Under Ground - Part 2

Under Ground - Part 2

Carl had taken his wet, filthy clothes and put them in a plastic trash bag to take home to be washed. He didn’t want to wear them the next day and remind those who’d seen him in them, of how muddy and messy he’d gotten during day one. Starting over was best, he figured.

Arriving at the mine, he put his belongings and clean clothes for after work in the basket and raised it to the ceiling and then locked it. He went out to the lamphouse where the lights and batteries are kept between shifts for charging. He picked up the light and battery that had been assigned to him the day before.

He was early to work.

He remembered how, as a teenager, he’d make fun of his father for going to work at the mine an hour and a half before his shift, and it only took him fifteen minutes to get there. His father would always say, “Well, what if I break down, or what if I get a flat tire on the way to work?”

Carl wasn’t thinking about breaking down or anything like that; he just felt he’d better be there on time. Getting there beforehand was a good thing to do and it would make a good impression. At least it would at first, until he got to know the other miners and bosses.

About that time the mine foreman, a guy named Paul Beirston, saw Carl and told him that he’d be working that day with a guy named George, and Carl should meet up with him when he got to the bottom. George would be waiting for him with a mantrip, he said.

“What’s a mantrip?” Carl asked the mine foreman.

“What you rode in yesterday when you worked for Jay Smith.”

“They told me that was called a tram,” Carl said. The foreman looked at Carl and shrugged his shoulders.

When he got to the bottom, he looked around as the guys went off in different directions to go to the sections of the mine in which they’d be working. Then he saw George; he wasn’t a tall guy, but he was stocky. Carl told him the foreman had said he’d be working with him.

“You do any pumping?” George asked.

“Pumping? This is only my second day, so no. I don’t know what pumping you’re talking about.” George didn’t say anything in reply, but he shook his head. George had four pumps loaded in the mantrip, and it didn’t have a roof like the one Carl had ridden in to get to Jay Smith’s crew’s section the day before.

“Okay, get in,” George said. There was a passenger seat in the front of the mantrip, but it had all kinds of tools and parts on it as well as on the passenger floor area, so George told him to sit in the back.

They went quite a ways on the tracks until George finally brought them to a stop. He then got out, and Carl followed. George got one of the pumps out and carried it to a place away from the tracks where a fair amount of water had collected.

George seemed to be doing okay with the pump by himself as far as Carl saw, but after he was in the water with the pump, he looked at Carl and said, “You’re no good to me over there,” so Carl waded into the water, thinking it might be deeper than his boots were tall. It was close. George told him to grab the handle on his side.

Carl grabbed the handle and realized immediately that the pump was really quite heavy, and being in the water, along with the height difference between him and George, made lifting and handling it very awkward. Plus, he had to be careful to not get water in his boots.

Once he lifted his side however, George then started off walking pretty fast with the pump, and Carl was really struggling to keep up with George, to keep the water out of his boots, and to hold the heavy pump and move through the water at the same time.

He failed to keep the water out of his boots, and asked George if he’d slow down because of it.

“What kind of boy did they send me this time?” George muttered, just loud enough for Carl to hear. “Boy?” Carl thought, “Who in the hell is he, calling me a boy?” Having seen the ease George seemed to have moving the heavy pump by himself through the water though, with Carl actually just hanging on, he thought it was probably better to not call him out right then.

He’d also been told by his father that it’s a felony to hit or fight someone underground in the United States, so there was that too.

George probably could have “mopped” all the water off the bottom with him anyway, so Carl just bit his lip. All the old guys in the mine seem to be assholes, he thought. He just hoped he wasn’t going to be George’s “helper” permanently. He might have to quit if that would be the case.

After that, he and George traveled to the other places where the other three pumps were needed to pump accumulated water out of the mine. George said nothing except to yell at Carl periodically as though Carl had been dong this for twenty years.

At one point, George said it was “dinnertime,” and he stopped where this other miner was working on something. The mantrip was parked on the tracks on a little hill. Carl ate his sandwich and pack of two frosted chocolate cupcakes, and drank his soda.

As he sat there in the back, eating, Carl could hear George talking to the other miner every once in awhile, and he thought he’d heard him say something with “boy” in it, and he laughed, thinking George must still be complaining to the other miner about his new boy “helper.”

Luckily for Carl, the day that he’d spent with George would be the only day he’d spend with George. It was just a bit worrisome though, because if George told the foreman that he was worthless, he might get fired even though there was a union and every employee except company employees had to belong to it.

Would the union protect him?

_{Under Ground - Part 2 © free-reign 2020}

Sources for images used in this post:

Public Domain photos are from Wikimedia Commons:

_{Mine Water: Image by ArtTower from Pixabay
Miners Going To Lamphouse: Image by Russell Lee / Public domain
Mine Water: Image by John Collier / Public domain
Miners Eating: Image by John Collier / Public domain}

A side note: In the second picture of this post, where the miners are waiting to enter the lamphouse, their "dinnerbuckets" can be seen as they carry them. It is said that when miners decide to go on strike, they will all pour the water out of their dinnerbuckets, onto the ground, which is the official signal that they are +-on strike.