The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1919-08-03

jelly sticks out from between the lay
ers, the slice of cake taken out answer
! ing to the hollow made in the earth
Pretty soon we approached the entry
and before you could breath right good
and hard we were whisked into jet black,
inky darkness except. for the lights on
the caps of the miners sort of reminding
you of the wise and the foolish virgins
of Biblical lore, and l earnestly prayed
to belong to the wise ones who kept their
lamps trimmed and burning for 1 felt
morally sure that if my little lamp went
out that would be the end of me!
And by the way, little later l met the
canny Scotchman, Thomas Cairns, who
drove the heading into the Sipsey mines;
a big, brawny type he is. with keen
sense of humor and a mining record to
his credit which he is proud of. He
came to this country II years ago from
Ayrshire, where he was born and bred.
| On and on we sped, Low Bridge being
! the order of the day, even a sitting pos
ture without "ducking'' your head being
"tabooed." You can hardly understand
this if you haven't been in a mine, where
sitting flat down you can touch the rock
above you, and the coal on all sides the
seam" in this particular mine being only
about three feet mot to speak of the
| tucks" and "ruffles').
| Any way, somebody shouted just about
the time | caught my breath:
"All out for the substation; change
| cars for H"
mo, my friend 1 interrupted, "were
\ there nowi'
The 'sub-station'' turned out to be the
place where the big electric apparatus
changes hands or currents or whatever
| it is, to make things go. Seriously, it is
to convert the alter mating current into a
/ direct current, which is done to take
car of the voltage drop and increase er-
| ficiency.
| Here we stopped long enough for me to
see some of the fossils that creep into
to the formative substance of the mines;
a trunk of a tree was pointed out very
distinctly; in another place the foot of
a mule (who had stepped into the rock
| instead of the mud, and all sorts of
curious malformations and foreign sub
stances which are interesting and mex
| plcable, freaks of nature as it were.
This "sub-station' was sort of like a
junction on the Frisco; things were hum
ming and drumming, and we met trip of
loaded cars and everybody got out of the
way, and then we heard an awful noise,
and thought it was an explosion. and I
was done for, when somebody said some
thing about underwriting, and 1 also
caught "shot the Mines and bug dust
and I just naturally gave up because I
felt that hell fire itself had turned loose
and Pandemonium was ruling the hour,
and that L never get back home to write
"The Life Story of a Ton of Coal" and
see the babies or sit in my blessed. be-
loved little office at The Age Herald,
! where I spend the happiest moments of
my life.
The miners looked at me in perfect
amazement; they laughed at me. and
think sort of felt sorry for me because
they knew l was scared cat" but
you'll pardon me, / feel sure if l pass
a compliment to myself won't you? It's
this. and I'm awfully proud of it: those
nice miners told me mot one but many
of them) that they considered me about
"the dead gamest sport they'd ever met,
and all the time l was getting scareder
and scareder and dirtier and dirtier and
blacker and blacker
In the mine it was cool and pleasant;
the temperature averages about Is
degrees the year round. BY this time
was sort Of getting the lay of
the land. l started to say run of the
mine" but that's another story, as Mr..
Kinling would say
l found out among other things that
the mine is laid out very much as a large
fashionable hotel; long corridors from
which shorter ones jut out are noted.
and rooms or chambers are arranged with
regularity along the way; chamber
40 feet wide and undercut five feet will
turn out about 20 tons of coal. I'd like
to occupy one of those, wouldn't you?
Into these chambers we manoeuvered
our way, always affecting the "Grecian
Bend" which as the old darkey described,
is
DE head throwed forward
An de body extern
Dat con-sti- tutes
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