DOWN, But NOT Out

You may not know how a gold mine works, so let me tell you. Gold is usually found in hair-like strands in quartz crystal. "Gold Ore" is a mottled quartz matrix of various crystals and calcite. Not soft. Gold miners use jackhammers, dynamite, and sledgehammers to break up the gold ore and put it into rail carts that are then sent outside the mine to the rock crusher. From there the pulverized ore is sent to the smelter, a huge blast furnace that super heats the ore, in hopes that a few drops of liquefied gold will drip down and be caught in small metal cups. Those cups are collected and sent later for the gold in them to be purified and made into gold bars. Gold mines are usually near mountains, and the further down they go, the warmer they get.

DOWN, But NOT Out

3000 ft, (1 klm) down, but not out. . .

I stepped into the creaky caution-yellow metal miners’ cage that was suspended above by a hoist cable. Soon it began to descend down a shaft of total darkness into the earth. Until suddenly all of the darkness ended and I was 1000ft underground and staring into a lighted drift cavern of an old gold mine, in Cripple Creek, Colorado.

My guide was an good-nature d old man who was an experienced and retired miner himself. He spent most of the the 1970's, he said, in the humid ninety-degree heat, three thousand foot underground, in the nearby Ajax Gold Mine. He began showing our group how hard-rock gold mining was accomplished, from the turn of the century, until now.

Our guide explained to us how drilling and blasting was done, and how ore carts were filled. Then, he mentioned that, as fun as all of that might have sounded to us, miners had a quota of one ore cart an hour - that they were expected to fill. Well, I have to admit, that would add to the stress of what already appeared to be a very dangerous job.

Then, our guide mentioned that World Heavyweight Boxing Champion; Jack Dempsey, had grown up nearby, and worked in the gold mines when he was a young man. He told us that Jack Dempsey got fired from the mine he was working at, because he could not keep up with the one full ore-cart-an-hour quota.

He said:

“The reason I am telling you this, is that just because you fail at one thing, does not mean that you won’t be a success at something else.”

I thought that was a very nice little point he made, so I wanted to recount it for you here.