I Always Sleep With One Eye Open Cuz I'm A Guard Doggy!

Two nights ago at 2:30 am, Taz woke me up, growling and barking. (He was growling and barking, not me.) I realized that it was a different bark than his usual “Wake up, I need to go outside and pee!”bark, or his “Wake up it's time to get up!” bark, so I reluctantly got out of my warm bed and followed him into the living room. I noticed that the fire in the fireplace was burning, the Cedar kindling crackling and ...Wait a minute! Who lit the fire?

Lately, in the afternoon I've been bringing in logs and kindling and laying a fire for the next morning, to take the morning chill off the house. There must have been some coals buried in the ashes and the fire lit itself.

When it sunk in that Taz had woke me because he knew something was wrong, I sat down beside him and petted him until he rolled over and let me scratch his favorite belly spot. “You're a good doggy!” I said, “You're a real good dog!”

I told Carol about it later that morning and we agreed that Taz was turning into an ace watchdog.

Last night about midnight he woke me again, barking and growling in the dining room. I jumped out of bed and hurried in to see what our ace watchdog had spotted. There he was looking at his reflection in a glass pane of the french door, growling ferociously, his hair standing on end. I sighed and closed the curtain. Taz looked up at me with a “Am I still a good doggy?” look on his face. I petted him, told him that he was a good dog and we both went back to bed.

Hard Rock Mining

Along with millions of other people, we watched the rescue of the miners in Chile last week. As some of the details came out I couldn't help but remember my years working in a similar mine.

Instead of Gold and Copper, the Henderson mine was a Molybdenum mine. Located on the east side of Berthoud Pass in the mountains of Colorado the entrance was at 11,000 feet, and the hoist operator dropped us in a wire enclosed “cage” 2500 feet down a shaft to the working level. The half mile descent took a hair raising 3 minutes and when we stepped out to go to work, the temperature was over 90 degrees. In the winter on graveyard and swing shifts the temperature on the surface was sometimes 40 below and when we would emerge from the cage after the shift, wet and steaming, our clothing would freeze between the shaft and the dry room.

While I worked there the mine was still under development; we were digging drifts and shafts to the ore body in preparation for production. The similarity of depth and temperature with the Chilean mine is striking but there was one big difference; the mine in Chile was dry, the Henderson mine was wet...very wet. If we had been trapped underground for very long. the main danger would have been from drowning because the water, which was like a constant warm rain, had to be pumped from every heading to the main shaft where a series of huge pump stations at 6 different levels pumped it up to the surface. There were backups to these pumps and the mine had its own coal fired power plant in case of a power failure, but a serious cave-in would have shut things down and the mine would have quickly filled up with water.

I rode in a carpool with 5 other miners so I only had to drive once a week or so but it still took two hours out of every day just going to and from work.

Looking back, I suppose it was about as safe as a large mining company like AMAX could make it, but it still was dangerous work. Our crew had more than its share of accidents. One miner had a severe compound fracture from a rock fall, (his leg bone was sticking out of the side of his boot,) another had a punctured lung, (a one inch drill rod through his chest,) and I even got carried out in a stretcher one night with a slashed arm when I slipped and fell off of a drill boom onto a sharp edged rock.

After two years of helping to carry injured friends up out of the mine and riding with them in the mine ambulance sixty miles to a hospital in Denver, I decided to find another line of work.

I guess I'm a slow learner.

Another Rant

Proselytizing: The act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion.

In my opinion, sending email espousing one's religious or political views is just as objectionable as having a Jehovah’s Witness knock on the door and try to tell me what to believe in, or someone calling me on the phone telling me who to vote for.

Lately TV has been inundated with mud-slinging political ads, most of which are exaggerated, taken out of context or just plain lies, and most people will tell you that they don't like them, but then they'll go ahead and forward the most outrageous email as long as it supports their views.

I'm tired of getting emails demonizing President Obama, or any other political figure.

I'm tired of getting emails telling me that God has blessed me, but if I don't pass it on to ten others, fire and brimstone will rain down on me.

Carol and I have our own, sometimes differing, opinions and beliefs on politics and religion and we respect each others right to those opinions and beliefs. We try to stay informed by various news sources and we are both registered Independents, voting for the person, not the party..

Religious or political emails are deleted, unread.