173

A. Varesano interviewing Joe Sulkusky
- 1 -
6/28/72
Tape 16-1

JS: Down where I worked in Buck Mountain, where he had you that tunnel, you could
go in there, oh you could go in a far distance. And then you would go in where the
men were working in around there. Oh, there were a good many men that time that
were caught in the fire. It was not too long before they stopped the mine. They were
all shattered [?]. There face and everything all cut up. Lucky non of them were killed,
but there were all hurt, you know, cut up, when the blast went off.

AV: What happened?

JS: I-----------well, they just didn't time it right or anything, see?
They used to blast out towards Caskerdea? with a battery, you know.
You had a battery, you set your charges, you went back so far, around where it
couldn't hit you, you know, or anything. And then, when you was ready to fire
you'd go out and pull a battery. And the caps, you had them timed. You had
the timer, and number one, number two, number three, all the way up, you
know, how many holes you had. And if you wanted them all to go off at once,
well, you had to put all number ones in, and then that shot would go all at once.
But sometimes that timer don't work. Because if, ou shoot the all at once and it don't take
it right, then them holes are all stuck, they don't throw their coal. They only make dog holes,
you think that they're ground hogs or rabbits went in there! Itwon't tear the thing.
There's a lot of men, miners, they're called miners, but they have a hell of a time to make
a day's wages. They don't understand how to cut the coal. You must know how to cut it.
You must time your holes, that the one hole makes a chance for the other one. And if
you plan that right, then you get lots of coal. But if you don't time it right, you'll be
working your head off all day. And then they're stuck. they can't make it go. Lots of men.

AV: How do you have to fix the hole, so that it doesn't make long tunnels?

JS: Well, they call that, maybe you're driving a gangway, you know. You go in,
all they way in, and then after a while, there's other men, they drive breasters[?]
up, or maybe they drive them up the pitch, already, you know. They're pretty
wide, they take them twenty-four feet wide, you know. All the way up again,
up from the main gangway, what they call. that's just like a tunnel, or something,
you know. That's their haulage-way, they take the coal in and out. And then,
some of them just drive poles up, the pillars, when the pillars are up. A pillar
is this, when you drive a breast up, you leave. I guess, well you're supposed to do it, but
they don't. Thirty feet thick, you know, in between that breast and the next breast,
thirty feet. Well then, they call that rubbin[?], when they're rubbin[?] back. Well,
they drive holes up, just narrow holes. they go up, oh, you have some times three
hundred feet and higher. But you have to timber them. You put timer around, just
like a home, you know. You put the two legs up and then the collar out, then you put
laggins and boards on top that nothing comes through. You go all the way
up and then you start to come down, taking that coal down from the both side
in that hole. It's kind of lots of experience if you go and look at how they're
doin' it, and what they do and all, you know.

AV: What's a laggin?

JS: Eh? A laggin? Well, these small tress, you know, about that thick. They put
that over the top, and then they put boards on that from the timber to the nother
one; see you put a timber up, then when you put the next one up, you put the
end in on this back one, then on the front one, then you put the boards on top.
Then you wedge it, tight, you ake wedges, you know. And then you hammer then
in under these laggins, that they wouldn't move away when you fire holes, again.