Still eating is enough, here in the hardscrabble

Two bodies of water in Rio Blanco County bear granddad’s name

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

His answer was always the same: “Still eating.”
Rain or shine, good times or bad, my grandfather always answered that way, when anybody asked him, “How is it going?” or “How are you?” or “How do you do?”
He had other little endearing comments and sayings of course (for example, calling black table pepper the Sioux word for fly poop). But “Still eating,” was his trademark and it reflected his hardscrabble existence as a homestead rancher on the Western Slope of Colorado.
Owen Carrigan, my granddad, filed his first Colorado homestead claim 1914. After subsequently 'proving up' on that, and additional filings, he ran cattle, sheep and other livestock and harvested alfalfa hay for nearly half a century on Morapos Creek near the Hamilton turnoff, between Craig and Meeker.
Prior to that, he hailed from Minnesota country, by way of the Dakotas. He came here to escape Asthma and finish recovering from a broken leg he suffered when a horse fell with him while punching cows for a Texas-owned outfit in the Dakotas.
His mother, Minnie Buce Carrigan, wrote the popular book “Captured by the Indians, Reminiscences of Pioneer Life in Minnesota.” It is an account of the murder of her father, mother, two sisters, and her captivity among the Sioux after the 1862 uprising and her subsequent experience as an orphan. In the book, she describes her life as a young German immigrant girl prior to her capture and the ten weeks she lived with her captors until being freed by the United States Army.
In a state where “whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over,” two bodies of water in Rio Blanco County bear granddad’s name, Owen Carrigan Reservoir and Owen Carrigan Ditch. I am proud of the fact that, as a family, we go way back around here. Not everyone can say that.
Even after he sold the ranch, he counted irrigation as one of his favorite chores. He liked to make the ditches run. I am probably around to tell stories today, however, because he had a healthy respect for fast moving water. He saved my life one morning when I was about six or seven when he fished me out of the opening in irrigation tube near the 'Grand' as he called it, or Colorado River, before I could be sucked down the tube into oblivion.
Grandma would have given him hell, however, if he somehow managed to allow one of the grandkids to drown while he was checking ditches.
When I was very young, my grandfather would take me with him as he caroused downtown Grand Junction. The trip usually involved a jaunt into a hardware store where he ended up buying me something like an electric drill, or bench vice, or a set of wood chisels.
I think his reasoning was twofold. He was concerned about whether or not I would have the proper tools to survive in the modern world; and he wanted to encourage my creative side, that he saw when I spent hours trying to make boats, cars, spaceships, and such, with the tools on his extensive work bench at the back of his house.
He was a pretty fair blacksmith, ferrier, and agricultural mechanic, himself. Though he tended to cobble stuff together, using whatever scrap material he could scare up.
Another part of those downtown trips involved a stop at one or more bars in town. My granddad liked to make his own beer, but he also always enjoyed company while he drank it. And the bars offered that. That might have been where I picked up my eventual calling — as I listened and learned the art of story telling from the old cowboys, and steam tractor mechanics, and loggers and miners and bums.
Some of the stories were even about him, though I was young enough, and was mostly concerned with the Coca-Cola in a beer glass, I don't recall all the details.
Always, always, always, the folks in the bar seemed to enjoy the salutatory greeting when his shadow graced the door. "“How is it going?” or “How are you?” or “Howdy do?” they called out.
But as my grandfather was prone to say, there really was only one answer that could come back.
“Still eating,” his reply. And that was more than enough, then.

River smoothes over us hard cases

The river smoothes over us hard cases.
In the spring, it is wild and dangerous.
But summer reflects upon us cautiously.
By fall, we are weak, diminished, stagnant.
The ice of winter traps us, first at the edge.
Then, you may walk across, smooth again.

I remember the girls in the water of summer.
I forget that I was wild and dangerous.
I think of my friends in reflections of the fall.
I feel the bitter bite of the cold in the winter.
I brave the thin ice around frozen banks.

Anger wells up from the spring's runoff.
Violence in the mood of warm reflection.
Falling into pools of stagnant water.
Living on the edge where the ice forms.
But the river smoothes over us hard cases.

--- Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Don't want anything to do with the place

Don't want anything to do with the place.
Can't stand the smell, color, the looks on his face.

Lots money spent, people hired — all in the name of healin' ya'
Watch you, tube you, wire you — and with any luck, avoid killin' ya'

The bear went in, just as he did in the old days.
They patched, and scratched, dosed and said "No ways."

He thought he was a goner, started saying goodbyes.
Reached for something way down, as we all just stood by.

Saw him after few weeks, other trouble seemed to focus him.
No grey color, fogged eyes, sissy grip, some pain — but rising like a crocus then.

Don't like it. Have trouble, don't want anything to do with the place.
Keep me out, can't stand it.  The smell, color, the looks on his face.

__ Rob Carrigan

All roads lead to Walter Paris

By 1873, Walter Paris was painting water color sketches in around the Pikes Peak region

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Art and the ice business, Palmer Lake and Cripple Creek, Professor Ferdinand Hayden and the U.S. Government Geological Survey, local architecture, and Rudyard Kipling's Nobel Prize for Literature   ...  all roads lead to Paris.
Walter Paris, that is. He arrived in the Pikes Peak area in the Summer of 1873.  In his youth, Paris, an esteemed English-trained architect had been appointed assistant architect in Bombay, by the English government. He had befriended John Lockwood Kipling, who was professor at the Bombay School of Art, at the time.
"One morning December of 1865, John Kipling rushed over to Paris' bungalow to announce that his wife had given birth to a 12-pound boy. A few days later, Paris went to see the infant and held him in his arms. The infant's name was Rudyard Kipling, who grew up to be one of the most famous British writers in India and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 1907. Paris maintained a friendship with the Kiplings and their son, and by 1899, when Rudyard Kipling was living in Vermont, Paris rightfully consider himself Kipling's oldest, friend," writes Palmer Lake historian Daniel W. Edwards in a historical paper for the Palmer Lake Historical Society in July of 2010.
By 1873, Walter Paris was painting water color sketches in around the Pikes Peak region. He continued to design buildings in Colorado, including an office building on Tejon Street in Colorado Springs, and a school in west Denver, but also set in motion plans for an Ice House near Divide Lake in northern El Paso County.
Divide Lake (later rechristened Palmer Lake) was leased from the railroad and Paris built an ice house there that could store 2,000 tons of ice to be sold in Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
Paris and W.S. Hannaford established the Fountain Ice Company and purchased existing ice houses in Colorado Springs and Manitou.
"The company's ice house at Palmer Lake was completed by the end of 1873, and there is one tantalizing reference to Paris sending carpenters to build, if not the beginnings of town, at least some houses at Divide Lake where workers at his plant could spend the winter. If Paris did construct housing facilities, it indicates there was a small settlement at the future site of Palmer Lake long before Thompson began his development efforts in 1883," writes Dan Edwards.
Paris joined the Prof. Ferdinand Hayden's U.S. Geological Survey team that documented first intoYellowstone region of Wyoming in the early 1870s was working as an artist for the survey in the fall of 1874.
"Mr. Walter Paris, who has been accompanying Professor Hayden's party in their trip northward from Colorado Springs, along the base of the mountains, has made a number of sketches of scenery in Pleasant Park and other localities along the route, and extends and invitation to our citizens to call at his studio and look them over," reported the Colorado Springs Gazette on Oct. 24, 1874.
But he became restless. In January 1875, Paris wrote to Hayden in Washington, at the time.
"I feel that a reputation is not to be gained in an out-of-the-way place like Colorado Springs, and the best plan to make one's self known is to come East and exhibit my works, and should I succeed in getting commissions to paint views of this part of country I can come West in May or June next..."
He did so by March of that year as reported in Washington papers but still had not sold all of his property in Colorado as late as 1881, when records show as owner of an ice house and nine acres of land in Colorado Springs.
Paris returned to Colorado several times in the ensuing years and sketched a number of scenes in and around Cripple Creek in 1892.
"Mr. Walter Paris has returned from Cripple Creek bringing with him some excellent sketches of the town from various points in the vicinity and two water colors of mountain scenery. He also has a very vigorous sketch the main street while the fire was in progress Wednesday night," reported the Colorado Springs paper.
Described as "a large man, broad-shoulders, well-built, and wore a mustache and full beard squarely cut," in the Dictionary of American Biography, he seemed to be well-connected here in the U.S. and his native England, in fact attending a White House reception hosted by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. He died in Washington in November of 1906 at the age of 54 from the effects of a stroke.
"He had a dignity which verged on pomposity and was slow and heavy in movement and speech, and latter distinctly British in accent... Of his own work and attainments he held high opinion, and not infrequently frankly expressed, and he was intolerant of criticism, but this characteristic also may been only the armor worn to protect a supersensitive nature," according to the Dictionary of American Biography.

Photo caption 1: Ferdinand V. Hayden (left), who led the 1871 expedition of Yellowstone, talks with his assistant Walter Paris.
Photo caption 2: Traditional artwork of Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods by Walter Paris.

No surprise: Rough Riders heroes of a specific past

The whole town considered him a fragment of their own history

 By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

 When a kid, looking through the portraits of U.S. Presidents, naturally picks out one he identifies with, it's no surprise. There is a fellow, wide-faced, bespectacled, with a barrel chest, bushy mustache, and remember, a cowboy countenance ...

I came by my interest in Theodore Roosevelt, quite naturally.

The whole town considered him a fragment of their own history. "Rough Riders" were the prominent heroes of our specific past. At least three of the 1,250 1st United States Volunteer Calvary hailed from the little town of Dolores, where I grew up. The 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry was first commanded by Colonel Leonard Wood.

Dolores cowboys James E. Akin and William H. Brumley, Jr. were both in Troop G, and Carl John Scharnhorst (or Schornhorst in some muster info), Jr., who served first in Troop F, then transferred to Troop I in San Antonio.

When American newspapers cried out, "Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain," the boys from Dolores, along with group from Durango, and Theodore Roosevelt, serving at the time as assistant secretary of the Navy, dropped everything to heed the call. Roosevelt resigned his office on May 6, 1898 — the day he secured a commission — and set about putting together a calvary regiment to lead into battle.

Roosevelt helped put together and train the outfit comprised of cowboys, hunters, miners, Indians, policemen, bronc busters and men from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, becoming "The Rough Riders," a moniker adopted from Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

Most of the members of G Troop were from the New Mexico Territory, a total of 37. The second most prolific state was Illinois with 12. Other states represented include Texas, Arizona, Missouri, New York, Massachusetts, the Indian Territory, Louisiana, Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, Michigan, Colorado, New Jersey, Kentucky, California, West Virginia and Nebraska. Most all enlisted at Santa Fe in early May, 1898, and were to receive their training at San Antonio which was selected as the training center for the 1st US Vol. Cavalry.

Colonel Wood arrived in San Antonio on Thursday, May 5, 1898. The contingent from New Mexico arrived on May 10. For the time being they were quartered in the Exposition Hall near the center of the fairgrounds. On May 11, Colonel Wood announced that there would be three squadrons of four troops each. Each troop would contain 65 but later was increased.

On May 12, the regiment was taken on a long extended drill of marching several miles from camp and over two hours of drill. Squadron drill came in the afternoon, followed by first regimental drill formation. On May 14, G Troop was issued their Krag Model 1896 carbine.

Roosevelt, by his monied connections and notable influence, had made that happen, as well, by "hurrying up the different bureaus and telegraphing my various railroad friends, so as to insure our getting carbines, saddles and uniforms that we needed from the various armories and storehouses," as he wrote in his book, "Rough Riders."

May 18, had the excitement of the demonstration of a new weapon, Colt’s rapid fire guns. These guns could fire 500 rounds per minute. On May 19, tents arrived at the camp. These were dog tents consisting of two pieces four feet wide, and six-and-a-half feet long, buttoned together over a ridge pole about three feet high.

Drill continued all through May. The heat was punishing with several of the Rough Riders suffering its effects, but they continued to drill. May 29 reveille sounded at 3 a.m., an hour earlier than usual. By 9 a.m., the regiment was on their way to the stockyards to load on the waiting trains.

The Rough Riders reached Tampa June 2. Not having enough transport ships, the Rough Riders would go as dismounted cavalry. They would operate as infantry while in Cuba.

G Troop would travel to Cuba on the transport ship the "Yucatan" and arrive at Daiquiri on June 22. The landing at Daiquiri was unopposed. Any Spanish in the area had already took off toward Santiago.

William H. H. Llewellyn served as the captain of Troop G.

Llewellyn had previously served as Indian Agent on Mescalero Apache Reservation in southern New Mexico. He soon became one of the few agents who considered the welfare of his charges, worked for their betterment, subjected them to discipline and won their respect. He organized an Indian police force and strove to bring the lawless situation on the reservation under control. Going hunting with them, the Mescaleros called him “Tata Crooked Nose”. 

In 1883 he also became agent for the Jicarilla Apaches and supervised their transfer to the Mescalero reservation. Later he established an Indian boarding school, added a doctor to the agency staff and had the Indians join the Cattle Growers Association.

In Cuba Captain Llewellyn was credited with an important contribution to the American victory in the battle for a hill at San Juan. Dubbed “Kettle Hill”, a sentry named Ralph McFie had been posted for night duty, when he heard the stirrings of Spanish troops moving into position. Retreating to his own lines he was intercepted by Captain Llewellyn. McFie was also from Las Cruces and Llewellyn knew him well. The Captain lost no time to notify headquarters, causing the promoted Colonel Roosevelt to order an early counterattack that went into history as the celebrated charge of San Juan Heights.

McFie’s vigilance and Llewellyn’s prompt action earned the latter a promotion to Major. The campaign also caused him to contract yellow fever and put him into the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

As Roosevelt’s comrade-in-arms on San Juan Heights, Llewellyn returned to Las Cruces as something of a war hero. 

Since the 1890’s Llewellyn had been a member of the New Mexico Territorial Militia, and when he was appointed Judge Advocate General of the New Mexico National Guard, he was promoted to Colonel. He also was active since at least 1899 in New Mexico’s long drawn out struggle for statehood, in fact serving as Speaker of the House in the Territorial Legislature. He served in the Constitutional Convention of 1910 and in November 1911, was chosen a member of New Mexico’s first state legislature, where he represented Dona Ana County.

President Roosevelt never lost his affection for his battle buddies and appointed them to important political offices whenever the opportunity presented itself. Among his special friends was Colonel William H. H. Llewellyn of Las Cruces, New Mexico, who was close enough to the President to dine with him at the White House, to escort Mrs. Roosevelt to the Theater, and who is one of the few 1st Calvary soldiers the President mentions in his autobiography.

I picked out the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., as a kid, because I identified with him. And the whole town consider him a fragment of our history. We came by it quite naturally. And it is no surprise.

The craft: Passed on from one generation to another

Bound to be musical because he was brought up around a piano

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Fifty or sixty years ago, you could wander into a newspaper office and take up a craft that was pretty much same as it had been for 150 years.
Now, as noted in a recent CBS Sunday Morning story, there is really only one Saguache Crescent, run by Dean Coombs, last of the hot-type publishers.
"The press itself dates to about 1915 -- about as long as the Coombs family has been publishing the Crescent, every week, since 1917. The same intricate choreography -- perfected and passed on, one generation to the next," according to CBS.
"They hooked my baby carriage to the back of that press," Coombs said. "The carriage would go back and forth," rocking him to sleep.
"To put it another way, Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain could walk into the Crescent office and go right to work. The Linotype machine might be a novelty to Franklin (And Twain lost heavily with an investment in a competing machine which, he claimed, “could do everything a human printer can do except get drunk on Saturday night,”) but the cases of hand-set type would be familiar, as would the mutton quads, rules, dingbats, platen pins, chases, quoins, galley trays, and proof press," wrote the late Ed Quillen, way back in 1995.
"I don't actually think there might even be another newspaper in the world using Linotype," Coombs said. "There are none on the United States."
Another paper I am familiar with, of course, The Courier, had a hot type history. The Courier, which is a direct descendant of several papers from Teller County, was started by one Ernest Chapin Gard, who also founded The Palmer Lake Herald, and the Monument Register, as well as about 20 other papers around the country, 11 of them in Colorado.
Gold’s discovery in the Cripple Creek District precipitated Gard and his partner’s race to become the first newspaper in Cripple Creek. He pulled out all the stops to beat William McRea by four days, publishing the first edition of the Cripple Creek Crusher on Dec. 4, 1891.  Descendant of the Crusher and other consolidations, The Cripple Creek Gold Rush still published until 2007 when it became incorporated into Pikes Peak Courier View, of Woodland Park. It is now simply the Pikes Peak Courier.
Gard, and partner W.S. Neal, celebrated the feat by printing in gilded ink — a layer of gold over the regular ink — for the inaugural edition. McRea, four days late and perhaps more than a dollar short, sported vermilion headlines that said “New Gold Field.”

To confuse matters a bit more, the Geddes family armed with a loan from the Golden Cycle Corporation,  Kenneth and Margaret, bought the daily Times-Record of the district on 

April 1, 1941. Descendant of the Crusher and the product of consolidations of the Victor Record and the Cripple Creek Times, the Geddes closed on the deal, and then had to turn around and get an eight-page paper out that afternoon.

"We went to the office the morning after we settled the deal and realized we have to fill up eight pages in time to distribute by 5 p.m.," wrote Margaret Geddes in "Gold Camp Indian Summer."

"We discovered how our lives would be changed on the first day. We met the force, which included a foreman, two Linotype operators, two men for general shop work — and then there was Freddie., who admitted he had a difficult time with second grade," Geddes wrote.

"Freddie had a little boy, Eugene, who also had trouble with second grade. Eugene was bound to be musical, his daddy said, 'since he was brought up around a piano.'"

My own history is reflected similarly. Having grown up watching the hot-type Dolores Star being put to bed every week, I was bound to be inked-stained, as I was brought up around a Linotype. The craft, it seems, is passed on from one generation to the next.
And then there is the Dolores Star.

But that is the world of the first newspaper I came in contact with.

The first time I set foot in the Dolores Star, I might have been all of three years old. My next-door neighbors, Larry and Marilyn Pleasant owned “The Star” at that time and their son Andy, was a few months younger than I.

Andy and I played in the attic balcony office, somewhat out of danger of running our tiny fingers through the machinery in busy office below. The Star then, was in between John Lambert’s (the one-legged blacksmith) and Mary Akin’s little shop, but with growing job printing and the tendency for the Pleasants to collect stuff, things were pretty tightly crammed in there. A huge, white, clapboard cabinet contained a few toys in the overhead office but the real entertainment was below.

As the business grew, (and the amount of stuff collected), it became increasingly necessary to find a bigger home for Dolores Star.

 

 

The Exon Mercantile Building, built by old man Exon shortly after the town moved up from Big Bend in 1891, was just across what we called Main Street then, and on the corner.

It was a typical turn-of-century, brick building, with decorative cornice work and wood floors, an office up front that looked out on the sidewalk though large windows, and a massive open room with wooden shelves that ran up the walls all the way to the 12-foot pressed tin ceilings. There was another long room extending the length of the building on the side behind the office; and wooden locker-like storage rooms near the back of the open room. Behind them was my favorite ‘old building’ feature of all time — the rope and pulley-powered platform elevator to the basement. Out the back door on the downriver side, was another room that had been the old smoke house. A barn and assorted sheds filled out the property toward the back.

The move of “The Star” building to what formerly constituted Exon Mercantile was quite a deal, as I remember it. Linotype machines, and presses, and other heavy printing equipment rolled across the street on iron pipe, that was moved from the back of the machines, up to the front. Tons of iron inched forward across the street, pushed and pulled by straining men and a few women. Amazingly, I think moving the big stuff took less than a week. But for years afterward, additional items (some involving the newspaper or printing business, but much of it, local historic arcana) continued to collect in the sprawling buildings at the corner of Fourth and Main.

Today, a rusted Linotype parked on the sidewalk, still calls attention to a craft, almost forgotten.

 

 

###

An 'Oh Crap! moment' in Colorado mining history

"The usual shift was about 125 people. It would have killed everybody."

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

We have all been there.

My dad called them "Oh crap! moments," but some are worse than others.

In the mining and exploration industry, my brother tells of the dangerous predicament of 'setting a post' or a concrete plug that blows out of a well head at extreme velocity, destroying everything in its path.

At Lake Peigneur, Louisiana, there was 'the swirling vortex of doom.' Nov. 21, 1980, a twelve-man Texaco drilling crew was forced to stop by loud popping noises, the precarious leaning of the rig, and then a fresh-water lake covering 1,300 acres in about 11-feet of water creates a steadily accelerating whirlpool a quarter of a mile in diameter, with its center directly over the drill site and drops 3.5 billion gallons of water (over about three hours) into Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, just below. Fifty miners are still in the the mine, rigs and other structures are being pulled into the vortex.

"Meanwhile, up on the surface, the tremendous sucking power of the whirlpool was causing violent destruction. It swallowed another nearby drilling platform whole, as well as a barge loading dock, 70 acres of soil from Jefferson Island, trucks, trees, structures, and a parking lot. The sucking force was so strong that it reversed the flow of a 12-mile-long canal which led out to the Gulf of Mexico, and dragged 11 barges from that canal into the swirling vortex, where they disappeared into the flooded mines below. It also overtook a manned tug on the canal, which struggled against the current for as long as possible before the crew had to leap off onto the canal bank and watch as the lake consumed their boat," according to Damninteresting.com.

"After three hours, the lake was drained of its 3.5 billion gallons of water. The water from the canal, now flowing in from the Gulf of Mexico, formed a 150-foot waterfall into the crater where the lake had been, filling it with salty ocean water. As the canal refilled the crater over the next two days, nine of the sunken barges popped back to the surface like corks, though the drilling rigs and tug were left entombed in the ruined salt mine," said the site.

"Despite the enormous destruction of property, no human life was lost in this disaster, nor were there any serious injuries. Within two days, what had previously been an eleven-foot-deep freshwater body was replaced with a 1,300-foot-deep saltwater lake. The lake's biology was changed drastically, and it became home to many species of plants and fish which had not been there previously."

Here in Colorado, just a few years before, there was Lake Emma, and the Sunnyside Mine incident.

"On June 4, 1978, a major physical disaster struck the Sunnyside Mine. At that time rich gold was being mined on the Spur vein under Lake Emma. Although previous core drilling had been done to determine that the mine was a safe distance from the bottom of the lake, 70 feet above.  The lake had been formed thousands of years ago by the scouring action of a glacier. When the glacier passed over the hard quartz-gold vein, it plucked a thin sliver of rock from the downhill side of the vein.  The sliver, about 20 feet in diameter, extended downward about 65 feet below the bottom of the lake," wrote Allen  G. Bird in "Silverton Gold," in 1986.

"On a Sunday afternoon, when the mine crews were at home, lake Emma broke through the spot and emptied thousands of gallons of water and over one million tons of mud into the mine. The crater on the surface was the length of three football fields and about 500 feet wide. The water and the mud had about 1,800-foot fall to reach the American Tunnel level. A 20-ton Plymouth Locomotive parked below the main ore pass was completely flattened. All timber, except for a 200-foot section between "G" and "F" levels, was stripped from the Washington Incline Shaft. All mining tunnels, including the mile-long Terry and the two-mile-long American were filled to the top with mud. Although the mine was insured for $900 million, the insurance company refused to pay any damages. After an expensive court battle, the insurance company was ordered to pay, although they actually paid only about $5,500,000. Had the breakthrough occurred any time other than Sunday, over 125 men would have been killed, leaving no survivors," wrote Bird.

"We all had a close call when Lake Emma  flooded and caved in the mine," said Silverton Miner Terry Rhoades in oral histories captured in "Colorado Mining Stories, Hazards, Heroics, Humor" by Caroline Arlen. " The engineers had actually tested it under the lake for depth. They figured it was a fault going up there, because there was real bad water coming through. They didn't realize it was half full of mud," Rhoades said.

"The guys that were driving that stope — I think it was Fred and Harry Castle — they refused to go to work that Friday night because they said that water was pouring out of there. That Sunday it came through. Luckily nobody was underground. There were places, like where I had been working, where the mud wouldn't have got you, but there was no way you would have been able to make your way out of there, You would have starved to death." 

In the same book, Rick Ernst agrees.

"When Lake Emma caved in and flooded the mine, that was the beginning of the end, right there. The lake was over the mine. I guess they had us mine up too close to it. It was real lucky it waited until Sunday to cave in. it could have happened any other day of the week. Nobody was underground Sunday. The usual shift was about 125 people. It would have killed everybody," Ernst said.

Oh crap!, to say the least.