between the cage rides up and down, every day underground was different. Every day he felt privileged to work in a world that few ever see. The underground was a mystery to topsiders. They saw it as a dark, dank, unpleasant world of rock faces and brutal sameness. Those who didnât know metal mining, or who didnât respect where the silver came from for their camera film or for the conductive strands of metal that fired the circuitry on their cars or TVs, talked trash about the underground.
Cold as stone. Rocks in your head. Dumb as a rock. Where the sun donât shine.
The miners, many believed, were a born-to-lose, scruffy rabble who toiled with a pick and a shovel because they werenât smart enough to do anything better where the sun
did
shine. Good gyppo miners knew better. And those who couldnât gyppo and plugged away as pipe men or water guys looked at gyppos with deserved respect and even awe. Men like Flory saw great challenges in working a stope, shooting a face down just so. Meeting the unknown head-on was one of the rewards of mining. Understanding what the rock was saying when it talked was more relevant than speaking three languages and knowing what wine went with steak. Flory knew which formations meant good money and, conversely, what clues signaled a difficult and ultimately less profitable stope. Besides mere muscle, it took skill and fearlessness to get a round drilled and blasted, muck pulled, and the stope bolted, and then to do it all again.
No one knew it, of course, but on May 2 a man needed more than strength and daring. Ron Flory, his partner Tom Wilkinson, and 171 others were on their way to discovering just what it took to be a Sunshine miner, the Marines of the underground.
S INCE K ELLOGG AND W ALLACE WERE SO INSULA R â CULTURALLY, geographically , and economicallyâmost boys simply grew up knowing that mines waited on the other side of adolescence. Mines werenât traps, but they were whirlpools of sorts. Close to the edge, with a father or an uncle going mining, a young man found himself leaning over, curious. Before long, he was inside. It was like that for Ron Flory. His family had shuttled between Montana, Washington, New Mexico, and Idaho as his dad, Richard, worked the tramp minerâs circuit. Home, however, was always Pine Creek in the Coeur DâAlenes. A Nazarene churchgoing woman of tested resilience, Belle Flory had raised five children on her husbandâs wildly fluctuating paychecks. The Florys never had a TV, though they always had electricityâwhen many neighbors and friends didnât. Whenever the mines went on strike, Richard Flory waited it out while his wife stretched macaroni until it snapped. It was a hard way to live, so when she finally booted him out, few were surprised. Belle Flory didnât leave the district. She couldnât. None of her family could leave. Ron Floryâs brother, Bob, had long wanted to move away, but he also found himself working at Sunshine. The district, he began to believe, was like one of those open crab barrels heâd seen one time on Seattleâs waterfront. The containers didnât have lids because they didnât need any. If a crab tried to escape, the others would grab it and pull it back.
Ron Flory had his dumb-kid brushes with the law and two years of Army service behind him when he came home to a minerâs life. His father broke him in at Nancy Lee, a Kellogg-owned lead and silver producer near Superior, Montana. The idea that he could do something else for a living never really entered Floryâs mind. Mining was a dirty, thankless job that someone had to do, and he didnât mind. The only thing that got to him was the never-ending nighttime. It was dark in the morning before shift, the work was in the dark, and after shift it was dark outside. He was a mole. Sometimes the only way around it was to dump shift during the week.
Partner Tom Wilkinson went mining later.
Cold as stone. Rocks in your head. Dumb as a rock. Where the sun donât shine.
The miners, many believed, were a born-to-lose, scruffy rabble who toiled with a pick and a shovel because they werenât smart enough to do anything better where the sun
did
shine. Good gyppo miners knew better. And those who couldnât gyppo and plugged away as pipe men or water guys looked at gyppos with deserved respect and even awe. Men like Flory saw great challenges in working a stope, shooting a face down just so. Meeting the unknown head-on was one of the rewards of mining. Understanding what the rock was saying when it talked was more relevant than speaking three languages and knowing what wine went with steak. Flory knew which formations meant good money and, conversely, what clues signaled a difficult and ultimately less profitable stope. Besides mere muscle, it took skill and fearlessness to get a round drilled and blasted, muck pulled, and the stope bolted, and then to do it all again.
No one knew it, of course, but on May 2 a man needed more than strength and daring. Ron Flory, his partner Tom Wilkinson, and 171 others were on their way to discovering just what it took to be a Sunshine miner, the Marines of the underground.
S INCE K ELLOGG AND W ALLACE WERE SO INSULA R â CULTURALLY, geographically , and economicallyâmost boys simply grew up knowing that mines waited on the other side of adolescence. Mines werenât traps, but they were whirlpools of sorts. Close to the edge, with a father or an uncle going mining, a young man found himself leaning over, curious. Before long, he was inside. It was like that for Ron Flory. His family had shuttled between Montana, Washington, New Mexico, and Idaho as his dad, Richard, worked the tramp minerâs circuit. Home, however, was always Pine Creek in the Coeur DâAlenes. A Nazarene churchgoing woman of tested resilience, Belle Flory had raised five children on her husbandâs wildly fluctuating paychecks. The Florys never had a TV, though they always had electricityâwhen many neighbors and friends didnât. Whenever the mines went on strike, Richard Flory waited it out while his wife stretched macaroni until it snapped. It was a hard way to live, so when she finally booted him out, few were surprised. Belle Flory didnât leave the district. She couldnât. None of her family could leave. Ron Floryâs brother, Bob, had long wanted to move away, but he also found himself working at Sunshine. The district, he began to believe, was like one of those open crab barrels heâd seen one time on Seattleâs waterfront. The containers didnât have lids because they didnât need any. If a crab tried to escape, the others would grab it and pull it back.
Ron Flory had his dumb-kid brushes with the law and two years of Army service behind him when he came home to a minerâs life. His father broke him in at Nancy Lee, a Kellogg-owned lead and silver producer near Superior, Montana. The idea that he could do something else for a living never really entered Floryâs mind. Mining was a dirty, thankless job that someone had to do, and he didnât mind. The only thing that got to him was the never-ending nighttime. It was dark in the morning before shift, the work was in the dark, and after shift it was dark outside. He was a mole. Sometimes the only way around it was to dump shift during the week.
Partner Tom Wilkinson went mining later.
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