Loveridge

In 1958 there wasn't a place in West Virginia called Loveridge but in Pittsburgh Pa. there was a gentleman called George Love who happened to be the president and CEO of Consol Coal Company. So the people who name coal mines for Consol decided that Loveridge would be just the right name for their new mine near Fairview WV. When I visited Harry Turner at Loveridge It wasn't much more than a 300 foot deep hole in the ground with a new mechanic who didn't know his @$$ from third base. Forty Five years later Loveridge is still there and is one of the largest coal mines in the world and is producing five million tons of coal a year.

I dug out my hard-toed gumboots, miner’s belt and hardhat. You can tell a lot about a miner by his hard hat, they come in all colors and the miners cover them with stickers that might say anything from their politics to their religion. Some wear them on the back of their heads or tilted over their eyes. Zeke a miner at Mine 93 moved the lamp clip that holds your light to one side so he could have the bill over one ear and his light would shine straight ahead. My hard hat was a 1930s, black model that my father bought me when I started in the mine. I wore it straight on my head and it never had a sticker on it.

Loveridge had new buildings and a nice big clean bathhouse for the United Mine workers but once you got on the elevator and dropped down the three hundred feet, it was just like all of the other mines I had been in. I was a section mechanic on a crew of 6 men counting the boss. They were all young men about my age except the boss, Tony Hess who was 50. Our section was one west, the first section in Loveridge. I knew I was going to like working there.

Denise and I started looking for a better house to rent. We were a few years and a lot of saving away from buying another one. Then one morning when I arrived at work I had one of those experiences that changed things for me but I didn't know it at the time. When I got in site of the Loveridge gate I saw cars parked along the road and a crowd of miners at the gate. I knew it was a picket line. I parked about a hundred yards from the gate and started walking up there. I got madder and madder as I walked. I was thinking of how I was going to tell Denise I was on strike and there wouldn't be a pay check. When I got to the gate I recognized the guy who was making the speech. It was Cadillac Coaches a local union official from Wheeling WV. He was trying to take over the union from Tony Boyle. I think I lost my mind because I yelled for him to shut up and I told everyone that I was going back to my car and when I got to the gate I was going to be driving seventy miles an hour and I hoped there wouldn't be any one in my way. Some of the pickets yelled if I tried that they would shoot me. When I made the turn into the gate the old ford hit sixty five and there wasn't any one in the way. I didn't look back and I didn't hear any shots. When I got to the mine Joe Akers ask me what I was doing there and I told him I had come to work. Joe said they had a pump broken down and the water was getting up on the track and he would appreciate it if I could get it fixed. But he said you know if you go to work one of those crazy SOBs might shoot you.

The only DC electricity in Loveridge was for the haulage Locomotives that pulled the trains of coal out of the mine. The Pump was an old DC pump that got its power from the trolley wire and I lucked in because I knew how to repair DC motor controllers. I changed a bad coil and pumped the water off the track. I traveled around with one of the bosses the rest of the day and we checked the pumps and made sure every thing was ok.

When I got home they had called Denise and threatened her. They picked the wrong lady to threaten they just made her mad. This was not a union authorized strike or I would have honored the picket line and I had gone too far to turn back. The next morning when I got close to the picket line I speeded up and I saw a Green 88 Oldsmobile pull out behind me and I thought they are going to try to box me in. When I turned in at the gate everyone was out of my way but the green Oldsmobile followed me. When I got to the mine The Olds pulled up beside me and Jimmy Thomas got out, He was another mechanic and he said let's go to work. The next morning Jimmy pulled out behind me and a lot of cars followed him. The fourth day the pickets were gone and everyone went to work. Cadillac went back to the Northern Pan Handle of WV and that was the last wild cat strike at Loveridge.

That's all far behind me, long ago and far away but I still think about it and I have come to the conclusion that running the picket line was a stupid thing to do. All of the old hard line union miners went to their graves hating me for what I did. The younger men who were trying to take care of their families and were tired of striking over union official's in fighting, thought I did the right thing. I never cared what either side thought of me but there was always a lot of whiskey on a wild cat picket line to give the picketers courage and if any of them that threatened Denise had hurt her I could never have forgiven myself. I'm sure that there is still a lot of in fighting for the union high paying jobs, after all it gets a person out of the mine but the fights quit falling out into the streets.

The Consol Coal Company was divided up into divisions, the one in northern WV was Mountaineer Coal Co and the president of it was Kenney Kincell. The new AC electric school was at Monongah WV in the Mountaineer offices building. We went to the school on our own time in the evening. When the first class was over and we came out of the class room Mr. Kincell walked over to me and ask me if I was Ross Johnson's son? I said I was. He asked me what I thought of the school and I said I thought it was the chance of a lifetime for me. He said he would see me around. I knew he didn't give a damn about any of that - he spoke to me because I ran the Cadillac picket line. The incident would haunt me for the rest of my career.

Denise rented a house on the west side of Fairmont. It was a better house than we lived in when I was laid off but it was not a place that we wanted as a permanent home. She began saving to buy another house. Denise always managed our money and she thought paying rent was a waste. She never liked to buy anything on credit. In England it's called buying on the never, never, because you never, never get it paid off.

Ed Clayton was the roving mechanic on the shift that I worked. I called Ed a lot to help me when something broke down, while I was learning. Paul Hay the shift Forman would always show up right behind Ed and start complaining he didn't see how he was stuck with all of the mechanics that didn't know what they were doing. It upset me a lot until I found out he did that with all of the mechanics. Loveridge had all new mining machines and none of the mechanics had worked on this kind of equipment.

The Electrical school was long on practical and short on theory so I bough books on theoretical electricity and studied them. When the school was over it was like the Buddhist saying. “Before enlightenment you chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment you chop wood and carry water." As time went by, I found I didn't need to call Ed as often. I started to feel comfortable in the job. I learned to operate all of the machines, I would relieve all of the crew through dinner, and our section wouldn't have to stop mining. The section boss liked this because he was judged on the amount of coal he mined. Not having to stop for a half hour for dinner helped a lot.

One morning when I had greased the miner and filled it with hydraulic oil, I went down to the oil car, on the end of the supply track to fill my oilcans. I saw the light of a mine jeep coming up the track Paul Hay jumped out of the jeep and yelled for me to tell the boss that I was going with him. I ask him what was wrong. In his usual diplomatic way, he said, stop asking stupid questions and do what I say. I told Tony that I was going with Paul and he said what's wrong. I ask Tony if he wanted to go ask Paul and he said no. When we got in the jeep and Paul had called the dispatcher and got a right away to one south; he told me the miner in one south was broken down and that dumb SOB of a new mechanic didn't know what he was doing. When we got there, Ray Been was the mechanic and I ask him what was wrong? Ray said listen and he tried to start the miner and there was a loud BUZZZZZ. I told Ray to shut it off; the main motor was single phasing. We opened the motor controller box and a heater strip on the overload, on the main line starter had one end burned off. I had an overload in my toolbox and we changed it. I had Paul check for methane gas so we could try it with the box open and the miner ran fine. We closed the box and they started mining coal. I stopped at Ray's toolbox so we could make him a list of supplies that he would need in case of a break down. Paul said come on (know it all) you can hold school outside on your one time. While we were driving back over to my section, I had a funny feeling for the first time in my life I had gone from that dumb SOB to (know it all).

Loveridge 2

Every month we had mine rescue practice on a Saturday. It didn't make me any more money because I worked every Saturday as a mechanic but practice was only four hours and it gave me a half a day to spend with Denise. I never felt confident on the Loveridge team like I did at 93. The 93 team had older men who had been there and back a few times and knew what they were doing. I was the most experienced rescue man on the Loveridge team. In West Virginia you could always be sure the creeks would rise and block the roads when it rained and sooner or later there would be a mine fire and - or an explosion. The call came for me to come to the mines, there was a fire in Grantown Mine. When our team got there, the mine had been evacuated and the plans were being made for how we would seal the fire. They told us to get ready to go underground. I was checking my self-contained breathing apparatus when I heard something that sounded like a jet engine. Everyone jumped up and started looking around. BOOM, fire came out of the shaft and smoke went hundreds of feet in the air. They moved the rescue teams away from the shaft to a field on a hill above the portal. When we got up the hill in the middle of the field, I thought if the explosion had come thirty minutes later we would have been in the mine. I suddenly had to urinate but a lot of women arrived on the road behind us, who were worried about their husbands, I sat there and suffered and thought a lot about Denise and wished I could let her know I was OK. It seemed like we had sat there forever when a company official came up and told us to get ready to go. We had to get in there and seal that fire. Euell Snuffer, a state inspector said to him "When you say we have to seal that fire, does that mean you are going with us?" The company guy disappeared.

We sat there a while longer and the mine exploded again. That was when one of my aunts and her husband showed up at our house and told Denise, Grantown blew again and ask her if I was in there. The news was on the radio but they didn't have any details. Hell's fire, we were sitting there on the hillside and we couldn't get any details. Finally dear old Less Ryan, the state inspector came walking up the hill, smoking that crooked cigar and told us to go home, their going to seal it outside. Denise was almost crazy by the time I got home.

I don't think miners think about being killed in the mine any more then you do when you jump in the car and run out to the Go Mart. unless a drunk driver hits the car in front of you and kills the driver. Then you have to think that could have been me. I had seen a lot of mine fires and explosions and I thought a lot about it. Denise and I didn't have children and she didn't have a living relative. She was stuck in this God forsaken state and the only one she had was me.

Some people plan their careers and how they want to accomplish their goals. The oddest things moved mine along. The maintenance foreman showed up for work one day and someone had beaten him to a pulp. News travels fast in a small town and everyone soon knew that he was having an affair with the wife of one of the mechanics and it was the mechanic who beat him. The outcome of this was Consol fired the maintenance foreman and promoted his assistant to maintenance foreman. That left an opening for an assistant and Ed Clayton our roving mechanic got that job. This is where I came in; I got the roving mechanics job. I didn't get a raise - both jobs paid top rate but I got a key to the supply house so I could get parts if there was a breakdown. Mining machines are like computers, there are many breakdowns. One of the benefits of the job was I could keep a pack of cigarettes in the supply house and when I went out for parts I could grab a smoke. Of course you can't smoke in the mine and Paul Hay accused me of going out for a smoke when I didn't need parts, Paul was right. I could call Denise and say hey, I did that, and there is the prestige of being the rover.

The roving mechanics work in the inside shop repairing mine locomotives, and mine jeeps until a section mechanic calls for help. We always had more work than we could do. The mine was expanding so the authorities decided that each shift needed two rovers. I got Jim Haller as a buddy. I didn't know Jim very well but I had heard that he didn't know much about maintainance and they called him a sledgehammer mechanic. The first night we worked together I got the list of jobs and we went to the inside shop and I started telling Jim what we had to do. Jim took his coat off and threw it on the ground and said, lets have the fight and then we will decide who is going to be the boss. I knew Jim could clean my clock in about two minutes so I said; I looked for you when I went in to get the jobs and I couldn't find you. From now on, we will get the jobs together and we can decide who is going to do what. Jim said OK but he hated the fidgety jobs. I rebuilt a jeep controller, it was a fidgety job and Jim jacked up the jeep and changed the worn out wheels. Jim was five ten and weighed two thirty and it was all muscle. He could lift as much as two men and work twice as long with out getting tired.

On the shift before ours', they broke a cat pad on a continuous miner and they couldn't move it. The top got bad and fell in and covered it up. When we got to work they sent Jim and me to fix the cat pad and get the miner out from under the fall. The crew went to a spare section to mine coal so there was just Jim and me to get the miner out. We dug the rock and slate out until we could get to the broken pad. I watched the bad top while Jim drove the pins out of the broken pad. Small rocks would fall and I would yell at Jim and we would run out until the top quit falling. When it was time to put the new pad in Jim needed me to help him so we decided to call for someone else to come and watch the top for us. Paul Hay showed up in about ten minutes and stood back under the good top and said are you going to fool around all day or are you going to fix that and then he said my god I hope that big rock doesn't fall, it would smash the miner. Jim jumped up and told Paul, you get the hell out of here or I'm going to smash you. It was the hardest job we ever did but we got the miner out. The next night we went to the inside shop and the only jobs were rebuilding controllers, the fidgety kind. Jim worked on one with those big hands and those little tiny parts for about ten minutes before he threw his hard hat and yelled I wish we would have a broken cat pad under a fall. I worked six and seven days a week while I was a roving mechanic at Loveridge and didn't have any friends away from the mines. Jim got to be the closest friend I ever had.

Denise saved enough to buy another house and we bought one in Collage Park Fairmont. We shared a property line with Fairmont State Teachers Collage, our back garden faced the open end of the football stadium, and I could walk a hundred feet and watch a game any Saturday afternoon. All the years we lived there I never had a Saturday off work and I never saw one. Denise did some serious gardening there and people came to look at her flowers.

I enjoyed working with Jim. Ed Clayton told me when they were assigning the week end work and someone would say that is going to be a hard job, the maintenance foreman would say, give that one to Ross and Jim, but all good things come to an end. Wayman Goodman, the maintenance foreman got an offer for a better job that got him out of the mines. Ed Clayton was promoted to his job. Consol decided that instead of having an assistant maintenance foreman on day shift they would have one on each of the three shifts. Tom Poundstone got the first job, He was a good electrician and had more seniority than I did and I thought he deserved the job. Bob Tennant got the second assistants job and I was disappointed. Then in 1967, I came out of the mine and ED Clayton told me to see the superintendent, Bob Quenon. Bob told me that I was at the end of the line as a union man and ask me if I had ever considered going on salary and becoming a part of management. He gave me the sales pitch about a raise, a steady paycheck, the medical plan and the 401K investment plan. He was wasting his time I already knew it was what I wanted.

I worked as assistant maint. foreman for two years and then in 1968, as sure as God made little green apples, it had to happen. I was in two south one night and I heard my name being called on the pager, it was Ming the lamp man and he said you had better get outside there is something wrong at mine Number Nine. He said a woman called and said she thought there was an explosion. I told him to load the rescue stuff in the mine pick up, then start calling the rescue team, and tell them to meet me at Llewellyn portal. I took the dirt road over the hill to Nine. It was a Consol Mine and shared a property line with Loveridge. Before I got to the portal I saw the smoke and when I pulled in the parking lot I couldn't believe my eyes, The tower over the elevator shaft was gone, The fan over the return air shaft was gone. I thought this is the worst one I have ever seen. The lamp man and some people that lived there was in the parking lot. I told them if any rescue men showed up to send them to Athas Portal. I had to drive around through Farmington to get to the old portal and when I got to the company store, the state police had the road blocked. I told them who I was and they let me through. When I got to Athas I saw Lockey Riggs the Number Nine Superintendent and I ask him where he wanted the rescue stuff and he just looked at me. I ask him what he knew and he said a few men walked out the slope at the preparation plant and he thought that there were about eighty men still in there. I ask him how many sections were west of the Llewellyn Portal and he said all of them. I didn't say it but I thought God they're all gone. The State and Federal Mine inspectors showed up and said they wanted every one to leave the Athas Portal in case it blew up and they were setting up a headquarters at the company store. Two men, who were working near the bottom at Athas, came up on the elevator and they were OK. There were eight miners working near the bottom of the new Mahan shaft and they were rescued with a mobile crane with a steel cable and a bucket that held three men. They were all out by 10:30 AM. The official report said there were 99 miners in the mine that night. 21 escaped and 78 died. After ten days and a lot more explosions, the mine was sealed. Two days later an explosion blew the caps off Mods Run intake and return airshafts. Those shafts were filled with crushed limestone and this time the seals held. Although I didn't know it at the time but my life and career was changed forever.