Review by Steve Voynick
Mining – July 1995 – Colorado Central Magazine
Fire in the Hole: The Untold Story of Hardrock Miners
by Jerry Dolph
Washington State University Press
ISBN 0-87422-108-0
Just yesterday, it seems, hardrock mining was big business in Central Colorado and across much of the West. But today, the high-grade ores are gone, massive open-pit removal of low-grade ores is cheaper, foreign metals are cheaper yet, and American underground metal mines and the miners who worked them are inching toward extinction.
While today’s hardrock miners may be an endangered species, there are lots of former miners around: men — and in recent decades, women — who rode the rattling skips, hung on the back end of jacklegs, breathed the powder smoke, and endured the headaches that followed.
Former hardrock miners who want to relive a few memories, as well as non-miners who are curious about the underground experience, will enjoy Jerry Dolph’s Fire in the Hole. Dolph “tramped” the mines of northern Idaho, South Dakota, Montana, and even Arizona in the 1970s and early ’80s when tramping was still a way of life. During his sixteen years of tramping, Dolph absorbed and retained the essence of the hardrock mining culture.
Although Dolph never made the circuit of Colorado mines, hardrock mining culture and vernacular have such universality that this book will make any Black Cloud or old Climax miner feel right at home.
Fire in the Hole, Dolph’s own story of his years in the mines, is an abjectly, sometimes painfully, honest account of underground work. Dolph comes across as the kind of guy most miners would want as a partner. He finds no glory in doing the work, just a simple pride in doing it right, without getting “done-in” himself.
With an easy fast-reading style, Dolph has a good knack for recreating the miners’ vernacular. He recalls an account of an air blast in a deep Idaho mine: “When it hit I just about crapped my pants… I couldn’t think. As I watched, the sides blew in. And for an instant, I saw much roaring down the raise, mixed with broken posts and timber. The sound was terrible … All I could think of was `Oh, God.'”
While the book is a personal account, Dolph deftly slips in the technical side of underground mining, almost without the reader realizing it. Even those who haven’t mined will get a good understanding of the mechanics of underground mining.
Nicely produced in a large 8.5″ x 11″ format, the book’s 174 glossy pages contain more than 90 black-and-white photographs and illustrations. The price — $28 in softcover and $40 in cloth — is a bit steep, but then few good things come cheaply any more.
If anything, Dolph is perhaps too objective a narrator, revealing no deep feelings about mining one way or another. While that detachment initially disturbed me, it became yet another aspect of the book’s realism. If you’ve ever mined, you’ll know exactly what I mean. You neither loved nor hated it. You just did it.
— Steve Voynick