NO SEX WITHIN
Preston tried to look through a frosted windshield as he drove to another 16-hour shift at Allied Chemical. The defroster struggled to keep up even running at full blast. Snow blew past horizontally and the road ahead was icy and polished by the whipping wind. He realized there was a good chance the interstate would be shut down again so he decided to stick to the frontage road. After another cautious 30 minute drive he crested the last rise and saw the plant in all it's splendor.
Hundreds of lights outlined the refineries, conveyors, the powerhouse, the crusher and sodium carbonate ore stockpile. From a distance, it looked like an island, surrounded by an ocean of prairie. Towering above it all stood the ore-hoist.
Once in the parking lot, Preston hustled toward towards the administration building. It provided welcome heat. As soon as he reached the shelter of the change area, he shivered and stomped snow off his boots.
He spied fellow mechanic Don Goforth and said, "Fuck! It's not fit for man nor beast tonight!"
Don said, "Pity the poor slobs stuck on the surface. They're gonna freeze their nuggets off."
Preston said, "Sucks to be them. You here for a double-bagger?"
"Hell no," Don replied, "My wife told me that if I spend much more time out here, I'll have to make this my happy home. She won't be there when I get back. You?"
Preston thought of his own situation at home but replied, "You know me, I need to work when I can. Plus they want the new boring machine and FCT put together and headed for the panel as soon as possible. That means unlimited overtime."
The pair changed into their digging duds. Preston wore canvas duck bib overalls, a long sleeved denim shirt and steel-toed boots.
They headed for the staging area, clipped their cap lamps to their hard hats, filled their water jugs with ice and water and took a seat on a long row of benches. Preston glanced up at a now familiar sign posted on the wall. 'Do Not Spit On The Floor Use Trash Receptacles'
Another day in paradise, Preston thought.
Suddenly a door burst open and a line of scruffy, dusty men filed in and began jostling to punch a time clock.
One cried, " Get in the hole, get your asses in the hole. Get your ASSES in the hole!"
A few minutes later the shift supervisor, a short, wiry fellow wth salt and pepper hair, fire in his eye and a tan bandana around his neck, strode briskly from a conference room and exclaimed, "Cage!"
Sixty men and women stood, grabbed their lunch buckets and water jugs and walked down the hallway to the collar of the man/material hoist. Once crowded aboardthe hoist, Preston searched through the open grating on which he stood for the pinpoint of light at the station 1630 feet below.
A miner, pushed up against him asked, "Tight fit, yeah? I hope you're not gay. Are you?"
Preston said, "Im not, but stastically 10% of the population is. That means three guys on this deck would like to smoke your White Owl."
Everyone was sneaking looks at each other as we began our 3 minute descent.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Preston returned home mid-afternoon the next day near exhaustion. He found his wife Dovey sitting at the kitchen table staring into a coffee cup. "How's your day, dear?" he asked. When she did not answer he continued, "How are the boys?"
"The car wouldn't start this morning," she replied."I had to walk Toby to school. Keith has a stuffy nose." On cue, his youngest came running in the kitchen, landing on his father's lap. Preston picked him up and looked Keith in the eye as he grinned and blew a couple enormous snot bubbles.
Preston said, "Good Lord kid, you have dragon breath! What you been eating, worms?" Keith giggled and sneezed. Preston looked at Dovey. She still looked glum.
He asked again, "Really, hon, how are you?"
"It's so cold," was her reply. "We're cooped in this apartment. The kids have me climbing the curtains and the wind never stops blowing. At least in Kentucky we could go outside."
"Hang in there, Spring's on it's way," Preston offered.
"I'm so homesick," Dovey said, "I want to go home."
Preston said, "There's not much left back there. The coal fields are done. Mining is all I've done since I was 18. It's all I know."
"We'll get by," Dovey said. "We'll live on love," she said, finally showing a hint of a smile.
"We'll be living on beans and Kool-aid," was Preston's reply. "I don't want to do that. I want you and the boys to have the best I can provide."
To him the move to Wyoming had been a blessing. This was the first time Preston did not have to worry about living hand to mouth in quite a while. They would have to extract him from here with a come-along.
Preston stood up and prepared to leave. "I'll see if your car will start. It proably needs a new battery." Dovey began to speak, but Preston interrupted, "I really need to get moving, hon, I need to get at least a little sleep before my shift tonight. We'll talk more later, OK?"
~~~~~~~~~~
Preston stepped off the cage as soon as it stopped and walked three crosscuts to where the FCT was being assembled. It was a balmy 60 degrees undrground as compared to the subzero temp on the surface tonight.
Flexible Conveyor Train, a 450 foot long conglomeration of articulated metal cars, flyghts, and tram chains, electric motors, fiber optic and power cables topped by a conveyor understructure. It was designed to propel itself behind the Boring machine and carry away the ore as fast as it could be mined. It was a sight to behold. It was painted bright orange and looked like a steampunk centipede from some engineer's fever dream.
"The Boys from Joy were up in the night when they came up with this," one mechanic said.
The mining crews gave it the once over as they waited for their man trips to arrive. "What is this abortion?" one miner operator asked.
"Job security," Carlos Singh, a mechanic spoke up, "I'm looking at my retirement, boys, keeping this thing running."
"How many jobs will this eliminate?" a miner operator asked.
"At least one shuttle car operator. It takes one operator to stand alongside and mash buttons and one bolter man to to punch a string of 5 foot roof bolts above their path," was the reply.
"Goddamn," said the operator.
"It's the wave of the future," said Carlos.
One of the crew trips pulled up and stopped. Crystal Young, a shuttle car operator went to climb in the back, but two bolter operators sat facing each other, refusing to move and forced her to crawl over their laps.
As she climbed over the pair, she said, "One of you smells nice. What do you have on? "
"Kirby Hopkins, a gigantic tow-headed hillbilly said, "I've got a hard-on. I didn't know you could. smell it."
Crystal rolled her eyes, gave gave him a half-hearted smile and said, "If you have any nuts with that, spit them out, squirrel head. They're not yours."
As they drove away down the drift, Carlos said, "You know those pricks have a 40 minute ride to the panels. They mined under the interstate last month. That's 12 miles. An hour 20 paid ass time. What a sack of dicks."
After that inspirational statement, he grabbed Jeff Sanderson, a mechanic half his size in a headlock, knocking off his hard hat and thick glasses in the process and began rubbing his bald head. "Come here sweetie," he said.
Taylor Vu, a Vietnamese electrician standing nearby started cackling and Jeff started squawking like a magpie.
