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light mantle of snow transformed the austere coal camp
of Eagle, West Virginia, into an eerily beautiful night landscape. Blanketing
the grimy coal dust that coated everything, the snowfall seemed to put away the
stresses of life. The Great Depression, over a year old, that wore on everyone,
might be easily forgotten in the tranquil, Christmas card scene.
But Jim Shupe was not so easily fooled.
Surrounded by his telephones, employee
charts, and maps, he would be the only man to know if something went wrong. And
the silence was weighing on him. Even though he should have felt relieved to
draw such easy Sunday duty, he felt a brooding evil in the stillness. If
something went wrong, it would happen when he least expected it. Would he hear
it? See it? Feel it?
As he sat in his warm office high above
the labyrinth of mine tunnels deep in the earth below, he tried to tune in the
few sounds outsideóthe howl of a December wind, the flap of loose telephone
wires, the drone of the mine ventilation fan. As dispatcher, he was more
accustomed to the hubbub of weekdays when he had to keep track of the myriad
rail movements in the beehive of activity below.
Then his door sprang open. He jumped up,
his heart pounding.
In the open doorway stood the Colonel,
glaring at him as he stamped muddy snow from his boots.
The old man's square, ruddy face under his
coal-black hard hat looked like a box sitting upon the larger carton of wide
shoulders and stocky green coveralls. The Colonel was wide-awake and ready for
work. The old guy had a reputation for showing up anywhere, anytime, especially
when least expected. But what had he found? What had gone wrong? What had
brought out the Colonel so late at night?
It was amazing how stealthy the old man
could be. Jim hadn't heard the Colonel's big, new 1930 Buick drive up. That
usually meant a surprise inspection, which threw into question all of his
activities as dispatcher.
But there were no activities that late at
night. Eagle, West Virginia, was absolutely dead. Underground operations had
been shut down all weekend. Starting several blocks from Jim's office and
scattered about the valleys and hillsides of Eagle, miners lay asleep in more
than three hundred company houses. Perhaps dreams of the upcoming Christmas
holiday were dancing in their heads. What was there to check?
His dispatcher's title came from his
principal responsibility for directing all traffic on the mine's extensive
railroad system. A vast array of track in the dark tunnels linked the many
parts of Eagle One. Crank-type telephones, located near key intersections,
provided the locomotive operators a means of securing his all-important
clearance before moving onto a different section of track.
The simple chalk blackboard on the wall in
front of him provided a tool for maintaining control. A schematic of all the
tracks was painted on it, along with the names that each section was called.
Space was provided for written notes in chalk as to who had the right of way in
that section. Any error on his part, and two of the squatty electric
locomotives, accompanied by their strings of heavy coal cars, might suddenly
loom out of the confined darkness for a terrifying face-to-face meeting. Such
encounters could result in horrendous crashes, with maiming and death liberally
mingled among the tangle of wreckage.
He knew that the painted lines on his map
represented only the railroad track that ran in one of the three or four
parallel tunnels, usually called entries, that extended together as a unit into
the various parts of the mine. The entries provided for fresh air into the mine
and a route for the used air to exhaust out of the mine. One of the entries
provided space for the railroad track. Each parallel entry was separated by
fifty to one hundred feet of coal seam. Tunnels called crosscuts ran between
the entries every fifty to one hundred feet. The checkerboard of coal blocks
left between them, called pillars, provided support for the tremendous weight
above.
The Colonel finally slammed the door
closed, shutting out the draft of cold air. Jim watched closely as he whipped
off his leather gloves and slammed them on his desk. The crews called big Bill
Hughes "the Colonel," but the title was honorary. And it did add credence to
one hard fact; the Colonel was the absolute boss of Continental Collieries'
mine, and Eagle was his town. The company built it to support his mine, and it
existed for no other purpose.
Colonel Hughes hired, fired, and paid
everyone from the police chief to the coal loaders. He allocated the company
houses with the same positive flair that he used to allocate the mining plans.
His company store fed and clothed the citizens of Eagle, and his company doctor
cured their ills. Running the town and running the mine were all part of the
same job for the Colonel. As superintendent of the mine, he reported to no one
but the owners in New York City.
It was the second Christmas since the
stock market crash of '29, and Jim was grateful that the mine was still open.
So many had closed. But the Colonel kept telling his men that the economy would
quickly get back on its feet. Now, over a year since the crash, it looked even
gloomier. But somehow the Colonel won the fight to keep Eagle One profitable
and open. Jim knew instinctively that the Colonel couldn't solve the economy,
but, by God, he could mine coal.
Jim caught the Colonel's eyes, as clear
and blue as a mountain stream, casting a glance at the in-board that hung on
his wall. Perhaps he was there to check on underground operations that night.
Besides controlling the vehicles on the
railroad system, Jim also had to know at all times who was in the mine. Two
large boards, called check boards, assisted him with this task. One was called
the in-board and the other, the out-board. Hanging on the wall near the door
and painted with the various shifts and sections, they showed an instant status
of the mine personnel. Small hooks arrayed in neat vertical and horizontal rows
provided each man going underground a place to hang his check tag.
Each employee had check tags. These
half-dollar-sized brass tags with the employee's company number indented into
them were used to identify anything that needed identification. Men who could
neither read nor write instantly recognized their check tag number. Each coal
loader was paid by the tons of coal he loaded. After the precious tons were in
a coal car, he hung one of his check tags on the car's side so that the scale
operator could give him pay credit when he weighed the labor.
Furthermore, each miner had a check tag
riveted to his mine belt. It provided a reliable means of identification in
case disaster should pick that mine and that shift to strike. After all, a
brass check tag could survive time, fire, and explosion.
The rule was, you hung a check tag on the
in-board on the way to the elevator, and, after coming out, you removed it
immediately and placed it on the out-board. That meant everyone. There were no
exceptions. It was simple and effective, and it was rigorously enforced.
As dispatcher, Jim also ran the lamp
house. He maintained all of the miners' cap lamps in good repair, and placed
them on the central battery charger to keep the battery, that hung on each
man's mine belt, fully charged.
He knew that the Colonel needed a
responsible man in the dispatcher job. So it made him proud to be the youngest
as he rotated shifts with his fellow dispatchers, maintaining watch on the mine
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The in-board remained under the Colonel's
piercing gaze. It was bare. The mine had been vacant since late Saturday night.
The last people out, for what remained of the weekend, had been a small
maintenance crew. Ernie Umberger, Tory Cochran, and Billy McMullen had moved
the last check tags over to the out-board after working a good part of the
night repairing a machine in the new entries dubbed Third Right. With Sunday
morning approaching, the tired men had been anxious to get home.
Tory Cochran had kidded the newly married
McMullen, when the young man grabbed the first tag. "No need to rush. It's a
mite late to shake the covers tonight."
Now that it was nearly Monday morning, in
a couple of hours Mule-Ear Hartley and Swimmer Davis, the fire bosses, would
ride the elevator down the deep shaft and start their inspection of the mine's
vast array of entries and working places.
These were skilled men. They would
separate at shaft bottom to search the mine for accumulations of dangerous
methane gas, bad roof, inadequate ventilation, accumulations of explosive coal
dust, and the many other things that could make it unsafe to work.
Jim chuckled to himself as he remembered
how Swimmer had earned his name. During one such trip, he had stepped into what
appeared to be a shallow puddle of water that turned out to be a newly dug and
flooded six-foot deep sump for a pump.
The one hundred boisterous miners of the
first shift could not start down the shaft unless the fire bosses completed
their run and declared the mine safe. If all went well, the mine foreman's
police-style whistle, blown precisely at 7:00 a.m., indicated that work had
started. Each section foreman would herd his group onto the elevator at their
assigned time to coordinate with the scheduled trains below.
The throng of strong men wearing hard hats
and mine clothes would enter the mineshaft carrying lunch buckets and various
tools. Their cap lamps would flash about as they joked, laughed, and kidded
each other. Mixed with the regional and local accents of America were those of
Hungary, Poland, Italy, Russia, Czechoslovakia and other far reaches of the
world. Their many faiths spread across the religious spectrum. They
discriminated, but despised being discriminated against. They used crude ethnic
names, but fought over the name referring to them.
They were black, white, and colors
between, but at shaft bottom they were just coal miners. They worked as tight
teams to maximize what each could load out and get paid for. They shared their
chewing tobacco and water, and they risked life and limb to help any in danger.
They were the backbone of the mine. They were a family, a brotherhood. Because of
them, coal came out of the deep earth for the benefit of mankind.
"How goes the mine, James?" the Colonel
snapped in his raspy voice. He knew everyone by name.
"Fine, sir," he said, aware of the
eagerness in his voice. "All the fans are running. There's nobody underground
right now."
The Colonel nodded as he took a second
glance at the check boards. "I'll need a cap light and my flame safety lamp.
I'm going down."
Jim jumped to comply. He pulled a cap
light from the long rack of lights in the battery charger, and turned it on as
he handed it to the Colonel. It projected a bright white beam, indicating a
well-charged battery.
As the Colonel strapped the battery to his
mine belt and pulled the cord and light across his hard hat, Jim lit and
trimmed the flame in the mine safety lamp. Then the Colonel lifted the lamp and
carefully examined the small flame. It was a simple, but effective, device for
detecting bad air and methane gas. He made a slight adjustment to the flame and
hung it on his belt.
The clear blue eyes came back to Jim.
"Better get me a spare cap light."
Jim pulled another light from the rack and
tested it. He remembered that the Colonel usually took a spare light when he
went into the mine by himself. There was a story that once while alone deep in
the mine, the Colonel had a cap lamp fail, and since then always carried a
spare when he had to depend solely upon his own light.
The Colonel turned to leave. "I'll call
you at shaft bottom," the harsh voice came over his shoulder. He moved a check tag
from the out-board to the in-board.
The blustery wind nearly ripped the door
out of Jim's fingers as he attempted to shut it behind the boss. Then he took a
proprietary look around his office. All seemed in order. He noted the lone
check tag on the in-board. It was stamped with the number "1."
ISBN:
1-58961-xxx-x
Retail: $10.95 (US)