in the mines. Liffy had been training a new man, and an air hose had been run over and cut in two by the ore train. The 1-3/4 inch hose has 200 pounds per square inch of compressed air in it, used to run a Bogger and drills. When the train ran it over the hose began to fly around, Liffy was near, and jumped on the flailing hose and yelled for the trainee to turn the line off. The air from the hose got him across Liffy's tattooed chest, taking the skin off. In the months following the mishap, Liffy continued to work underground, getting dirt in the injury each day as it healed. As the wound healed, a cloud was formed over the clipper ship.
"What you figure we gonna do today?” JB greets Liffy as he sits down.
"Aye, you got me there Yank, I been on the plat all week, don't guess they let me out easy today, see what the Super has, bet it be a ball buster."
JB and Liffy work the same level, down at the 39, the lowest of the working levels. They will be doing the overtime shift today together. They eat their hearty breakfast and wash it down with tea, on the way out, each grabs a packed lunch.
Opening his lunch Liffy looks in and says “Aye, it be a Yank lunch if ever there be one, Spam sandwiches with molasses cookies and another apple, I bet I got ten apples down there on the lift, I line them up, hoping to get a chance to heave one at the Inspector."
They go out and get into the waiting Van. There are only five in the fourteen passenger van, a light load seeing how it is the weekend.
The union driver closes the door, and heads out, dust flying from the dirt road as he makes the nine miles over to the Juno mine. As they leave the smelter civilization drops away. They scoot along the 30-yard-wide mining road leading away from the smelter. Far off there is a cloud of dust, it gets bigger, and the union driver says "Blow me down! Every morning there is a train, even on the day before the Sabbath.” He pulls the van over, and drives right off the hard
traveled part of the road past the shoulder, and into the dessert just a bit, and the van comes to a stop. The dust cloud comes closer, and soon there is a pulsing bright light, a single head light seen in front of the cloud. Then the road-train comes close enough to be seen.
There is a mighty ten-wheeled tractor, with a "roobar" shielding the front. The regular headlights are on in the dawn hour. They light the road. Mounted on top of the tractor is a pulsating spot light, a foot across, put there to warn on-coming traffic to get out of the way. The tractor has a hood longer then any normal road tractor, there is a roar coming form the engine housed under the hood.
Behind the tractor are four ore cars, each with four axles under it, sixteen rubber tired wheels to each ore car. The first follows easy behind the tractor, the second is swaying just a bit, you don't notice the third because at 60 to 70 m.p.h. the final car is waging back and forth like the tail on a happy puppy. The tires of the last car spray gravel far and wide as it passes by, spraying the van parked well off the road surface. The trains have the right of way. More then that, when you meet one oncoming, you have to pull right off the road, and
if you spot one in the rear view, you'd be wise to pull off as well, for they go at a better clip them most four wheelers would want to go.
As they near Juno Mine, the head frame is the first thing to comes into view. The head frame is over the production shaft, a vertical shaft with the ore cage and man cage running in it, two offset ore cars, one going up while the other goes down. On top of one of the ore cars rides a man cage. The winch house set over to the side, the heavy cables running to the production shaft. Then the conveyors running from the shaft and the ore tip are visible.
They pull up past the Super’s house and come to a halt at the locker room. The Super is there to meet the van as they pull up.
"Liffy, take JB and you'll be checking the escape route".
"Aye Super, Well, that answers your question of what we'll be doing today, ha Yank? The bloody walk out, hope you’re ready for a long climb!"
As they enter the Locker room, each man puts his time card through the time clock, and grabs his battery off the charger. JB and Liffy prepare, much like a weekday. They clip the light to their helmet, put the battery on the heavy safety belt. There is a four-foot piece of rope also on the safety belt. On the end of the rope is a pigtail, a corkscrew like piece of heavy metal wire. The idea is to use the pigtail when working anywhere you could fall. One throw and the pigtail will go around a pipe or support or anything, come around and hook to
itself, making a quick way of tying yourself in as you work. In an emergency the rope can be thrown out during a fall, it will hopefully catch something and tie itself, breaking your fall. (Maybe your back as well, as you are stopped suddenly by a rope fixed to your waist belt.) Most all the miners don't leave the rope free ready for use, but wrap it tightly around the belt, keeping it neatly out of the way. Both Liffy and JB had theirs wrapped.
They would be going to the lowest level, so they would be on the first cage going down, it being a weekend there will only be two man runs, one to the lower levels, and one to the bell.
The way this mine looks underground, it might be hard to visualize. Most miners don't get to see enough of it to get a good picture of it. They go to their work station, and where they work the shift, and come back up the man cage. The mine is like a honeycomb. Starting just over 1,000 feet from the surface there are levels, every two to five hundred feet, each level is a series of drifts, a horizontal tunnel, running slightly uphill as it runs away from the shaft. The drifts run as much as three miles from the shaft, and then they have other dummy
shafts, a vertical tunnel that goes level to level, up and down but doesn’t go to the surface. The drifts go out like spokes from the shaft, with branching drifts as they go out further, and those branches branch, with dummy shafts every so often. These dummy shafts are ore drops. They will sink a shaft down to a lower level and then as they work a drift out, extending the horizontal tunnel, the ore will be dropped down the dummy shaft to the level below. There, it will be popped, mucked and taken by underground train to the platform (or
plat), there the ore will be loaded, usually by dropping another 3 to 5 hundred feet down a zigzag shaft, and that shaft will dump into the production shaft. The production shaft is the one with the winch and the man/ore cage.
These radiating spoke-like drifts, and dummy shafts are growing all the time as the miners work, expanding them and bringing out the ore. In places the drifts and shafts are so numerous that all that is left are pillars, vertical columns of rock, with the rest of the material around them removed.
The pillar pullers do just that, they will set charges in a pillar, and remove it, taking the resulting ore to a lower level, and eventually up to the surface.
The "Bell" is a huge open room, a mile and a half high, and over 3/4 of mile across, this is an area where the drifts and shafts made pillars, and the pillars have been pulled, leaving a empty room honey-combed on the sides. In the Juno Mine there are three bells, each off the shaft in a different direction. Below a bells are more levels, the ore is brought to the edge of the bell from the levels, with train, and dropped down dummy shafts that lead out into the bell. The bell is like a giant salt shaker with holes at the bottom. The ore falls into the shafts at the bottom, and at the next level down, there are muckers, breaking the rock up with explosives and loading the ore into rail cars to be taken to the production shaft.
As a safety measure, an escape route is established and maintained. It is a way a man can walk out in case there is some reason the winch isn't operating to bring them out with the man cage.
The escape route is always changing, as the mine expands, parts are left stale, and parts are removed, the escape route has to be moved and reestablished. The route is marked by a man in the running posture, with an arrow under it. The route will go along a drift, then maybe up a shaft using ladders, or steps fastened to the side of the shaft, some are vertical shafts, some are the zigzag, some are a short l00 foot climb, some seem like they go on forever. The route meanders, and there are old routes no longer in service along the way.
They will be marked by the running man with an arrow with an x somehow over it. Sometimes it will be two steps drilled into form the x. Other times it will be paint that can be hard to see. Sometimes the x will be chiseled into the rock.
Liffy and JB are to start at the bottom, and another team will start half way out, the upper crew will to try to get to the surface, and Liffy and JB will try to get to where the upper crew started. The upper escape route is better established, it is in the part of the mine no longer being mined, and it doesn’t change, the lower route goes around and through the production areas, along the edge of the bell, in and out all over the place.
Liffy and JB go down to the 39 level, over six miles from sunshine. They will start by going down to the sump and then back to 39 and then work up. It is a hassle to take the cage below 39, so they will climb down to the bottom and come back. The idea, is to check along the way that everything is safe. When going along a drift, they check the temperature. An area left without air moving will raise in temperature from the rock around it, and there is a good chance the air will become toxic, (deadly) but if the air is cool, it means it is being pulled through there and it will be safe to breathe. They check the "back", that is the rock over head, the ceiling, look for areas that look like they might have worked loose, or be cracked. They don't have the gear with them to pin them back, so they just have a spray paint can and mark it for another crew to come in later and pin it (set lags -- steel pins -- in and bolt them tight).
Along all the drifts there is a "piss trench", a trench running along the side of the rails where the water drains down towards the shaft. If one gets lost, look in the trench, if there is water flowing, it will be flowing towards the man cage, that doesn’t mean you can get to the man cage that way, the way could just lead to a dead area, or into the bell. But water flows towards the production shaft. Air on the other hand usually will flow the escape route. (Usually) On the surface there are eight shafts besides the production shaft and each has a great fan eight feet in diameter pulling air up out of the mine.
This keeps the air cool and safe to breathe, the air goes down the production shaft, and out these other eight dummy ventilation shafts.
Underground there is no light, it is six miles to the surface, no light makes its way down there unless you bring it with you. It is total darkness. The platform of each level, the crib room and the Grizzly area have electric lights, but move up a drift 200 feet from the grizzly or the platform, and the light you have is the light on your helmet or the hand held "Big John" light. Otherwise your eyes don't work, can't tell if they are open or closed. They just don't work at all. Most people have never seen complete darkness, no light at all. On the surface it is rarely ever witnessed. Underground if your helmet light goes off, your eyes don't work at all, nothing!
Liffy and JB are each given a pack, in it is a length of rope, a Big John light, some ladder pins, a radio, two little bottles of water and a few other odds and ends, then there is room for their lunch since they won't be getting back to the crib room for break.
The first task is to go from 39, where they work daily, down to the sump. To do this they have to leave the plat in a direction neither has ever taken. The area is not in use and the water coming out of pin holes in the sides and back are all discolored, some yellow, some green and another white. They seek out the route, looking for the markers. The route is marked to be ascended, not descended, so if you are to go up a shaft, it will be marked at the bottom, maybe not at the top. They get to the first shaft. It is a zig-zag, JB stays up, and Liffy goes down the first set of ladder rungs, mounted in the wall. The steps don't come just even like they would on a ladder. The pinholes for the rungs have been drilled with a portable air leg. Sometimes to get one started the hole doesn’t end up just where the operator had hoped, some of the rungs are sloped to the side, others are a little too far apart. It is a climb, but on the zigzag the way is made easier by the slope of the shaft.
Liffy gets down part way and calls for JB to come on down where he is. He has found a place where the rungs are far apart and wants the paint can to mark it.
That done, he continues on down, tapping the rungs with a hammer as he passes (only after he has had his full weight on them as he climbs down). Where the zig meets the zag there is a little shelf cut out. They both unite there. JB continues on down, checking as he goes.
The morning went along like this, an exploration down to the sump, then a quick return to 39, then they found it a bit easier going up, the rungs could be tested before standing on them, and the route was better marked. They got up to 38, traversed across a drift for several hundred feet, and found the next shaft, a vertical. When you climb a ladder you have it at just the right angle so your weight is on the ladder and you can climb with the least strain. A vertical ladder, or one set too steep, leaves your weight hanging back, dependent of your
hand holds as well as you foot holds. Also in a vertical there are no rest stops, you climb, and climb, and keep climbing till you get to a drift.
Sometimes some miner will take pity on a climber and pop out a room sized platform as a rest station, but these come too few and far between. To make one of these interim rest areas an airleg and drill have to be lowered down the shaft, then a man has to drill and pop the platform out with nowhere to stand. They don't come often enough.
After much climbing and exploration, Liffy and JB were on 32 at noon. There they had a hard time finding where the escape route went, they followed one set of marks, they lead to a dead end, a shaft that was choked with debris, and a mark showing to return. They retraced their tracks, and didn't find a marked escape route, but they did see a shaft with steps in it. They marked the place, and each went off exploring a ways, and they came back. Then they both went off exploring, together looking for the marked escape route. There is a lot of track
down there, they came out to the bell in two different places. With the Big John light they could look and see that they where near the bottom of the bell, maybe two levels up, the light wouldn't pick up the back of the bell, and only just barely reached the far side. This is a light like a car head light. The far side of the bell at the level they were at was nearly too far away to be picked out by the light.
"We could radio up to the Super, and tell him we can't find it". Said JB.
"Aye, and look like a couple of lost boy scouts, I doubt it mate. We can go up that one we saw with the steps, must be it. Let’s have a look".
Liffy went first, JB waiting. Liffy got up a ways and called for JB. They met 150 feet from 32 level. There was a drift there, but the shaft continued on up, it was a place to rest, and meet, and make another assault, still no markings saying they were on the right trail. Liffy headed up again, this shaft had a steel ladder in it, pined to the wall every so often. Liffy climbed, and as he came to a pin fastener he taped it with the hammer. The water running down over the years with the minerals in it had rusted the pins, the whole ladder was just
a bit unsteady as Liffy worked his way up. JB waited in the intersecting drift, he could see the light from Liffy's helmet each time he looked back down. He was getting a ways up there.
Then there was a noise. Underground when there is a noise it is caused by you. You are in solid rock with no way for sound to get to you from anywhere else.
So if you hear something, either you or your mate has made the sound. It was the sound of steel on rock, not like the tap tap of the hammer, more like a crashing sound. Then more, the stones began to fall from the shaft, JB couldn't see up to where Liffy was, but something was going on. The bottom of the ladder
moved, then more ladder came down the shaft, and more rock, ladders, and steel falling past the drift where JB was standing, he stepped back, and as quick as it started, the movement and noise stopped.
The shaft had bits of ladder wedged across it, and several sections where right there by the drift. JB got over by the Shaft and called. "Liffy! Liffy! You OK?!"
The reply came "****!" Now JB could see his light. It was moving, he must be all right if the light is moving and he can still swear. Liffy was hanging from the bottom rung of the ladder, everything below that had fallen down below him.
He was busy doing a pull-up getting up on to the rest of the ladder.
JB couldn't help. There was now no ladder leading up from where he was, and he couldn't even go down, the shaft was choked with broken bits of ladder.
Liffy called down. "****! Mate!
JB called back up, "You OK?"
“Ya, I’m on the bottom step, nothing below, don't know what's up above me, Give a shut to the Super".
So JB called the surface and told the Super where they where, and as much as he knew about what happened. Two crews where sent down right off, one to 32 and one to 30, JB was able to get out along the drift he was standing on. It took into the second shift to get Liffy out, they had to drop ladders and all down, pretty much make a way for him to get out. Later it was pointed out to them that they where not on the escape route, the route had gone up another shaft, one they hadn’t found. The whole experience was a bit sobering. The area they
work in is more than a days walk-out, and it isn't well marked, and for them to attempt to walk out they only got a small part of the way and then had to be rescued. A sobering thought, don't take the man cage for granted.

I am off to church. I hope you all have a blessed day.

Bogging

38 miles east of Tennant Creak, Northern Territory, Australia.

JB is twenty-three years old, built solid, at just under six feet. He
weighs just about two hundred pounds, he is tanned and muscular. His hair is brown, shoulder length, tied back with a blue bandanna. He
sports a long beard, confined mostly to the point of his chin. He is dressed blue jeans, and a T shirt that advertises a hotel in the Philippines and a pair of red sneakers.
It's a Saturday Morning, just before 5 a.m., the air is clear and warm, it will be another hot day on the surface, good thing he will be working underground today. Today is an overtime shift. He has worked through the week, 10 hours each day. Today will be something different, no mucking and bogging, today will be maintenance and resetting of equipment for the coming week. JB is thinking about what he might be asked to do in the mines today. Each Saturday is different. Last week he ran the clam and mucked out the sump where all the water runs into the very bottom of the mine. The water carries mineral-rich silt into the sump, and there is a clam there. Every once in a while someone uses the clam to muck out the sump and send the mineral-rich silt and muck to the surface. That had been interesting and somewhat challenging. Sending the clam into the water, closing
it on a mouthful of muck. then pulling it up to the waiting cage. All this by operating four levers and a peddle on the floor. The ore car, that hangs beneath the man cage, had been brought all the way to the bottom, 100 feet below the lowest working level. The muck was released into the waiting ore car on the lift.
Sometimes on a Saturday, there will be work on the surface, in the shop or running the crusher. The crusher job is one of the few surface jobs that are not taken by the union miners. The job entails watching over the crusher and examining the material being crushed. Making sure no steel or explosives go through the jaws. Some of the rocks need a helping hand with a bar to go through the jaws. The weather is the biggest factor of working on the surface. It gets to be 110F often in the heat of the day. The weather underground is always about the same. It will be about 70F, there will be a drafty wind going steady all the time. In places it will be raining all the time.
Saturday breakfast at the mess hall is a good one. They are all good meals at the mess hall. The cook had baked bread and the place smelled of the freshly baked bread coming out of the oven, mixed with the smell of the wood fire steak cooker, grilling steaks and chops. This morning for breakfast JB selects a good sized steak, a couple a chops, four eggs cooked to order, over easy, one slice of bacon, a sausage, and a bowl of the cooks’ baked beans (the beans will give you power when the rest is gone). He takes his tray to the table where Liffy is
sitting, and goes back for a big cup of strong tea. On the way back to the table JB grabs a small loaf of the fresh bread and sets it on the table between him and Liffy.
Liffy is 22, has short red hair, so curly it is almost kinky. He's all muscle from the work in the mines, and he is wearing a dirty Irish football shirt with the arms cut off. Where the arm holes are on the T shirt, you can see the edge of a tattoo, chest size, of a clipper ship, a four masted clipper in full sail, and over the tattoo there is a cloud. The cloud was caused by an accident in the mines. Liffy had been training a new man, and an air hose had been run over and cut in two by the ore train. The 1-3/4 inch hose has 200 pounds per square inch of compressed air in it, used to run a Bogger and drills. When the train ran it over the hose began to fly around, Liffy was near, and jumped on the flailing hose and yelled for the trainee to turn the line off. The air from the hose got him across Liffy's tattooed chest, taking the skin off. In the months following the mishap, Liffy continued to work underground, getting dirt in the injury each day as it healed. As the wound healed, a cloud was formed over the clipper ship.
"What you figure we gonna do today?” JB greets Liffy as he sits down.
"Aye, you got me there Yank, I been on the plat all week, don't guess they let me out easy today, see what the Super has, bet it be a ball buster."
JB and Liffy work the same level, down at the 39, the lowest of the working levels. They will be doing the overtime shift today together. They eat their hearty breakfast and wash it down with tea, on the way out, each grabs a packed lunch.
Opening his lunch Liffy looks in and says “Aye, it be a Yank lunch if ever there be one, Spam sandwiches with molasses cookies and another apple, I bet I got ten apples down there on the lift, I line them up, hoping to get a chance to heave one at the Inspector."
They go out and get into the waiting Van. There are only five in the fourteen passenger van, a light load seeing how it is the weekend.
The union driver closes the door, and heads out, dust flying from the dirt road as he makes the nine miles over to the Juno mine. As they leave the smelter civilization drops away. They scoot along the 30-yard-wide mining road leading away from the smelter. Far off there is a cloud of dust, it gets bigger, and the union driver says "Blow me down! Every morning there is a train, even on the day before the Sabbath.” He pulls the van over, and drives right off the hard
traveled part of the road past the shoulder, and into the dessert just a bit, and the van comes to a stop. The dust cloud comes closer, and soon there is a pulsing bright light, a single head light seen in front of the cloud. Then the road-train comes close enough to be seen.
There is a mighty ten-wheeled tractor, with a "roobar" shielding the front. The regular headlights are on in the dawn hour. They light the road. Mounted on top of the tractor is a pulsating spot light, a foot across, put there to warn on-coming traffic to get out of the way. The tractor has a hood longer then any normal road tractor, there is a roar coming form the engine housed under the hood.
Behind the tractor are four ore cars, each with four axles under it, sixteen rubber tired wheels to each ore car. The first follows easy behind the tractor, the second is swaying just a bit, you don't notice the third because at 60 to 70 m.p.h. the final car is waging back and forth like the tail on a happy puppy. The tires of the last car spray gravel far and wide as it passes by, spraying the van parked well off the road surface. The trains have the right of way. More then that, when you meet one oncoming, you have to pull right off the road, and
if you spot one in the rear view, you'd be wise to pull off as well, for they go at a better clip them most four wheelers would want to go.
As they near Juno Mine, the head frame is the first thing to comes into view. The head frame is over the production shaft, a vertical shaft with the ore cage and man cage running in it, two offset ore cars, one going up while the other goes down. On top of one of the ore cars rides a man cage. The winch house set over to the side, the heavy cables running to the production shaft. Then the conveyors running from the shaft and the ore tip are visible.
They pull up past the Super’s house and come to a halt at the locker room. The Super is there to meet the van as they pull up.
"Liffy, take JB and you'll be checking the escape route".
"Aye Super, Well, that answers your question of what we'll be doing today, ha Yank? The bloody walk out, hope you’re ready for a long climb!"
As they enter the Locker room, each man puts his time card through the time clock, and grabs his battery off the charger. JB and Liffy prepare, much like a weekday. They clip the light to their helmet, put the battery on the heavy safety belt. There is a four-foot piece of rope also on the safety belt. On the end of the rope is a pigtail, a corkscrew like piece of heavy metal wire. The idea is to use the pigtail when working anywhere you could fall. One throw and the pigtail will go around a pipe or support or anything, come around and hook to
itself, making a quick way of tying yourself in as you work. In an emergency the rope can be thrown out during a fall, it will hopefully catch something and tie itself, breaking your fall. (Maybe your back as well, as you are stopped suddenly by a rope fixed to your waist belt.) Most all the miners don't leave the rope free ready for use, but wrap it tightly around the belt, keeping it neatly out of the way. Both Liffy and JB had theirs wrapped.
They would be going to the lowest level, so they would be on the first cage going down, it being a weekend there will only be two man runs, one to the lower levels, and one to the bell.
The way this mine looks underground, it might be hard to visualize. Most miners don't get to see enough of it to get a good picture of it. They go to their work station, and where they work the shift, and come back up the man cage. The mine is like a honeycomb. Starting just over 1,000 feet from the surface there are levels, every two to five hundred feet, each level is a series of drifts, a horizontal tunnel, running slightly uphill as it runs away from the shaft. The drifts run as much as three miles from the shaft, and then they have other dummy
shafts, a vertical tunnel that goes level to level, up and down but doesn’t go to the surface. The drifts go out like spokes from the shaft, with branching drifts as they go out further, and those branches branch, with dummy shafts every so often. These dummy shafts are ore drops. They will sink a shaft down to a lower level and then as they work a drift out, extending the horizontal tunnel, the ore will be dropped down the dummy shaft to the level below. There, it will be popped, mucked and taken by underground train to the platform (or
plat), there the ore will be loaded, usually by dropping another 3 to 5 hundred feet down a zigzag shaft, and that shaft will dump into the production shaft. The production shaft is the one with the winch and the man/ore cage.
These radiating spoke-like drifts, and dummy shafts are growing all the time as the miners work, expanding them and bringing out the ore. In places the drifts and shafts are so numerous that all that is left are pillars, vertical columns of rock, with the rest of the material around them removed.
The pillar pullers do just that, they will set charges in a pillar, and remove it, taking the resulting ore to a lower level, and eventually up to the surface.
The "Bell" is a huge open room, a mile and a half high, and over 3/4 of mile across, this is an area where the drifts and shafts made pillars, and the pillars have been pulled, leaving a empty room honey-combed on the sides. In the Juno Mine there are three bells, each off the shaft in a different direction. Below a bells are more levels, the ore is brought to the edge of the bell from the levels, with train, and dropped down dummy shafts that lead out into the bell. The bell is like a giant salt shaker with holes at the bottom. The ore falls into the shafts at the bottom, and at the next level down, there are muckers, breaking the rock up with explosives and loading the ore into rail cars to be taken to the production shaft.
As a safety measure, an escape route is established and maintained. It is a way a man can walk out in case there is some reason the winch isn't operating to bring them out with the man cage.
The escape route is always changing, as the mine expands, parts are left stale, and parts are removed, the escape route has to be moved and reestablished. The route is marked by a man in the running posture, with an arrow under it. The route will go along a drift, then maybe up a shaft using ladders, or steps fastened to the side of the shaft, some are vertical shafts, some are the zigzag, some are a short l00 foot climb, some seem like they go on forever. The route meanders, and there are old routes no longer in service along the way.
They will be marked by the running man with an arrow with an x somehow over it. Sometimes it will be two steps drilled into form the x. Other times it will be paint that can be hard to see. Sometimes the x will be chiseled into the rock.
Liffy and JB are to start at the bottom, and another team will start half way out, the upper crew will to try to get to the surface, and Liffy and JB will try to get to where the upper crew started. The upper escape route is better established, it is in the part of the mine no longer being mined, and it doesn’t change, the lower route goes around and through the production areas, along the edge of the bell, in and out all over the place.
Liffy and JB go down to the 39 level, over six miles from sunshine. They will start by going down to the sump and then back to 39 and then work up. It is a hassle to take the cage below 39, so they will climb down to the bottom and come back. The idea, is to check along the way that everything is safe. When going along a drift, they check the temperature. An area left without air moving will raise in temperature from the rock around it, and there is a good chance the air will become toxic, (deadly) but if the air is cool, it means it is being pulled through there and it will be safe to breathe. They check the "back", that is the rock over head, the ceiling, look for areas that look like they might have worked loose, or be cracked. They don't have the gear with them to pin them back, so they just have a spray paint can and mark it for another crew to come in later and pin it (set lags -- steel pins -- in and bolt them tight).
Along all the drifts there is a "piss trench", a trench running along the side of the rails where the water drains down towards the shaft. If one gets lost, look in the trench, if there is water flowing, it will be flowing towards the man cage, that doesn’t mean you can get to the man cage that way, the way could just lead to a dead area, or into the bell. But water flows towards the production shaft. Air on the other hand usually will flow the escape route. (Usually) On the surface there are eight shafts besides the production shaft and each has a great fan eight feet in diameter pulling air up out of the mine.
This keeps the air cool and safe to breathe, the air goes down the production shaft, and out these other eight dummy ventilation shafts.
Underground there is no light, it is six miles to the surface, no light makes its way down there unless you bring it with you. It is total darkness. The platform of each level, the crib room and the Grizzly area have electric lights, but move up a drift 200 feet from the grizzly or the platform, and the light you have is the light on your helmet or the hand held "Big John" light. Otherwise your eyes don't work, can't tell if they are open or closed. They just don't work at all. Most people have never seen complete darkness, no light at all. On the surface it is rarely ever witnessed. Underground if your helmet light goes off, your eyes don't work at all, nothing!
Liffy and JB are each given a pack, in it is a length of rope, a Big John light, some ladder pins, a radio, two little bottles of water and a few other odds and ends, then there is room for their lunch since they won't be getting back to the crib room for break.
The first task is to go from 39, where they work daily, down to the sump. To do this they have to leave the plat in a direction neither has ever taken. The area is not in use and the water coming out of pin holes in the sides and back are all discolored, some yellow, some green and another white. They seek out the route, looking for the markers. The route is marked to be ascended, not descended, so if you are to go up a shaft, it will be marked at the bottom, maybe not at the top. They get to the first shaft. It is a zig-zag, JB stays up, and Liffy goes down the first set of ladder rungs, mounted in the wall. The steps don't come just even like they would on a ladder. The pinholes for the rungs have been drilled with a portable air leg. Sometimes to get one started the hole doesn’t end up just where the operator had hoped, some of the rungs are sloped to the side, others are a little too far apart. It is a climb, but on the zigzag the way is made easier by the slope of the shaft.
Liffy gets down part way and calls for JB to come on down where he is. He has found a place where the rungs are far apart and wants the paint can to mark it.
That done, he continues on down, tapping the rungs with a hammer as he passes (only after he has had his full weight on them as he climbs down). Where the zig meets the zag there is a little shelf cut out. They both unite there. JB continues on down, checking as he goes.
The morning went along like this, an exploration down to the sump, then a quick return to 39, then they found it a bit easier going up, the rungs could be tested before standing on them, and the route was better marked. They got up to 38, traversed across a drift for several hundred feet, and found the next shaft, a vertical. When you climb a ladder you have it at just the right angle so your weight is on the ladder and you can climb with the least strain. A vertical ladder, or one set too steep, leaves your weight hanging back, dependent of your
hand holds as well as you foot holds. Also in a vertical there are no rest stops, you climb, and climb, and keep climbing till you get to a drift.
Sometimes some miner will take pity on a climber and pop out a room sized platform as a rest station, but these come too few and far between. To make one of these interim rest areas an airleg and drill have to be lowered down the shaft, then a man has to drill and pop the platform out with nowhere to stand. They don't come often enough.
After much climbing and exploration, Liffy and JB were on 32 at noon. There they had a hard time finding where the escape route went, they followed one set of marks, they lead to a dead end, a shaft that was choked with debris, and a mark showing to return. They retraced their tracks, and didn't find a marked escape route, but they did see a shaft with steps in it. They marked the place, and each went off exploring a ways, and they came back. Then they both went off exploring, together looking for the marked escape route. There is a lot of track
down there, they came out to the bell in two different places. With the Big John light they could look and see that they where near the bottom of the bell, maybe two levels up, the light wouldn't pick up the back of the bell, and only just barely reached the far side. This is a light like a car head light. The far side of the bell at the level they were at was nearly too far away to be picked out by the light.
"We could radio up to the Super, and tell him we can't find it". Said JB.
"Aye, and look like a couple of lost boy scouts, I doubt it mate. We can go up that one we saw with the steps, must be it. Let’s have a look".
Liffy went first, JB waiting. Liffy got up a ways and called for JB. They met 150 feet from 32 level. There was a drift there, but the shaft continued on up, it was a place to rest, and meet, and make another assault, still no markings saying they were on the right trail. Liffy headed up again, this shaft had a steel ladder in it, pined to the wall every so often. Liffy climbed, and as he came to a pin fastener he taped it with the hammer. The water running down over the years with the minerals in it had rusted the pins, the whole ladder was just
a bit unsteady as Liffy worked his way up. JB waited in the intersecting drift, he could see the light from Liffy's helmet each time he looked back down. He was getting a ways up there.
Then there was a noise. Underground when there is a noise it is caused by you. You are in solid rock with no way for sound to get to you from anywhere else.
So if you hear something, either you or your mate has made the sound. It was the sound of steel on rock, not like the tap tap of the hammer, more like a crashing sound. Then more, the stones began to fall from the shaft, JB couldn't see up to where Liffy was, but something was going on. The bottom of the ladder
moved, then more ladder came down the shaft, and more rock, ladders, and steel falling past the drift where JB was standing, he stepped back, and as quick as it started, the movement and noise stopped.
The shaft had bits of ladder wedged across it, and several sections where right there by the drift. JB got over by the Shaft and called. "Liffy! Liffy! You OK?!"
The reply came "****!" Now JB could see his light. It was moving, he must be all right if the light is moving and he can still swear. Liffy was hanging from the bottom rung of the ladder, everything below that had fallen down below him.
He was busy doing a pull-up getting up on to the rest of the ladder.
JB couldn't help. There was now no ladder leading up from where he was, and he couldn't even go down, the shaft was choked with broken bits of ladder.
Liffy called down. "****! Mate!
JB called back up, "You OK?"
“Ya, I’m on the bottom step, nothing below, don't know what's up above me, Give a shut to the Super".
So JB called the surface and told the Super where they where, and as much as he knew about what happened. Two crews where sent down right off, one to 32 and one to 30, JB was able to get out along the drift he was standing on. It took into the second shift to get Liffy out, they had to drop ladders and all down, pretty much make a way for him to get out. Later it was pointed out to them that they where not on the escape route, the route had gone up another shaft, one they hadn’t found. The whole experience was a bit sobering. The area they
work in is more than a days walk-out, and it isn't well marked, and for them to attempt to walk out they only got a small part of the way and then had to be rescued. A sobering thought, don't take the man cage for granted.

Washington County, reporting for duty, Sir!

I am the one who went out in the woods looking for her. I never found her.

Some pictures are as good as 1,000 words. Your photo, sorry to say it, lacks a full sentance.
Welcome to Just Say Hi. Send some more time in the dark room and find a picture that will show what you look like.