Lunch Buckets

THE LUNCH BUCKETS

From an oral history of Margaret Mawhinney

"We mostly ate at home -- meat, potatoes, and some vegetables. Of course, they used to make the pies and the cakes and the cookies. But they had to be for the bucket. You know, the miner's lunch bucket. They were round, stood about 15 inches high and had a place in the bottom where you would make the tea or coffee. Above that, similar to a double boiler, is where you would put the sandwiches and the pasties. They loved the pastie. Those are little meat pies. Then, in the smaller part on the top they would put a piece of cake or the cookies. They all carried them.

I know as a kid I'd always run to meet my father when he came home with his horse and the bucket and we'd like to see if there was something good left in the bucket. We'd get a ride over to the watering trough across the top of Main Street and home. It was a real treat! I think he always left some for me."

From an oral history of Margaret Mawhinney

"I remember in later years where the mill was there was an entrance to the mine. I went in there once. That's where we rode this hand car, where one sits on one side and one sits on the other and you push the handle until we got to the Judge. We got off of that and get on one of those hoists they call them, like an elevator through the mine and see all the workings. Just little places dug out of the hill, men working in there. At the next place we'd put on the yellow gum clothes and boots. And then we went down an incline and oh...it was just like the worst rain storm you were ever in. The pouring! The men down were working in water up to their knees. You wondered how they could work. Cold, yes, you bet. And wet. Just heavy water. Oooooooohhh....No surprise lots got pneumonia. My uncle, Frank Fleishman, he was a superintendent there under Bamberger. That's how I went in one night. That was the first and only time I was in the mine. I wouldn't want anyone belonging to me to work there. It was terrible!"

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF YOU GOT SICK

From an oral history of J.W. Popenoe

"The miners, they were treated terrible. I think they only made $2.00 - $3.00 a day, something like that. If they were sick and couldn't make it...there were no phones. We had a telephone office here, yes. But if you called somebody, they would have to give somebody a ten-cent piece to deliver the message by hand. Well, if you didn't get the notice to your boss -- like tonight, you got sick and you couldn't make it -- you didn't have a job tomorrow. Just automatically, you were fired!"

Taken from a writing by McKay Edwards of his experiences working in the mines in the summer of 1976.

WORKING IN THE MINES: HOISTING DOWN

"I first 'hoisted down' at the Ontario Mine, Park City, Utah, in the summer of 1976. I was a college kid with a summer job. As I figured out how to put on all my yellow slickers, rubber boots, helmet and miner's lamp, I noticed that no one else's slickers were yellow. They were black with the grime of the mine. I stuck out like the 'greenie' I was.

I remember my first hoist ride all too well. There were maybe 12 of us squeezed into the cage. The shift boss pulled on the rope to signal that the doors were closed and we were ready to4 go down. The cage just dropped and the outer world disappeared. There's a smell to a hard rock mine; it's the smell of broken rock mixed with the sulfur and nitroglycerine of the explosives. The air is damp and cool, about 48 degrees year round. The cage drops...100, 200, 300 feet. The rock walls and timber of the shaft are going by, close enough to touch. Water starts to drip over the cage, over helmets and slickers. This constant drip was part of life in the Park City mines; in some places it was a torrent. There are sections of shaft where the rock is moving. The cage shudders as it squeezes by these crooked spots.

Behind me tow cowboy miners, who were old friends, smiled and nudged each other. 'Hey, Glen' said the other. 'There's a greenie on the cage!' As the cage dropped like a rock into the depths of the Park City hills I swallowed hard, chuckled nervously, and hoped that the pair were headed for a different part of the mine than I was. I was to be disappointed."