“I love it underground; I miss it when I am not there. It is like your own little world when you are down there. It is good fellowship, good guys, you get joking around under there. It is serious underground but if you are able to laugh, it is good. I am sure my family is like any other family, they worry about my going underground, but I assure them that everything is all right. They do not want to hear any stories; all they want to hear is that work is good.

“The only thing in school that I really liked was social studies, about the gold mining. That is what I really paid attention to. It is weird how things work out. Now that I am here at Quinsam Coal, I would not change it for anything. Who knows what is going to happen five or six years down the road? I want to stay here, but if this mine ever closes, I would find another coal mine. It is what I want to do. I love it.

“I have been rotated all around; right now I am on a construction crew doing timber work and setting stuff up. I have thought a lot about what it would have been like mining in the old days, and I like how we do it now just for the fact that it is easier, to be bluntly honest! There are days when you are working really hard underground, when you are pulling cables and doing moves, or working on the construction crew.

Before I came here I did not get excited about going to work, but now I get excited. It is a whole new world down there, I look in and it is a whole different place. It is always different; you get different roof conditions, different ribs, and different things happen with the machinery. There are different people to work with all the time. It is not monotonous, it is interesting. It is never the same two days in a row.

“There are other aspects of it, too. Being the younger generation, the older guys are always looking out for us. They will say, ‘Hey, get away from that rib, there is a crack in it,’ and it helps me to be more aware of my environment. Coming in to this I really did not know anything. I still feel that I do not know a lot, and I think that is a good thing to know, because that way I am always being aware, listening, and not getting cocky. I am just trying to be a sponge, taking in the information from the old fellers.

“The most physical aspect of mining with machinery is the bolting. You have to keep the machine supplied with bolts and plates, and tug the screen around, lift cables and drill all day. That is the most physical work if you are running equipment.

“I love learning, especially when it is a hands-on physical job. Right now, I am timbering; which is all handwork and an art in itself. We put timbers up so they support the roof, and we put them on the ribs to hold them up. In areas where there are bad faults or bad working conditions close to workable works, we have to make sure that it is safe. We put rib bolts in, but sometimes the wall will slough in the center; it depends if there is a fault or a mud band in there. We will put up crypt settings too, where we will hold up different parts of the roof. It is such a learning experience. You do not usually get to do anything like that anymore because we have rib bolts and things are different, so it is a dying trade.

“It will be good to see how that new main works for me. It is going to be a different mine for me because I have been on this nice, relatively flat seam. The seam we are working in has got a down-pitch so it will be all new to me. It has different crosscuts and angles for bolting; I have not learned that kind of mining yet. It is something different, different pitches, everything is different. I am excited about working in this main because I get to learn something new today!”

Mike May, 2006