NOT A GOOD DAY AT THE POTASH MINE-- Did not much right

                                
 NOT A GOOD DAY AT THE POTASH MINE

It all started with a Phone call.

“Hello is that Ken?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“I’m Bill Walker, from the Potash Mine. You applied for a job here did you not?” Said a loud voice with a very pronounced Texas drawl.

“Oh, right, yes I did make out an application at the employment office.”

“OK that’s fine I have a few questions to ask you.”

He asked me if I had ever worked in a mine before.  I assured him that I had lots of experience.  He mentioned that this was, perhaps, the most unusual and most difficult mining job in all of North America, and only those with experience would even be considered.  He asked a few more questions I answered with several lies.

“OK”. He said, “Since we’re a man short tomorrow morning, I’m going to take a chance and give you a try.  Be at the mine site by 7:30 tomorrow morning sharp.  Above all, don’t forget to bring your woolen underwear and warm socks.” 

I flippantly answered, “Right, don’t worry I’ll be there on time, See ya.”

I was 18 years old and had just been hired over the phone to work on the original shaft of the largest potash mine in the world.  I was thinking, “What a twit this guy from the deep South must be...bring your woolen underwear!

 RIGHT.

It was July in Saskatoon. The temperature at least 90 degrees in the shade and I was decked out in shorts and T-shirt, with sweat dripping off my nose.  “Bring woolen underwear and warm socks...Right!!”  After all, according to my 18 years of experience, it was my understanding that a mine was below ground.  I further reasoned that it got warmer as one went deeper, why on earth would I need extra clothing?  After all, I was used to being outdoors in minus 40-degree weather.  I did not need underwear on the hottest day of the year...perhaps; a Texan might, but certainly NOT this true blue Canadian!

The next morning, I arrived at the mineshaft about 20 miles east of the city at 7:45 sharp.

 I checked in at the only small office I could find and they directed me to the ‘change room’ across the road.  As I arrived at this large room, about 8 men dressed in rubber suits, rubber boots, and hard hats were leaving.  (They must have arrived at 7:30!)  The expression on their faces led me to believe that they were going to a funeral.

The ‘change room’ was very large, very dark, and very damp.  There were rubber outfits hanging from the ceiling like men on gallows.   It reminded me of some horror movie.  As I stood there in my shorts and sandals, trying to figure out what to do next, I noticed an “older” man (probably 35 years old), sitting on one of the two by twelve benches.  He had his head in his hands.

With enthusiasm, I went over and said, “Hi.  I’m Ken!  I’m supposed to start work here today.  Have you any idea what I’m supposed to do?”

 The man looked up at me with rather lifeless eyes, blinked a few times, and said, “Where’s your underwear and wool socks?”

In my usual cavalier attitude, I said, “I don’t need underwear or wool socks!”

“Have it your way, kid.” He said.  “Let down one of those rubber outfits and grab a pair of boots.  When you get dressed, meet me at the mine shaft in that big building you passed on your way here.” 

With that, he got up and left.

Now, I was alone.  I really did not like this creepy place, but I began to untie the rope from the first rubber outfit.  It thumped to the ground beside me like some corpse.  I jumped about 4 feet!  I weighed all of 135 pounds, soaking wet.  I knew this outfit was made for a giant.  I could, literally, walk around inside the thing.  I threw the first outfit into a corner, and the second, and the third.  Finally, it dawned on me that they were ALL going to be too big, so I just put the next one on.  It was only about 3 sizes too large.  I almost felt svelte.  It was about then that I started to feel a little chilly.  This black rubber suit was cold and very wet on the inside, against my bare skin.

As I was trying on several pairs of oversized rubber boots on my bare feet, I was starting to get a premonition that I may not like this job.

I found a hard hat that almost fit, and, with that, I sort of shuffled and stumbled out into the blazing sun.  (Even at 8 am, it was already at least 70 degrees).   I made my way to the gigantic building, which housed the cable with the very large cast iron bucket on the end.  It was used to transport anything that went down into the shaft through the double iron doors that opened from the middle of the floor.

There was a man sitting in a little house inside this place with all kinds of levers and “stuff”.  I went over to the little house, poked my head in and shouted; “Did you see a guy here.  He was supposed to take me to the mine?”

The cable operator was a young, clean-cut college student kind-of-guy. 

“Oh!  You mean the shift supervisor?” he said.

“Yeah I guess that was who he was”

“Well, he waited for a while.  Then, he said to send you down when you arrived.”  He looked at me in a strange way and added, “You haven’t worked in a potash mine before, have you?”

“No.” I said.  “How can you tell?”

“Well, for starters, you don’t have gloves, you’ve got your hard hat on backwards, and nothing fits you.”

“Oh, I see.” I said. “By the way, what is all this preoccupation with underwear around here?

“Didn’t they tell you before you were hired?”  He paused.  Then, he went on, “This shaft is drilled into a quicksand region.  To make it feasible, they have drilled small shafts all through the area and piped freezing brine (a salt-water solution also used to lubricate the drills) all through the shaft.  We are drilling into FROZEN SLUSH.”

Just then, a fellow, with a hard hat labeled “Electrical Engineer” appeared. 

“Harry, I’m on my way to level 3,” he said.  “Will you open up the trap doors and raise the bucket.”

“OK.” Said Harry.  “By the way, can you take this young man with you?”

“Sure, Harry, will do.”

Turning to me, the Electrical Engineer said, “What’s your name?”

 “Ken.”

“Well, Ken, Let’s go.  But, first, you might want to put your hard hat on the right way around!” he said, with a smile.

As we got up to the shaft, the large double iron doors opened.  Before my eyes were the biggest bucket I had ever seen.  It was made out of solid iron, about 5 feet across and 8 feet deep.  The engineer grabbed the edge and let himself down into the bottom of the bucket.  Then, he looked up at me as if to say, “Let’s get moving!”  Although I had a distinct feeling that this was not a good idea, I grabbed the edge and slid into the bucket beside him.  He signaled to the operator and the iron doors closed over our heads.

As complete darkness enveloped us, I thought, “I don’t think I like this at all.”

We started down.

“Now.” the engineer said.  “I’m going to get off before you.  The bucket will continue down with you.  It will come to a stop above the men working.  This is so the Supervisor will notice you and signal the cable operator to slowly bring you down the last 20 feet or so.  Just remember.  Wait until it stops twice before you climb up to get out.”

All this time, we were going straight down into this black hole.  This was quite an elevator.    The longest elevator ride I had ever had was six floors in the Canada Building, on twenty-First Street.

We just kept going down and down.  It seemed like it was going forever.  Each minute, we went deeper.  And, each minute reinforced my premonition that this was NOT GOING TO BE A GOOD DAY!!!

The inside of the iron bucket was very cold.  The freezing iron on the wet freezing rubber of my over-sized suit and cold rubber boots on my bare feet, was, to say the least, uncomfortable...bordering miserable!

Suddenly, out of the blackness, there was light.  “Now, this is better!” I thought.

“Well, this is where I leave you.” Said the engineer.  “Now, remember.  Do not climb out of the bucket until it stops twice.  Good luck!”  With that, he climbed up over the lip of the bucket and disappeared.

Instantly, it became black again, as the bucket descended.  It was now very quiet, and very lonely.  It seemed like hours passed and we (the bucket and I) kept going deeper and deeper.  The bucket got lower, I got colder.  Suddenly, I noticed the sound of jackhammers...at first, faint and in the distance...then, louder and louder until the noise was deafening.  I thought, “Great!  At least, I will be able to get out of this rotten bucket before I die!”

Slowly, the bucket came to a smooth stop.  We hung gently swaying somewhere above the men working in the pit below.  “Wait for the second stop before you climb up to the edge and get out of the bucket,” the engineer had said.  That was what I would do.  “It might take a few minutes.” I told myself.   I would not panic, despite my frozen hands, and feet, and near frozen body!

I was determined not to do anything stupid.  For all I knew, we might be 10 stories above the men.  With my bare feet inside wet boots, standing on cast iron that definitely was below freezing; it was becoming quite uncomfortable.  However, I waited another 10 minutes or so.  Finally, I decided to jump up to the rim of the bucket and have a look, to see what I could see.

As I peered over the edge of the bucket, it was like some kind of nightmare.  Vague shapes appeared and vanished in the swirl of smoke and fog.  “Unfortunate wretches toiling in hell.” I thought.  There were lights somewhere below, but it was impossible to tell how far away through the eerie fog.  The top of this cloud of dirty smoke was just below the bottom of the bucket.  The fog was swirling as if the jackhammers were making it move.

The noise was painful to my ears.  I dropped back into the bucket where it wasn’t quite as noisy...merely ear shattering!

So, there I stood in the gloom.  It wasn’t pitch dark any more.  For that, I was thankful, but it was getting colder and colder and I was freezing.  Oh, how I wished I had my nice warm, wool socks and longjohns!  Maybe I should have listened to that sissy Texan???

After another 10 minutes or so, two things became obvious: 

#1.  Something had gone terribly wrong with the signaling plan and

 #2.  If I didn’t get out of this Iron IceBox pretty soon, I was a goner!

Once again, I awkwardly raised my frozen hands and stiff legs and got to the edge of the bucket and peered down.  It was like being in an aircraft above the clouds.  Only a pilot probably would have some idea as to how far he was from the ground, and what was on the ground.  I knew neither.

I climbed over the edge, hung by my fingers for just a second; then, I found myself falling into the fog.  I know my heart stopped on the way down.  An eternity seemed to pass.  I had a fleeting thought that, maybe, I was 20 stories high and this was the end.

Then, all of a sudden, boom!  I hit something.  I bounced off and landed with a splash and a thud on the brine-filled rock bottom of the shaft.  I hurt everywhere.  My boots were filled instantly with frozen brine. My eyes were filled with frozen brine.  The jackhammers kept going without missing a beat. The noise was almost unbearable. 

Nobody even noticed that I had arrived!!

Then, I noticed another man lying beside me.  He was trying to get up.  Suddenly, I recognized him.  He was the shift supervisor.  I had landed on him!  I helped him up, all the while apologizing profusely to him.  He didn’t respond.  Not even a nod.  He made absolutely no acknowledgment that I was alive.  With the six jackhammers banging away, there was absolutely no way to communicate. I cupped my hands over the shift supervisor’s ears and screamed with all my might.  He didn’t even blink!

But...at least, I was out of the bucket.  This was a great improvement.  Standing in a foot of frozen brine, my boots filled with the freezing stuff, I was soaked from head to toe and ached all over.

There was an upside, though.  I had a supervisor who would know what to do.

I had to admit, though, it appeared that this supervisor either hated me, was deaf and dumb, was having a mental breakdown, or perhaps, all three!  Maybe the “upside” wasn’t that far up after all.

Once more, I got the feeling this wasn’t going to be a good day!

I realized by now that there was absolutely no talking down here, so I decided to have a look around. As I stood there in the gloom and smoke, slowly freezing to death, I counted three groups of men each with a Jackhammer/drill.  Each group had three men holding on or doing something with the drill.  As I peered at them I couldn’t for the life of me figure out just exactly what each worker was actually doing. That is except for the one that had hold of the handle, it was obvious that he was in charge of the Drill.  Then I noticed one group only had two men, so I started to stumble over to them.  I finally got over to them and screamed.

“What should I do?”

The only answer I got was the continuous ear splitting roar from the Drill.

So I stood a foot or so away and watched.  There was the guy on the handle; the other fellow was immediately behind him holding on to the two hoses that come out of the Drill.  I guess he sort of helped keep some of the weight of all the hoses off the handle guy; I still don’t know what he accomplished.  The one thing that he was doing was getting shaken like a dog with a bone. Him being the bone. But at least his blood was moving, and he was alive. 

My blood was standing still.  I was near death. 

I finally made a decision, I also had to get hold of this machine somewhere and get shaken to life.

I got up close to the handle man and tried to grab hold of one of his handles.  This was the first time since I dropped from the bucket that anyone had acknowledged I existed.  This large muscle bound guy took one hand off the handle long enough to backhand me four feet in the air onto my back in the water.

“Don’t need any help there, eh.” I screamed.

I edged back close to these two men and tried to catch their attention, but they studiously ignored me.

I stood there feeling rigor mortis rapidly setting in.  I then noticed the third man on one of the other drills seemed to be in front of the handle guy, he was holding on to the drill just above where the steel bit came out.  I guess he was sort of helping direct the drill.  He was getting shaken pretty good as well.  It didn’t appear to me that one had to know much to do that job.

It was meant for me.

“Im just going to grab hold of your drill down here.” I screamed as I reached for the lower body of the drill with both hands.  At the same time I slipped into a hole and fell against the Handle Guy.  He was not expecting this.  The handle guy (who I found out later was actually called the Driller and made more money than the rest of us) fell into the water and dragged the hose guy with him.

I got hold of the Drill. It had stopped but it was warm. I was never going to let it go.   They both got up out of the water.  It was hard to see their faces but they both looked as best I can remember, furious.  As I lay there, holding on to the bottom of the warm drill the hose guy came over and punched me alongside the head.  I think he screamed something, but it was probably just as well that I didn’t hear it.

I hung on to that drill.

In my fuddled mind holding onto the drill was my last hope to live out the day.  The Drill guy came over and I closed my eyes waiting for his punch.  He didn’t punch me. He was trying to get the drill up and going again, but unfortunately, there was this stupid person attached to the front of his machine.  It was much more difficult lifting up a hundred pound drill with a hundred and forty pound blob hanging on to the other end. Both the Driller and the hose guy tried to pry my hands off the drill, but eventually they gave up and with my help we got the drill upright, into the same hole and started up again. 

The noise was ear shattering, the fumes were choking, and the freezing dirty water was splashing into my eyes (which were bouncing like Ping-Pong balls).  However, I was part of the team, and almost warm, as I hung on to the drill like grim death.

Written by Larry W. Bennett