The motor, clacking and swaying There on the track sits the jumbo Over the drills they hunker Rock slurry pores from drill holes |
FIRE IN THE HOLE! Scooped into mine cars Heavy shoring timbers, carefully placed Quittin’ time! |
In the summer following his sophomore year in college Dick got a job as a hardrock miner in Fraser, Colorado, where he sometimes saw President Eisenhower at his favorite fishing hole. The pay was $2.02/hour, with time-and-a-half on Saturday. And at the end of that shift he often hitchhiked 75 miles over the Continental Divide to visit his girlfriend in Estes Park, returning on Sunday. He also remembers a throbbing headache after thoughtlessly handling a stick of dynamite with bare hands.