Before long the ambulance arrived, and I was loaded up and ready for the very long ride to the Grants Clinic.
Aftermath
The diagnosis was a broken vertebra. I spent two weeks at the Grants Clinic, and while it wasn’t pleasant overall, there were some enjoyable elements. One was Demerol.
At first the injections were urgently anticipated to ease the pain, and later I wanted one whether I needed it or not. My physician, Dr. Valdivia, was good and realized what patients like me were up to, so the administration of Demerol by needle tapered off and was replaced with a pill form of the drug that, while decent, couldn’t match the rush of the injections. I now have at least some rudimentary understanding of drug addiction. That Demerol was good stuff.
I signed some papers and cashed some checks during the period of Demerol injections that I later had no recollection of. I ended up getting copies of the checks I signed before I would believe I had actually done it. That’s what drugs will do to you.
As for the injury itself, I never lost the use of any extremity, but I did lose feeling in several spots on my body that ranged from a square inch to one area of the chest that was several inches around. I would pinch these areas and feel nothing for many months afterward.
Although my injury did not feel minor, during my stay at the clinic I met other miners with injuries far more severe than mine. I quickly realized the good fortune with which I had been blessed to have had such relatively modest damage.
The Grants Clinic. that also served as the only hospital in town, was filled with underground workers who had been hurt in some particularly gruesome ways. One of my roommates had been routinely operating a slusher when the drum bearings came apart, sending a bolt through his ankle, irreparably destroying his bones.
Another laborer had been walking down a main track drift when he was struck by the lead ore car of a motor. He told me he never saw or heard it coming. He lived to talk about it, but he was pretty broken up. My discomfort paled by comparison to these men, and I resolved to tone down my internal self-pity a little.
My hospital stay lasted for two weeks, after which I was fitted with a waist-to-neck body cast and sent home.
At some point during my stay at the Grants Clinic, Greg Hornaday left without a word. I never figured that one out. He just up and vanished, never to be seen again.
Someone stole the battery out of my El Camino during my clinic stay, adding insult to injury, so I had to get that replaced just to get home.
The cast stayed on for three months, during which time it was somewhat difficult to get around or do much of anything. Occasionally I would take a drive, but had I suffered a flat tire, I would have been unable to change it, so I never ventured far from home.
During those months I watched a lot of TV and went for some walks in the San Rafael area, but that was about the extent of it for quite some time. When walking around got old, I went to a western outfitter in town and found a shirt that was two or three sizes too big but would fit over my body cast. Doing so I was able to go to the Iron Blossom by wearing my huge western shirt over the cast. I talked myself into thinking it was fine, but I can only imagine how preposterous that must have looked. Good thing we were all drinking.
Those few trips didn’t work out well, and it wasn’t the same as when I had been working. It was as if I wasn’t a part of the underground fraternity anymore, so after a couple of attempts at it, I quit going.
I had ample opportunity to reflect during that three-month period, so that’s what I did. Although I loved working underground, I had to admit it wasn’t a real safe environment. Besides my own, I’d seen a lot of injuries and many far worse.
I really wasn’t the best miner, or close to it, and wasn’t sure I ever would be or ever wanted to be for that matter. Mostly I just liked the people I worked with, the honest hard work I did, the money and being underground.
The time was rapidly approaching when I would have to decide to either go back out to Section 35 or quit. Quitting would be no hardship, as I had managed to save a good chunk of what I had made.
I was medically cleared to return to work on a Friday yet still hadn’t decided what do. After further considering everything over the weekend, I made myself a lunch, filled up my thermos, and headed back out to Section 35, still unsure whether I was going to work or quit.
I had with me a well-worn, beaten, grayish looking hard hat, thoroughly broken in overalls and my beat up boots. Although I’d been gone for a few months any new guys out by the headframe, who didn’t know who I was, would assuredly know what I was. No greenhorn I.
But, somewhere along the thirty-mile stretch of highway out to Ambrosia Lake, it came to me that this was it. I was done with mining.
Pulling into the parking lot for what was to be the final time, I was already turning melancholy, but my mind was made up.
Entering the Dry, I was greeted by several of my fellow miners welcoming me back, but in reality I was already gone, and in passing didn’t have much to say to them, as I was no longer a part of the subterranean fraternity.
Making my way down the hallway of the mine offices, I stopped and knocked on Shotgun’s door. He was seated behind his desk looking over some paperwork and when he looked up at me quietly standing there I said, “I’m quitting.”
Thankfully, doubtless with my wellbeing in mind, he did not attempt to talk me out it because he would likely have succeeded in doing so. Instead, “OK. Sorry to see you go, but good luck,” was all he had to say.
My mining days now over I left the Dry feeling a little down, but glancing to my right was immediately buoyed by the sight of a small group of new hands, they of the shiny hard hats and clean clothes, bunched together near the headframe. Smiling to myself I thought, Good luck, I hope you have as much fun as I did.
Epilogue
I never saw Cal Cargill again, but I kept track of him as best I could over the years. He returned to his life and family in Montana. He passed away in 2006, so I suppose he wasn’t as old as I thought he was back in 1976.
Shotgun Buchanan worked for many years as a mining engineer in Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Arizona, and even Indonesia. He eventually returned home to Whitehall, Montana where he passed away in 2016.
After Greg Hornaday vanished, I never saw him again but later learned that he continued on in underground mining and, later, construction work as an explosives expert. He must have been good to have lasted so long.
Al Friedt, the hard-working and good-natured helper, I rarely saw at Section 35 after we were no longer partners. I knew from looking at the contract postings that he did well. I heard he hung on mining uranium until the mines shut down in the 1980s.
Anthony Gonzales I never saw or heard from again, but I do hope he managed to get his driver’s license and his Firebird back. Oh, and sorry about that death grip on your arm, and thanks for getting help, Anthony.
My first boss underground, Frankie Garcia, I never heard a word about until many, many years later, when I discovered that my Albuquerque barber was his brother-in-law. Small world. I wonder if he remembers the knucklehead laborer he sent to open an ore chute?
Bill Clark and many others from the Butte, Montana, area either returned to Butte after the uranium boom ended in Grants or fanned out to areas of the country where underground miners were still in demand.
As it was such a fascinating life to have lived in a boomtown and to have worked in a uranium mine alongside such an extraordinary group of people, I’m fairly certain, had I not been injured, I would have continued mining for quite some time.