180

Tape 16-1, page 8

know what it means. So he come down after, when they went off and he looked
at me. He said, Two holes, he said, you'll have enough coal to load all of your
cars and, he said, there will be coal left yet! So, that's the way you shoot.
See, if you can't, if you go to work and you're gonna take a cut of coal out,
well, if you drill the hole in sttaight and another one in straight and another
one in straight, they aren't gonna do nothin', because this first one ain't got
no way to tear that coal outa there. Well then, the other ones ain't go a chance
and they're gonna stick. They're gonna shoot, but they ain't gonna throw no
coal out. That's the way that happens. But if you take your first hole and
drill it a little bit slantway here, then she has tear that, kick that all out.
When she kicks out, then all of these are kickin' out, everywhere. Yeah,
that's, that's the way coal--I wasn't afraid of minin' coal. I could blast that
damn thing, I didn't care what kind it was. Well, lots of guys--good workers
and they worked neighbors, you know. And they'd come along, and he said,
How in the hell, he said, you can cut that coal, and when we fire it don't want to
work for us. Well, you don't drill your holes right. That's the only damn thing,
I said, you don't drill your holes right. We used to come down there on our
shift, the place would be bare. Well, I'd get the damn tools, machines, or
however and start drillin' holes, and the guy would say, Oh you won't drill
that many tonight, there is no start, we have no start. the other guy says
What? Don't talk, he says. Wait til you see, he says. When them holes
go out, wait til you see. He says. You'll see a pile of coal, he says, you'd
think it was a big bank, he says, out in the stripin's somewhere, he says.
The guy, says I wouldn't say nothin'. And I would blast, where would be lots of
coal left. And if they didn't know how to fire it.... Then, there were a
place there we had when we took the most of the coal out on our right, the top.
It's, oh, about nine, nine feet thick, you know. And nice and smooth like this
ceiling there. I drilled I don't know how many holes I drilled in this to
bring that all down. And there were so much coal below that it was, because
we didn't know if we'd fire this maybe it would cave below and