Sunday - December 19, 2004

Life With Steel (Part 3)

I worked in a hard rock gold mine. So far away from any other humans that we called kerosine lights and a diverted creek water. A hole in the ground was ... well ... the shitter. Far away.

Just me and another. He owned the claim. We spent a summer in a shaft about 75’ down.

Here’s the drill. Me and him would hand drill (star drills made by my own hand in a hand powered forge) a couple of holes every morning. Using a single jack. That’d be a one handed sledge for the unknowing. Bang a few times and pull the drill out of the hole and use a ‘spoon’ to clean the hole out. Tedious.  Had to make the spoons myself too. Deeper the hole, longer the spoon.

Soooo, after the holes got to be about 2’, I set charges.

Now the guy I was with could not handle powder. Read dynamite. Nitro glycerin will go right through your skin. And give ya a REAL BAD HEADACHE.

So just before lunch, I’d plug a couple of sticks in the holes.

That was because the smoke from dynamite will hurt your head too. So we’d time it so the shot was over lunch.

Now I’m in a shaft. We ain’t using primacord or those detonator thingies you see in cartoons. No, we had to use real cord. The black tarry cord you also see in cartoons.

Contrary to popular thought, you really can’t light off a fuse with a match.

You have to split the cord down about 3” and make a ‘splitter’.

You mate that to the splitter that’s in the charge. That way, you are guaranteed a light. Sometimes fuse will fool ya. Looks like it’s lit and ain’t. Or worse, looks like it ain’t lit and boom.

Now in the bottom of this shaft I cut the fuse and make splitters. One thing you always do is time the fuse burn to know when it’s gonna blow.  Just make a sample fuse split and see how long it takes to get to the end.

Crude. But that’s the way it’s been done for a very long time.

There was a ladder to the top of the shaft. Hand made. A bit rickety, but sufficient.

The other guy vacated when I was setting charge. Can’t blame him.

So every day, I’d blow and eat lunch.

I had a game. Fun game.

I time the splitters so that I had JUST ENOUGH TIME to climb the ladder out of the hole. JUST ENOUGH.

But I could cut it close, so to speak.

Sometimes too close.

That was the game.

Well, my wife always brought lunch and she was up on top waiting for me to get out of the hole and blow.

I cut it a bit close. Imagine, if you will, I set the charge and started climbing up the hand made ladder and *&^%$#@ a rung broke. Whoops.

When I was almost at the top rung BOOM. And I mean BOOM!

Blew my ass out of the shaft and about 20’ away. Damned near landed in her lap.

Her eyes were as big as eyes can be. And she had big eyes.

I rolled over and said ‘what’s for lunch?’

I couldn’t hear her reply. Hell, I couldn’t hear her for days.

Roast beef sandwiches I recall. She spaced the horseradish.

Boom.

Posted by The Skipper     on 12/19/2004 at 01:53 PM   
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