Thinking back on summer, and my first job at Erie Mining

Summer is nearly here, high school seniors will be graduating and having parties, then working summer jobs. Once again our Iron Range mining industry is experiencing hard times so there may not be many summer opportunities to be had in the mines. It’s a recurring scenario here, different factors involved, usually dealing with foreign markets, but always resulting in the uncertainty of how long and/or will it be resolved.

Growing up in Hoyt Lakes I had the valuable opportunity to experience working in an iron mine in 1977 after graduating from Aurora-Hoyt Lakes High School. My dad was a mechanical engineer at Erie Mining Company (later LTV), and when your dad worked there, the chances of getting hired were real good. Having been a babysitter, paper delivery girl, dishwasher and store clerk already in my young life, I was ready for the BIG job.

I remember going with dad to buy my first pair of steel-toe Red Wing work boots down at the shoe store in the Hoyt Lakes shopping center. I recall the drive out to Erie the morning of my first day of work. Stopping at the security shack to check in, you could look about a mile ahead and see the plant way up on a hill looking so foreboding with the large drab steel buildings: Agglomerator, Shops, Fine Crusher, Coarse Crusher and Concentrator. I was assigned to shift work at the Concentrator and spent most of the first few weeks shoveling around the conveyor belts on an upper floor in the heat. The hours dragged on with two ten-minute breaks and a twenty-minute lunch. It was a job I never enjoyed but it was a good paying job at about $10 an hour for job class 2. Back then the idea of quitting a mining job was pretty absurd unless you were going to college, into the military, laid-off, or dead, so I forced myself to adjust.

The men who worked in the Concentrator seemed nice enough for the most part. I had gone to school with some of their kids. I was a naive eighteen-year-old who’d been active in high school theater and didn’t smoke or party so being around tough talk was new to me and I found it very intimidating. The first introduction came when I went into the women’s “dry” (locker room) and was faced with blank, stern faces with no smiles or greetings. Overall, I found the women to be a much tougher lot than the men. I quietly listened to their exchange and realized they were defensive because in the 1970’s the fact was, men didn’t want women working at the mines because they were taking jobs from male workers, then still considered the primary bread-winners.

There was one specific incident that happened because I was a woman, young and naive. I was sent to work for a foreman on an afternoon shift in the Concentrator. I remember him leading me outside onto a large slurry-covered cement floor that overlooked the thickener tanks. There were large hoses, three inches in diameter, that were used to hose the slurry back towards the tanks. We were the only ones out there. I had never met this foreman before and to this day don’t recall who he was. He told me I needed to get down on my knees and put the hose between my legs, that this was the best way to clean the floor without the hose getting away from me. It seemed a stretch, but I did it. After awhile I turned around and he was gone. Continuing this task on my knees was stupid, I surmised, and I finally stood up, careful not to let the huge hose loose. I’m sure the foreman and some of his cronies back in the building had a great laugh. Nothing more ever came of this situation, but I stored it in memory, as one of “those” things women may experience.

Throughout the summer I worked a variety of jobs out at the plant. In the Fine Crusher I swept floors for endless hours, floors that were barely dirty. Midnight shift was especially tough with the constant hum of the machinery droning through my foam earplugs. I never got used to staying up all night. Being a “rookie,” I didn’t slink off to nap on a pile of floor-dry bags tucked away somewhere.

One day the foreman assigned me and another woman to unjam a crusher head. They were circular, with walls and a groove around the inside where material would move through for crushing or in this instance, get caught. We both climbed into the head with our crow bars and an audience of about eight guys stood around heckling and watching us. Didn’t they have their own jobs to do? Another one of “those” things.

It was a nice change when I got assigned to work outside in the pits on the shovel crew. We would pull the heavy cable and coil into what was referred to as “the boat”. A dangerous job back then because you had to sit on the cable to hold it in the boat as it was pulled behind the shovel and sometimes a limb could get caught and twisted in the drag.

At one point I decided to try bidding on a higher level job, Mobile Crane Operator Trainee, job class seventeen, and got it! I was the first woman to ever run the Mobile Cranes at Erie Mining Co. I was making more money than I ever had made washing dishes at MaryAnn’s Supper Club in Aurora. It probably was about $15 an hour to start with.

Being a trainee was lots of fun. I had three different Crane Operators teaching me how to run a P&H Crane. We’d travel all over the property, including Dunka River. The scariest event happened one day when I was moving switch houses to set up for a blast. My trainer was outside of the crane BS’ing with some guys about eight feet away. The crane doors were open and we were on a slight slope. I was lifting the switch house towards the front of the crane when all of a sudden the boom started back in the opposite direction, switch house swinging wildly, with the entire left side of the crane coming off the ground. My trainer’s eyes went wide in alarm, he yelled for me to get out as he jumped up, grabbing the controls to wrangle the mess back under control. We had failed to put the outriggers out for balance and I nearly had dumped the crane over on its side, possibly killing or injuring myself or others. With the huge piece of equipment level, I approached the door of the crane, and still recall looking up at my trainer’s laughing face assuring me all was well, as he handed me a roll of toilet paper.

In the spring of the following year I was laid off. The reality of being a low-seniority Crane Operator, spending long years as a “skull cracker” in a pit smashing one rock after another bored me to tears. You had to have seniority to get the more interesting jobs. I elected to head off to attend a school near Bemidji and left “Cheery Erie” (as dad called it) and the mining life behind. After all, orange safety helmets were never a fulfillment of what I considered stylish headwear. Dad was mad and I heard about it for awhile because he didn’t think I was college material. Occasionally, a person would comment that I was foolish for leaving, that is until Erie went bankrupt, LTV took its time and closed, leaving many jobless and short-changed.

I’d never trade my experience at Erie that started my colorful life after high school. To grow up here with mining and not experience any part of it is a bit of a loss I think. I was hands on, honing for myself a bit of interesting historical trivia in being the first female Mobile Crane Operator at Erie. Years later, after dad had passed away, I graduated Cum Laude from Bemidji State University with a BS Degree in Graphic Design/Technical Illustration. I respect the generations who have worked in the Iron Range mining industry and hope somehow it will sustain us well into the future.

O’Hara can be reached at: scarlet@frontiernet.net