The Miner's Code
I always love an old Western coal-mining town. Even when the mines have been closed for decades. But why? Architecture survives -- is there a community spirit that survives as well? A recent book set in Nova Scotia and Georgia offers a tantalizing hint.
Melissa Fay Greene's Last Man Out chronicles Canada's Springhill Mine disaster of October, 1958, when 19 miners were trapped 12,000 feet underground for over eight days. 19 men were brought out after being trapped (75 others died).
Because the disaster took place at the height of the Cold War, when social scientists were interested in how people might survive nuclear fallout in underground bunkers, the survivors were extensively interviewed afterward. These records provide Greene with vivid material for a true-life adventure book.
But one of its most interesting features is what she says kept the men going: something called the Miners' Code.
They always sought to rescue men trapped in a disaster, and they always believed that trapped men were still alive.
The author of Praying for Sheetrock, Greene is one of our nation’s most insightful writers on racial issues, and for her the most interesting aspect of the story is that the leader of the trapped group, a human embodiment of the Code and the last man to walk out of the ruined mine, was black. After the state of Georgia invited the saved miners on a paid vacation in a lame tourism promotion effort, they ended up having to segregate the biggest hero from his buddies. (And, in the one-for-all spirit of the Code, he went along.)
The Code can't survive every crisis. By the end of this book, the Springhill mine has closed, and many of the survivors find themselves scared, lost, and embittered. Spending eight days underground in the dark without food or water, it turns out, is not very good for your mental health.
But Springhill, at least temporarily, gained the name Miracle Town. That could be because there is a kind of heroism in staying alive underground after a mine disaster longer than anyone ever had before. But I prefer to think of the moniker, in Springhill or anywhere else, as a perfectly logical result of the camaraderie, community spirit, and foolish idealism of the Miner's Code.
Join the discussion at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/johnclaytonoutreach/, or let me know your thoughts via info at johnclaytonbooks (and you can fill in the rest).
Melissa Fay Greene's Last Man Out chronicles Canada's Springhill Mine disaster of October, 1958, when 19 miners were trapped 12,000 feet underground for over eight days. 19 men were brought out after being trapped (75 others died).
Because the disaster took place at the height of the Cold War, when social scientists were interested in how people might survive nuclear fallout in underground bunkers, the survivors were extensively interviewed afterward. These records provide Greene with vivid material for a true-life adventure book.
But one of its most interesting features is what she says kept the men going: something called the Miners' Code.
Solidarity was the cornerstone; the workers struck the mines together, refused to be bought off separately, and never gave up on a man lost in the pit until he had was brought up, dead or alive.
They always sought to rescue men trapped in a disaster, and they always believed that trapped men were still alive.
The author of Praying for Sheetrock, Greene is one of our nation’s most insightful writers on racial issues, and for her the most interesting aspect of the story is that the leader of the trapped group, a human embodiment of the Code and the last man to walk out of the ruined mine, was black. After the state of Georgia invited the saved miners on a paid vacation in a lame tourism promotion effort, they ended up having to segregate the biggest hero from his buddies. (And, in the one-for-all spirit of the Code, he went along.)
The Code can't survive every crisis. By the end of this book, the Springhill mine has closed, and many of the survivors find themselves scared, lost, and embittered. Spending eight days underground in the dark without food or water, it turns out, is not very good for your mental health.
But Springhill, at least temporarily, gained the name Miracle Town. That could be because there is a kind of heroism in staying alive underground after a mine disaster longer than anyone ever had before. But I prefer to think of the moniker, in Springhill or anywhere else, as a perfectly logical result of the camaraderie, community spirit, and foolish idealism of the Miner's Code.
Join the discussion at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/johnclaytonoutreach/, or let me know your thoughts via info at johnclaytonbooks (and you can fill in the rest).
