The Ribs

A loud crunch followed by coal crumbling off the top of the ribs forced Tom Cory to instictively flinched.

Hoek laughed. “Don’t worry, buddy, it’s just a squeeze. That’s the roof pressing down on the blocks of coal. We’re going to be okay. Hand me another bit.”

Tom pulled a bit out of an old ammo box and handed it to Hoek. “Haven’t worked the ribs for a couple years. Did it back a few years ago as utilityman when I first came into the mines. Been on the solids since then. Bid on this miner’s helper job for top rate.”

“The solids are tame. This is where the action is, buddy.” Hoek used a pair of pliers to snap the ring clamp on the bit and handed them to Tom. He put them in the ammo box. “Let’s have a look around. See what’s going on here.”

Hoek used the beam of his head lamp to trace the path of a gray clay vein across the entry. It disappeared into a block of coal on the other side of the intersection. “That’s a problem. With three blocks out and no roof fall, that clay vein is a natural fault line.”

From his first days in the coal mines three years ago, the old timers warned him about clay veins. The sediment from streams millions of years ago became soft sharp rocks that could fall off the roof with no warning.

“Let’s see what’s happening behind that canvass.”

Hoek pushed his way around the side of a yellow canvas at the end of the entry. Tom followed him. A gray slab of rock ten feet wide rested on its edge and disappeared where the roof abruptly ended behind three posts.

“Let’s check the other side, buddy.”

They went behind the canvass on the cross cut side of the block. Their head lamp beams revealed stumps of coal and posts left behind as temporary roof supports in a vast black cavern.

Hoek spit tobacco juice. “That’s about three blocks of nothing. All those rocks up there are interlocked together so the roof out in the empty gob is pulling down on the roof over top of us. And that’s why we got this squeeze going on. See how those posts there are bent like bananas and how their sweating sap up at the top. There’s a lot of pressure on them, buddy.”

Tom heard a buggy’s whining tram motors behind them.

Ronnie the boss joined them. “Got posts and crib blocks to unload.” He scanned the empty gob. “Going to be a hell of fall when it comes.”

“Yeah, hopefully without one of us under it,” Hoek said.

“Tom, we got to get you some experience running the miner. Hoek will fender out the backside of the block and you’ll fender out the back quarter. Hoek will take out the front quarter. It’ll be the toughest. Might as well break your cherry.”

“Okay,” Tom said. These two appeared immune to the fear that rippled through him.

“Come on,” Ronnie said.

When they immerged from the canvas, the buggy, a large rectangular dumpster on four wheels with a conveyor belt up the middle to the boom and a steel canopy over the operator’s compartment, sat in the intersection. The crew stood around its hopper waiting for orders.

“Okay, get those posts out of there and stick them over here. Put those crib blocks over there. Let’s go. I have to check the returns.” Ronnie disappeared into the darkness.

“Hey, Tab, you going to help,” Toad the lead utilityman asked as he pulled a post from the buggy. He had large eyes, a wide mouth and a pock marked face – he looked like a toad.

“Now you know better than that, buddy,” Tab said in slow drawl from the kitchen of the buggy.

“I don’t leave this seat except to piss and eat lunch. Buddy, there’s only two things I’m willing to do, run this buggy and retire soon.” The crew laughed.

Tom smiled. Tab was the oldest man on the crew. He had a white Van Dike beard, entertained the men with stories of the old days and sometimes got off the buggy to give safety tips learned from years of experience.

Ronnie came back as Tom passed the last crib block over the side of the buggy to Toad. “Tab, get that buggy out here. Toad, Suitcase, Tapeworm, you take the new utilityman – what’s your name?”

“Billy.”

“Billy - and tear down that canvass at the end of the entry. Set six posts in front of those three posts there. You, guys,” he pointed at Hoek, Tom and Goober, tear down that canvas on the cross cut and do the same. And put the canvas back up. I’m going to see how Meatball’s doing greasing Goober’s buggy.”

Tom measured the distance from the roof to the bottom with two old roof augers. They took turns on a two-man bow saw to cut the post. Goober set the post in place, Hoek put a small cap block on top of it and Tom used the flat side of an ax to drive wooden wedges under it to tighten it against the roof.

Meatball the mechanic joined them.

“What, you can’t sleep?” Hoek asked. “We making too much noise for you?”

Meatball inspected the post they set with a mischievous glint in his eye. “Hoek, you can’t use more than two wedges on a post. You know that. An inspector comes along; he’d write your ass up.”

“Hey, Meatball, in five hours that post is going to be under hundreds of thousands of tons of rock. Ain’t no inspector going to see how many wedges I have on that post.”

“Suit yourself.” He held up his hands in surrender. “You want to break the law, that’s your business.”

“Hey, if all you got to do is aggravate me, I can tear up that miner in this next cut and give you something useful to do.”

“Why they call you Meatball?” Tom asked while he took measurements for another post.

Hoek let out an evil chortle. “Because when he first got married all his wife knew how to make was spaghetti and meatballs. He ate so many meatballs he started to look like one. So we named him accordingly. And only a real meatball would come up here aggravating a man about how many wedges he uses on a gob post.”

When they finished their jobs, the crew gathered at the intersection. Ronnie came around the corner a few minutes later. Toad, Billy, you guys put up a canvass at the end of the entry - from here.” Ronnie walked the length of the cross cut. “Turn it here and run it up to the face about a foot from the rib. Suitcase, Tapeworm, help them. We want air to flow to the face and sweep the dust into the gob. Any questions?

“Tom, Hoek, Goober, you guys start building a crib here.” Ronnie stood at the corner of the block where he wanted the crib built. Alright, let’s go.” Ronnie disappeared around the corner.

Tom used a wide coal shovel to make a clean spot on the bottom for the crib. Hoek and Goober dropped three foot, six by six inch crib blocks beside him. He placed two cribs on the ground parallel to each other, set two across them and stacked them to the roof. When he finished, it looked like a vertical crib.

While they tightened it against the roof with wedges, Tom asked, “Why do you guys call the bolter and his helper Suitcase and Tapeworm?”

“Suitcase Joe.” Hoek said with a broad grin. “He went out and got all drunked up one night and came home to find a suitcase on his front porch.”

“He’s divorced?”

“Nah, his wife let him back in - but had to beg. And now, whenever he goes out on a drunk, he finds a suitcase on the front porch and has to beg his wife to let him in again.” Hoek laughed.

“And Tapeworm - you ever see that kid eat? Hell, his wife packs him three sandwiches, a bunch of twinkies and who knows what else. He stands a little over five and half feet tall, can’t weigh more than one hundred and forty pounds and eats like a continuous miner hogging out coal.”

Toad, Billy, Suitcase and Tapeworm joined them. The crew gathered around the crib like a family around a freshly decorated Christmas tree.

Billy asked, “What are we doing here?”

“Mining coal,” Suitcase said. “Man, you are green.” The crew laughed.

“I meant . . .”

“I know, Buddy. I’m just messing with you. They call it the ribs opposed to the solids. In the solids, you run in the entries and cross cuts to make blocks one hundred by one hundred feet square. In the ribs, we take the blocks out. That puts a lot of pressure on the walls of coal here, the ribs.”

Goober, a country boy with a thick drawl, said, “You want to walk down the middle of the entry. The ribs can blow out in a squeeze like this one.”

“We split the block in half parallel to the crosscut and then split the front half parallel to the entry so it looks like a T,” Hoek said. “Then we take out the fenders and it all comes in behind us. We set the posts as temporary roof supports. We’ll remove the ones that don’t have too much weight on them so we can use them again on the next block. That crib there, it will hold as much weight as thirteen posts.”

“You think it’ll fall tonight,” Toad asked.

“Hope so,” Hoek said. “Those knuckleheads on afternoon got the block T’d. Then the miner broke down so they couldn’t take out the back fender. That’s alright, we get this block out and start on the other block, afternoon will have to move the equipment across the section to start on the block between entries one and two.”

“That means we don’t have to move. Man, I hate dragging all that cable across the section,” Toad said.

“That’s if they don’t break down or decide to rob the barrier. They rob the barrier and that’s going to be a couple cuts,” Hoek said.

“Isn’t robbing the barrier against the law?” Tom asked.

“Of course it is. The law says you have to have a hundred foot barrier between sections - untouched. It keeps black damp, air with no oxygen, and other gasses in an abandoned section from seeping into a working section. The barrier also keeps water in an abandoned section from flooding a working section. But, when everything falls in, who’s going to see if you robbed the barrier?

“If you're going to rob the barrier, you want to do it down on number eight. It’s a bad idea to rob the barrier on number one where you got an abandoned section on the other side.”
Why?

“If you got bad luck, you stand a real good chance of robbing the barrier where someone robbed it on the other side. And nobody has worse luck than that poor bastard Mike Rovkavich.”

“What happened to Mike,” Gobber asked.

“Daylight left us the fenders on the block between number one and two entries. Mike decided he want a few extra cars of coal so he told me to rob the barrier on the left side of 2 Butt 18 Face. He figured he had a hundred foot barrier, two cuts would leave plenty of coal in the barrier. Halfway into that second cut the face exploded on me. Water flooded in like it was the Poseidon adventure. We started running and were calf deep in water before we reached the dinner hole. Mike’s came splashing after us screaming, ‘get sand bags. Get a sump pump."

“What’d you guys do,” Toad asked when he got control of his laughter.

“Hey, that poor bastard was on his own as far as we were concerned.”

“The company doesn't ask too many questions as long as the coal's coming out the section. But when you need a canoe to get from the dinner hole to the miner, they got a lot of questions.”

The laughter was infectious and uncontrollable.

“I’m hoping this here Ronnie guy is smarter than that. But when you get right down to it, when things get tough, they’re all the same.”

Ronnie came back around the corner. “Hoek, fire up the miner and load coal.”

Hoek climbed under the steel canopy and into the kitchen, turned the miner on and pushed the tram levers forward. The continuous miner’s steel tracks clip clopped down the center of the entry. Tom followed behind the boom to keep the miner’s three inch cable and water hose off to the side against the rib.

After Hoek swung the boom around, he angled the miner’s head to the coal face and turned on the water sprays. The wet black coal streaked with gray seams of slate glisten its halogen flood lights. He started the drum head and pushed it against the coal. The miner lurched and rocked on its center axis. Sparks flew; dust billowed and blew into the gob.

Tab pulled his buggy under the boom. A metallic clattering announced the start of the conveyor. Mounds of coal spilled into the buggy.

Hoek started at the bottom and brought the head half way up the coal face, pushed in a little further and lowered it. Once he had dug into the face about four feet, he backed out of the cut.

Tom pulled the cable back to keep the miner from crushing it.

Once out, Hoek lifted the rotating head and tore into the coal on the upper cut.

Hoek finished the cut and the whole crew set post in preparation for the next cut. They finished the last cut on the back fender after lunch. Suitcase and Tapeworm helped Tom with the cable as Hoek backed the miner into the intersection. The crew stood and waited to see if the roof came in.

When it didn’t, Ronnie said, “Okay, Tom, into the kitchen.”

The shaking and rumbling of the thirty-five foot machine crawling over the bottom filled Tom with a sense of power. He maneuvered to the cut, turned on the sprays and head. The violence of the head ripping at the coal sent a rush through his body.

With the cut almost finished, he started to feel a little antsy when a buggy didn’t pull under the boom for a couple minutes. He wanted to finish the cut and get out. His light caught movement on the rib beside him. Black coal dust slid down the rib in fine ripples like flowing oil. The ripples glittering and dancing in the light of his head lamp mesmerized him.

He tried to think of what this new experience meant. Terror jolted his body when he realized it announced an impending fall. He grabbed the tram leavers and slammed them into reverse. Instinctively he turned and flagged Hoek with his head lamp. Hoek grabbed the cable. Suitcase, Tapeworm, Meatball, Toad and Billy ran to help. They looked like a tug of war team.

A buggy lumbered around the corner. Everyone flagged him off with frantic shakes of their head lamps. The buggy disappeared.

Tom spun his head to the gob. The roof sagged. He swung the boom to keep it from jamming against the rib. His hand released a tram lever and the miner swung around the corner. His heart raced. He pulled both levers back till they could go no further to make the miner crawl faster. It didn’t. The miner’s head cleared the clay vein as the roof caved in.

Layers of flat rocks wiped out the quarter block and filled the intersection. Tom sat motionless and stared at the fall. He jumped when a hand slapped him hard on the shoulder.

Hoek stood beside him grinning. “You saved her, buddy – good job.”

Suitcase stood next to Hoek. “You need any shit paper there, buddy.”

Everyone laughed.

Tom smiled. “Nah - I’m okay. Man, that was a close one.”

“Yeah but you hung in there, buddy, and brought her out like a guy born on that seat,” Suitcase said.

Ronnie came up. “Good job, Tom.”

“I need a drink of water,” Tom said. He left the miner and walked to the dinner hole. He pushed his way through the slit in the canvass. A block wall that separated the return where the dust and gasses blew out of the mine closed off the far side of the dinner hole. Three posts down the middle had boards nailed to them at the top and half way down as back rests. Benches made of boards on cinder blocks lined the ribs and either side of the posts. He took his igloo thermos off a nail from a top board and gulped cool water.

His adrenalin came back to normal and he started to tremble. With a thud he sat on a bench and leaned against the back rest. He felt tired. He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath and exhaled.

The crew came through the canvass for a drink. Ronnie followed them.

“Okay, after you get a drink, Toad, Billy, move that fan around and start setting up the next cut. We have to start T’ing the next block. Suitcase, Tapeworm, you help them. Then get your bolter moved around. Hoek, Tom, get the miner moved over to the next block. Let’s go.”

Tom followed the crew out of the dinner hole grateful he didn’t have too long to ponder his close call.