Tour-Ed Mine and Museum, Tarentum PA
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular location has been ‘on my list’ for a while now, and were it not for having shattered my left ankle a while back, it would have already been visited.
Our Lady of the Pentacle joined me for this trip, which involved a not so long drive to one of Pittsburgh’s neighboring communities – Tarentum.
Tarentum is where the Tour-Ed Mine and Museum is found.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The conceit of this experience begins with a short lecture, which is followed by a visit to a former coal mine, which is found some 160 feet below the surface. They sell tickets, and it’s a popular attraction.
We all piled into a ‘Man Riding Car’ which would carry us down to the depths. It was an interesting group, one which included families with young children. A cool vibe was in the air.
Yep, when I get interested in something, I’m ‘all in.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
After piling into the tracked vehicle, it was all ‘shake, rattle, and roll’ on the way down. One of the things I soon discerned on this trip was that I wouldn’t have lasted a half hour at this job.
A blossom of existential horror was constantly unfolding, along with an illogical sense of paranoid terror that was stalking around at the edge of thought, polluting the environment between the ears and behind the eyes. I’m a little bit claustrophobic, it seems.
Our guide through these stygian depths under Tarentum was a retired coal miner, named ‘Bob.’
50 years on the job, he said. 12 hours a day, and six days a week. Bob mentioned that if even if you were having open heart surgery at six in the morning, the boss would still expect you to come in after lunch or lose ‘your place.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As you can see above, the ‘Man Riding Car’ is rather shallow in terms of verticality, and it took a bit of a wiggle to get my fat butt in and out of it.
Historically: the coal industry would send recruiting agents to Southern and Eastern Europe, mainly, bringing people over who were Serfs in their home countries. They’d emigrate, and join the coal extraction work force in Appalachia, and along the way become Americans. The promise.
The agents and the bosses promised these people freedom, and a chance at fortune, and then when they arrived here… some of the darkest forms of capitalism awaited them, many of which which made the feudal system back home seem comparatively liberal and progressive… the company store, the Coal and Iron Police, the unincorporated company towns…
Another day older, and deeper in debt… huh?
Good old captains of industry, what a bunch of coy rascals they were. Definitely not Robber Barons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
You are obliged to wear a hard hat down in the Tour-Ed mine, as even a no more than five foot and nine inches tall but humble narrator kept accidentally bopping his head on the roof.
Bob continued with his demonstrations of the equipment installed down here, and regaled the crowd with tales of working in the extraction industry, spiced up with witty commentary and all ages jokes. I got the sense that Bob also answers to ‘Grandpa.’ He had that vibe about him.
The Pittsburgh Coal Seam forms a narrow band in the Appalachian soil’s Layer Cake, sometimes stretching less than five feet from top to bottom, but more often it’s around ten feet in depth. The economics of mining involve ascertaining just how far down you can afford to follow the seam, and transport the coal back to the surface, while maintaining your profit margin.
If you dig too deep, all sorts of problems can emerge.
Tour-Ed is what’s called a ‘Drift Mine,’ as the original miners back in the 19th century were able to start digging in at the surface level, and then they followed the coal seam into, and down the side of, the hill.
The entrance to a coal mine is called a ‘Portal,’ incidentally.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Bob demonstrated the actual task of freeing the coal from the seam, which involved lying on his side and picking at the seam to create small holes, into which explosive charges would then be inserted.
Once you collapsed a section with the boom sticks, you’d shovel the freed coal into a cart, and attach your ‘chit’ (a metal disc with your employee ID number on it, used for accounting purposes) to a hook installed on the thing, and a donkey would then pull the cart and coal up and out of the mine, where it would be weighed and then recorded into a ledger alongside your chit ID. That’s how what you’d get paid for the day was calculated. ‘16 tons, and what do you get?’
Piece work.
For 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. That’s how those ‘Captains of Industry’ got it done, back when ‘America was Great.’ Bootstraps. All that.
Bob said you could expect to pull 80-90K a year as a coal miner, but that’s in modern times, and it’s due to unionization. Further, he asserted that if you followed the Union’s safety rules to the letter, you’d be just fine working down below.
As mentioned above, I wouldn’t last a half hour down here. These people are made of far sterner stuff than I am.
Back tomorrow with more.
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