That incident ruined my working life for a while, seeing as I had a heel full of cactus needles. Persevering in spite of the agonizing pain, I never once considered seeing a doctor, even though Kermac provided 100 percent free medical insurance. I had worked hard to move up a rung on the ladder of the laborer hierarchy and didn’t want to lose my place by taking any time off for a doctor’s appointment. That was out of the question. And did that heel ever hurt.
I don’t know how I managed, but I did. It took quite a while for those needles to work themselves out, but I can attest to the fact that the body can heal itself. I also have a great deal of respect for the cactus and its built in self-defense mechanism, always giving a wide berth to any I see.
A Place to Call Home
Those two extra weeks the rangers had granted us seemed to fly by, and Greg and I were again faced with eviction. The rangers again let us know that we wouldn’t be able to check back into the campground after this, so we were out. Whether it was legal or not, we were going to be out this time.
We spent some time scouting the surrounding area before finding a secluded spot on top of a small mesa. That mesa top turned out to be a seemingly perfect spot, as it wasn’t far off the main road and was fairly easy to access.
Because we weren’t sure how the rangers would feel about our continued residence on their mountain, we thought it prudent not to be seen. As luck would have it, there was a small depression on the mesa where we pitched our cabin tent that made it impossible to see from the main road.
The one drawback to that location was the huge volcanic plug located to the east about a hundred yards away that caused the sun to set very early in the afternoon. We had to bring our own water and had no bathroom and no shower, but we had those things at work, so we thought it was a good spot and one we could live at for quite some time. Not so.
We’d gone on for about two weeks, thinking we had a nice secluded life, when along came the rangers one afternoon. I don’t know how they found us, but they did. We were warned that we could no longer live on national forest land and would have to leave. There was not much we could do but agree to that, and we did, but of course we had no intention of leaving because there was no place else to go. So we stayed.
A few days later, Greg and I came back from day shift to find our tent down in a crumpled heap. All the tent poles had been broken, snapped in two. I can’t say it was the rangers who had done it, but we had no other suspects, so here again, that’s something I’ll never know. It could have been a bear with thumbs. We were undeterred by the broken poles, though.
Although Greg thought the tent was useless, I thought I could fix it. So I proceeded to repair each tent pole by crimping the broken ends and forcing them into each other until a couple of hours later the tent was back up.
It might have been a little shaky, but it was standing and looked good. Greg told me there was no way my repairs would hold up, but I declared there was no way they wouldn’t. I could see the questioning look on his face, so I further assured Greg that there was no way that tent could be knocked down. I did solid work. Those poles were fixed. Greg went into the tent to arrange his things, and I went back to the car to fetch something.
I couldn’t have been gone more than a couple of minutes, but when I returned, the tent was down—all but one corner, that is, through which I saw a face peering out at me through a small screen window. Oops. I will never forget that sight, as it was one of the funniest pictures I have ever seen.
Still undeterred I proceeded to work on the tent poles until I again had the tent standing. I’m proud to say it remained standing for the duration of our stay.
I always expected to have the tent further vandalized, but it never happened. Perhaps whoever damaged it originally thought maybe they had gone too far and just gave up.
We continued to live in our broken tent in the little depression on the mesa for a few weeks until one day a shift boss we knew took pity on us and offered us his cab-over camper to stay in. It was the type designed to fit in the bed of a pickup truck. The question was, where to put it?
Just then providence struck, and a coworker, Ben Wilson, told me he was quitting Kermac and returning home to Butte, Montana. Ben offered me his rented mobile home that was to be available within two weeks.
I accepted immediately of course, sight unseen, and then asked if we could park the camper on his rented property in the interim. Ben agreed, and we then had a comfortable place to live and, even better, running water for the first time in a couple of months.
Between and just south of Grants and Milan is the small town of San Rafael. It’s just to the west of Route 53 and during my time in the area had a population of around six hundred. The population of San Rafael seemed to be made up of primarily natives of the area who had been there long before uranium was discovered. Maybe some of them worked in the mines, but other than that, there was no visible industry of any kind.
San Rafael appeared to me as somewhat of an oasis in what otherwise was desert country. The main street was almost picturesque with all its greenery, and I would occasionally turn off Route 53 just to drive through the village.
The place that I was going to rent was a half mile south of San Rafael on Route 53, where there was little greenery but a lot of surrounding wide-open country. It was close to the former site of the original Fort Wingate, where Douglas MacArthur’s father, Arthur, was stationed in 1880, and it was there that we placed the camper we would live in for a couple of weeks.
Shortly before moving into the vacated rental home, Greg Hornaday left Grants and his employ at Section 35. I don’t know what happened at Section 35 that precipitated his decision to move on, but he decided to go one day, and the next he was gone. It could have been nothing specific but instead an accumulation of things or maybe being just plain tired out.
For the first time since arriving in the Grants area, I had an actual home now and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. It wasn’t close to any of the crowds in Grants or Milan, nor was it anything fancy, but that was fine with me. Only some ranchers and a few miners lived out there, so despite being barren country, it was peaceful and offered some great views of Mount Taylor.
Miner’s Helper
I continued working with Al Riordan for two weeks and enjoyed it the entire time. He was a very good miner and a great guy to learn from.
It was the first time I saw drilling and blasting up close, and while I didn’t know exactly what Al was doing, I could see he certainly knew what he was doing. Each round he blasted seemed to turn out perfectly, always the same height and width, as we advanced the main drift. I still don’t know how he was able to get the floor so flat so that the ties and rails we laid were perfectly level.
I learned about ground support, both about the temporary roof jack and more about the permanent stull. I had earlier loaded and unloaded a lot of stulls, so it was good to see how they were used. I learned how to scale the back and ribs using a scaling bar. A scaling bar was a long six- or eight-foot piece of heavy steel with a flattened end by which any loose material is brought down by prying, before it fell on its own or on us.