Under Ground – Part 4

Under Ground

After spending a day with the TV critics of the underground world, Carl was returned back to Jay Smith’s crew for good. This gave him a chance to get to know the guys on the crew, with whom he hadn’t yet had the chance. Getting to eat with them in the dinner-hole went far in correcting that lapse.

One of the strangest among the crew was Jay Smith himself. Here was a guy, just as filthy from the coal dust as any other miner, yet he obviously held himself in the highest regard. He had an air of projecting himself as a royal among peasants. Yet for all of his highbrow antics before the crew, Carl thought he was funny as hell.

The shuttle car operator was also an older guy; late forties, Carl guessed. John Gates was his name, and his personality was of the nervous energy type - always alert and always ready to move - doing whatever he needed to do to make sure everything was going as it should.

John was also funny and made great use of his penchant for sarcasm. He kept the crew members’ spirits high with his wit and humor. Carl just naturally liked him and was glad that John was a member of the crew.

Roy, the continuous miner operator, never ate in the dinner-hole. He’d eat while sitting on his machine. It was hard for Carl to get a personal take on Roy, but he soon discovered that Roy thought highly of himself too. Much like Jay in that way, but he wasn't funny at all. Sourpuss was more like it.

Then there was the miner’s helper. The job had an official name; “Continuous Miner Operator Assistant,” and his main job was to keep the huge electrical cable off to the side of the “road” where the shuttle car ran as it got loaded and then went to the ramp to dump it into the coal car on the tracks. Frank Moore was the miner’s helper.

One other detail about the job of the miner’s helper, was that the miner’s helper was supposed to operate the continuous miner for the second half of the shift. This was both for learning how to operate the machine and also to stay in practice once they’ve learned.

Roy never got off the continuous miner. He operated the machine the whole shift, every shift. Once he knew the “rules” about that job, Carl wandered why Frank didn’t insist he run the machine the second half of the shift as it was supposed to be. It turned out to be too much timidness in Frank, and an “I’m not budging” attitude from Roy.

Jay had a hair-trigger temper, and the fact that his main job was to get as much coal cut and loaded during the eight hours of each shift as he possibly could, any delay whatsoever that affected production would cause him to go completely berserk.

Jay carried a “sounding stick” around with him everywhere he went. It was a wooden stick with a metal cap on one end.

It served two purposes for Jay; one, he could use it to tap the mine roof, (like this miner is doing with the pick head), to see if it sounded hollow (bad) or tight (good), and two, he had something in his hand that he could throw in a fit of anger.

And throw it he did. The first time Carl saw him in the act, he laughed so hard he almost threw up. It just got better from there.

The funniest thing about Jay getting mad, was that he always threw that stick against the rib, (the sides of the “tunnel” were called “the rib”), and not only that; he would throw it so hard, that sometimes his hard hat would fly off his head.

Sometimes the velocity of the hard hat being flung from his head, would make the cord for the battery wrap around his neck, as the hard hat would make a couple of orbits around his head. He’d never learn though, and he kept doing it.

Once, while the crew was having lunch in the dinnerhole, (except for Roy), Frank said he had an apple that he didn’t want and asked if anyone wanted it. No one answered immediately, so he started asking each guy if he wanted the apple.

When he got around to asking Jay if he wanted the apple, Jay replied, “What? You offer it to me after you offer it to the common man? No, I don’t want it.”

Carl was both offended that he’d say such a thing and mean it, and laughing inside that anyone could actually be that much of a jerk. He understood, however, that Jay’s job must have awful consequences if the acceptable amount of coal isn’t produced, let alone exceeded.

The life of a section boss in a coal mine; a constant struggle to motivate your crew to do their best and also work their fastest, to load that coal and exceed the proposed objective, and be the boss that loaded the most coal that shift.

A boss had to know how to bond with his crew members, get their approval of his methods and then motivate them to do their best. If a boss could get certain members of his crew, especially the miner operator, to be really gung-ho, he’d have it made.

Roy happened to be one of those kinds of guys, and he really put his best effort into cutting as much coal as possible in a shift. Carl wondered if Roy got anything extra out of the deal. He recognized what a problem a guy like Roy could become for the whole crew.

What if Roy did get something extra from Jay whenever Jay loaded more coal than the other bosses. Could Roy be putting the crew in more danger than normal because of his desire to get more of what’s motivating him?

How would such acts be committed? Is it even possible that laws meant to keep miners safe were being ignored by bosses and broken by miners simply to load more coal for a prize?

_{Under Ground © free-reign 2020}

In case it isn’t clear in the text, the miner with the pick is using the top of the pick to tap the roof to see whether it sounds solid or hollow. Jay Smith carried a “ sounding stick,” as described, made especially for testing the roof’s integrity but I could not find a photo of one that I could use.

Thanks for reading!

Sources for images used in this post:

Public Domain photos from Wikimedia Commons:

_{Miners waiting to go to work Image by: The U.S. National Archives / No restrictions
Miner: Image by Russell Lee / Public domain
Miner Tests Roof: Image by John Collier / Public domain
Continuous Miner: Image by ENERGY.GOV / Public domain}