Tag: Lulu Kombol

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Tony and Lulu’s Story

Tony Kombol and Lulu Shircliff, sometime before their 1914 wedding.

Their stories began in 1885.  That January, a baby boy was born in Fuzine, Croatia.  His name was Anton Kombol, the same as his father. When baby Anton was born, Croatia was a provincial kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Fuzine is a village in the Primorje-Gorski-Kotar region about six miles from the coast, but 2,400 feet above sea level, and 30 miles from the largest regional city of Rijeka.

Little is known of Anton’s early life in Fuzine.  Though he was Croatian by birth, the Kombol family surname derived from French immigrants who first settled in the region during the Napoleonic era.  The earliest recorded birth of a Kombol in Croatia was Ivan born to Martin and Ana Kombol about 1810 in the village of Bribir, around 20 miles southeast of Fuzine and near the coast.  Ivan married Matejka Grenko, while his son, Anton married Franciska Mihaljevic, baby Anton’s mother.

A 1968 postcard photo of Fuzine, Croatia.

Through actions at the 1815 Congress of Vienna after the fall of Napoleon, this area of Croatia was absorbed into the Austrian Empire and later the combined empire jointly administered with Hungary. The primary local industries were woodworking and furniture-making.  As Anton grew towards adulthood that would be his likely future if the Austrian army didn’t call first.

Over 5,000 miles west, baby Lulu’s prospects seemed bright.  The Brown family was well respected and her mother, Jennie Brown at age 17, was noted as “one of our most attractive young ladies.”  Walla Walla, with a population of 3,500 was the largest city in Washington Territory.  Lulu’s father, William Shircliff had recently returned from expeditionary explorations in Alaska, then secured the respected paymaster position at the nearby Army fort.

The couple married on a Thursday evening in early June at the home of Jennie’s parents, Horace and Sarah Brown.  The wedding announcement in the Walla Walla Journal noted that “the groom is clerk to Major D. R. Larned, paymaster, U.S.A., and is one of the finest and most promising young men in existence.”  Mr. and Mrs. Shircliff began housekeeping two days later in a house at the corner of Birch and Seventh Streets.  Shocking for the time, just 10 weeks later a baby girl was born and christened Lulu Mildred Shircliff.

Jennie Brown and William Shircliff, well before their wedding day when she was nearly seven months pregnant.

William Shircliff left Walla Walla the following March, seven months after his daughter’s birth.  He traveled to San Francisco where he was stationed at the army garrison, with promises to soon send for his wife and baby girl – a pledge he never kept.  Jennie pleaded with her husband for money so she and Lulu could move south and join him.  Shircliff ignored her entreaties, so she filed divorce proceedings upon which he was ordered to pay child support.  There’s no record of whether Shircliff paid or not, but within two years he moved to Washington D.C.  As far as we know, Lulu never again saw her father.

Lulu Shircliff as a baby in Walla Walla, 1886.

Three years later Lulu’s mother, Jennie remarried and moved onto Ransom Holcomb’s farm on the Cowlitz River south of Toledo, Washington.  Lulu remained in Walla Walla with her grandmother until age 11, when she joined her new family and two baby brothers, Ransom and Wyman, 10 and 13 years her junior.  Far from the active world of the small town she’d known in Walla Walla, on the farm Lulu experienced an old-fashioned life in a remote but exciting place – a farm filled with cows, pigs, ducks, goats, and chickens.  The farm produced eggs, cream, cheese, milk, and hay, all of which were used to sustain the family and farmhands with excess sold to Portland merchants downstream.

Farm life was busy with Lulu assisting her mother in making hearty breakfasts for her stepfather, uncle, and hired men.  After breakfast, animals were fed and chores began.  Milk was skimmed and the thick cream churned to butter.  Crocks and milk pails were meticulously washed in hot soapy water and then placed on slotted shelves to dry.  The remaining hours were spent baking bread, making cheese, and doing typical chores like ironing, sewing, and cleaning.

The farm was self-sufficient except for staples such as green-bean coffee which they hand roasted.  Most foodstuffs were grown on the farm: potatoes, carrots, turnips, pumpkins, oats, and wheat.  The family’s orchards supplied fresh produce in season, with the majority canned to provide fruit for the rest of the year.  Bee hives pollinated spring blossoms and provided honey for the family. Evening hours were short and illuminated by oil lamps.  Early to bed was only occasionally delayed by card games, reading books, or singing as her mother played guitar.

During the school year, Lulu walked about a mile each way.  There in a one-room schoolhouse, 15 or so students of all ages were taught.  Later when attending Chehalis High School, Lulu moved away from the farm because the commuting distance was too far.  She boarded with different families the first year, then rented an apartment with another farm girl her junior and senior years.  The Chehalis Superintendent, Mr. Thompson encouraged her to pursue a teaching career and allowed Lulu to miss classes anytime a substitute was needed.

Lulu Shirclifff sporting a large white bow, 2nd row, 2nd from right with her 1904 graduating class.

After graduation, Lulu’s future brightened.  A vacancy in grade school landed her a series of full-time jobs, albeit with limited credentials.  In 1906, her stepfather traveled to Alaska where he suddenly died.  Ransom Holcomb was always interested in Lulu’s education and had left her money for that purpose.  The following September, Lulu enrolled at the Teacher’s College in Bellingham where she earned a teacher’s certificate.

Meanwhile, back in Croatia, Anton was anxious about life.  The following year he’d turn 18 and risked being drafted into the Austrian army.  Two older brothers, John and Matt had emigrated to Roslyn and found work in coal mines with good wages.  So Anton decided to leave his family and village behind to join his brothers in America.

Anton traveled to the port city of Rijeka embarking on a steamer to Le Havre, France.  He crossed the English Channel to Southampton where he boarded the St. Louis on a nine-day voyage across the Atlantic that landed him on New York’s Ellis Island.  The next day, this 17-year-old boy who spoke no English, boarded a train for a five-day trip across the country.  On Christmas Day 1902, Anton rode that train carrying a loaf of bread and a promise of what his future might hold.  Within a month, he turned 18 and was working in a coal mine.

Matt, John, and Anton Kombol in the early 1900s, likely in Rosyln.
Both Tony and Lulu move to Ravensdale

Their worlds grew closer in 1908 – a pivotal year for both.  After laboring six years in Roslyn’s coal mines Tony, as he came to be known moved to greener pastures in Ravensdale.  There he worked for the same company as in Roslyn, the Northwest Improvement Company (NWI).  It was owned by the Northern Pacific Railway whose locomotives burned millions of tons of black diamonds every year.  That year, Tony also submitted his declaration to become a U.S. citizen.

Deciding a teacher’s pay in Centralia was not sufficient to her tastes, Lulu chose a job in Ravensdale where the best wages were paid.  This was probably because it was an unruly mining town, lacking middle-class families and culture, so coal companies needed to pay top wages to attract the young women who increasingly filled the ranks.  There she boarded at reduced rates with families who valued the literacy a teacher brought into their homes.  Convenient rail access also provided Lulu with opportunities to attend top plays and musicals in Tacoma or Seattle, where she traveled on weekend excursions and stayed with friends.

Lulu Shircliff, with her class of Ravensdale school children, 1913.
Tony Kombol, upper right with the Northwest Improvement Company bunker crew, 1913.

How Tony and Lulu met is lost to time.  But it wouldn’t be difficult in a town of 725, according to 1913 census figures.  In June 1914, Tony purchased a plot of land just north of Kent-Kangley Road and built a home for his soon-to-be bride.  They exchanged wedding vows on August 4th.  The newlyweds were 29 years of age, gainfully employed, and seemingly settled into a good life.

Tony Kombol in front of the home he built, 1914. The home still stands at 27521 S.E. 271st St., Ravensdale, WA 98051.

A few days before their nuptials, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.  Then France and Germany declared war against each other setting in motion the start of World War I.  Had Tony still lived in Croatia, he would have been drafted as Austria mobilized.  By the war’s end, 20 million lay dead with another 21 million wounded.  The 1919 Treaty of Versailles created a new country called Yugoslavia, meaning South Slavs, formed from Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

Fifteen months later, on November 16, 1915, their happy home was shattered by a mine explosion that claimed 31 miners’ lives.  The Ravendale tragedy was the third worst coal mine disaster in Washington state history. The mine was utterly destroyed by the deadly blast, and the company had little interest in reopening.  Tony might have been lost as well if a blown fuse hadn’t crippled the hoisting machinery that brought coal to the surface, sending 100 miners home that morning.

Ravensdale mine explosion that killed 37 miners, Nov. 16, 1915.

Miners left Ravensdale in droves.  With the abrupt termination of over 230 mining jobs, there was little value in the new home Tony had built for his bride.  By 1920, Ravensdale’s population fell 75% to 187 residents.  Most left town in search of new jobs.

To Arizona and Montana, then back to Washington

Tony left for Arizona the next month and Lulu followed a few months later, probably at the end of the school year, though enrollment had no doubt fallen precipitously.  In Ray Arizona, Tony found work in the copper mines.  The couple also saw the birth of their first child in June 1916, a baby boy they named Bernell.  A year later Montana beckoned with yet another copper mining job and yet another baby this time a girl named Dana born in March 1918.

Looking for new opportunities Tony left for Alaska but stopped in Washington to see William Reese, the Northwest Improvement mine superintendent with whom he was friendly.  NWI was the company Tony had worked for since coming to America.  It was opening a new mine to be called Hiawatha, located about five miles east of Ravensdale.  Tony agreed to join the effort.  Since NWI had not yet moved homes to Hiawatha to house their employees, Tony took up residency in Durham.  Lulu soon arrived and the following year so did their third child, Nola born in Aug. 1919.

As miners dug the tunnels and built the surface facilities to mine coal, NWI moved or built about 20 company houses in Hiawatha.  Tony and Lulu’s fourth and fifth children, Jack and Nadine were born at home in July 1921 and August 1923.  One of those Hiawatha dwellings became the family’s home for the next 50 years.

In a strange twist of fate, the Morris Brothers Coal Mining Company incorporated in Dec. 1921 and shortly thereafter purchased the entire town of Durham – the mines, bunkers, houses, and hotels.  All of the large and extended Morris family who had lived and mined coal in the Pierce County town of Wilkeson since 1894 moved to Durham.  With Durham less than a mile south of Hiawatha, it was inevitable that Morris and Kombol children would attend the same Selleck and Enumclaw schools and romp through the same neighborhoods.

A map of Durham with each Morris family home and the homes of miners identified.  Some of the miners followed the Morris family from Wilkeson.

The Kombol family glided along smoothly on Tony’s wages from mining coal while Lulu, who had quit teaching after the Ravensdale disaster tended to five small children.  But, 1925 threw the Kombol family a nasty curve ball.  An errant dynamite shot exploded in Tony’s face blinding him completely and speckling his skin with tiny bits of coal.  Though an operation partially restored his sight, he could no longer work in the coal mines but only perform chores around home.  Tony became Mr. Mom to five children under the age of 10, while Lulu went back to work as a school teacher.

Times were tough but the Kombols soldiered on

Their Hiawatha home was small and located on land owned by Northern Pacific Railroad under a 99-year lease.  The main floor measured just over 1,000 square feet with two bedrooms and a sleeping porch upstairs accessed through the back bedroom.  There was a basement underneath with a barn in a field out back.

The seven family members shared rooms as the children grew to adulthood.  They even welcomed relatives, like Rose Kombol who left Roundup, Montana, a small mining community where Tony’s brothers, John and Matt had relocated.  Rose moved west at age 16 and worked at the nearby Durham Hotel, managed by Jonas and Maggie Morris, whose only son, George was a year older than Bernell Kombol.  Rose later married Woodrow Gauthier, a logger and sawmill operator, whose partnership with his brother, Joe Gauthier employed Jack Kombol on numerous occasions during the 1940s and early 1950s.

Jack Kombol and Rose Kombol, planting a tree, 1939.

Times were tough as both the local coal mines and sawmills were subject to economic downturns when commodity prices fell.  The 1929 stock market crash precipitated a Great Depression that persisted through most of the 1930s.  Then in 1939, the Pacific States Lumber Company which owned the town of Selleck was unable to meet its financial obligations and saw all of its land, buildings, lumber, and railroad lines seized by the IRS for nonpayment of taxes.

The following year, former mill employees, Lloyd Qually Sr. and Gust Coukas bought the company out of bankruptcy for just $3,000, when no other bids were submitted.  Qually and Coukas dismantled the mill buildings and salvaged the equipment.  Later Lloyd Qually and his wife, Lucille, who taught school with Lulu, fixed up Selleck’s old company homes and rented them out.  One of those Selleck dwellings became Jack and Pauline’s first home soon after their son, Barry was born.

Four of the five Kombol children graduated from high school, except Jack who quit during his junior year.  In chronological order, Nola married Chester Fontana, Bernell married Helmie Sandberg, Dana married Frank Zapitul, Nadine married Joe Silversti, and Jack married Pauline Morris.

From which 11 grandchildren were born, all of whom were present when Tony and Lulu celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in early August 1964.  Lulu, who went back to teaching after Tony’s mine accident, taught school for 44 years and didn’t retire until 1965, the year she turned 80.  Tony passed away on Sept. 21, 1967, the end of a 53-year marriage.  Collectively, the six Kombol couples logged 290 years of marriage.

Their 50th wedding anniversary. Seated: Dana, Tony, Lulu. Standing: Jack, Bernell. Kneeling: Nola, Nadine. Sunday, Aug. 2, 1964.

Less than a year after Tony’s death, Jack and Pauline Kombol with Barry, Bill, Jeanmarie, and Danica in tow, traveled to Europe for six weeks, including a six-day stop in Yugoslavia.  The Kombols visited Jack’s relatives in Rijeka, Fuzine, and Pula, Croatia.  A few weeks later, they traveled to see Pauline’s relatives in Chepstow, Abertillary, and Nant-y-moel, Wales.

Jack Kombol with his cousin, Stefica Roksandic in Pula, June 10, 1968.

Lulu survived Tony by nearly a decade.  She moved out of the family home in early 1974, living her remaining years with daughter, Nola whose husband Chester Fontana died in April 1971.  Barry and Cathy Kombol moved into that Hiawatha home in May 1975 with their recently born daughter, Meaghan.

To My Family

After moving to the Lake City home where Nola had lived since 1940, Lulu began writing her autobiography.  “To My Family” was published on Aug. 27, 1974, her 89th birthday.  Lulu passed away on January 19, 1977, at the age of 91.

Thirty-four years later in 2011, her grandson, Bill Kombol obtained the original transcript of the memoir from Nadine.  On passages written about her father, Lulu scribbled out everything she’d written after receiving an official government document that William Shircliff completed where he failed to list her as his child.

Bill’s extended version was nearly twice as long as the original.  It also included 61 detailed footnotes and 26 photos of Lulu.  A nearly identical version (without photos) of Lulu Kombol’s “To My Family – Extended Version” appears on the Washington state history site, HistoryLink.org.

The Kombol family assemble in Renton for Bill & Jennifer’s wedding reception. Front row kneeling, L-R: Angie Beck, Brendan Kombol, Nolan Kombol, Cara Kombol.  2nd row seated: Eric Brough holding Kyle Brough, Jeanene Brough, Pauline Kombol holding Miranda Lewis, Nadine Silvestri, Dan Silvestri, Corre Kombol, Joe Silvestri holding Lindsey Brough.  3rd row standing: Nola Fontana, Meaghan Kombol, Bernell Kombol, Helmie Kombol, Todd Kombol, Karrin Kombol, Bill Kombol, Jennifer Kombol, Darlene Fontana, Jeff Kombol, David Lewis, Danica Kombol in front of Gerry Beck, Cheryl Beck, July 28, 1990.

Tony & Lulu’s Story was adapted from the eulogy I read at Aunt Nadine’s funeral in October 2019. – Bill Kombol, Sept 21, 2023

 

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Uncategorized

July 5, 1953

The first known photo of Billy, with his brother, Barry outside their Selleck Home, July 1953

July 5, 1953 – Baby Billy’s Birth

Seventy years ago today, Pauline Kombol bore her second son.  Twelve months earlier, she buried her first daughter.  Paula Jean lived for but two days.  Paula’s father, Jack was sad.  Pauline was devastated.

Paula Jean’s gravestone is in the Enumclaw cemetery about 50 feet from her parents.

Just over a year later, the Kombol family gathered at Lake Retreat for their annual Fourth of July picnic.  By late afternoon, Pauline’s father-in-law, Papa Tony Kombol had indigestion that he blamed on the baked beans. The next day after hearing Pauline had her baby, Tony, in his distinct Croatian accent said, “It must have been the beans.”

The boy was delivered on a Sunday at 5:04 pm at Seattle’s Doctor’s Hospital by Dr. Albert Lee with nurse, Anne Green in attendance.  A year and one day later, on July 6, 1954, Pauline welcomed his baby sister, Jeanmarie into the world.  For Billy and Jeanie Kombol, born on the 5th and 6th of July, Independence Day would always be the kickoff to their birthday celebrations.

As Pauline rested comfortably, her dad, John H. Morris stopped by to ask what she planned to name her son.  Pauline had spent so much of her pregnancy praying for a healthy baby, that she’d given little thought to a name, either boy or girl.  The boy’s grandfather, John H. Morris provided the answer – his first name would be William, in honor of his own brother, Bill, and the middle name John, after him.  In 1982, that baby boy, William John Kombol assumed the same position as head of the family company, that his grandfather held for 30 years following Palmer Coking Coal’s founding in 1933.

As Pauline held her 7-pound, 12-ounce baby, she saw his eyes were blue and his hair was brown.  The ‘Kombol, Boy’ record completed by Nurse Green listed his length at 20.5 inches with a head circumference of 13.5 inches.  Billy, as he came to be known spent the first week of his life at Doctor’s Hospital, whose original façade and entrance at 9th and University is now a part of the Virginia Mason Medical Center on  First Hill.  The bill for the delivery, anesthesia, nursery, pharmacy, and lab work, plus a six-day hospital stay came to $193.40.

The hospital invoice shows details of Pauline and Billy’s six-day stay in the hospital.

Letters of congratulations poured in from Aunt Nancy & Uncle Bill Morris (his namesake); Lloyd & Lucile Qually; Palma Weflen, Yvonne & Keith Grennan; Rose & Woodrow Gauthier; Wilfred & Wilma St. Clair; Marian Dahl, and Aunt Ruth Forest.  Pauline’s mother, Marie mailed her a letter every day.  Pauline kept all of them.

That week’s visitors to the hospital included his Grandma Marie & Grandpa John Morris; Aunt Nancy Morris, Aunt Nola Fontana, Aunt Alice & Uncle Jack Morris; Palma Weflen, Lucile Qually, Grandma Lulu Kombol & Aunt Dana Zaputil; plus Billy Guerrini with his Daddy, Jack.  Bill Guerrini was a close childhood friend of Jack back in their Kangley days.  Guerrini often told the story that Jack’s son was named after him.

The baby record completed by the hospital nurse with Baby Billy’s footprints. The booklet had several pages.

On July 11, Pauline and baby Billy left the hospital and traveled several miles north to Aunt Nola’s home in Lake City.  That Saturday night, Jack picked Pauline and Billy up driving them to the family’s rental home in Selleck.  By Monday morning, Jack was back at work as a truck driver for Palmer Coking Coal.

Pauline poured all her love into the baby boy at that small Selleck home.  It was built in 1912 to house workers of the long-since-closed sawmill. There she nurtured and cuddled Billy to ward off a repeat tragedy and heal the loss of Paula Jean.  So, all the love she hadn’t buried with Paula was invested in Billy.

And that’s how William John Kombol grew up, surrounded by love and affection.  As that grown boy writes another chapter in his story of scenes from a charmed life.

Pauline with Billy in the living room of their Selleck home, his milk bottle on the lamp-stand, Sept. 1953.

Who’s who among those named:

Pauline Lucile Morris (1927-2011) – Pauline was born the 4th of four children to John H. Morris and Nina Marie Morris.  Both of her parents were children of Welsh coal miners named Morris who immigrated to America.  She grew up in Durham, the coal mining town where so many of her Morris uncles and aunts lived, as did dozens of miners and their families.  Pauline moved to Enumclaw at age six, graduated from EHS in 1945, and married Jack Kombol in late 1950.

Laverne Shercliffe “Jack” Kombol (1921-1979) – Jack was born the 4th of five children to Tony Kombol and Lulu Shircliff.  He was struck with polio at age six so didn’t attend school for two years.  Jack dropped out of high school at age 19 and moved to Seattle where he lived with his sister, Nola, and drove trucks for the garbage companies.  He bounced around at a number of jobs but mostly worked in the woods driving logging trucks and running equipment.  Jack joined Palmer Coking Coal Co. in June 1952, the same month Paula Jean died.  He died of pancreatic cancer at age 57.

Paula Jean Kombol (1952-1952) – Paula died two days after birth and is buried in the Enumclaw cemetery about 50 feet from her parent’s grave.

Tony Kombol (1884-1967) – Jack’s father, Tony emigrated from Croatia at age 17 and made his way to Roslyn where he joined two brothers as coal miners. Tony worked at the Ravensdale mine, avoiding the 1915 explosion that claimed 31 lives.  The family moved to Arizona and Montana where he worked the copper mines before returning to Washington.  A 1925 explosion nearly blinded him and he could no longer work.  For the next 42 years, he kept track of their small farm and worked around the home.

Lulu (Shircliff) Kombol (1885-1976) – Jack’s mother, Lulu was born in Walla Walla to Jennie Brown, age 17 who was seven months pregnant.  Jennie married William Shircliff, an Army paymaster clerk, who abandoned his wife and daughter after eight months of marriage.  Lulu’s mother remarried and she grew up on a Cowlitz River farm.  Lulu attended Bellingham Normal School attaining her teacher’s certificate and eventually moved to Ravensdale where teachers were paid more.  After bearing five children, she went back to teaching, primarily in Cumberland and Selleck schools after Tony’s mine accident  In total, Lulu taught for more than 50 years before retiring at age 80.

John Henry Morris (1894-1973) – Pauline’s father was born in Wilkeson into a large family of coal miners.  John’s mother and father emigrated from Wales shortly after their marriage.  His father and brothers all worked in the coal mines, eventually rising through the ranks and starting their own coal mining company, then a second named Morris Brothers. John with three brothers and one investor started Palmer Coking Coal Co. in August 1933, during the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Nina Marie (Morris) Morris (1890-1967) – Pauline’s mother was born in the coal mining town of Franklin.  Her father, Joshua was a coal miner who in 1880 was on the prospecting party that discovered coal seams in the Green River Gorge that led to the establishment of Black Diamond and Franklin.  Shortly after Marie’s birth, the family moved to Osceola where Joshua farmed in the summer and mined coal in the winter.  Marie and her two sisters, Lena and Ruth graduated from Buckley H.S. and all three become school teachers. She met John while teaching in Wilkeson where he was working in the coal mines.

Uncle Bill Morris (1897-1979) – William “Bill” Morris was the closest brother to John H. Morris, thus a great uncle to his namesake, Bill Kombol.  Bill Morris was a jack-of-all-trades around the coal mines, working primarily on the surface in the preparation plants.

Aunt Nancy (Boots) Morris (1899-1969) – Nancy and her husband Bill lost two children, each of whom died shortly after childbirth.  Great Aunt Nancy often babysat the Kombol children in their Four Corners home.

Lloyd & Lucile Qually – Lloyd was the head mechanic for Pacific States Lumber, the company that owned the town of Selleck.  He held that job until the mill closed in 1939.  Lucile was a school teacher with Lulu Kombol at the old Selleck School that burned down in 1929.  Eventually, they lived in the town’s biggest home, once occupied by Frank Selleck.  The Quallys were good friends of Jack and Pauline.

Palma Weflen – Census records show she was a 55-year-old widow and nurse living with a family in Seattle. Most likely she was a kind of a midwife to Pauline.

Yvonne (Cross) & Keith Grennan – Yvonne was one of Pauline’s best friends from high school.  Her husband Keith was a brother to Dolly (Grennan) Fugate another of Pauline’s good friends.

Rose (Kombol) Gauthier (1920-2001) was Jack’s first cousin who moved from Roundup Montana when she was 16 to live with the Kombol family in Kangley.  She went to work at the Durham Hotel, which was managed by Jonas and Maggie Morris, John H., and Bill Morris’ older brother.  Rose married Woodrow Gauthier (1913-2001) (pronounced goat-chee), a logger and later a sawmill owner.  Jack worked for Gauthier Brothers Lumber & Logging Co. on and off for 10 years.

Wilfred & Wilma St. Clair were next-door neighbors to the home of Tony & Lulu Kombol, and friends with Jack & Pauline.  Two of their sons, Bill and Dick St. Clair often played with the Kombol boys.

Marian Dahl (1912-2005) was Pauline’s cousin, though almost a generation older.

Ruth (Morris) Forest (1892-1968) was Pauline’s aunt and Nina Marie Morris’ sister, hence Bill’s great-aunt.  She was born on the Fourth of July.

Jack Morris (1918-2007) was Pauline’s brother and Alice (Hanson) Morris (1920-2016) was his wife, hence Bill’s uncle and aunt.

Dana (Kombol) Zaputil (1918-2012) was Jack’s oldest sister, married to Frank Zaputil (1914-1984), hence Bill’s aunt and uncle.

Nola (Kombol) Fontana (1919-2017) was Jack’s older sister, married to Chester Fontana (1916-1971), hence Bill’s aunt and uncle.  Chester’s Fontana relatives, who during Prohibition were involved in bootlegging gifted Chester & Nola their Lake City home in 1940.  When Jack moved to Seattle to drive garbage trucks during the war years, he stayed at Chester and Nola’s Lake City home paying for his room and board.  Twenty-five years later, when Bill took a bank job in Seattle he stayed with his Aunt Nola and paid her for room and board.  Nola lived in that home for 77 years before dying there in 2017.

Billy Guerrini, at age 97 is still alive and lives in the family home in Kangley.  Jack was best friends with his brother Martin “Fats” Guerrini, but after Fats died during WW-II, Jack and Billy became close friends.  When Jack drove to the hospital to see his new baby boy name Billy, Billy Guerrini came in with him.

Categories
Musings

First Tastes of Mortality

Papa Tony Kombol and Grandma Nina Marie Morris.

“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever.” – Tom Stopppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

More than fifty years ago, two grandparents died on the same day.  It was the last day of summer, and the first time anyone close to me had died.

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.                                    – Leonard Lipton / Peter Yarrow

Released in Jan. 1963, Peter, Paul & Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” soon topped the charts.

I remember those first thoughts about dying.  It was the spring of 1963 and I was nine years old.  Grandma and Grandpa Morris lived in a large, white, country home west of Enumclaw on McHugh Street.  The radio played in the background.  The number one song was “Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul & Mary.  It’s a children’s song wrapped in fabled lyrics released during the height of the folk era.  I’d heard it before, but never fully absorbed this line: “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys.”  My tenth birthday would be in a month or so.

Grandma (Nina Marie Morris) was in the early stages of dementia which even a boy could recognize.  She was easily confused.  One day, Billy Hawthorne (the son of Grandma’s part-time caregiver) and I played a cruel trick on her by hiding in the closet.  We watched her search for us in vain.  After frantic calls we reappeared, only to see a vacant look of despair on her bewildered face.  Mom explained she had hardening of the arteries, causing blood to flow slowly to her brain, meaning she couldn’t think as clearly as before.  She was ill and wouldn’t get better.  I felt bad about our trick.

Grandpa and Grandma – Jack and Marie Morris, a night on the town in San Francisco, 1959.

The song ended but a feeling lingered – I wouldn’t be a little boy much longer.  Just like Jackie Paper, my imaginary dragons and toy soldiers would soon be gone.  Those wistful feelings of melancholy floated in the wind like the down of a dandelion.

One evening that summer, I lay in bed.  It was a Friday or Saturday night.  Next to my bed was a cheap AM radio.  Late at night, I spun the dial picking up a distant station in Salt Lake City and listened to the final innings of a baseball game.  It ended and the nightly news was read – “At 12:01 a.m., a convicted murderer on death row will be executed by firing squad.  Growing tired I turned off the radio and saw a blindfolded prisoner led to a brick courtyard.  The moment passed but the memory remained – a boy, the radio, a distant broadcast, the bleakness of death.

Bad posture, Billy at Grandma & Grandpa Morris home, Spring 1967.

In the 14th year of my life, the grim reaper appeared.  It was 1967.  Music defined my world and I delighted in its sounds.  Newspapers called it the “summer of love.”  For me it was a summer of friends, family, fun . . . and Sgt. Pepper.  Each morning brought new sounds and adventures.  The sun shone day after rainless day, for so long it set a record – 67 days without rain.  The bluest skies you’d ever seen were in Seattle.

That September, I entered the final year of junior high as a 9th grader.  Three weeks later that cozy world was disquieted by the death of two grandparents: Grandma Morris and Papa Kombol.  On the same day, my father lost his father, and my mother lost her mother.  In a way, this double death was a tonic for both parents.  They told us kids of feeling like orphans, leaning on each other – weathering funerals and wakes, one after the other.  September 21st was the last day of summer . . . and the autumn of my youth.

Papa Tony Kombol and Grandma Nina Marie Morris died on the same day.

Both grandparents were elderly: 82 and 77, yet important fixtures in life.  Papa (Tony Kombol) babysat me when I was four and five.  Mom dropped me off at their home near Elk Coal where I’d follow Papa doing chores, fixing lunch, then put me down for a nap.  Legally blind from a 1925 coal mining accident, he stayed home while Grandma Lulu taught school in nearby Selleck.  Needing to be near Enumclaw’s medical facilities, Papa stayed at our home the last few weeks of his life.

Grandma Morris was the first person I remember reading to me.  We flipped through “Two Little Miners” so many times I could picture each page.  I boarded an airplane for the first time in late June 1962, a Boeing 707, when she and Grandpa took me to San Francisco.  We braved chilly Candlestick Park and watched my first major league baseball game.  The Giants won the pennant that season.

When in San Francisco Grandpa always stayed at the Maurice, a businessman’s Hotel near Union Square where that day we had our shoes shined, July 1962.

We dined in the Starlight Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, celebrating  great-aunt Ruth’s 75th birthday . . . and my 9th.  I still have the menu dated July 3, 1962.  Two weeks earlier, Tony Bennett released the song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

Great Aunt Ruth’s birthday was July 4th and mine July 5th, so Grandpa Morris took us to the restaurant at Sir Francis Drake Hotel.  It was a fancy place with the date  printed at the top of the menu.  The waiter gave it to me as a souvenir.

In later years Grandma Morris was confined to the Bethesda Manor nursing home not far from our home, falling deeper into the darkness of dementia.  Mom visited her daily, sometimes twice.  She hired our neighbor, Wilma Boerlage to provide extra care.  I’d go on occasion, but in time she no longer knew me.

Jack & Pauline Kombol, late 1967.

Over the coming weeks, I began to imagine life without parents.  It was the year Mom stopped tucking me in and saying nighttime prayers together.  Alone in bed, save for a pink teddy bear won at the Puyallup Fair, I thought of the future.  One day Mom and Dad will surely die, just like Grandma and Papa.  A profound sense of sorrow consumed me.  Visualizing their deaths, I cried myself to sleep each night.  I tried to figure a way out – what if they never died?  Maybe I’d die first and be spared the heartache?  Whatever scenario I concocted, the end was always the same – falling asleep to tears.  The end of their lives and my childhood hung in the balance.  But I knew not how or when.

Unbeknownst to me, the thoughts of that 14-year-old boy were long ago known by Stoic philosophers.  The anticipation of hardship softens its eventual blow.  A Stoic prepares for the future by focusing on the worst possible outcome, a Latin principle called premeditation of adversity.  Seneca advised his followers to rehearse ruinous scenarios “in your mind – exile, torture, war, shipwreck,” thereby robbing the future of its awful bite.

By morning, Mom woke me as I skipped downstairs to find a hearty breakfast on the kitchen table.  Jean and I walked to the Junior High, a three-story, brick building four blocks away.  There I roamed halls, diagrammed sentences, and played with friends after school.

Male tear ducts shrink as boys become men.  It becomes more difficult for men to cry.  Evolutionary psychologists can no doubt tell you why.  My tears were gone in time.  Ninth grade led to new friendships and adventures.  I turned out for basketball and made the greatest team ever.  I raised tropical fish in an aquarium.  At semester’s end, I earned my first perfect report card, all A’s.  As a special treat, Dad took me to the Four Seasons in downtown Enumclaw for Chinese food.  I felt pride in the glow of my father’s love.

Twelve years later, I wrote a poem to read at his funeral.  The lines recalled the mournful feelings of those earlier times:

The last day we expected was the morning that we feared feared
the nights we cried so long ago have come to rest right here.
And so we’ll cry these tears of pain from sorrow we must store
the tears we have are tears we’ve cried a thousand times before.

Father and son, Jack Kombol and Bill, Lyon, France, Feb 1978, a year before he died.

In February 1968, Barry and I picked copper strands from piles of rocks and sticks at the Mine #11 wash plant in Black Diamond.  The wire came from blasting caps used when dynamite dislodged coal at the Rogers #3 mine.  Seven years later I’d work in that mine, learning just how those wires were used.  Over several weekends we collected nearly a pickup load of coiled yellow wire, then burned off the plastic coating.  Dad sold the copper for 40 cents a pound at the recycling yard.  It was souvenir money for us four kids to use during our family’s forthcoming trip to Europe later that spring.

We missed the last few weeks of school.  In Ireland, England, Wales, and the continent we saw historic sights, tasted new foods, and explored a world far removed from our own.  We also visited the embodiment of death – Dachau, the Jewish concentration camp near Munich.  The visitor’s center displayed black and white photos of emaciated bodies, showing all manner of depravity.

Mom kept a journal of our trip so I know the day we visited Dachau – May 31, 1968.

The guide told of Jewish children with tattooed numbers on bony arms – herded from rail cars, not knowing their fate. We walked through the barracks, gas chambers, and crematoriums where thousands died at the hands of their Nazi henchmen. We saw death on an unimaginable scale.  I’ve never forgotten that visit or the sign on the entrance gate: Arbeit macht frei. “Work sets you free.” Mom read its translation from Arthur Frommer’s Europe on $5 a Day,

The sign on the gate as you enter Dachau – Work sets you free.

Three weeks after coming home, I turned 15.  Four days later a boy I’d grown up with died.  John Sherwood attended our Presbyterian church.  His parents, Earl and Isabelle Sherwood were our youth group leaders and taught us Sunday school.  John was a troubled lad who’d just flunked 10th grade.  On a warm summer evening in early July, John went to a party and guzzled 190-proof Everclear from a bottle.  Mr. Sherwood found his son slumped over the front seat of their car just after midnight.  The Enumclaw police never figured out who provided the bottle, though some teens in town surely knew.

He was the first contemporary I’d known who died.  John was 16.  The coroner’s jury attributed his death to “consuming excessive amounts of liquor furnished by a person or persons unknown.”  The Courier-Herald ran articles linking his death to narcotic and alcohol abuse among local youth in 1968.  Glue sniffing was a particular concern that year.

The following spring our Cascadian yearbook printed his photo in remembrance, followed by a short poem:

John Sherwood’s page in our high school yearbook.

He is not dead, this friend not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread
Got some few, trifling steps ahead
And nearer to the end;
So that you too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.

– Robert Louis Stevenson   

Sporting a Nehru jacket on my first day of high school as a sophomore, Sept. 1968

When you’re young, five years is practically forever.  “Puff the Magic Dragon” was a distant memory.  Heading to high school in September new adventures emerged.  I started a job as the Saturday boy at Palmer’s mine office in Black Diamond.  I joined the chess team and found the calling of a new sport.  By summer, I’d have a driver’s license plus two more jobs to fill my days.  Papa and Grandma were fading memories.

As boyhood drew to a close, a young man began to emerge.  My horizons broadened.  Ahead of me lay many deaths . . . relatives, classmates, and loved ones.  Those first tastes of mortality would always be with me, but  childhood fears were fading.  A new set of adolescent anxieties gripped me.  I was growing up and the world was growing bigger.

Categories
History

Working at a Coal Mine

The last coal miners of Rogers #3 mine
LR156b- The morning and afternoon shifts of coal miners in the front of the washhouse of the last underground coal mine in the State of Washington: the Rogers #3 Mine located at 26222 S.E. Kent-Kangley Road in Ravensdale. Front Row (L to R): Joe Ozbolt (kneeling), James Bo Williams, John Costanich (kneeling), Tony Basselli, Bill McLoughry. Back Row: Bob Morris, Bill Kombol, Barry Kombol, George Savicke, Bud Simmons, Roy Darby, John Streepy. Photo by Bob Morris, 1975.

My senior year of college was as different as night and day.  It wasn’t my original plan. By day, I inhabited the rarified air of life at a university where young men and women, often preening boys and girls, proffered great thoughts fueled by a steady diet of pot and booze.  At night, I worked in a coal mine with gray-haired men at jobs they’d performed their entire lives.

I was bemused by the attitudes and mindsets of the two cultures.  For me, it was the best and worst of times – the most wonderful and dreadful of any span of my then young life.  I was fully exhilarated and completely exhausted – a caterpillar in search of a butterfly to escape a cocoon of his own making.  For years I’ve struggled to reconcile the feelings and emotions within those discordant worlds I simultaneously ingested.

I’d grown increasingly bored with college phonies fretting over which grad school to attend.  I was steadily drawn to the stoic lives of coal miners.  My fellow undergrads bemoaned petty stresses of their own making.  Each day the miners completed the tasks set before them.  The grad school gang imagined chic careers with grand salaries.  The coal miners were content with life and their position in it.

In early September 1974, I prepared to return for my last year of college.  Over three summers past, I worked for Palmer Coking Coal, a family-owned company.  My jobs were common laboring at the Black Diamond yard and Rogers #3 mine.  That mine was a succession of Rogers #1 and #2, started in 1958 and 1959 respectively.  Located in Ravensdale, Rogers #3 was slated to close in less than a year.  It would be the last underground coal mine in the State of Washington.

End of the shift
That’s me at shift’s end and covered with coal dust on one of my rare day shifts. The Rogers #3 hoist room and mine tipple are up the hill behind me.  Photo by Barry Kombol, April 1975

My uncle, Jack Morris was President of Palmer.  He was navigating the company’s exit from the coal business, as gracefully as possible.  It was a tough time for the firm.  Jack was drinking heavily, and Palmer’s fortunes were not promising.  There were sharp disagreements between three uncles, Jack, Evan Morris, and Charlie Falk, who collectively led the firm.  I was thankfully unaware of building tensions and unresolved rivalries. I just turned 21.  Little did I know that leadership of this company would one day fall to me.

Evan Morris, Sr. on the platform beside the portal entrance into the Rogers #3 mine.  The sloped tunnel descended 800 feet underground.  December 1974.

Federal coal inspectors were bearing down on small mines like Palmer’s.  Our operation didn’t fit the template for a subsurface coal mine.  The Rogers coal seam stood nearly vertical, while most coal mines operate on horizontal planes, the way sedimentary formations containing coal seams are naturally deposited.  The plate tectonic which uplifted the Cascade Mountains altered the local Ravensdale geology to a rare condition – a vein of coal tilted to more than 80º.  Underground mine regulations hadn’t been written for that kind of operation.

Coal seams in this area of Ravensdale stood nearly vertical as seen in this geologic cross section. – Golder Associates.

Most men who worked at Rogers #3 were lifelong coal miners.  All were in their late 50s and early 60s, except for a cousin, Bob Morris; my brother, Barry Kombol, and me.  Two dozen miners had retired over the previous eight years, but enough experienced men remained allowing Palmer to finish its underground mine while honoring contracts supplying coal to State prisons.  Palmer’s management was mindful of the decades those miners had worked in the industry and sensitive to union pensions that hung in the balance.  A few more years would strengthen each miner’s retirement payout.

One day in early September, Jack pulled me aside and asked if I’d work the afternoon shift while attending college.  It was my senior year where an easy slide towards graduation was a natural expectation.  Jack explained I’d earn the wage rate under the United Mine Workers contract to which Palmer was bound.  A Grade 2, Tipple Attendant made $45.93 per day.  That UMW day rate was the equivalent of $32 per hour in today’s currency.  To a money-hungry lad like me, that sounded awfully enticing.  I talked it over with my folks and a decision was made.

Surface facilities at Rogers #3. The tipple to the left and load out bunkers to the right.  Photo by Don Mason, early 1970s.

The afternoon shift was from 3 – 11 pm, so it made sense to live at home.  My first three years of college were spent at Pi Kappa Phi, where I enjoyed the camaraderie of fraternity brothers plus the assorted characters who boarded in spare rooms.  Ours was a frat house with a classical facade, good cooks, and two hot meals a day.  Staying at home would make me a “townie,” so I’d only pay fraternity dues plus the meal rate for lunch, a significant saving over full room and board.  I drove my parent’s 1968 Renault, an unusual car in those days – basically a Volkswagen Bug for cheapskates.  The no-frills Renault got good mileage, had a stick shift on the floor, with an A.M. radio.  What else could I possibly need?

My schedule was grueling.  Monday through Friday, I was up at 6 am, fixing breakfast while Mom packed my evening dinner in a metal lunch bucket.  I loved yogurt and back then little was sold in stores, so Mom cultured her own which I ate from a squat thermos.  She, Pauline (Morris) Kombol was herself, a coal miner’s daughter.

I left Enumclaw every morning at 7 am.  Traffic was light with far less congestion than today’s clogged freeways.  Interstate 5 was a breeze with only occasionally slowdowns.  I arrived at the University of Washington campus about 8 am, parked at the fraternity, then walked to my 8:30 class.  My first break came at 9:30, so for an hour I studied at the Husky Union Building, and then sped off to my 10:30 and 11:30 classes.  By 12:30 pm, I rambled back to the fraternity for lunch, studied for an hour, and left Seattle at 1:45 arriving at the Ravensdale mine by 2:45 pm.

Joe Ozbolt, left and James ‘Bo’ Williams, right inside the Rogers #3 washhouse. Photo by Charlie Falk, February 1975.

In the washhouse, I joined other miners where we changed from street clothes to working gear.  There were only six miners per shift, but I was exclusively night shift so worked with alternating crews each week. We walked up a slight hill to the hoist room and met the day crew coming from the mine.  Our counterparts were greeted and a light banter exchanged.  The afternoon shift started at 3 pm, lasting eight hours including a dinner break.  My job involved standing at a waist-high metal platform, where coal was separated from rock.  It was called the picking table and I was its operator.  The picking table was located in the belly of a triangular wooden structure called the tipple.

A loaded coal car is being dumped from the top of tipple into the chute below. The picking table was behind the silver-colored sheet metal above the dumptruck where waste material was collected before being hauled to the rock dump.  Photo by Bill Kombol, April 1975.

The job was simple – push coal to the right and rock to the left.  There was one primary goal: don’t let rocks smash your fingers, lest you wind up with a throbbing fingernail rapidly turning purple.  Still, it happened, and no matter how long you sucked that pulsing finger, the pain lingered.  Sometimes it hurt so much, you had to heat a sewing needle red hot then drill down through the nail to release the pounding pressure caused when blood rushed to repair the wound.

The picking table was six feet wide and about two feet deep.  The left third featured a hinged trap-door balanced by a pulley and weight.  When 100 pounds or more of rock accumulated on that side, a trap door released the waste material that fell into a dump truck below.  The large chunks of coal which landed on the table were pushed right into a crusher and broken into small pieces.

Barry Kombol, ready at the picking table – notice how clean he is at the start of a shift.  Photo by Bill Kombol, April 1975.  
A Moulden & Sons dump truck filling up with coal to be hauled to Palmer’s Mine #11 yard in Black Diamond for further processing.  Photo by Bill Kombol, April 1975.

Above me was a chute regularly filled with coal and rock brought from the mine and dumped from the tipple above.  A slanted door of thick steel, opened and closed by an electric motor, regulated how much coal came through that chute.  After falling down, the coal mix vibrated over a sloped screen with square openings.  The smaller-sized pieces (less than 4” in diameter) dropped onto a conveyor belt and were carried to the loadout bunker.

The slanted door on the chute had to be set to just the right level.  Opened too much and excessive coal crashed down, blinding the screen, and left the picking table a cluttered mess.  If the avalanche was too large you couldn’t separate the rock from coal fast enough and both ended up discarded.  But when not opened enough, the screening process slowed, and the next coal car to dump was stalled, disrupting the entire operation.  Getting it right was fairly easy when coal was uniform, and rocks were small.  But sometimes, large chunks of sharp-angled sandstone and sedimentary rock jammed between the chute door and vibrating screen.  The rocks wedged together at such awkward angles that none could break through the hatchway.  The bind got so nasty that rocks were stuck even with a fully opened door.

When that happened, I rushed to the hoist room and told the operator to stop pulling cars from the mine.  The hoist-man operated a large spool, six feet across upon which was wound 1,000 feet of 1” thick steel cable.  It resembled a gigantic fishing reel.  The cable spun through a bull-wheel atop the tipple providing leverage needed for pulling five-ton coal cars up from the bottom of the mine.  After the car was dumped, the hoist operator braked against gravity, allowing the car to free-wheel down rails tracks along the 48º slope, through a mine opening called the portal.

A closeup of Bill McLoughry operating the hoist. The drum and steel cable are in the background.  Photo by Barry Kombol, April 1974.

With coal cars stopped, I ran back to the picking table and turned off the vibrating screen.  I climbed up and with a long metal pry bar tried dislodging rocks to coax them through the door.  If that didn’t work, I’d pound repeatedly with a sledgehammer to break the burly rocks into smaller pieces that could fit through.  Sometimes the clog was so bad, the hoist man joined me as we tried to get things moving.  Some nights the work was so grueling my body was drained in sweat.

Hoist operators: Roy Darby, top left; Frank Manowski, top right; and Bob Morris, below.

Other nights the coal was so perfectly sized that 95% of the mix cruised through the screen.  The few melon-sized chunks which dropped to the picking table were easy to handle and my job was a breeze.  After screening five tons, I had plenty of idle time awaiting the next coal car’s arrival at the top of the tipple.

A bucket seat salvaged from an old sports car had been set up in the picking table chamber.  Trips arrived every six to eight minutes, and I usually screened a carload in two to three minutes giving me several minutes between loads.  In between, I read my textbooks perhaps a page or two, until the next car arrived.  Its approach was signaled by the pitch of the whirring cable and sway of the tipple.  When coal and rock crashed into the hopper above, that meant another five tons to screen.

The rail tracks leading to the portal opening, seen mid-photo as the darkest area. This photo of the portal opening into the mine was taken from atop the tipple looking down.  Photo by Bill Kombol, April 1975.

From time to time, I emptied the dump truck parked below.  After 10 to 12 tons of rock dropped through the trap door to the waiting dump box, I scurried down, jumped in the truck, drove to the rock dump, and emptied the load.  The truck was dumped five or six times a night depending on the percentage of rock to coal.  I needed to be fast, as coal cars kept emerging from the mine.

On nights when coal wasn’t hoisted, I rode a coal car 800 feet underground to work with the miners.  There I performed laboring tasks – sometimes drilling coal and loading dynamite.  Other nights I helped set timber props that held up the roof of the mine.  Or cleaned coal spilled on rail tracks.

Bill Kombol handing John Costanich a stick of dynamite ready for loading into a drill hole.  Photo by Barry Kombol, April 1974.
With a long plastic pole Bill Kombol helps John Costanich (on platform above) push the dynamite to the top of the drill hole.  Dummy bags were put in last to plug the hole and ensure a successful blast.  Photo by Barry Kombol, April 1974.

The most mindless job was filling dummy bags with loose clay used for stemming plugs.  After loading a drill hole with a dozen sticks of dynamite, the sausage-sized, clay-filled, paper bags were punched into the end of the hole.  This focused the energy of the explosive force to blast intact coal into thousands of smaller pieces.   Otherwise, the explosion would blow out the bottom of the drill hole, like a firecracker dud.  Dummy bags were in constant use during mining, so I spent hours bagging up a week’s supply or more.

Bill Kombol filling dummy bags and placing the finished sausage-sized bags into an empty dynamite box.  A “dummy bag” was a paper sack filled with clay or shale and used to stem drill holes. The dummy bag was about the same size as a dynamite stick.  After the drill hole was filled with dynamite, several dummy bags were tamped tightly as stemming, so that the dynamite blast would break and loosen the coal rather than simply blow out the end of the hole. “Stemming” means to tamp, plug, or make tight, to ensure a successful shot.  Photo by Barry Kombol, April 1974.

One shift, bored and alone in the crosscut, I turned off my miner’s lamp to see if my eyes could fully adjust to the dark.  It was an experiment.  After 10 minutes, I slowly drew my hand towards my eyes guessing ambient light would illuminate the outline of the appendage, but there was nothing – complete and total darkness.  There was no sound beyond my breathing.  The lack of sight and sound that far below the earth’s surface conjured feelings I’ve never forgotten.

People often asked what it was like working underground.  The best part was a constant temperature somewhere around 50º. There was little air movement except for a slight breeze from fans that ventilated the mine.  We didn’t have to worry about rain, as it was dry except for a stream of underground water that accumulated in a ditch next to the hanging wall.  It flowed to a sump and was pumped outside.  The mine tunnels were supported by a three-piece timber set, consisting of two uprights supporting a cross beam log all tied together by an overhead roof of rugged boards, called lagging.  It was a comfortable working environment, save for the fact everything you touched was black.

At 7 pm, work stopped for our dinner break.  I moseyed down to the hoist room where a pot-bellied coal stove kept the tin shack warm.  On rare occasions, the miners came up from below to warm themselves and join us.  But most nights it was just me and the hoist man, either Roy Darby, Bill McLoughry, my cousin, Bob Morris, or sometimes Frank Manowski.  Pee Wee, the dirty black mine dog hung out in the hoist room.

George Savicke, right eats his lunch while Tony Basselli toasts his sandwich on the pot-bellied coal stove in the hoist room. That night the two miners came out from below for their dinner break.  November 1974.

Dinner break was a time to relax, chat, and eat the meal Mom prepared 12 hours earlier.  Sometimes she packed homemade soup in a thermos, but more often a meat and cheese sandwich, which I toasted atop the hot stove.  I was talkative and conversations with the old coal miners took curious turns.  Almost to a man, they told me to get an education and stay out of the mines.

Following our half-hour pause, it was back to work until 11 pm when our shift ended.  Then I dragged my tired body, covered with sweat and coal dust, down to the wash house where we showered on concrete floors, under three side-by-side spigots.  It was like traveling back to a shoddy version of a junior high locker room.  The hot showers felt good, as did donning clean clothes you’d changed from eight hours earlier.

Pee Wee, the hoist room mine dog carrying a miner’s lunch box ,then seeking attention and perhaps a snack from the miners. Photo by Barry Kombol, April 1974.

Each night, your work clothes were hung from hooks on a wire basket, with gloves and hard hat placed inside.  A chain and pulley hauled the gear to the eve of the wash house where heat naturally accumulated.  If your clothes were wet, they’d be warm and toasty by the following day.  Each Friday, I brought my dirty garments home for Mom to wash.

I was in my car by 11:20 pm for the 20-minute drive back to Enumclaw.  I brushed my teeth and plopped into the same bed I’d slept in since sixth grade.  Falling to sleep each night was the easiest part of my day.  Six hours later, it started all over again – up for breakfast, in my car, and driving to the U.W.

On weekends, I’d sleep till 11 or noon.  I had no life outside of school and work.  All my friends were away so largely I kept to myself.  Some Saturday nights, I walked to the Chalet Theater to see a movie.  But mostly I studied, typed papers, and prepared to face Monday.

After two college quarters and more than seven months of this routine, I was burned out.  Fortunately, the underground coal mine was preparing to shut down.  My night-shift job on the picking table phased out shortly after the start of the spring quarter.  I completed my senior year living in Enumclaw but no longer working at the mine.

When the Rogers #3 mine finally closed, a retirement party was held featuring a cake with all Palmer personnel, who were part of the last underground coal mine in Washington State written in the frosting. 1975.

In addition to my regular Econ classes, I took a one-credit P.E. in tennis and a two-credit course on nutrition.  But my favorite class spring quarter was a three-credit course entitled the Living Theater.  We studied drama, went to plays, and wrote reviews of those we saw.  It was my favorite college class and fittingly my last.

During those days of school and nights of work, my dreams were filled with fears – of papers not completed and exams I didn’t understand.  Remarkably, I scored all A’s, and only one B that year.  Slowly my life recovered as I took pride in a fat bank account.  It’s easy saving money when living at home with no time to spend it.

For more than a year prior, I’d suffered an emotionally embarrassing case of facial acne.  I felt ugly.  But nothing Dr. Homer Harris, a noted dermatologist prescribed seemed to work.  I stopped getting haircuts and grew my hair out.  To hide my pimpled face, I quit shaving.  Perhaps it was the release from stress or maybe shaving irritated my skin.  But the acne lessened and within a few months disappeared.  I began to feel human again.

I graduated that June, with a B.A. in Economics.  I was tired of college. My attachment to fraternity brothers dwindled and I abandoned the academic scene.  I had no interest in attending commencement.  My sister graduated from high school that same year, so the folks wanted to throw a party for the both of us.  I declined their offer and also pointedly skipped graduation ceremonies.  My diploma arrived in the mail four months later.

Four years of study and 195 college credits produced this Bachelor of Arts in Economics, mailed to me several months later, as I had no interest in attending graduation ceremonies.

A few relatives and two high school teachers sent congratulatory cards. My Grandma Kombol, a school teacher for 44 years gave me Webster’s Third International, a 13-pound dictionary I still cherish.  I loafed all summer.  I bought a motorcycle in August and moved to Lincoln City that fall.  There I collected unemployment checks, read books, and walked on the beach.

Working at a coal mine my senior year of college was an experience I’ll never forget.  It was a lonely existence within a beehive of perpetual motion.  My life was a rolling slog in squirrel-cage.  That choice shaped my life, unlike anything before or since.  Perhaps the Stoic philosopher, Seneca said it best, “Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.”

The mine and the old miners are now all gone.  All that remains of Rogers #3 is the weather-beaten washhouse.  Still to these memories I remain eternally grateful – the miners with whom I worked, the hours spent driving to and fro, the classes attended, and college papers written.  Textbook pages studied, the picking table, cement-floor showers, and the sense of freedom that spring when released from the whirlwind into a world of plays and theater.

Of those days long-ago, this memory I shall never forget – dinnertime in the hoist room, standing beside a hot coal stove, and tasting the melted cheese on the sandwich Mom lovingly packed for me.

I kept my hard hat and lunch bucket and recently photographed them atop a pile of stoker coal.

* * *

After loafing all summer, bumming that fall in Lincoln City and cashing unemployment checks, seven months later, I came back to work for Palmer. My uncle Charlie Falk took this photo of me in January 1976, where I was working in Enumclaw helping PCC relocate the Stergeon cement  bins to Black Diamond for use at the coal mine wash plant there.