When we reached the stope, I still had drilling to do, so I picked that up while Al gathered supplies and stacked timber.
It was midmorning when the light appeared. I stopped drilling long enough to point it out to Al, but he had already seen it.
“Hey, there’s a light; somebody’s coming,” he said.
“No, that’s the light I was telling you about.”
“Nah, it’s too bright. That’s somebody.”
“It isn’t somebody, Al; it’s just a light that keeps showing up, but if you want to go see for yourself, go ahead.”
Just like all of us had done previously, Al took off to see who it was, and just like everyone else, he was back shortly, having been unable to see or find anyone.
“Does that thing show up all the time?” he asked.
“Nope, just a couple of times a shift at the most, and it never moves around.”
At that point he agreed that nobody was there. Unlike me, he thought the stope probably had a ghost, which seemed to amuse him greatly. He told me the ghost didn’t matter to him as long as it stayed put.
For the three months or so that Al and I worked together, we saw the light many times. It usually never moved but now and then would shift a little from side to side.
At some point we noticed that the light was no longer making its daily appearance. It was gone, and we never saw the light again.
The relationship I had with Al was much different than Cal and I had. Al was about five years my junior, which made a difference, so we had some banter that went back and forth, unlike with Cal. On the other hand, much like Cal, he didn’t find the humor in many of the things that happened underground the way that I did.
In fact, Al had just a bit of a sense of humor deficit. His serious side would come out from time to time in conversations as time went by.
While most miners would spice up every sentence with some profane pronouncement or other, I was more refined. Where many would say, “Fuck, that boss is a real asshole,” or “Shit, that fucking mucker never works,” I would say, “Boy, that boss is a real asshole,” or “Boy, that fucking mucker never works.” It was second nature to me and in some way seemed to add a more civilized tone to life underground.
Al and I had been working together a month when one afternoon, we had completed hoisting some very heavy twelve-foot timbers, and we were carrying them one by one back to the working area of the stope. I said, “Boy, these fuckers are heavy.”
Al dropped his end. As I was on the other end, it hurt when that happened because of the added weight, so I dropped mine too. He looked at me as serious as could be and said, “Stop calling me boy. You’ve been calling me boy every day for a month, and I don’t like it.”
I started laughing and couldn’t stop while Al stood there with a look on his face that said he was ready to do battle. Fortunately, I was so much bigger than Al that he didn’t attack me, although I’m sure he wanted to.
After I calmed down, I explained that “boy” was just an expression I added to most sentences. It took me a while, but I convinced him it wasn’t personal. His outburst persuaded me not to add “boy” to my sentences any longer, and since that day in the stope, it is a rare occurrence when I do.
One day I told Al how glad I was that the day was almost over. Belying his nineteen years, he told me we would never have that day back, so, no, it was not a good thing the day was over. That was the Al Friedt credo and how he lived and worked.
Al worked so hard there were times I stood watching and laughing inside as he literally ran from place to place in the stope. I thought Al was the kind of guy that would make a great ballroom miner. He moved so fast I don’t know that a slab would ever be able to catch him. The speed at which Al worked combined with his enthusiasm made it appear to me that he was headed for the stratosphere of the mining elite one day, and I doubted he would be with me long.
Still being on the twelve-hour shift and seeing as we got along so well together, Al and I decided we would try carpooling. So Al who lived in Grants, wouldn’t have to drive all the way out to San Rafael, I drove into Milan on the days Al drove and parked my El Camino in an empty lot.
It was quite a sight when, on the first day of Al’s week to drive, he drove up in his 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. It was a slant-back, dark-green machine with some distinctive features.
The rear end had been lifted to an almost ridiculous level, and to such an extent that in order to stay seated on the inclined passenger seat, I sometimes had to brace myself with my hands on the dashboard. The nose of the car was pointed into the ground, and just getting into the car was an ordeal. I learned to open the door and hold it with my right hand; then, putting my left hand on the dashboard, I slid in and pulled the door closed all in one motion. It was the only car I have ever had to fight my way inside.
Once in and semi-seated, I looked around the interior and noticed that everything in the car was covered with a fuzzy fabric of some kind. It was on the seats, the dashboard, the instrument cluster, the rearview mirror, the steering wheel, the rear seating area, the arm rests, and almost every other part of the passenger compartment. He topped it off with fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Considering Al’s humor allotment, I might have been taking a chance, but without thinking I blurted out, “It’s a Fuzzmobile. Have you thought about fuzzwall tires?” From then on it was the Fuzzmobile.
The Fuzzmobile had seat belts, so although we seemed to be going down the road in a position somewhere between sitting and standing, it was possible to stay fastened into the passenger seat.
I had a lot of fun riding in the Fuzzmobile, and no matter how much I kidded Al about the car, he never objected. If I pointed out a spot in the car that he might have missed fuzzing over, he would have some fuzz on it the next time I saw it. He must have had quite a supply of fuzzy material at home. I never did convince him to go with the fuzzwalls, though.
Even with Al, who I liked, I never could get comfortable in carpooling. So, despite my love of the Fuzzmobile and recognizing Al as being one of the safer drivers of my carpool experiences, I went back to driving myself to work.
The Fuzzmobile was not long for the commute out to Ambrosia Lake. Shortly after I stopped riding with Al, he either had an accident in it or decided to quit subjecting the car to the abuse of the long commute.
Al replaced the Fuzzmobile with one of the all-time classic vehicles in commuting history.
Al lived at home. I think his parents must have charged him quite a lot in rent because, although he was making good money for a nineteen-year-old, he always seemed to be broke. As a result, he replaced the relatively luxurious Fuzzmobile with one of the worst-looking, used-up, broken-down pickup trucks I’d ever seen.
At one time the truck had probably been a 1960s Ford, but it was hard to tell as all the identifying emblems were gone. Most of us at the mine agreed that it had the general shape of a Ford, but we had no idea what model it might have been.
Whatever interior insignia had come with the truck was long gone, along with the paint, bumpers, tailgate, and grille. Al covered the exterior with several cans, more or less, of black spray paint.
Though not exactly the chick magnet that the Fuzzmobile was, the truck did run and made the sixty-mile round trip to and from the mine every day with no problem, except for one.
The commute out thirty miles to Ambrosia Lake went by way of Route 53 in Milan to Route 334 to Route 509, all two-lane roads. What wasn’t being mined was mostly open-range ranch land.