"Third Stool from the Rear": Part II

Third Stool from the Rear

"Shorty says they need a new muleskinner at the Amethyst if your nephew is still lookin' for a job. Erick tied a can to Grover today his second trip out of the hole...he was so drunk he couldn't keep his feet when he got off at the barn and knew he was in trouble so he harnessed up Brownie real quick and got his train off the waste dump before Glen could smell the fumes...old Archer can smell whiskey on a man's breath a mile away.

"Erick and John were starting the compressors...when they walked down the snow shed they could see Grover hadn't picked up any of the supplies he was supposed to take to the three way switch...guess Erick was suspicious so he waited until Grover came out with his first load and helped him dump the cars.

"The little turd had all kinds of excuses for not picking up the supplies but Erick knew he was loaded and told him he'd drive him back to town so he could sleep it off...Grover talked him out of it...said he'd have a cup of coffee and the cold air of the tunnel would sober him up...gave the Swede a real song and dance about how he needed to make every shift so Erick let him hitch up again.

"Next trip he was drunker than the first time...he forgot to brake and the step hit Brownie an' pushed him right into the dump hole then Grover fell flat on his face when he tried to wedge the first car...he rolled on his back tryin' to get up an' looked up to see Erick standin' right over him...I'll tell you, that was one mad Swede...soon as he and John hoisted Brownie out of the hole he walked over to the bench and pulled Grover's thermos out of his lunch bucket...Grover's laying there and knows he is fresh out of work...his thermos was still half full of whiskey."

Printed page 11. "Old Archer" appears to be the same Glen Archer, foreman, named in "A Rude Awakening" in Part I.

"Lynn Rides a Hellcat and She Ghost Bareback"

Colorado State Mine Inspectors told us, emphatically, we were not to ride the cans but it was 230' from 5 level to the bottom of a vertical winze where two veins were to be put in production. Riding the lips of the sump buckets with a tight grip on the cable saved much time as well as energy.

The cans spun as cable unwound from the air hoists of elevated pockets in vertical shafts or winzes as they are called underground. We could use one hand against the enclosing boards to slow the spinning and with two miners on the can it was possible to direct it without a bobble. One of the old timers, Lynn "Key" LeZotte, had to work himself under the bale and scrunch down with his knees under his chin while one of us rode the rim to lower him safely to other levels. Key had physical problems that prevented him riding the rim.

Key was supposed to tram for us on the 850' level and I waited at the collar of the winze to help him in and off the bucket. George Kershner, a mule skinner, came by and told me my partner had been sent to the Albion raise instead so I gave the hoistman a 3-3 rap on the airline to lower me and forgot about Key.

Later that morning I went to pick up drill bits near a platform at the bottom of the winze and could hear a bucket being lowered. I waited to see if we were receiving supplies. The bucket, spinning wildly, came in view. I slammed it against a wall, a common practice to slow the spinning, then caught it to position it on the platform. I could hear groaning from under the bale. Key had finished his job at the Albion raise and thought he should finish the day with us.

I dropped the bucket on one side and slid him out, re-lit his carbide lamp and started to help him to his feet but his legs wouldn't support his body. He was so dizzy he couldn't even focus his eyes. I helped him to a sitting position in a softer place and asked if I could get him a cup of coffee. "Oh God no, Johnny, I would just throw it up," he replied, "that ride was a hell cat and a she ghost rolled into one." A favorite expression of Lynn LeZotte.

Printed page 12.

"Board Stiff"

Loaded buckets, in our vertical winze, sometimes left the bottom swaying and if not re-positioned by the trammer could rap the sides of the square hoistway and break boards of the lining. As we were raised to the level at end of shift we tried to yank the broken boards from the stulls so they could drop to the floor and not be a hazard.

On one such trip the lower portion of one board was stubborn and I couldn't dislodge it. Skinner and I made a mental note to tell the hoistman we had a board sticking out far enough to interfere with the bucket and next shift he would need to lower us slowly enough to have time to remove it or push it inward out of the way. We forgot.

The next day we fished Key from the bucket on 6 level where he rapped the pipe a proper code to lower us. We still hadn't remembered the broken board. We were less than 70' from 6 level when I had a strange feeling that someone ran his hand up the back of my jacket and I was promptly lifted off the bucket. I don't believe I've ever been as scared, underground, as at that moment when I realized I was suspended on the ragged end of a small board held in place by two 10-penny nails. I climbed the cable like a madman.

Once on a can and being lowered the only way to get the attention of the hoistman was by jumping up and down on the rim with all our weight. This caused a noticeable "arroomph, arroomph" in the sound of the exhaust from the hoist and an experienced hoistman knew he was to stop. Skinner was able to stop the bucket and yell to Key, who was still by the station, to signal our hoistman to pull the bucket up. Luckily, we had Ed McCargish, an experienced and careful hoistman, who eased the bucket and Skinner to my perch and plucked me off both the board and cable. Skinner had to pry my fingers from the cable.

Printed page 13. "Skinner" and "Key" are the same Gavin Skinner and Lynn "Key" LeZotte named in "Lynn Rides a Hellcat and She Ghost Bareback," immediately before this story.

Third Stool from the Rear

"You get to see Andy before he left?

"I talked to him in Puss Weavers last week when Marybelle was showing him off...never thought I'd see that big bohunk in a suit but I'll tell you he looked like a million dollars...hair slicked back and no dirt under his fingernails.

"Yeah, I was going to play a few hands of poker with Roy and Gus but Foster Elliott had the stakes too damned high so I went to talk to Puss...I like to fell off my stool when Marybelle came in with Andy all decked out in a blue pin-striped suit...she'd been squirreling away money for a year to buy it...ever see those kids of theirs?...I think that girl has rickets the way she walks all humped over.

"They had a beer and Marybelle had him pour it in a glass the way gentlemen should drink...Andy started to drink it from the bottle and she showed him how to pour it...she was telling Puss they were going to leave, wants to get Andy out of the mines 'cause he's more the executive type...hell, he couldn't spell cat if you spotted him the first two letters...she wants to get somewhere back East where ladies can have tea parties and Andy can run a company instead of working for one...Andy told me he had only gone to the seventh grade but Marybelle went through high school...I wanted to tell her all she had to do was circulate a little, Mrs. Barnhart and Mrs. Major have tea parties all the time, even Mayme Groom has a social now and then for the ladies on her block.

"It takes all kinds but I'll bet a dollar to a hole in a doughnut that old Andy is back in his diggers within a month and his new pin-striped suit is gathering dust in a closet."

Printed page 14. "Puss Weavers" appears to be a bar or gathering place named for a proprietor called Puss Weaver; neither Andy, Marybelle, nor Puss is given a surname.

"Chalk One Up for Blackberry"

We passed the shaft each time we crossed the ridge between the Midwest Mine and East Willow Creek on fishing trips. At times we stopped long enough to break a few rocks with color, other times we sat on the south side where a horse whim had pulled loaded buckets from the depths and I listened again to the reason something kept drawing him back to this hole.

Dad had known a man by the name of Blackberry Johnson who helped sink a discovery shaft on the Phoenix claim. Blackberry had worked in many mines of the Creede District and achieved dubious fame for driving the only tunnel that ended up where it started. Not quite! He started a tunnel in a gulch near Sunnyside, hit a contact of sediments and rhyolite with fair silver values along travertine which he followed in a semi-circle to blast into daylight not far from his portal.

Blackberry was certain the Phoenix claim would be far richer than the famous Holy Moses mine that brought prospectors from all over the country. When miner's consumption robbed him of the will to go on he told my father he should try to buy it or lease it. Dad had faith in Blackberry and he had faith in the prospect. It was very likely a strand or continuation of the Solomon-Holy Moses fault and assays from dump material were encouraging.

When Clinton Fairchild bulldozed a road to his Grandfather's caved tunnel north of the Phoenix claim we had access and no more excuses to sit and dream about the bonanza. We rented a compressor and jackhammer from John Hamm who had just buttoned up a gold prospect near Saguache, bought light rail from Roy Fisher and borrowed a sump bucket and tram car. Gavin Skinner and I had been partners in leasing for two years operating under the firm name J & S Mining Company and it was a natural extension to include the Phoenix claim under bond and lease.

There were many pitfalls along the way that made me, at times, wish old Bill Jackson had never known anyone by the name of Blackberry Johnson but his faith was rewarded in October of 1951 when I hauled the first 5 tons of ore, "richer than bullshit" as Lou Oppey remarked with his first glimpse of the vein, from the shaft on a 1938 vintage FWD truck.

It was backbreaking work to get the first 50 tons to surface from a winze south of the main shaft. We were broke when we drilled into the blossom of carbonate lead and silver ore in our jackhammer drift. To continue operating depended totally on getting a high grade lot on the road to a smelter. We were joined by a big bruiser from California who had driven out to hunt elk with us that fall. Earl Wilson hoisted every pound of the first lot in 5 gallon pails as Scooter and I sunk the winze. Gavin Skinner operated the hoist on the main shaft. Earl questioned me about our methods. "Can't you use an air hoist underground?"

I fielded his questions with "they put off carbon monoxide" or "there are regulations against using them underground."

When the first 50-ton lot was on a gondola ready for transit to Leadville I told Earl we plain didn't have the money to buy a hoist. He looked at the blisters on blisters on his hands and cried, "Jeezuscrist, why didn't you tell me you were broke? I would have hocked my car to buy another hoist so we wouldn't have to jackass those pails up by hand." On the plus side he lost 25 pounds of flab in the shaft and was better able to chase elk.

Printed pages 14–15. "Bill Jackson" is John's father; "Gavin Skinner" and "Lou Oppey" are named again in stories later in this Part.

Third Stool from the Rear

"Hey Al, you got any of that dark beer yet? I can't think of the name of it but you got some in last fall. You say you can only get it when they clean the dead mice out of the vats? That's okay, I like a little body in my beer anyway...ah, ha, ha, ha...draw me an' Jim a couple of your old horse piss then.

"Curly got his love life cut off at the pockets...you hear about it? He was up sampling Wilbur's raise and they got to visitin' about one thing and another...Curly's damn near sixty years old, well, around fifty-seven I guess and Wilbur asks him if he and his wife still do it...Wilbur likes to talk about that sort of thing...so Curly tells him sure, you never get too old to try then he gets careless and tells him about the last time.

"Said they were really goin' after it when the slats shifted and the springs fell down on one side...rolled them right off on the floor but they didn't miss a lick...Wilbur was rollin' on a timber an' laughing so hard Curly thought he was going to fall down the raise an' grabbed him by a leg.

"You know how Wilbur is...hell, he even blabs about his own bedroom adventures an' he couldn't wait to get home to tell Betty and she spread the word all around town. So Curly comes home and his wife lit right into him...told him she'd never sleep with him again an' she was so ashamed she'd never show her face outside the house again so he'd better think about leaving Creede. To top it off that crazy Wilbur had a furniture salesman call Curly and ask him if he didn't want to try one of the new innerspring mattresses that don't use no slats...old Curly slammed the phone down so hard he broke the hook off.

"He's just waiting for a chance to tramp Wilbur...first time he screws up he'll be walkin' down the hill with a pink slip in his pocket."

Printed page 16. "Al" appears to be the same bartender addressed by name in several of the book's barroom vignettes; neither Curly nor Wilbur is given a surname.

"Smiles Forgot to Smile"

I was driving a tunnel on the Palo Alto claim in bitterly cold weather but had been fortunate in that we were pasted with only two light snows previous to this December and I had been able to pull the hill without chains on the Model T Ford truck.

On this morning it had been 10° below zero in Creede and seemed colder at the tunnel site above East Willow Creek. I had mucked out, drilled out and was warming several sticks of 8-inch dynamite piled on the curve of a scoop shovel which rested on a wood heater with the handle steadied on my knees. The sticks were frozen solid and had to be thawed enough to punch for threading primers. I had a cup of coffee beside me when the door opened and a stocky fellow stepped in, waited for his pupils to adjust to the interior of the shed and introduced himself as John "Smiles" Doyle, state mining inspector. When I rose to shake his hand two or three sticks of dynamite rolled off the shovel and began smoking on the stove top before I could brush them off.

"What in the hell are you doing?" Smiles roared. He was mad and scared out of his hide. "Where's your partner? What are those blasting caps doing by that box of powder?" The questions were coming too fast for me to answer. When he drove in he should have realized that this was nothing more than a raggedast lease and isolated enough to not require the services of a mine inspector.

I had met Smiles two years before in the Amethyst Mine but he didn't recognize me. The only thing he recognized was 45% gelex dynamite roasting by an open fire and he wanted to get as far away from it as he possibly could.

So, he wrote me up. He wrote me up for mishandling explosives...for working alone...for not having a powder magazine...for mingling primers with dynamite and for not notifying the bureau of mines of the operation. There were several more grave violations I fail to remember at this late date.

I believe Smiles is 80 years of age at this writing and I would like to inform him that I roasted many more sticks of gelex dynamite that winter and I never did burn the handle of that scoop shovel.

Printed page 17. "°" and the percent figure are printed as shown.

"Fiddling Around with the Judge"

It was November, 1948, general election night and the two story building housing B.P.O. Elks Lodge #506 was rocking with revelers and dancers awaiting the outcome of several local contests.

A disagreement over serving order of drinks erupted into name calling and shoving that filtered down the stairs and into a gravel thoroughfare called Main Street where a young bulldozer operator, bearing scars of many settos, threw our left handed fiddle player, Loyd Wanzer, over his back to land with a dust raising "thud". Loyd was a veteran of the war in Europe and a hard rock miner. He was also a southpaw fighter with the kick of a mule in his left fist.

Within minutes Loyd had gained the upper hand and was severely pummeling the bulldozer operator when John Van Buskirk ran up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. "For God's sake get off that fellow, Loyd. You are the duly elected Judge of Mineral County, now get on your feet and show some respect for the office."

They retired to the bar to celebrate both victories.

Printed page 18. John Van Buskirk is the same John Van Buskirk named in "A Rude Awakening" in Part I.

"Lou Oppey's Snow Bred Red McClures"

Another shift in at the Phoenix Mine and we were easing past the corner just north of "Mountain Man" Lou Oppey's cabin. It was early April, storm clouds had blown in while we were in the hole and we were now enveloped in spring snow flurries that hampered vision. We learned, long ago, to slow to a crawl on this stretch of gravel road because Lou had a target on the east side of the canyon where he sighted in his rifles with hand loaded cartridges. The road passed in his line of fire.

With snow flakes scudding in, nearly horizontal, from a brisk wind we felt reasonably safe this day as we made the corner to take a straight shot past the cabin. The wipers struggled with the heavy wet flakes and I rolled the driver's side window down to push some of the built up snow off with a gloved hand. It was then that Gavin spotted a dark figure floundering around at the end of a large barn. I stopped and we watched. There was a brief lull in the storm, time enough to identify Lou Oppey shoveling a hole and reaching into a sack hanging from his shoulder for a seed potato. The old mountain man was planting the first stage of his summer garden two months too early. Mr. Oppey had flipped his lid.

"Think the rain will hurt the rhubarb," Pete Walker hollered to Lou as he took note of us in the truck.

"Just take yourselves on home," Lou yelled back, "I don't have time to talk with no damn fools today."

The last week in August of that year Mountain Man Lou Oppey had a bushel of large, firm Red McClures for the crew of the Phoenix Mine.

Printed page 18. "Gavin" is the same Gavin Skinner named earlier in this Part; Lou Oppey was named earlier in this Part in "Chalk One Up for Blackberry."

Third Stool from the Rear

"Yuh hear about John and Bob mixing it up last Saturday night?

"Hell, I thought everyone in town would know about it by now. Yeah, Bob said something about the democrats and pissed John off so he invited him outside...snowing like hell and they were sparring around like a couple of banty roosters...John took a wild swing and landed on his face...Bob ducked and slipped and fell flat on his back...old John finally got to his feet, saw Bob laying there in the snow and thought he had knocked him out so he helped him up. Funniest damn thing I ever saw, hell, they can't fight when they're sober...they shook hands and went back in the bar...their wives were proud as punch of them...call 'em 'one punch John' and 'glass jaw Bob' now...they'll probably do it every time it snows if they don't get hurt any worse than that."

Printed page 19. Neither this John nor this Bob is given a surname; they are not identified with the narrator or any other named figure in the book.

"Long Distance Indigestion"

I can't recall her name and it is probably just as well though she made more of an impression on my 19-year old bride than any chance acquaintance before or since.

I had just come home from the Phoenix Mine and was working my rubber boots off wet socks and feet when there was a knock at the door. Inez was busy in the kitchen so I hobbled over with one bare foot and one still in a boot. A dumpy, middle-aged gal pushed her way by me as she asked "Where's your phone, Johnny, I gotta make a call?" I couldn't place her from Adam but, evidently, she knew me. She spotted the telephone before I could direct her to it and began dialing.

Inez came to see what the commotion was about just as a flash of memory returned me to Shuler-Underwood Chevrolet company in Del Norte where this same woman, months prior to this date, approached me for a ride to Creede. My dad had driven me the 38 miles in his pickup to sign papers for a truck we would use in our mining operation above Creede. The deal hadn't been completed. The woman was in dire straights with a husband, two kids and a dog waiting somewhere between Del Norte and Monte Vista where their own pickup and trailer were resting by the side of the road in need of Shuler-Underwood's tow truck.

Dad never turned anyone down in need. He told me to take the mine truck home and he would see me later in the evening. The last I saw of him he was rolling his window down and the old gal was waving her arms as she animatedly gave him the story of her life. I left shortly after and was in Creede within an hour. After checking in with Inez I walked the block to my parent's house to let Mom know that her breadwinner would be late and the reason why. He drove by just as I turned to leave with a helluva load of household furnishings on which the husband, two kids and a dog were scrunched up in a frosty ball. Dad honked, feebly, and we could see the woman with her collar turned up around her ears. It was bitterly cold but Dad still had his window down. He let the cab air out for a week after the trip.

So! Here she was. As social as if we were long lost friends mouthing cross words to someone on the other end of the line. She slammed the phone down and left without a thank you or go to hell. Thirty minutes later she came barging back in the house in the same ratty coat she was wearing when she met Dad and me at the Chevrolet agency, plopped herself down on the kidney stool by the telephone, and began dialing long distance. She turned to Inez, "You ain't got a cup of coffee for me have you dearie?" I could see the pupils of my bride's eyes turn to pinpoints with a fire beginning to smolder behind them but she went to the kitchen and returned with a steaming cup just as our guest reached her party. "I don't want to talk to you," she barked in the mouthpiece, "I want to talk to the doctor." As that registered with whoever she was talking to she raised one hip and let out a rip-roaring, lengthy fart that literally stirred dust and dog hairs on her coat. She then aimed a gap toothed grin at Inez as much as to say, "Match that one if you can, dearie."

We had a Chesapeake female dog that wandered over to sniff at the vacant kidney stool. She turned up her nose and never approached it again. Neither did the bag lady.

Printed pages 19–20.