Thoughts of an Eighteen-Year-Old Miner

I went to work as a miner a few days after my eighteenth birthday, having convinced Dad and his partner Thurman Hess into letting me go inside. We had to get up at 4:00 a.m. to drive to Jewell Valley in the back of an open pickup truck.

My birthday is October 9th, so it was mighty cool by then. We arrived at the mines already frozen and beaten half to death from the ruts in the road.
Everyone stood around the bucket fire outside the mine, laughed, and talked, till our motorman, my good friend Bill Hess, showed up with the tram. This consisted of the motor and four coal cars that could hold one ton of coal each.

The men climbed inside the cars and lay flat on their tummies. I joined my Daddy in his car. He was no longer my Dad or father, but once again my Daddy, for along about now the fear was creeping in. I could feel it spread to the tips of my toes.

We were going into a drift-mouth mine. This kind goes straight back into the mountain, whereas a shaft mine goes down into the earth. Dad yelled for me to lie flat so I wouldn’t get crushed against the top, but there was nothing to hold onto. I bounced all over the place.

We each had a hard hat with a battery light on it, but right then the only light came from the motor up front. From its light, I could see the timbers flying by. We were moving very fast because my friend Bill, the driver, was in a hurry to get back out to the fire for a nap. I was glad I had on lots of heavy clothes. I was getting mighty cold inside that mountain.
The men were dropped off one and two at a time in front of what looked like rooms. Bill took me to the end of a long hall, told me to get out, and backed the car into a room. It was a little higher than the hall, but to go in, I still had to stay on my knees and stay bent over. I thought to myself, Self, how’s a man going to load coal in here?

Bill put the car between two timbers and left it perfectly placed for loading coal extracted from the exposed seam, called the “face.” (That was just one of the words I would have to learn to use in days to come.) I realized my light was not going to shine anywhere except right in front of me. Then, after Bill had gone, I began experimenting with it. As he rounded the curve and went out of sight, I turned it off.

Oh sweet Mother of Jesus! This is the darkest dark known to man, I thought, as I instantly started searching for the switch. I could not see beyond my own mind. I felt like my heart was going to jump right out of my chest until I turned it back on.

I got my shovel and started working. I wasn’t getting paid for sitting. First I had to clean up the loose coal and dust which Dad’s blasting the night before had broken off the wall. My shovel was full, and as I brought it into the car, it hit steel and the top of the mine at the same time. I received a face full of cold dust.

This happened on my first try, and it kept happening again and again. On about the second hundredth time, I removed the timber that stood at the side of the car and found I could at least get small lumps of coal loaded before the motorman showed up to take the car away. It took me a little longer than usual, but I finally got it full.

Then I sat down to rest. As I was working, I’d gotten very warm, and removed a lot of clothes before I stopped. Almost as soon as I sat down, I began to shiver. It felt like it was below zero. I put the clothes back on real quick.

We pitched on each side of the room what is called “gob,” the rock and dirty stuff we weren’t allowed to load. It was piled pretty high, and I crawled up there for some rest and a smoke. Even though they weren’t suppose to, I knew that in this type of mine, the men smoked. So I lit one up, took some puffs, raised my head, and put it out on the top.
Lying there, I realized just how much mountain was over my head, with only a few timbers holding it off of me.

Along about now, Thurman Hess showed up to see how I was doing and spotted the timber that I had knocked out. Then he set in to chewing out my little butt. (I was only 4 foot 10 and 73 pounds soaking wet.) He reset the timber, then headed out and down the hall. Soon Dad showed up with more screaming, telling me that I could have gotten killed or worse, and that if the mine inspector had showed up, he would have closed us down.
By then it was lunch time. I crawled up on the gob, had a good lunch, lit one up, and all of a sudden, bam! I had such a pain in my stomach, it felt like the top of the mine had fallen on it, though nothing like that had happened. I screamed, and Dad came as fast as he could, considering there wasn’t room in the hall to stand up.

He and the others rushed me outside. They decided I must have given myself the bends, from eating all my lunch at once. It’s like what a diver gets if he comes to the surface of the water too fast. That’s how I found out that in the mines, you eat a small amount at a time. All I could do till the end of the shift was stay in the shack and lie back.

That night I didn’t want to go to sleep, knowing I would have to go back to the mine when I woke.

That second day was the same as the first, only this time I was more afraid. Dad had to blast a place he hadn’t gotten to the night before. He let me watch him drill holes in the coal, then pack it with dynamite, with each fuse shorter than the other. Then he lit a smoke, crawled around the room, and lit each one. By then I was out in the hall, lying on my back. Dad let out a holler—Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!

Suddenly there came this terrible roar, followed by a cloud of dust. The top trembled so that I could have sworn it was going to come down on top of us. I began thinking about the lovely fields just a few miles above me, with their flowers, trees, and berries that cover the hillside. Oh how I’d love to be there. But I was thinking, I never will. The timbers were squeaking, my heart was pounding.

Then I realized I was alive. Praise the Lord.

As I was crawling to my place, I got rocks under my badly-fitting kneepads, and they were cutting my skin all to pieces. It was starting to turn into a lovely day already.

I got down to work. The same as yesterday, I couldn’t get lumps of coal between the top and the car, so again I took out a timber. In came Thurman. He was so mad he could have chewed me up and spit me out. Instead, he went out to get Dad.

I tried to get the timber back up before Dad got there. But my only experience with timbers had been knocking them down, so he caught me before I finished my task. He fired me on the spot. But then I suppose he thought about the fact I’d have to sit outside in subzero weather till quitting time, and he knew that would not go over real well with my Mom. He reset the timber, and I started back to work.

Before Dad and Thurman left, they agreed that I was going to have a partner, starting right away. Suddenly from the darkness of the hall came a burst of light. I couldn’t see who it was. His light was in my eyes and I’m sure mine was in his.

Then I heard wonderful words: Yo, Jack, that you?

I knew right away it was the voice of an angel. It could only be Harve Helmandollar. He was my angel, my guardian angel. I’d always loved him like a daddy (and also kind of liked his little blonde-haired daughter, but that’s another story). I was so happy to see him. It was lonely back there all alone, and a wee bit scary.

Harve was old enough to retire but didn’t have enough time in yet. He was a big man, a gentle giant to me. And he could load some coal. He would load his half before I could get started with mine, and then he’d help me finish.

Once he must have heard a noise. He came around the car duck-walking as fast as he could, grabbed my arm, and pulled me to the hall. Then he asked me in a very not-so-calm voice, Did you hear rocks falling on your helmet?

I did, I replied.

It could have been the top coming down, he said.

From then on, I listened for that sound.

With Harve around, I knew I was standing in the presence of the past, and working in there was going to be a little bit easier for this eighteen-year-old miner. Lord but I loved that wonderful man.

One day, when I was off work, the cable caught fire on the machine Dad used to cut the coal. It filled the place with a deadly thick black smoke, and all the men crawled blindly around. Eventually they found a hall leading to the air tunnel and were able to save themselves.

After that, I was more afraid than ever to go back. But two days later I was there again, loading that black beauty. In all, I stuck it out for six months, though it seemed at the time like two years.

With that mine, even getting paid made me nervous. The owners also owned the funeral home in Richlands, and one of them, Jimmy Farmer, was the mortician. We had to go in where he was working to receive our paychecks. We were careful never to take a drink of anything our nice boss offered us there. I loved Jimmy, but I was as scared of funeral homes as I was the mines.

Coal mining wasn’t for me. But without it, we people of the mountains could not have made much of a living. And besides, those men in the mines taught me about, not just mining, but life itself. I learned that there will be things blocking your way, but sometimes they are there for your own good. Leave them be. You never run a mouse off in the mines. If he’s there, you’re all right, too.

But if even small rocks fall on your head, you run.

This story is dedicated to all the men who worked in that little mine with me: my father, Roscoe Nipper; Thurman and Bill Hess; Harve Helmandollar; Sam Blankenship; Arvil Lowe; Anthony Hess; and Tom Blanton.