Matewan it's not, but it's close

Sunday morning in the hill country. Blue skies, bright sun, pleasant temps. A good day as any to go work up in Mine Shaft #19. I walked off down towards Clem's house and he was sitting on his front porch with his dog, Blue. "Clem," I said. "Ready to head up to the mine?"

"Yep," replied Clem. "Be with you in a sec." He disappeared into the house and came back out with a big smile on his face.

"Let's go! Had to kiss the wife g'bye."

We trudged up the long winding dirt road that led to Ol' 19. We finally arrived at about 11. This was the last mine that we owned. We used to have two open mines over in Old Bridge County. We did a lot of open strip mining on those two, but we had to sell the land last year. Now all that's left is #19.

The big black door that barred the front of the mine had shifted over the years and some of the contents were leaking out. Clem and I got the door away from the front and saw the rich contents of the mine.

"Gotta be careful this year," I said to Clem. "You're right. We lost two guys when we were up here two years ago."

That tragedy was caused by the ever dangerous cave-in. This year though I had a plan. We started excavating the black gold from the front of the mine. After we had gone about a fourth of the way into the mine, I got a large piece of plywood. We shoved it in at the height of the opening. With large rubber mallets, the wood was shoved all the way to the back of the mine. As we dug deeper into the mine we supported the wood ceiling with beams of wood.

"This will hold it up real good," said Clem. I nodded back to my partner.

We finally reached the back of the mine but I wanted more. More black gold.

At the bottom of the mine was a grid of wooden planks that served as sort of a sieve floor. Not sure why this was installed in this mine, but the wood had rotted over the years. We managed to get all the rotten wood out, and then excavated even more down to the original floor.

All total, we excavated about 7 or 8 pails full of black gold. We then replaced the old floor with a new one of bricks.

Now came the tricky part. We had to get the beams and the partial ceiling out and avoid the eventual cave in. We had to be quick and fast.

"Fire in the hole," I yelled.

Clem and I grabbed all the wood and ran. The top of the mine thundered down where we had just been. Some of the contents of the mine fell out, but we shoveled it back in and replaced the front door. To fasten the door more securely, we roped it up good and tight.

"Well, lunch at the tavern, Clem?"

"Yup"

And off we went to quaff our thirsts after a hard day's work.

(For the gullible, this is a story of how I made a withdrawal from my compost maker. And it's pronounced "Mait-wan")

Real life re-boot

I went to sleep last night to the pleasant rumblings of an oncoming thunderstorm. I woke up in the middle of the night and I realized something was different. I didn't need to visit my favorite watering hole; rather I noticed that my ceiling fan was not turning and the room was quite warm. I strained my eyes to try and see what the comforting red digits on my alarm clock read. But all I saw was black. Had I gone blind? No the power was off. So I moved down stairs to the sofa where the room was quite cool due to the aforementioned rain storm. Around 8, I arose and the power was still off. So I decided to kill some time and went out for a paper and breakfast. Upon returning home I realized that the status had not changed. I knew this because I saw quite a few people sitting out on there porches. I guess they were forced out of their AC'd sealed-up cocoons which were now quite warm. Haaah, flushed out of their little holes like a hose down a chipmunk's lair.

But no difference here except for the absence of any working fans. So to kill more time, I decided to tackle some more tasks which required either muscles, a hose, or both. Speaking of using a hose, I'd like to make a comment in response to a posting that appeared on my N-I-L's blog. She mentioned the need for going green and one of the ways is not to run the water during the brushing of one's teeth. Well, that's nothing compared to some of the knuckleheads on my block. It amazes me as to when they water their lawns. The weather man could be saying that there is a 50% chance of rain at night but they're watering their lawns in the early evening. I guess I could give them some slack on that since we're talking about percents and probability, but the ice-hole three houses down takes the cake. After a night of heavy downpours, he had his sprinkler going full blast this morning. Unbelievable. And I don't know why people water their lawns so much. I have not watered my lawn ONCE this summer and it is just as green as anyone else's on the block. Oh, well. Thanks to my venting, I now have a posting for August.

Well, around 1 PM, the power finally came back on and except for missing a few hours of the Louis Armstrong Birthday Broadcast, it wasn't such a hardship after all.