Under Ground
Now that he was officially the miner helper, Carl would be trained by Pat to learn how to operate the continuous miner. It was a Joy 12 CM model continuous miner that moved about on tracks, similar to the way bulldozers or tanks move. The 12 CM was a fairly new model continuous miner.
For this job, Carl had happened to be in the right place at the right time as a kid, for when he was ten years old he’d learned how to operate a high-lift that ran on tracks. So he already had a basic knowledge of how to maneuver a machine such as the 12 CM.
To develop the skills necessary to become a safe and productive continuous miner operator, getting a feel for the machine’s several levers was imperative. There was a lever to move the cutting head up and down, one for moving the conveyor, up, down, left or right, and of course, the two levers used to “steer” the machine as it moved forward or backward.
The roof needed to be as smooth as possible for the roof-bolter. The miner operator had to move the machine forward without gouging the roof with the bits on the rotating head as he’d move forward. If the machine moved forward too fast while cutting, the bits could grab and a gouge would result.
The most important thing he needed to learn was how to judge the roof. It wasn’t only for his safety, but also to avoid having the continuous miner end up under a collapsed roof, covered with tons of coal and rock. It took a considerable amount of time for a retrieval crew to pull a continuous miner out of the debris from a fall.
Any covered-up continuous miner situation meant that at least one shift in that section of the mine would not be able to load any coal during their shift. Often times the delay in production could extend to a second or even third shift, depending on the amount of debris, and damages done to the machine from the fall’s effects.
It didn’t take Carl long to get the feel of the machine and to develop a fine touch with the controls. Nor did it take him long to master the skill of keeping the roof perfectly level. He’d found that easing the head downward in small increments as he moved the machine forward into the coal seam, did the trick.
Pat was a good instructor, and before long Carl became very productive during his half of the shift operating the machine, meeting and sometimes exceeding Pat’s production during the first half of the shift. From John Cooper’s perspective, having two productive miner operators like Pat and Carl on his crew, was pure bliss.
Don, one of the shuttle car operators, had served as a marine in Vietnam. Carl had served there in the army, so the two would often trade stories about their experiences. They were the only two on the crew who’d been there.
During lunch one day, while Don and Carl were having a conversation touching on their experiences, Lou felt it was the right time to jump in and reveal his own military service.
“Ah, well uh, when I was in Seoul,” he began, and then went into a lengthy explanation of one of his “experiences” in Seoul, South Korea.
Seoul was actually one of the R&R destinations for the US military service members in Vietnam. R&R refers to the troops’ week-long “vacation,” to which they were entitled for fully serving their tour of duty in Vietnam. R&R stands for “Rest and Recuperation.”
After that first interjection, Lou then made it a habit to come up with some story based on his military service in Seoul, practically every time that Don and Carl would trade and compare their Vietnam experiences.
When Lou wasn’t butting into a discussion Don and Carl were having with each other, he’d reveal a story to the crew about what a “ladies’ man” he was.
An alarming number of these romance stories included girls (some underage) and women who were “stark naked,” and far too many of them would “accidentally” encounter him while already being stark naked.
One of the more memorable of Lou’s stories, was one about friends who had stopped by to visit while on their way to see relatives. They were invited, and decided to stay overnight with Lou and his wife at their house, and continue on their journey the next day.
“Ah, well uh, these friends stopped to visit and they uh, stayed overnight, and they had their sixteen year-old daughter with them.” Lou would constantly pause, take breaths and say “uh” a lot while speaking, seemingly for effect.
“Uh, got up to take a piss; came out of the bathroom, she was standing there, stark naked... said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were in there big boy.’”
He would tell several of these “stories” over time, and all would have a point where females, even underage ones, as in this case, just couldn't contain themselves if he was in the same building.
They’d all end up stark naked in an encounter with him, while his wife was asleep, completely in the “dark” concerning his “problem” of being overly charismatic to females.
It was also quite amazing that every female would always refer to him as “big boy” at some point during the “accidental” encounter. The really strange thing about his tales, was that they never went further than the encounter itself. It was as though he just wanted everyone to know he was regularly stalked by stark naked females.
After he’d been on the crew for a few weeks, Lou revealed that he’d been trying, while on his previous crew, to get on as a miner helper. He started this thing, of coming up to Carl and saying, “I’ll trade jobs with you for awhile,” and Carl would just look at him and shake his head.
The more that Carl got to know him, the more Lou became the embodiment of the most unlikable man alive. He was big, he was lazy, and he was SO full of shit. Carl would catch himself though, if he started getting a little too riled up, and he’d recall the words of his drill sergeant; “It takes all kinds.”
Under Ground © free-reign 2020
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This is my first post in the Gems community, and I hope to post here many more times.
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