In the middle of Zeigler's Circle, there used to be a fountain. Now there stands a statue of a coal miner called "The Miners' Memorial, complete with a hard-hat that has a light on it. He is holding and a pick. I have a serious beef about the statue, and that is that the man is *scrawny*.
Now, I suppose that there were (and are) some skinny coal miners. But when I think of coal miners, I think of my Uncle Lloyd. Even in his day, coal mining was automated; but his job in the mines was welding, and he was constantly lifting heavy pieces of broken equipment to weld them back together, so that the rest of the miners could do their work. Although my memories of him were when he was in his fifties, and his hair was steel-gray, he was broad-shouldered, and built like a rock. At the age of 58, a sudden massive heart attack took him from us.
During visits to Zeigler, I have sometimes run across old friends who were working in the mines, and on these occasions I was suddenly aware of my ignorance. In all the time I had lived in coal mining country, never once had I visited one of the established shaft mines (they actually used to have tours, but I hadn’t known about it); nor had I asked any of my relatives (a grandfather, two uncles, and a cousin) who had worked in the mines what it is like down there.
The husband of one of my best buddies from high school is a coal miner. He is another of the burly variety of men who would probably be insulted if he thought about the skinny statue on the Circle. If he were living around here, in suburban yuppie-land, he would probably be asked where he worked out. When I encountered him in his prime, he was a vigorous, stocky man with a close-cropped beard, but he didn't acquire his muscles from Gold's gym. He had been working in the mines for the last 20 years. When he and my friend got married at the age of 18, he took a job in the mines. There was no question about it -- the mines paid well, and it is easy to see the attraction for the young man who may not have had the time or money to acquire a college education. When you are working in the mines, you make more than most people who possess college degrees. But most miners can't count on working all the time. There are frequent lay-offs, and when the union goes on strike, everyone just hopes that it won't be a long one.
My friend operates a "continuous miner," a big machine with a rotating drum in front. On the drum are teeth that cut the coal out of the seam. The drum is first lifted, and as it rotates, it is moved downward, until it has finished the scoop. Then the drum is raised, the machine moves forward, and it takes another bite out of the coal.
According to statistics, mining is still one of the most hazardous occupations, although it is only half as dangerous as it used to be when my uncle was in the mines. We asked my friend if he had ever feared for his life, and without effort he recalled three times when he thought he was going to die in very unpleasant ways. The first occurred after he had cut the grid into the coal and was backing the machine out of the tunnel, mining the permissible quantity of coal off the pillars as he went. As he got to the end of the last "room", he heard the sound of the roof falling in. It looked like an upside down wave, and he fully expected to be crushed as he sat on his machine, watching it come closer. Fortunately, the fall was self-limited, and the roof close to him was stabilized by the roof bolts. But it was a close call, and if he had been a little slower mining off the pillars, he would have gotten more than the shower of small rocks that sprayed him.
Another time, his machine started rolling by itself while he was standing between it and the wall. He didn't have time to get out of the way, and fully expected to be cut in half at about the waist. Fortunately, he fit between two prong-like structures on the side of the machine, which dug into the wall on either side of him, pinning but not crushing him, as the huge machine ground to a halt.
Once, they were cutting a new tunnel, and assuming that the old maps of previous mining operations were accurate, there should have been an old mine a full 850 feet away from where they were cutting coal. But as my friend raised the cutting drum of the continuous miner, and it took its first bite at the top, a torrent of water poured through from the old mine tunnel. It filled up the new tunnel waist-high, and then miraculously, the deluge stopped, just before getting to the unshielded section of the electrical junction box. What saved them was the fact that the tunnel of the old mine sloped downhill. If the men down there had gotten electrocuted or drowned, the accident would have gone on record as one of the worst mining disasters in history. It is a good thing to stay out of those stories in the mining history books.
Men are still getting killed down there, be it quickly or slowly. Although the air is filled with coal dust, some refuse to wear their respirators. If the ventilation isn't adequate, flammable gases collect. The father of a schoolmate of mine strolled off into a shaft. A late classmate of mine who worked in the strip mines walked into a strip pit to his death. And there is always the danger of flooding or of a roof falling in.
My friend said that he feels safer down in the mines than he does on the roads to and from work. A classmate of mine told me "The thought of working in the mines for the rest of my career scares me to death; the only thought that scares me more is the prospect of *not* working in the mines."
Those of us who grew up in coal mining country have that love-hate relationship with the industry that gnaws in the bowels of Southern Illinois. While it undermines our towns and kills our men in their prime, most of us owe our existence to it, at least in part.
Zeigler should have that monument in its center. I only wish they had made that miner a little heftier.
