SPEAKING OF DRAGLINES

 4444

During the summer of 1966, just after my junior year of high school, I procured a temporary job with one of the phosphate mining companies. (It may have been Agrico or U.S. Steel-Mining Division. I don't recall now). At any rate, our work location was just west of Spirit Lake Road, Winter Haven, and just north of the Bartow Airbase.

I was assigned to what was characterized as the Pit Car. The entire operation consisted of yours truly and another fellow seated in an open air trailer of sorts, and aiming hydraulic guns at the phosphate "feed" which our dragline operator regularly deposited in front of an open grate. The extreme water pressure allowed what amounted to phosphate ore to rush through a pipe towards the processing plant in the distance.

Whenever the dragline operator took a break from his duties, or there were mechanical issues with the big machine, the ten ton bucket would cease to do what it did best; temporarily, or for an extended time period.

Well, for some unknown reason, on a given night, I decided to pay a visit to Charlie, our friendly dragline operator. However, as I reflect on it now, I must have been experiencing teenaged dementia at that moment, since I proceeded to walk across the invisible sweep between the dragline and pit car, which the bucket had been following that particular evening; (and which it was energetically following it at the time).

By now, I had reached a point about halfway across the muddy field which separated my primitive little workhouse from the massive dragline. Suddenly, I realized what appeared to be my almost irrevocable error.

The unyielding steel bucket filled with phosphate feed was sweeping my way at an alarming rate of speed. I had absolutely no time to react. My next breath would almost certainly be my last.

Thankfully, with no more than two seconds to spare, Charlie saw a dim figure, shaped like a human being, in the midst of the mud and darkness of an environment that he knew so well.

Two seconds, one second before...IMPACT.

Now, the dragline operator slammed his hand down on a lever which controlled the altitude of the heavy steel bucket. BAM! The dragline bucket, massive enough to hold a large pickup truck, slammed against the top ten feet of the pit Charlie had been excavating over the past several weeks.

The dragline was quiet now. The only sound which permeated the blackness of the night around us was the sound of crickets, and the almost imperceptible hum of mosquito wings.

I would like to tell you that Charlie was very understanding, and that he took my age and innocence into account. I would like to tell you that. (He didn't).

I lost my dignity that evening. Charlie showered me with a multitude of choice four letter words, and gave me a verbal whipping (which still stings a little). But, for all of the verbal tirade I suffered that evening, I was still standing upright, and not lying prostrate on the muddy field of my labor.

I may have sacrificed a little of my dignity on that dark summer's night in 1966, (and though my fellow miners never let me live it down), I maintained my life, and at 77 I have outlived half of my classmates.

I owe you Charlie.

by Bill McDonald, PhD