every crack. A rich red tablecloth displayed Beth’s gleaming silver and glowing candles, a perfect setting for a turkey with all the trimmings except fresh vegetables, which were not available to us.
Only a genius could have managed that feast with the few facilities available. Everything canned but the turkey. A tiny cookstove within arm’s reach from the table warmed the room. One step away on a small stand was what served as the sink, a dishpan and the usual oil can of water underneath. Handicapped by the difficulty of cooking in high altitudes, plus a delicate baby to care for, Beth had spread a feast for our eyes, the inner man, and complete satisfaction.
Shortly after that Christmas day I had a new adventure. Johnny Midwinter, the foreman, suggested that he and George take me into the mine. George thought I would enjoy it.
Johnny met us at the entrance. Outfitted in a miner’s long rubber coat and sou’wester I entered the tunnel where Johnny fastened a miner’s candlestick in the loop on my hat and with a dramatic gesture of his pudgy hand, lighted the candle.
Possibly, because I had made the effort to send help to the roustabout which prevented an accident, Johnny decided my interest in the mine warranted a wider understanding of its ramifications. After we walked some distance along the main tunnel he turned to me with a smile and said, “We’ll start up this ladder in what we call ‘a vertical raise.’ Just climb slowly behind me and George will follow you. When we get up to the stope, take the candle out of your hat and carry it straight up and as far from your face as you can.”
What did he mean by a stope, and would I recognize it when I reached it?
Step by step, clinging to the rungs, we climbed straight up the three by four opening in the rock. As water dripped from above and hit my hat and face, the candle sputtered. I stepped carefully for fear of tripping on my skirt. With the strange feeling of carrying a candle on my head I stared steadily at the ladder. The flickering light shone dimly on the walls caging us in, three sides of solid rock and the fourth made of timbers for the ore chute alongside. Each rung was a little harder for me to reach and cling to. By the time fifty rungs were beneath us I began to waver, then I hesitated, but remembering that George was close below and might be thrown off balance, I plunged on. After one hundred feet of this fearsome climb we reached the top of the ladder where the rock closed in over our heads.
Even today, many years later, the memory of that moment hits hard at the pit of my stomach!
Broken ore almost completely filled the cross shaft, leaving only a crooked passage to crawl through, two feet wide, three feet high. Faintness and vertigo swept through me. But not for anything would I let George or Johnny know how desperately fear gripped me. I could hardly breathe. There must have been oxygen but I couldn’t pull any of it into my lungs. To cover the sick feeling of panic I made the excuse, which was real enough, that I needed to catch my breath after the exhausting climb. Unable, in that flat space, to sit up I lay flat on my stomach, resting, doubting that I could go on.
Through the pounding of my heart I could hear myself saying, “Hattie, you must go on. You are the wife of a miner. Keep going and get it over!” But my head was swimming and my stomach churning. I lay there until terror subsided somewhat, then told Johnny I was ready.
Holding the candle safely before me I inched along, face down, clawing at the rocks with my one free hand, dragging my legs forward, my long skirts hampering every move. Only occasionally could I catch the gleam of Johnny’s candle ahead. Unable to look back I could hear George calling a word of encouragement as he followed.
But what if the rock overhead should cave in? The thought was torture. I struggled to wipe it from my mind. In the darkness, broken only by a flicker of the nearby candle, I twisted, turned, writhed like a snake, stopped many times to rest and capture a mite of courage.
It was one hundred and fifty feet of pure hell! Yet I lived through it. We had crossed the awful stope and there remained the descent, straight down another hundred-foot ladder in a well, scarcely four feet square, cut in solid rock. It seemed easy. I had room to breathe. With each rung lower there was more space above my head. The tunnel at last! I hurried toward the streak of daylight at its mouth, and the great outdoors. Heaven!
I was still trying to shake off the remembered terror of that adventure, when a few days later, Johnny came to our shack.
“Now you’ve been through a stope, let’s go down into the diggin’s.”
My face showed how startled I was at the prospect of suffering again as I had done before. Johnny noticed it.
“Oh, it won’t be like that, this time,” he assured me. “We’ll ride down as soon as George finishes his work.” He was doing me a favor, giving me a treat, according to his ideas. Reluctantly I consented.
That afternoon George, Johnny, and I got into the cage which ran on wheels down an inclined track and were lowered into the mine one hundred feet, two hundred feet … down, down to the one-thousand-foot level. All the levels were lighted by electricity and we carried candles only for an emergency. The day shift had left. The air had cleared after the blasting. We three were alone in the bowels of the mountain. Sounds of water gurgling out of crevices echoed through the vaulted caverns. Our voices resounded weirdly. I wandered around the large underground cave peering into empty stopes, drifts and storage rooms until mounting claustrophobia started my stomach to quiver.
“I’m ready to get out of this,” I said to Johnny.
He walked to the shaft and with a hammer pounded three times on the air line, the signal to the man at the top that we were ready to be hoisted. The resonant sounds carried along the pipe and we waited. And waited. No answering tap-tap came from above. Several minutes passed. Johnny and George, unperturbed, talked of assays, high-grade, waste, and tonnage. I fidgeted. The happy-go-lucky Cornishman again rapped on the pipe and the metallic sounds rang loud underground. Silence.
“Why don’t they answer?” I asked, a picture of being buried alive flashing in my mind.
“They will soon. Probably the cageman has gone away from the hoist to attend to something,” and Johnny sauntered away, returning with a piece of ore to show George.
“Fairly good ore,” he said turning it over and over, “but so far we haven’t found enough of it, or a large enough vein to make it pay.” While they discussed values, my ears were straining to catch a sound from above.
It was a full fifteen minutes before the answering signal sounded, clink-clank, faint and wavering at first, then louder as the cage wheels rattled on tracks only slightly off vertical. Never was music sweeter to my ears, and as the platform settled gently on the floor, one thousand feet down, I was instantly on it. George and Johnny took their time, talking as they strolled. Men! But answering the “up” signal the cage began to climb, and I was thinking—never again! A morning stroll to the stable to pick up the mail was all the adventure I wanted for a while.
Next morning I encountered my Finnish neighbor pacing back and forth close to her shack and at my “Good Morning” she merely inclined her head, not from shyness I decided, but from some inhibition that repelled friendly advances. I had seen her husband, a tall blond Finn, several times and on each occasion he too seemed preoccupied and avoided speaking. Their reserve intrigued me. It was so unlike the attitudes of everyone else on the hill. And after weeks of hearing that strange sound of pounding in the early dark of every morning, I began to think it was coming from their house. Well, George had said it was nothing to worry about so again I dismissed it from my mind.
One noon early in March, George came home unexpectedly, a worried look on his face.
“What in the world is the matter, dear? Do you feel sick?” Fear really struck me because of his expression.
“No, I’m not sick, but the manager told me that in a month the Japan Flora will have to close down. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Oh, just get another job.” I answered unconcernedly, hoping to lessen his anxiety.
“That’s not so easy, Kiddy (one of his pet names for me). It will take money to leave here