|
||||
  
 
 |
Tales from down under: USU student examines Arizona miners' stories By
Samantha Nicholas Most elementary schools provide programs on how to deal with peer pressure, alcohol and drugs. Randy Martin's elementary school gave programs on what to do if you find explosives lying around the yard. "We were raised not to play with blasting caps," said Martin. Being typical boys, he and his friends searched for them anyway. Martin grew up in Bisbee, Arizona listening to miners' tales directly from the source. His father and uncle both worked in the copper mines that surround Bisbee. Martin began collecting mining tales in 1998 as an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. He performed field work and began recording narratives from several retired miners in and around Bisbee. In 1999, Martin received a grant from the University to study Hispanic and Anglo folklore. Martin and his mentor at the University of Arizona discussed possible universities where he could complete his graduate work. Utah State University came to the top of the list. According to Martin, USU has one of the top five folklore programs in the country. With staff such as Barre Toelken and Jeannie Thomas, both highly admired in their fields, Martin didn't have difficulty making the decision. In August 2000, he began his graduate study at USU. Thomas, a member of Martin's thesis committee, said there are several interesting and important aspects of Martin's research. He was documenting a multi-ethnic occupational group that experienced conflicts above ground, but worked together harmoniously below ground. She was very interested in the folk customs that allowed for harmony to occur. Martin has categorized the folklore of the miners into three main purposes. The first is to relieve tension. Working under hazardous conditions every day made relieving stress absolutely vital. The second is initiation. Rookies and newlyweds were considered fair game. Almost every miner passed through initiation of some sort before being welcomed into the ore cars. The final category was equalization of status. Working side by side in a mine shaft requires trust and respect. Pranks were played on those who let their egos get out of hand. One prank was usually enough to bring them back to the ground. When Martin began his master's project at USU, he expected to find a unique set of superstitions, nicknames and other folklore for each group, Hispanics and Anglos. In folklore, as in life, things don't always work out the way they're expected to. "I answered my question," said Martin. "Basically there's no difference." Martin had to change the name of his paper to match his findings. "The Folklore of Hispanic and Anglo Copper Miners in Bisbee, AZ., 1930-1975," no longer seemed to fit. The new title is, "Occupational Folklore of the Bisbee, Arizona Copper Miners." After his graduation from USU in May, Martin plans to return to Arizona and teach at Cochise Community College in Sierra Vista where he is an associate English faculty member. He also plans to pursue a PhD from the University of Arizona in Tucson. Martin has interviewed 10 miners from his hometown of Bisbee, Ariz., some of whom began their careers in the late *30s and early *40s at the Phelps, Dodge and Company copper mine. The mine "played out" and was closed in 1975. Bisbee now serves as a haven for retirees and artists. Tourism is the new money-maker. Bisbee, 90 miles south of Tucson, was founded in 1880 and named after Judge DeWitt Bisbee, one of the financial backers of the Copper Queen Mine. By the early 1900s, Bisbee was one of the largest cities in the southwest with a population of approximately 20,000. The town's location in the midst of the mountains created some interesting architectural challenges. One Bisbee website reports buildings "were stacked on top of each other like bees in a hive." Grand family homes built by wealthy merchants and entrepreneurs mixed with less stylish shacks inhabited by miners still searching for the big one. In 1905, the Copper Queen Mine was the second largest copper mine in the world. According to the Bisbee Chamber of Commerce, more than 8 billion pounds of copper have been mined from the surrounding Mule Mountains. Copper isn't the only rare metal found in them thar hills. Between 1880 and 1975 almost 2.9 million ounces of gold were mined as a by-product of the copper industry. Around the 1900s, Bisbee was known as a white man's camp. However, that was soon to change. Bisbee is only five miles from the Mexican border and in the late *30s and early *40s, the Hispanic population surged. Martin says its proximity to the border is what makes Bisbee unique. Originally, Hispanics were not allowed to work underground; they performed the necessary tasks above. During World War II, many of the Anglos went to serve the United States military, which created a shortage of mine workers in the Bisbee area. Only then did Hispanics descend into the mines. Mining is a dangerous occupation. To ease the tension, miners engaged in a lot of "horseplay," including giving each other nicknames, sharing superstitions and playing pranks on one another. Before beginning his research, Martin thought these "tension breakers" would vary between the Anglo and Hispanic populations. They didn't. According to the miners, once you were underground it didn't make a difference what color your skin was. Discrimination and racism didn't descend into the mine shaft. Professor Thomas believes that "in a life or death situation, it is easier to put ethnicity aside." "Underground, there's no time for that foolishness," explained Martin. There was plenty of time however, for nicknames. Copper Water Slim was one of the best known miners during the World War I era. Slim worked as a raise man for the copper mine and was referred to as a "super miner." Slim was the standard other miners were held to. Others who may not have been as ambitious as Slim earned other names, some even more descriptive. In the mines, one of the ore cars was designated as a latrine. This car was known as the honey pot. The honey pot contained a small amount of water in the bottom. One miner thought it would be a great gag to take the carbide out of his lamp and throw it into the honey pot. The addition of carbide to the honey pot would create a small explosion. This would have been only mildly funny if Howard, a fellow miner, hadn't been sitting on it at the time. Since that day he has been known as "Shit Car Howard." Not all miners received nicknames, good or bad. Some played practical jokes on each other. Some shared superstitions or "old-wives tales." One such tale claimed if a miner's light went dim, it meant his wife was cheating on him. Of course, there were no women working in the mine shafts. Allowing women underground was strictly taboo. Some miners claimed that even passing a woman on the way to work was bad luck. Whether that was true or not, it broke up the monotony of calling in sick. "The neat thing about this study is that it showed how a new folklore could occur," Martin said. "There are still things about our culture that we can learn in our own back yard." That certainly was true for Martin. Thomas noted that Martin's research had a very personal level. It allowed him to see a side of his father, the copper miner, that he hadn't seen before: the man he was when he worked below the ground.
|
Archived Months:
January
1999 January
2000 January
2001 |
||