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From a reader:
“What memories. I worked there from 1979-1980. Those garages each
had a doublewide trailer behind them. Quite a place in its heyday. Lots
of work parollees from the prisons, drunks, perverts and prostitutes. Good
memories and bad. Company post office, company store, company bowling alley,
and bar.
Repaired all the electric mining shovels,Terex diesel electric ore trucks
and the GE locomotives. I was single and lived in one 6x10 room of a trailer.
There were about 50 of them (trailers) in two rows on a flat in the loop
of the railroad track. Community shower trailers (2) were spaced in between
the two rows of living quarters.
The double wides with garages were for families. There was (is?) a nice
high school and grade school there.
As you're coming up the road into the mountain there is an airstrip on
your left that parallels the road. The guy that owned the grocery store
(dated his daughter till she went off to college in Palm Dessert) owned
a plane he kept there. He lived down by the interstate in the housing development
with the golf course.
Lots of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in that place.
In late '79 the contract expired and everyone was screaming STRIKE. THen
the company just gave everyone a $1.00 across-the-board hourly pay increase.
All those dummies were floored and accepted it without getting suspicious.
The mine closed a year later. They decided to just avoid the strike with
a great deal that they knew they would only have to pay for one year. That
was the laziest bunch of people I ever worked with. They priced themselves
right out of work. I made $12.50 per hour in '79 plus time- and-a-half
for overtime ($18.50 per hour). And the company put $1.00 per hour and
$1.50 per hour overtime into a retirement fund. I quit after 1 1/2 years
and went to college in Tucson at U of A with $12,000 in my pocket.”
—Gary G., March 1998 |
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