Walking through the door of that large metal building was entering a strange world, the world of underground mining. I’d estimate the floor was maybe five thousand square feet. Over most of it were rows of long wooden benches. Here and there were some square wire mesh baskets suspended by cables hanging from the ceiling while others were perhaps 5 feet above floor level. Next to the baskets, just above the floor, were a few men who appeared to be changing from street clothes into their work clothes, and as they did so, they hung their street clothes onto hooks attached to the wire baskets.
As most of the men for this shift were already changed and waiting out by the headframe, almost all the baskets with their hanging clothes had been hoisted to the ceiling. It was an odd sight, looking up and seeing all those baskets, but it later became obvious what a necessary and efficient system it was and why, as the place where wet work clothes were hung at the end of a shift, the large metal building was called the Dry.
After entering the Dry, the first door to the left led to the Section 35 offices occupied by various foremen, engineers, geologists, supervisors, and of course the mine superintendent, Shotgun Buchanan.
But first Greg introduced me to the assistant superintendent, Mel Vigil. Now here was a tough-looking older man, who I guessed was possibly in his late forties and who appeared to have seen it all. I didn’t know it at the time, but Mel Vigil was a kind of mining legend around the Ambrosia Lake area who had, in fact, seen a lot and had probably done it all as a first-rate miner. Maybe he was tired of the grind, tired of the danger, or just plain tired out all around, but now he was an assistant superintendent who acted as a liaison of sorts between Shotgun and the miners, and although it later struck me that he would rather have been mining, I think he was good at his job.
Whatever my appearance seemed, I know it put a cross between a concerned and bemused look on Mel Vigil’s face. I don’t think he disliked me, but it was somewhere in between the two, I suppose. I could probably guess what it was for many years and never know. In retrospect, knowing what I do now, and having had the kind of experience Mel did, were a new hire to have appeared in my office looking as I did that first day, I would have had to suppress mightily the urge to burst out laughing.
Nevertheless, perhaps inexplicably, I liked Mel right away as he briefly explained who he was and what he did at Section 35. I do know that as things turned out, he was always fair with me, and I couldn’t have asked for any more than that.
Leaving Mel’s office, we next knocked on Shotgun’s door. It was open anyway, but it seemed the polite thing to do. As Greg introduced me to Shotgun, I didn’t notice any bemused look. If first impressions mean anything, I don’t think he liked me very much. It could have been that he was in the middle of something or had other things on his mind, but his look said he wasn’t really happy to see me right then. I’ll never know and it doesn’t matter, but it’s another thing I’ve wondered about for many years, in light of events as they ultimately transpired.
His given name Arnold, Shotgun was a tall, wiry, good-looking guy who I’d been told came to Grants from Butte, Montana. I didn’t meet many fellow workers with college degrees but Shotgun was one of them, having earned a mining engineering degree from Montana Tech in 1970, after which he went to work for Anaconda Copper Mines. When copper production in Butte began to rapidly decline he had moved to Grants where his expertise in a specific type of mining, that I’ll get to later, was put to good use.
I’d been instructed by Greg never to refer to Shotgun as Arnold. I could call him Shotgun, boss, or anything other than Arnold. Well, with a name like Shotgun, why would I call him anything else?
He was a little gruff at first, asking me what made me think I could be a miner, to which I replied something to do with working hard, being on time, and learning fast—none of which mattered anyway because he needed people with or without experience, and I knew it. Maybe that’s what annoyed him, the fact that he knew that I knew and it really didn’t matter who or what I was. So he said he could use a guy like me on his crew but that I still had to apply at the Kermac office. He told me he’d call over there to let them know I was on the way and that I was to be assigned to Section 35. I said thanks and good-bye and headed over to the Kermac Ambrosia Lake Division office.
The division office wasn’t far from the mine, so we were there in less than fifteen minutes. True to his word, something I found out later he always was, Shotgun had already spoken to the personnel manager, who was expecting me and seemed much happier about it than either Mel or Shotgun had been. They just flat out needed people, so Kermac Human Resources was always hoping guys like me would walk through the door.
I was given some forms and directed to a small area in the office with school desks where I found a few others filling out forms. Some of the others were like me, meaning zero mining experience, but some of the men there sure looked different than I did. Even though I had little to go on, they looked as if they had some experience doing this. I was aware that if I was really going to be a miner, then that’s what I would eventually look like.
I filled out all the required paperwork and turned it in, expecting maybe a short interview of some kind before being sent back out to Section 35 and heading on underground as an official miner. Well, of course nothing is ever that easy, even when the company you’re applying to is desperate for people.
Looking over my completed paperwork, the personnel manager might have asked me a question or two, but the only thing I remember being told was to report to the Grants Clinic for the Kermac physical exam.
That’s something I hadn’t thought of, but it made sense. So, fine, I’d go for my physical and then report to Section 35 and head on underground as an official miner. My naiveté was again exposed when the HR manager said, “If you pass the physical, report here on Wednesday for orientation.”
“Orientation?” I said.
“Right. All new hires go through a three-day orientation course so you’ll know how we do things here. You have never worked underground either, so it’ll be important.”
The entire hiring process was already taking a lot longer than I had expected, but, hiding my disappointment as best I could, I thanked the manager and went back into town and to the Grants Clinic.
Again they also seemed to be expecting me at the clinic. I was given some forms to fill out, which I did, and then was told to get in a line of men already waiting at a check-in desk. I assumed every mining company sent their new hires to the Grants Clinic, which accounted for the long line. I thought, This can’t all be Kermac people, can it? Before long I checked in and sat down to wait with the others.
I had to hand it to them, the Grants Clinic had an efficient assembly line set up, so it wasn’t long before my name was called.
The first stop was the weigh-in, followed by the standard physical exam. No problems there. Then it was to the hearing test. I wasn’t sure why I needed a hearing test, but OK, no problem.
Upon entering a soundproof booth, I was directed to put on a set of headphones and raise my hand every time I heard a tone. I sat there watching the nurse and technician running the test and listening for the tones but heard nothing. It seemed like quite a bit of time had elapsed, but I hadn’t heard a thing. The nurse and the tech didn’t appear to be waiting for anything, so I figured the test must be working. So, still not hearing a thing, I raised my hand. This seemed to amuse the two of them, and I immediately heard a faint tone. Lowering my hand, I sat there listening and then straining to hear something—anything—but no more tones were coming through, so I raised my hand again and immediately heard another tone, even more distant than the first.