Bustos probably should have known that would happen, but if he did, he didn’t care. The end result was that Jerry Sanchez found every reason not to pull the ore that Bustos was producing. Sure, Bustos could have gone complaining about it and gotten some ore pulled, but that hurt some other miner, so he saw no sense in it.
Like most good miners, Manuel Bustos was not one to sit around waiting. As the ore in Bustos’s stope filled the chute, something would have to be done if he couldn’t get Jerry to pull it. There was only one thing to do in that case: pull your own ore.
While Bustos was an excellent miner, he proved to be a lousy motorman and would have been better off having me do it for him. But I guess he was stubborn and too emotionally invested for that, and he would show Jerry Sanchez who the real motorman was.
The uranium ore collection site was located just off the station. To the back of the cage was another lifting area in the main shaft where the ore hoppers were. As long as there was ore in the collection chute, those hoppers were running up to the surface.
Motormen would pull their trains into the collection area, lining the cars up with one of two very large gates. The gates opened inwardly so that the ore could be dumped into collection chutes that were much bigger versions of the chutes at the stopes.
The side of the ore car facing the chute was hinged. On the reverse side was a clevis to which a cable was attached that was also connected to a winch. The motorman first pulled a handle located to the side of the gate, opening it, and then, using a separate handle, lifted the ore car on its hinges, dumping the ore into the chute. While it sounds involved, a good motorman was very fast and could unload ten cars of ore this way in under five minutes.
The tricky part was getting the ore car to flip back over and drop down onto its chassis. That was accomplished by pulling the car over fairly quickly via the winch so that the car dumped its ore and the weight and momentum of this stretched the cable slightly so that it acted like a steel rubber band. The bungee effect would bounce the car back to the tipping point, where it would then drop back over and be lowered by the operator to its resting position. An experienced operator completed this process very quickly, and the only people in the mine with that kind of experience were the motormen.
It was fun to watch an experienced motorman dumping ore, and although I tried to master the technique, I never got the hang of it. It usually took me several tries to get the ore car back over and settled on its chassis.
The winch and gate levers looked identical, and perhaps at one time someone had thought to color code them, but if that had ever happened, the color was long gone. I looked at those levers and never could tell the difference myself so was always careful around the ore dump. But there was no real need for an experienced motorman to be able to identify which was which; they just knew. Not so Manuel Bustos.
Always a man in a hurry, Bustos could be seen all but running from place to place. Regrettably, he applied his otherwise enviable work ethic every time he tried to be a motorman. Forgetting to turn on his trip light, speeding, and failing to pull the safety light lanyards hanging from the back were all his trademarks.
It didn’t hurt to know when he’d be pulling ore, as it was an invitation to be even more vigilant while walking down the track drift. He pulled a lot of ore this way, but it came close to being his undoing.
Much as I’d done working the main track drift, I did my best to help Manuel. An important component of that was keeping my mouth shut. I didn’t know anything, and unless I saw something falling, I wasn’t about to say anything, let alone question what he was doing. So when he told me he was going to start pulling his own ore, I certainly wasn’t going suggest I do it myself. If he had wanted me to do it, he would have said so, and besides there was the matter of his pesky emotional attachment to the problem.
As we worked in the stope, there came to be many tons of ore backed up. I don’t know the exact number, but the hundred-foot chute was full, and we had an awful lot of ore lying around. Jerry Sanchez had enough to keep himself busy and was not going back to pull all that ore, of course, so Bustos took matters into his own hands.
Bustos collected a motor and enough cars for a twelve-car train and made his first trip back to the stope’s ore chute. As I operated the ore chute lever filling the cars, Bustos would pull the motor ahead. Here was where my previous ore chute opening experience really made a difference, for in no time we had those cars full and together made it to the dumping station uneventfully—although I have to say I’d never ridden in a motor at that almost reckless speed.
At this point I became a spectator. Still, in a hurry as always, Bustos jumped from the motor heading for the winch cable handle to get some slack to hook up his first ore car, hastily yanking on the lever. Regrettably, not only did he pull on the wrong handle, but he was also standing on the lip of the gate, which opened as quickly as he had yanked on the lever. The speed at which the gate opened gave him no chance to catch himself, and Manuel Bustos had dumped himself down the ore collection chute—potentially a very long drop.
Those ore collection chutes were very deep, and a drop like that could be fatal; otherwise, the sight of Manuel disappearing down the chute would have been very funny. That chute flew open and down he went, feet flying up in the air and hands flailing as he quickly disappeared. All that remained to be seen was what was left of Manuel Bustos at the bottom of the hopper shaft.
If the chute was empty, or even a third full, it would mean one long fall onto a pile of rock and in all likelihood a fatal one. That’s what I was expecting as I inched up to the open gate to have a look.
Manuel Bustos, who had shown me before that he had some luck, had fallen only twelve feet, as the chute was almost full. He sustained no injury other than that to his pride and was able to crawl out.
Of course, as I was the only witness, there was no chance I would ever repeat what I had seen unless to confirm whatever Manuel decided to tell of it. He, being a good-natured man, actually delighted in telling the story, and I ended up having to confirm that what he said happened really did happen.
We pulled ore from the stope all day after Manuel’s close call. It had to have been more than a hundred cars—a good payday for Bustos and a good story for me.
The Iron Blossom
I had never been much for saloons. Not that I had anything against a drink now and then, but it just wasn’t my style to hang around bars. However, I soon found that if I wanted to socialize with my new mining buddies, then I needed to know something about the local bar scene.
The first thing I learned about the saloons in Grants was which establishments were relatively safe to go into, and those that were not. If the consensus I heard was to stay away from a particular bar, there was always a good reason or two. Whether it was because of a stabbing, a shooting, or an excess in fighting, I would stay clear.
On the other hand, some saloons had good reputations as places miners could go and, relatively speaking, safely have a good time. The Iron Blossom Saloon was one such place.
The Iron Blossom was a popular spot, and most of the people I associated with could be found there. It had large, round tables with eight to ten chairs and probably fifteen tables total plus a long bar. The long bar had been imported from a saloon in Butte, Montana, and actually was a beautiful piece of furniture in its own right backed up by a large mirror. The Iron Blossom setup was very similar to saloon sets seen in television and movie Westerns.
Attached to and behind the Iron Blossom was the La Ventana restaurant, which is still open today. It was a very comfortable place for a meal back then and still is.