Tommyknocker Tales

The following could be the first in a series of four or may be the last in a series of one. 

It was 1975. I was camped up Marshall Basin near the Bullion Tunnel in the heart and bones of what was once one of the richest, silver producing mines in North America, the Smuggler-Union. Even upon my arrival, which occurred at pale light on an angelic summer evening, I felt that I had company. When darkness fell I attempted to start a campfire but the damn thing kept going out due to a persistent breeze that only seemed to come up when I lit the scant pieces of quakey that I had hauled up the hill in my pack.

It was getting colder as I reached for my ax which I had leaned against a volunteer ponderosa which, at this snarled elevation, looked like it missed the last ore cart off the mountain a long time ago. The ax was gone, moved rather, across a tiny gulch, propped up against a pile of rocks that led to the dilapidated tunnel. I went to retrieve the tool and get on with dinner.

Grabbing the implement I shot a glance in the direction of the old boarding house. It was then that I heard voices, laughter, but it wasn’t coming from the skeleton of lumber and rock. It was coming from behind me. I turned quickly and was amazed to see a small man with a mule standing next to my once insolent fire which was now blazing away like hell’s own combustion furnace. The small figure beckoned me to join them at the hearth and I’d swear to this day on a stack of mining claims that the mule winked at me.

As I pendulously meandered in the direction of what had been the core of my evening’s festivities I heard the little man talking to the mule. This was not their virgin conversation and she jadedly hung on every word.

“Looks like we got a dinner invite,” said the man clanking along, searching through a conglomeration of rusty gear piled high atop the back of his four-legged companion. “Oh, put your ears down, Becky, I’m just looking for that caste iron fry pan. What did you do with it, you stringy beast?”

The mule responded, much like her fellows do, with as grunt. She stomped her feet and eyeballed the familiar intruder, her blinkers set way back in her fickle noggin.

“There it is,” whispered to the sky. Then he shot a glance in my direction.

“You’re on my land, boy. I filed on this piece in 1889 a few years before the Smuggler-Union started producing. What are you doing up here anyway, and at night to boot.”

His voice seemed distant. Both he and his mule patiently waited for my reply.

“Just camping, sir,” I spouted, quickly aware that I may have been too formal. It was my parochial education coming back to bite me on the posterior once again.

“Camping? What kind of nonsense is camping? Hell, son, when you live in these mountains the only camping worth a toot is in the bath tub at the Brown Palace over across the hill. You nuts kid?”

He then surgically extracted my entire life in a matter of moments and, after listening intently, told me point blank that none of my kind had any respect for what our forerunners had done to tame these mountains.

“Bunch of damn tinhorns in funny shoes,” he said peering down at my Italian hiking boots that cost even more than a light lunch in Picadilly Circus.

“Now just a minute, sir,” I started. “First you tell me I’m trespassing, then you ask me a lot of personal questions, now you tell me I don’t have any respect. If I was one of those people you’re gabbing about I’d still be back in Denver married to some perfume clerk, selling BMWs. Sure, I’m a bit green but I’ll bet you were too when you first crossed the Divide.”

The man stared at me and said, “What’s for dinner, sonny?”

I said “Stew. I made it last night, then froze it in these zip-lock bags…”

“Kind of like an old bear burying his dinner for a few days before eating.”

Despite his initial hesitancy with the packaging methods he scarfed down the stew. It was like he hadn’t eaten in years. Even the mule had a go at the stuff, eagerly licking the pan at the end of the meal.

“So, what do you intend to do for work in these parts?” he shot out of nowhere. “The mines are all but closed and there’s never been any money in ranching, unless you got cows full of gold.

“Of course, come to think of it most of the miners were working for $2.50 a day back at the turn-of-the-century, and that was 10 hours, boy, with no coffee breaks in a dark, dangerous hole in the ground. We always said it was like digging your way to hell, an hour at a time. But from some of the things I’ve seen hell could be no worse. If not for the union it would have been impossible. Did I mention that I was a union man?”

It was then that he embarked on the epic, though unsolicited history lesson of the day. He talked of snow slides that wiped out mining camps in minutes and rousing dance hall interludes. He told me about William Jennings Bryan and his Cross of Gold “conspiracy” as he called it. I heard about Jack Dempsey and Lillian Gish then more about Buckley Wells and Sarah Bernhardt. His attention to detail was quite impressive considering his years. He acted as if he had known them all.

“On a Saturday night you could drink with miners from all over the world. Finns, Cornish, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Serbs and even a few Chinese thrown in for spice,” he smiled. “Then there were the Irish, like me. Most were in the union.”

“Were you born in Ireland?”

“Of course, boy. Where else? Came over on a clipper.

I asked him his name.

“Patrick McGinty…and yours?”

We talked all night. Becky seemed to be taking shorthand in the lichen. I invited him to share my fire till dawn and was soundly scolded since, after all I was trespassing in the first place.

“No, we’ve got to be going. Tomorrow I’ve got to go down to Ames and visit the doctor. Mercury poisoning you know. But if you’ll come back here next Friday night we’ll meet up with you,” he said. “There’s a mound of history that we need to drill into your head.”

I promised to return, feeling rather flattered that he sought the company of newcomer like me.

Patrick McGinty. Now there’s a name with character. When I landed back in Telluride on Monday I stopped by the courthouse to check on his stimulating credentials. After about a half hour of searching farther and farther back into the dusty records I found a McGinty,  a bachelor named Patrick who had come to Telluride in 1884 from County Clare. It read: Patrick McGinty: Born March 20,1865, died July 3, 1901, during the labor trouble at the Smuggler-Union. A union man.

Next time: “A Visit With a Dead Man at 12,000 Feet”