Imperial Valley Press

BUTTE. Mont., NOV. 9. (UP)— Starting today. Rocky Mountain standard time, my life is going to be devoted to the doing of good. I am going to get up earlier in order to find more old ladies to help across streets. and more cats who need tin cans removed from their tails. When I see a crippled bird I will stop and, after putting splints on its wings, lead it by the hand to a reasonably priced, but well-kept and orderly bird bath. Thanksgiving will find me not only giving out turkeys, but pre-stuffed turkeys. and in my spare time I will rub Boy Scouts together, thus producing merit badges, fire and, I suppose anxious parents. I decided to be good yesterday, following a hasty acceptance of an offer to explore an Anaconda copper mine. Such a trip will make a saint out of the most confirmed cuss, even a sportswriter. because a trip to the bottom of a copper mine is nothing else but a preview of that ride to the Satanic suburbs where the mayor wears cloven hoofs and everything is served well done. One moment you are standing on the side of a hill. admiring the Butte civic projects, and adjusting your bow tie. The next you are dropping like a shot thing, straight down into the earth. Down you rocket. in pitch blackness. The world is left behind as 100-500-1000-2000-3000-feet you plummet toward you know not what. The sort of fireman's helmet they clamped on your head before you stepped in the steel cage is pelted with rocks and dirt. The tiny electric light on the helmet casts a feeble glow that only heightens the weirdness of the plunge into the fire and brimstone region. There's a sickening turn-then another-and another-as the cage sweeps around the curves hidden deep behind the surface. Your knees buckle and your stomach sweeps upward. Then, seemingly miles underground, lights begin to flicker. But they bring no hope, only fear as your dizzy mind interprets them as signals to the devil that another resident is on the way. and to get the pitchfork ready. The sing of the cable on which you're dropping turns into a tortured whine and then- Well, the sensation at this point makes all the others I have experienced pale into nothing. and I have ridden around the old and death-defying Indianapolis track at full speed, flown across the continent in the stratosphere seeking a dawn-to-dusk record, and had a part in many before-the-age-of reason-sets-in didoes. But when the breaks are put on that super squirrel cage. rigor mortis sets in like high tide, and one's life sweeps past, from the first corn silk cigarette back of the barn, to the latest phoney nickel in the slot machine. The car doesn't stop suddenly. Your heart does but not the cage. It starts doing a super big-apple, as though hung on a spring. It keeps on doing this until the "cat dies." so to speak. The occupant beats the cat to It by fifteen minutes. Copper miners make this trip twice a day. They think nothing of it. As for me, I'll never again be able to look a kettle in the face without lifting my hat and making a sweeping bow.