Journal Entries
The Huber “Breaker”
Posted Sep 10, 2006
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania – 10 September 2006
We drive south on Interstate 81 with Jil and Tom to see the Huber Anthracite Breaker and the Luzcerne County fair. They lost their New York apartment on 9/11. By coincidence, we will be with them on the 5th anniversary. Tom says they have some of the old subway lines up and running though the big pit again after five years.
Tom removed 60 black bags of debris from the apartment. All the windows and the substantial window frames were blown out. I ask him what kind of debris. He says that there were three 12-foot metal pieces from the disintegrated skin of the Trade Center, lots of dust, reams of paper, pieces of drywall, computer parts and chunks of cubicles.
The authorities eventually had second thoughts about his trash removal. They were concerned that there might be body parts in the black bags. So Tom and Jil gave up and went on the road fulltime four years ago. Now they send me T-shirts from places like Sturgis, South Dakota and Seward, Alaska.
The Everhart Museum of Art and Natural History in Scranton, Pennsylvania, had three haunting paintings of old coal breakers. The scenes are dismal and dark, painted with snow on the ground and mounds of black coal and industrial trash around the huge wooden buildings.
I wanted to see an anthracite breaker. There were once hundreds of these industrial structures in the area. In 1917, over 100 million tons of anthracite were produced and 118,000 deep miners were employed. The older breakers employed scores of children as young as six to pick out pieces of rock. Only one breaker is left standing. It is the Huber breaker located 35 miles south in Ashley, Pennsylvania. It was built in 1939 and ceased operation in 1976. The “Ashley file” below discusses paranormal investigations at the Huber breaker. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/tecsite/Ashley/AshleyFile.html
The breaker building is huge and unguarded. I climb five stories up into the twisted ruins on broken metal staircases and cross cracked concrete walkways as I ascend. The building is full of conveyors, chutes, chains, electric motors, gears, pulleys and levers. I hear smashing noises coming from one abandoned building and skip that one. I take my own paranormal readings and find this place ranks as medium spooky under the blue September sky...
The engineering that went into breaking up chunks of hard coal is impressive. Here are the shots of the Huber Breaker:
http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=554002956
A few miles further south, the Luzerne County Fair is open though this weekend in Dallas, Pennsylvania. Here. I like these a lot. They never change. Always the same food, rides, games, cooking contests, bluegrass music, llamas, cows, pigs, petting zoos, antique tractors, car smashing, magic mirrors, the freak show. I eat Italian Sausage and ice cream, go though the mirror maze, ride the rides and see the exhibits. Here is the County Fair slideshow
http://good-times.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=553992086
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Latest reply: Sep 10, 2006
In the Mines, Where the Sun Never Shines
Posted Sep 7, 2006
Lackawanna Coal Mine, Scranton, Pennsylvania – 6 September, 2006
We don hardhats and coats and ride the cable car deep into the cold abandoned anthracite mine near Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Coal is ranked in the U.S. from highest to lowest quality as anthracite, bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite. Recoverable reserves are estimated at about 275 billion tons, enough for about 200 years at the current rate of consumption. The cleanest and hottest burning coal is anthracite. This makes up 1.5% of the reserve and is located almost entirely in northeastern Pennsylvania.
Anthracite was formed during the Carboniferous geologic period from about 250 to 400 million years ago when Pennsylvania was covered with steaming swamps. The organic carbon was eventually thrust deep underground, morphed into anthracite by heat and pressure and then rose again in veins near to the surface by up thrust layers of rock. Commercial anthracite mining began in 1775.
In mining a seam of underground anthracite, it is necessary to leave a series of 20 by 60 foot pillars to help prevent collapse of the ceiling. Most of the available coal is left in place in these pillars to prevent roof collapse. Beams are placed between floor and ceiling, not to hold up the roof, but to provide cracking noises prior to a ceiling collapse. “When the beams start a-talking, you’d better be a-walking.”
Canaries were placed near the ceiling provided a warning of dangerous methane gas buildup. Rats collapsing on the mine floor indicated a dangerous carbon dioxide level (Black Damp). Eventually these biological warning devices were replaced with the Humpfries’ lamp.
An injured miner was placed in a wagon and left in his company provided home on the kitchen table. This was the extent of company medical benefits. A dead miner was simply left on the front porch and the widow was given three days to vacate. So much for the death benefits.
Children were eligible to begin work in the mines at age six. They worked the “breakers”, pulling out chunks of rock from the mined material as it was crushed. For this they earned $.06 per hour. At age 12, any surviving children could be promoted to operating 600 pound underground “airlock” doors needed for the ventilation system or they could also learn to lead mules pulling coal carts though the mine. The pay for this underground work was $.11 per hour. At age 21 you could become a miner earning about $1.50 for dynamiting and loading four tons of coal on a cart.. When “black lung” eventually prevented further hard labor, the miner could go back to work on the “breakers” at $.06 per hour. This was called the “Circle of the Miner”. Life expectancy was 42.
Payment was in Company script, which could be spent in the Company store. Those who were indebted to the Company could not leave the mining town. In 1902 the Unions began to prevent some of the worst exploitation. However, over 30,000 miners are thought to have died in mining operations since anthracite mining began. Employment in deep coal mining dropped from 180,000 in 1914 to 700 in 1987.
In 1930, the mules were replaced by an “electric donkey”. This was powered by a bare electric cable charged with 440 volts of DC power suspended about five feet off the mine floor. Touching this cable in the wet mine was another way to die quickly. Eventually, the unreliable burning dynamite fuses were replaced with electrically fused blasting caps, which reduced the death rate from blasting accidents.
Anthracite mining is expensive and has declined steadily in favor of the cheaper strip-mining of bituminous coal further west. Anthracite is very hard and shiny. It can be rubbed without discoloring one’s skin. A large chunk is surprisingly light. A very small chunk is available in the mine gift shop for $5.
Pictures of the Lackawanna Mine:
http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=553878821
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Latest reply: Sep 7, 2006
The Law of the Sea
Posted Sep 4, 2006
Alexandria, Virginia - 3 September, 2006
We board the yacht Celebrity in Alexandria at 5 PM for the wedding…The white-haired Captain performs the wedding ceremony on the Potomac River….There is an open bar…dinner is served after the ceremony…the boat cruises slowly toward the sea and then turns around and passes Reagan International Airport and the Washington Monument as darkness falls…
We don’t know the bride well although we have been friends with the mother of the bride for many years. The father of the bride, a more recent friend, Bruce, wears his Navy Captain mess dress uniform with all the medals he earned in four tours as a Navy seal in Vietnam. He has two silver stars on the right-most side of his bank of medals.
The bride, we learn, has taught in the American University of Beirut. The groom has served in the Peace Corps in Tonga and Zimbabwe. At one point a very energetic dance breaks out with Tonga music and eight young people who have served in Tonga dance with the bride and groom.
After the garter and bouquet tossing and the cake cutting, the guests are all issued yellow rubber ducks to salute the newly married couple on the dock with faint squeaks...
I was very mpressec to meet these young people who represent the best that our country has to offer. I learned today that crows mate for life. My hopes go with this young couple. May they do as well as crows.
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Latest reply: Sep 4, 2006
God's Own Bear
Posted Aug 31, 2006
Shenandoah National Park, Virginia – 31 August, 2006
The igneous granite and metamorphic rocks in this area date back a billion years. I wrestle with this number while walking down the trail and work out in my head out that if a billion years was compared to one year, each second in a year is equal to more than 30,000 years.
The mountains here are old and worn down by erosion from streams and glaciers. The dinosaurs walked here about September 30th. The glaciers from the last ice age receded and the great sloth and wooly mammoth became extinct less than a second before year end...Man came on the scene 11,000 years ago, about 1/3 of a second before midnight, December 31….We started seriously using fossil fuels 1/1000 of a second before midnight. Mayflies suddenly have a new relative longevity…
The trail goes downhill three miles to a waterfall. There is an elevation drop of 915 feet. We meet a German on the trail. He has a black curly moustache and looks Italian. He tells us excitedly about a black bear at least “two meters” tall. We end our short conversation with a long guttural laugh, a shared universal language
We meet an older couple on the trail. They have also seen the great bear. They’ve been married over 50 years. They look good physically and have had their furniture in storage for the last five years while they cruise North America.
We have lunch at a reflecting pool below the falls and wait quietly for an hour to see the bear. It fails to appear. This park has 516 miles of hiking trails and a road that runs 100 miles along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and completed in 1939 under the direction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt…
Tropical storm Ernesto is due her tomorrow with 40 MPH winds and 12 inches of rain…We play scrabble in the afternoon…I quit game two in disgust after Mrs. Phred places an “X” on a triple letter space and makes 25 points on an “ex” in one direction and another 25 on an “ox” in the other….Our campground is in the clouds and rain. More rain is expected for the next four days…A ranger tells us we may need to evacuate…I make halibut for dinner.
Mrs. Phred and I have decided we may spend the winter in New Orleans as volunteers to help build housing for low income residents….then move north to Alaska.
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Latest reply: Aug 31, 2006
A Short Walk on the Appalachian Trail
Posted Aug 29, 2006
Peaks of Otter Campground- Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia – 29 August, 2006
We drove up to a high overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway last night to pick up cell signals for the phone and for h2g2 on the laptop. In the dark, I drop the laptop’s inverter into a cup of cranberry juice and tonic water. When I plug the wet inverter into the cigarette lighter of the Toyota it blows a 15 amp fuse. We need the Toyota lighter receptacle to power its braking system air pump when it is under tow. The fuse is impossible to fix in the dark. In the morning I locate the fuses (bless Toyota for including a fuse puller and spare fuses) and buy a new inverter at Wal-Mart…The whole regrettable incident was certainly Mrs. Phred’s fault for leaving the cup on the console, an obvious trap in which to drop the inverter.
We drive the Blue Ridge after dark for nearly 100 miles and catch dozens of deer, badgers, a possum and a skunk in the headlights. The speed limit on this beautiful road is 45 MPH…no commercial vehicles allowed. I took some shots of Roanoke after dark from a mountain top. The 500 mile road was constructed as a make-work project on orders from President Roosevelt during the depression. It’s lined with hardwoods which must be even more spectacular in the fall.
We saw the National D-Day memorial in Bedford today. It can’t compare to the roses, white crosses, sea view and statuary in the American cemetery in Normandy. More boys from Bedford (per capita) were lost from the 116th infantry division than from any other American community.
We drive on to Lynchburg…Mrs. Phred asks me innocently if the name comes from lynching people...I hum "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday…. But I suspect that the town is named for a man…probably a man who made a difference….There is almost certainly is a man named Lynch in the city history…The local High School football team possibly carries on his name as the “Lynchburg Raiders” or the “Lynchburg Patriots”. Maybe he operated a tavern for tired travelers….perhaps a bawdy house… I hope he is not a banker or a merchant…or a tobacco planting slave owner… I imagine a Colonel John Lynch raising and training a local militia and organizing an insurgency with hatchets and flintlocks against the hated redcoats…sowing the local roads with improvised explosive devices…or maybe a Doctor Thomas Lynch fighting tuberculosis and yellow fever with soldiers from both sides in a quarantined hospital in unimaginable conditions during the Civil War….sawing off blackened gangrenous limbs and comforting the dying.
We visit a winery in the remote hills of Appalachia. The wines are what one would consider dessert wines, made from a variety of fruits and even hot chili peppers…personally I prefer Sauvignon Blanc, but I buy six bottles of pear, blueberry and apple wines. They still fly a tattered Confederate flag here...and display other politically incorrect symbols.
Here are some pictures; including the promised symbolic wave to Skankyrich from the 2,175 mile Appalachian walking trail…I didn’t walk the whole thing… Yet.
http://community.webshots.com/slideshow?ID=553587626
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Latest reply: Aug 29, 2006
Phred Firecloud
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