2-28-2012- strip tease

     this is the old dragline you used to see out on the hills behind magnolia school. in mr matties , sixth grade class where i was admonished by him for staring out the window. he wondered just what was so more important than what he had to teach me . well i never told him as i had heard horror stories of how he had whacked students , hitting them so hard with his boat oar of a paddle, that it actually brought the ill minded student up off his feet. as they were not allowed to paddle alone i assume another teacher witnessed it. so instead of taking chances with the hitler-esque mr mattie, i decided to just apologize and refocus my attention . besides he had already humiliated me in class , what more could he gain. we all had to confine our joy when we found out they were not renewing his contract. 

     and what was so important was watching this rig and move thousands of tons of soil and debris to uncover coal . coal has long been the lifeblood of the local economy. i remember being late for school one day after that first incident with mr. mattie, i missed the school bus and mom wasn't to keen on hauling me down to school , and it was farther to walk home than the state route, so i decided to thumb to school. this is the first time i ever tried it and sure enough i get out to st. rt 800 and who is the first car i stick my thumb out to but  state highway patrolman. he invited me into his car after he found out i missed the school bus and would take me to school. along the way he told me the reason he was headed down our way and that was to escort trucks from the coal mine to the tipple , as truck drivers were being sniped at by the teamster everyone assumed. james' coal comp.  was a non union mine and they were  trying to make it union. and they never did accomplish that but frayed a lot of nerves. anyhow the state highway patrolman was running escort on a convoy of trucks. and that was where he was headed. although he warned me to not thumb, he  thought it was great i showed effort to get to school. and i actually beat my bus there as he pulled up in front of sandy valley h.s.,to let me out. everyone was wondering just what i did to get a state highway patrolman to drop me off in front of school. 

     at a couple of points in my life i worked in strip mining. first i had ran dozer for first time in a lot of the pits around here . would push spoil as it is called in a system called box mining where the coal you uncover today would be buried by tomorrows overburden or the soil you need to excavate to reach the coal. this goes on 24 hrs . per day 6 days per week, thousand of tons of soil are moved by huge dozers to uncover a 2 -4 foo vein of ok coal. not a good hard coal but instead a sulfur rich  soft coal. sometimes they would remove the clay with it but a lot of times just stopped at the easy pickings and went on. some coal companies would excavate up to about 60 feet in depth of overburden leaving a high wall then auger drill under the remaining hill where it was impractical to remove the coal otherwise. acres and acres and miles upon miles of reclaimed strip mine land lay in their wake. the soils are a hodge -podge of their former structure. layers of striated stone ripped apart and exposed for the first time. some former mine operators for years never bothered to do anything with the spoils after they left them. taking the easy coal out that didn't require much mining. today any strip mine is first required to post a bond insuring that reclamation will follow plans. and basically i would run a large dozer called a d-9 to rip and tear and basically keep my blade full as pushed to uncover more coal. 

     next job i had was as a blaster's helper on strip mines setting up shots to blast a bench for a drag line as the one is  above. this allowed the drag line to operate more efficiently in removing overburden. there is nothing like watching dynamite blow on a rock shoot as the ground lifts up about four foot and the bottom slides out the side of the hole leaving debris reigning down all over . we hid by the trucks just in case we needed something to jump under. it would be nothing to see ton rocks hurtling through the air and smacking into a hill side. but at same time you would see more dirt moved in 3 seconds then a team of dozers could do all day. it was beautiful physics in action and mr mattie wanted to know what i was looking at. this was an ok job not without the usual worries if something goes wrong you die along with others, and yet in the end it was the dynamite that go me . just by picking it up. it came standard in 60 lb boxes you slid around everywhere. but to slide you needed to pick up first and i was unloading a truckload of dynamite and picked a box up wrong and went to send it down rollers to a guy catching at other end and heard a pop sound as it was the discs in my back popping. well i went to office to seek medical help and that whole thing there is another story in itself. long and short of it is that was my last day of work as they found a way to get me out as i was hurt and of no use to them. 

       i can drive out my drive and drive for miles in any direction for almost 20 and in some cases a hundred miles and see remnants of strip mines . in our immediate area we have more reclaimed strip mine land than we have agricultural land. we have the convenience of driving over the land that once was covered by dense forests. there is no trace of trees left on alot of this land. it will take thirty to forty years to get anything productive out of this land. and it will never be like it was. having the rock ripped up so far down into the hillsides assures very little water towards the surface is retained. and we get the double whammy as now a power plant is burning that same coal and emitting carbon dioxide and heating up our planet. but now we don't have any trees to remove the carbon dioxide or lock it away. just seems to me that the restore point we should try to achieve when reclaiming is better than it was before, not worse.  by working with the landowners , possibly plant seedlings at near or at better rates to achieve densities of woodland to insure good soil and water conservation and to reduce global warming. judging by the reclaimed land on our property i would say trees is the best use over livestock for reclaimed areas. livestock would reduce vegetation and hooves would leave marks increasing erosion over the long run. trees provide cover for animals and have a positive effect on our environment working ceaselessly to capture solar energy and also to sequester carbon dioxide.