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Into a miner's dark world
By MICHAEL SCHUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, SCRANTON, Pa. -- At least ditch-diggers worked in the open air. Beneath the rolling hills of northeastern Pennsylvania, men with bulging muscles and craggy faces labored in dusky caverns, where a careless move could land a 10-ton rock on their heads. Walk around the Lackawanna Coal Mine grounds in Scranton, Pa., now open for tours, and you experience a step back to the time when Old King Coal ruled northeastern Pennsylvania. An abandoned Bucyrus Erie steam shovel (call it a "straight front shovel" to sound knowledgeable) stands in weary retirement, among its rusty compatriots guarding the mine tipple and entrance. Plump coal cars squat on tracks by a 6.5-ton lump of Pennsylvania anthracite coal. Tom Supey Jr. was a mine worker for 25 years here. His father, Tom Sr., worked the mines for 50 years. Supey Jr. relates that his father had several close calls working underground but that he had significantly fewer: By the time the younger Supey entered the mines, experience and regulations had greatly improved safety conditions. Today, the son is mine foreman at the Lackawanna Coal Mine, once active but now used only for show. He was instrumental in developing the mine as a historical attraction, which opened to the public in 1985. A three-minute walk from the mine entrance is the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum. Both sites offer looks into the lives of those who spent their days in the dark so the rest of the nation could heat its homes. Said Supey Jr. on a recent tour, "We want to make sure visitors appreciate the jobs they have today. We want to show that we don't have it that bad now." However, he also hopes visitors will leave appreciating his and his father's work, too. "We'd like people today to understand what their ancestors went through. They put everything they had in a suitcase, left Europe and went through Ellis Island to take jobs working in the mines. I call that courage." Former New York City accountant Joe Burke led us on our tour into the miner's dusty world. Burke's great-great-grandfather worked coal mines after immigrating from Ireland during that country's infamous potato famine. Every subsequent generation of Burkes worked the mines until Joe left to be an accountant. Then he returned to his Scranton roots to lead tours. We entered the mine via a boxy yellow passenger car that cruises on rails 1,350 feet down at a 25-degree angle. The mine itself is now well lit -- a luminescence the workers could only have dreamed of. Near the end of the tour, Burke extinguished the artificial lights and turned on the battery-powered light attached to his miner's helmet, simulating the carbide-powered light used by workers 60 years ago. Suddenly, the mine chamber was the dark side of twilight. Burke then flicked the light completely off. If a miner's helmet light went out, he could try to crawl outside along coal-cart tracks on the ground. Or he could sit in the dark and wait until someone showed up, Burke explained as we stood in the darkness. In addition to light, we tourists had other luxuries mine workers never enjoyed. We moved along a boardwalk, not uneven ground, and we did not have to worry about poisonous gases. Burke said workers in the early 19th century brought caged canaries into mines. If a canary keeled over and died, the men fled, for they knew poisonous gases were in the air. But visitors do still experience the chill -- roughly 50 degrees, and damper than London in January. Scattered about the mine are mannequins representing workers. A mannequin fireboss, who today might be known as a section foreman, leans back in his chair, rests his feet on his desk and looks bored. A mannequin of a young boy stands by a mule. Mules provided cheap muscle needed to haul carts full of coal, and boys could be hired for less pay than men. In fact, boys as young as 7 or 8 were often hired as door boys, used to open and close doors in the caverns to control air flow. Parents often appreciated having an employed son, for the extra income needed to feed large families. The mine tour brought forth the question to Supey Jr.: "How does work as miserable as this get in one's blood?" Supey said a mine worker could literally see what he had done each day. "That doesn't happen with today's jobs," he said. "They're not as physical. Mine workers became very proud of what they had done." The lives of the mine workers, their families and communities are explored in the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum. A reproduced full-size kitchen, circa 1935, has a well worn washboard, a no-dial wall phone and a wooden table covered with a simple cloth and period culinary equipment: a mixing bowl, rolling pin and muffin tin. But subtleties show who lived here. No fedora hangs from the hat rack; instead there is a miner's helmet and metal lunch pail. Across the room is a coal-burning stove and next to it, a black pail filled with anthracite. In many coal workers' homes, the kitchen was also the living room, dining room and play room. The stove made it the warmest room in the house and the focal point of activity. Depending on the national origin of the occupants or their ancestors, the room was often filled with scents of pasta, sauerkraut or corned beef and cabbage. When not hanging their helmets at home, mine workers stored them, along with their street clothes, in a wash house on the mine property. It was there that they changed in and out of work clothes. Resting on a bench in a full-size reproduction of one of these wash houses are helmets, belts, hats and lunch pails; hanging from ropes are torn pants and shirts. The harvest of these men's and boys' efforts supplied work for their wives and sisters. Coal-powered silk factories thrived here. On view is a ponderous 1924 twist machine, an endless jumble of spools and spindles used to twist silk filaments together to form usable yarn. And today? Above-ground strip mining is done in anthracite country, even though cleaner fuels have largely replaced coal as a heating source in homes and factories. Yet coal is still used in everything from water filtration to car batteries. And with a mine tour and a museum, king coal has become part of another industry -- tourism. IF YOU GOGETTING THERE: The Lackawanna Coal Mine and Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum are in McDade Park, on Scranton's west side. No airlines offer direct service between the Tampa Bay area and Scranton, but several carriers fly to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, from which commuter flights are available. From Scranton, take Interstate 81 to exit 182, onto Davis Street. Drive west to N Keyser Avenue to the park. From Interstate 476 (the Pennsylvania Turnpike), take exit 38 to N Keyser and on to the park. The Lackawanna Coal Mine is open April-November, daily. 10-4:30. Admission is $6 for adults, $4 ages 3-12, $5.75 ages 65 and older. For more information, write to the mine, McDade Park, Scranton, PA 18504; call toll-free 1-800-238-7245, or (570) 963-6463. The Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum is open year-round, Monday-Saturday 9-5, Sunday 12-5. Admission is $3.50 adults, $3 age 62 and older, $2 ages 6-12; family rate $12. For more information contact the museum at RR 1, Bald Mountain Road, Scranton, PA 18504; (570) 963-4804. The Web site for both attractions is www.visitnepa.org In a park-like setting downtown are the Historic Scranton Iron Furnaces, four massive 19th-century blast-furnace stacks, remnants of the days when the Lackawanna Iron & Coal Co. was the second-largest iron producer in the United States. Open daily, sunrise to sunset. Free. Call (570) 963-3208. A coupon brochure called the Passport has $1-per-person discount coupons to the mine tour, the heritage museum and other area attractions. The brochure is available from the Northeast Pennsylvania Convention and Visitors Bureau, 99 Glenmaura National Blvd., Scranton, PA 18507; call toll-free 1-800-229-3526; www.visitnepa.org - Freelance writer Michael Schuman lives in Keene, N.H.
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