One of my main jobs during track drift construction was to scale the back and ribs after every round was blasted. My hard hat always got a lot of use when I was scaling, as I managed to pry rock onto my head from time to time.
When the ribs were sufficiently scaled of loose material, Al and I would cover them with steel fencing material, fastening it with rock bolts.
Track drift miners used a mucking machine to clear the blasted material away from the face and into waiting ore cars for disposal.
Mucking machines were somewhat like little front-end loaders that operate on the rail in the main drift. They had a small bucket on the front that was used to scoop up the muck from a blast. The mucker operator, standing on a small platform attached to the side of the machine and using hand control levers, would flip this hinged bucket full of muck over his head, throwing the materiel into a waiting ore car behind the mucker.
As with most large machinery underground, the mucker was run by compressed air and was a lot of fun to operate if you knew what you were doing. For an inexperienced operator like me, a mucking machine was very easy to derail. Al let me run the mucker a few times, but I derailed it, and that cost us time and therefore money. I did, however, learn how to get a derailed mucker back on track very quickly and efficiently.
Now and then when Al would take a break or go back to the station for something, I would practice running the mucker up and down the track, getting familiar with the controls. That came in handy later when I had to use a mucker full time on another assignment.
Hauling rock from the face of a track drift was another one of those jobs that a motorman didn’t want to do. Only hauling ore paid a decent contract rate, and while hauling waste material paid something to the motorman, it was hardly worth his time, and unless under direct orders from a shift boss, a motorman was hard to find when waste needed to be hauled.
Because track drift mining produces waste muck almost exclusively, it’s left to the track drift miner’s helper to haul the waste material. Thanks to my previous experience running motors, it turned out I was the guy for the job. So when Al asked, “You ever run a motor?” I was able to respond, “Yup.” So Al said, “OK, go get a motor and get back here; we have a lot of work to do.” One thing about working for Al was he never let up. It was go, go, go all the time.
I went all the way back to the station, this time walking, picked up a motor and an ore car, and drove back to the face where Al was busy drilling another round.
Drill, blast, scale, muck, haul the waste, set the ties, wire the ribs, and lay the rail. That was pretty much the job as a track drift miner. Now and then we would also erect three-piece timber sets, consisting of two posts and one cap wedged against the back for enhanced ground support.
Moving and installing the long lengths of rail was extremely difficult. The rail was unwieldy, and again the steel-toed boots came in handy a few times as I would drop rail ends on myself now and then. With those steel toes, the rail would just bounce off.
As difficult as it was to lay rail, it was only a narrow-gauge track, so it gave me some appreciation for what it must be like to install full-size rail.
It was extremely heavy lifting working track drift; there was not much danger, and it was otherwise boring, but man did it pay. Al was making about $150 an hour, which I knew before I ever worked a day with him because each miner’s contract rate was posted in the Dry every other Friday.
I think he might have thrown me an hour or two of contract those two weeks I was with him, but I hadn’t expected any at all, being just a fill-in guy, so I was grateful for anything.
I was most appreciative of the temporary promotion to helper and the opportunity to finally learn something about mining. And this led to my next job.
Down the Chute
Manuel Bustos was an excellent, experienced miner in the prime of his working life. As had been the case with Al Riordan, Manuel’s regular helper was off for a couple of weeks. Bustos was cheerful and friendly, even around the new hands, so when Frankie said to me, “You’re with Bustos today,” I was pretty happy about it. It must have meant I did all right during my time with Riordan.
Bustos was a, strong, stocky man with a full, scraggly beard and longish, jet-black hair. He had kind of an odd look about him with no butt to speak of, which was only noticeable because of the extra fabric that dropped down low as he walked, causing him to be constantly pulling his pants up. He always wore his miner’s boots over his pant legs, which I found to be a particularly funny look on him. He had a great sense of humor and some interesting stories he’d accumulated through the years.
Everyone carried a steel thermos bottle underground along with their lunch bucket, and I’d noticed that Bustos’s thermos had a very large dent in it, almost separating it into two pieces. Because he was such a friendly guy, I asked him about the thermos one day during lunch break.
For a while early in his career, Bustos had been a surface worker. I think he said he ran a loader, but one day he and his crew sat down next to a loader to have their lunch. Bustos placed his thermos on the ground next to him when suddenly the loader bucket that had been left suspended in the air ten or twelve feet let loose and dropped right next to the crew and on top of Manuel’s thermos, bending it practically in two. He’d saved that thermos—I guess as a reminder to always be alert to his surroundings.
Bustos worked the pillar stopes, so named for the pillars of rock left in place to hold the ground above from collapsing after an area had been mined. Pillar stope miners produced a lot of ore and were very highly paid as a result.
Motormen loved the pillar stope guys because of the large volume of ore they produced and would sometimes pull the ore from one stope all day long. It was fast, it was easy, and they made a lot of money doing it. But it was a two-way street.
As a pillar stope miner, it paid to be on good terms with the motormen. Motormen had plenty of other stopes to pull, so if a miner gave them a hard time, it could be a while before a motor came around to pick up ore. Those miners who had a problem with a particular motorman could find their ore sitting in the chute and production stopping for a long while, and down would go the miner’s paycheck. That’s what happened to Bustos.
Jerry Sanchez was the lead motorman at Section 35, and his brother, Leo, was a hoistman. One morning Leo let the cage that Bustos was riding free-fall a couple of hundred feet. That’s a serious drop to be on the receiving end of.
Manuel was still hot about it after his shift ended and went looking for Leo, and while no fight ensued, there was some bad blood between the two that spilled over to Jerry.