Coal Dust Gets in the Veins of Scrappy Miners

The scars are barely visible. Only in the evenings, when the men wash away the day’s grime, do they come to light.

Thin squiggly lines and fat creases, and sometimes great gouges torn from their skin.

But the strangest thing about the scars is their color. They are a deep and startling blue.

They tell a story of a dark, dangerous world that men cling to, women fear and sons stubbornly follow their fathers into, even though there is little money, little future and very little hope.

There are perhaps 100 independent anthracite miners left in Pennsylvania, working their tiny family mines -- blasting and shoveling coal by hand.

They work against the odds. There is little market left for anthracite, a hard clean coal that once heated most of the homes in the eastern United States. Bituminous coal, dirtier but easier to mine, is cheaper. Machines do the work in big company-owned mines. Power plants and steel mills buy the cheaper coal.

So fewer and fewer men crawl into the coal holes.

There are 12 family anthracite mines left in Pennsylvania, down from 60 in 1995 and 140 a decade earlier.

“We’re dinosaurs,” says David A. Lucas, 53, a barrel-chested miner known as David A. whose father and grandfather mined the “hard coal” before him, and whose 29-year-old son, David “Junior” Lucas, would too if only he could make a living doing so. Instead, Junior has turned to welding.

Deep inside his mine, the elder Lucas’ eyes pierce the dark.

“In a couple of years,” he says, “we’ll be extinct.”

*

They are descendants of bootleggers, miners left jobless after the Depression and the coal strikes of the early 20th century, who in desperation sank shafts on the abandoned workings of the big collieries.

At first, they were prosecuted, but over the years, agreements were worked out and the bootleggers became legalized.

Ties to family are one reason they fight for a way of life that seems doomed. But there are more subtle reasons.

“Listen,” David A. Lucas says, tapping with his pick 300 feet underground in the upper level of D & D Anthracite, which he owns with his brother Daryl “Bimmer” Lucas.

The lower level, another 300 feet down, was shut down by mine inspectors after it flooded.

“If you listen,” Lucas says, still tapping, “the vein speaks.”

These are the things that speak to Lucas:

The creaking of the oak beams hammered into the roof. A sudden hiss of air. A puff from the flame in the safety lamp used to detect deadly methane gas, or indicate “black damp” pockets where there is no oxygen.

The sounds tell Lucas whether it is safe to blast. They tell him when he should flee.

To enter the Lucas mine, the men crawl into a coal buggy, which is lowered into the shaft. Bimmer operates the hoist from giant levers in a shack on top. The same buggy is used to haul out five-ton loads of coal.

David A. spends six or seven days a week in the mine with the Lucases’ one employee, their cousin Ernie Lucas, 42.

“Down here, there are no problems,” Ernie says, as he crouches in the gangway. “Down here, it’s peaceful.”

He shovels a load of coal into a machine called a mucker. It trundles out again. At the other end of the tunnel, David A. will load the buggy and Bimmer will hoist it to the surface.

The dank tunnel reeks of danger, but the miners rarely speak of it.

“Fear,” David A. says, “has no place underground.”

In this particular week, the Lucases mine about 75 tons of coal, which they sell to a local processing plant for $35 or $40 a ton.

After expenses, they each take home about $75, although the amount varies week to week.

The Lucases have lost count of times that they have been cited for violations of safety, health and other regulations -- citations they claim are often frivolous.

“We’re not thieves or bums,” Bimmer says. “We shouldn’t be penalized for doing an honest day’s work.”

The inspectors say they are just doing their job.

*

“Black Diamond,” the miners call anthracite.

One hundred years ago, more than 100 million tons of anthracite was being mined from this region.

Today, the neat row houses of the miners cling to the hills, while the ruins of old collieries sink, ghostlike, into the mountains.

Anthracite production is down to about 2 million tons a year, much of it from a few large strip mines. The independent deep mines produce about 200,000 tons.

“Ten years ago, I thought there was a future,” says Cindy Rothermel, sitting in a shanty by the entrance to the Pottsville mine that she owns with her husband, Randy. “No longer.”

A few years ago, there would have been 10 miners bustling about the shanty. Today, the Rothermels employ four, including their son, Randy “Boo” Rothermel Jr., 28.

Cindy Rothermel has spent her life in the mines. She picked rock to pay her way through college. When pregnant, she shoveled sludge. At 49, she knows the history of the mines -- and the heartache -- as well as anyone.

She lost her father in an explosion when she was 12. Several years ago, she almost lost her son in a blast.

It was the worst day of her life.

And, yet, she understands the mines’ pull.

She has felt it herself, sitting alone in the cold, quiet earth, headlamp off, just listening. She has written poems about its spell, the fossil fish and shells that she has found. She has written poems about the foolishness of miners too.

One hangs in the bedroom of her son, John. At 17, he wants to go into the mines. She prays that he will go to college.

*

Across the valley in Good Spring, Mike Rothermel, Randy’s brother, runs a breaker, which processes coal, washing it and sorting by size. His customers have included industrial plants in Florida, Venezuela and Germany, and lately U.S. steel plants hurt by the shortage of bituminous coke.

As the price of steel rises, Rothermel hopes to tap more of that market. But he has bigger plans: He wants to open a new anthracite mine.

Rothermel’s hope is that he can build a machine, similar to those used in bituminous mines, that would dig out the coal more safely and speedily. With anthracite, the problem has always been to design a machine that could tackle the steep pitch of the veins.

Mike Rothermel, 42, has a personal reason for wanting his new mine to work.

Once, he owned a beautiful mine. Officials pointed to it as an example of clean, safe mining. They used it to make training videos. Today, Rothermel’s mine lies idle.

It has a ghost, one Mike Rothermel feels all the time.

In 1998, his nephew Gary “Chirp” Laundslanger, died in an explosion there. Chirp was 23, married with a baby and another on the way. He was like a son to Mike.

After Chirp’s death, Mike closed the mine for good and swore that he wouldn’t mine again unless he could find a safer way.

*

The bar at the Valley View Gun Club is a dark, cozy place where the Yuengling beer costs 50 cents a glass, and the juke box plays Loretta Lynn.

David A. Lucas barrels through the door and claims his corner stool.

It’s late Friday afternoon. Randy and Boo Rothermel sit next to him. Farther down is Anna Hoffman, 75, who lost her husband to black lung; her five sons all followed their father into the mines.

In the club’s kitchen, Lucas’ wife, LaRae, 52, prepares pizzas for a fundraiser to be held the next day for a miner down on his luck.

LaRae talks wearily: “It’s all such a fight. A fight for the coal, a fight against the inspectors, a fight against black lung....

“It’s sad,” she goes on, “that it comes to this after a lifetime of work.”

This year, for the first time, the Lucases held a pizza fundraiser for themselves.

*

Deep inside the earth, two men crawl through the tunnel.

Their eyes shine, green and luminous, like cats in the night.

Carefully, one man checks the timber. The other places half a dozen sticks of dynamite in small holes drilled into the rock.

They crawl back about 100 feet and crouch.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Silvery-black chunks of anthracite tumble through the dust.

“Beautiful,” David A. says, caressing the coal.