Just asking . . .

Why, in this modern age, does it take so long--usually over two months after work starts--to replace a road bridge in Boulder County? Recent examples: the bridge just completed on 95th Street over Boulder Creek; now one on Niwot Road over the Feeder Canal, and another one on 95th Street just south of Longmont over Lefthand Creek—all with closures and some with seemingly lengthy detours. Still being worked on is a bridge over Boulder Creek at Highway 52 and east county line. Fortunately, one lane has been kept open there for traffic.

Meanwhile out on the range: Boulder County is seeking volunteer open space patrollers for the county’s parks and open space areas, a news item said. They will undergo two days of training and wear a park-patroller shirt and nametag.

“Patroller” sounds ominous and too many people tend to let a little bit of authority go to their head. Will these people be deputized and armed? Will they write tickets? Will they be insured if a rattlesnake bites them? Doesn’t the county’s OS Dept. already have a fleet of four-wheelers of its own with trained personnel for patrolling. Where are they?

Why is it that tobacco smoke, even secondhand, has been declared a serious health hazard, while marijuana smoke escapes this aggressive condemnation? Both add particulates to the lungs and to the atmosphere -- as pictured at the April 20 Boulder smoke-out, where CU police issued a dozen tickets.

How can an organization that’s pushing pot get away with threatening the DA when he’s carrying out his official duties? Certainly the Cannabis Therapy Institute has free-speech rights and its promise to derail the Boulder DA’s quest for higher office (state attorney general) unless he drops the 12 ganja-related cases may be seen as politics by some. Yet it unnecessarily puts the DA on the spot: If he acts to strictly pursue the laws to their disliking, he could be called retaliatory and prejudiced; if he fails to act or dilutes the charges, then he could be regarded by others as being soft on crime. The media can’t have it both ways.

On the sports scene: Why does the Denver news media let the NBA get away with scheduling most of the Nuggets playoff games, even those played at home, so late in the evening? The Denver market deserves better. Oh well, pay-to-view is in store for all the major sports, so maybe we commoners should be grateful to see any game for free –- no matter the time frame.

More on “sports”: The NFL suspended Pittsburgh’s Big Ben Roethlisberger for his indiscretion, while MLB’s Mark McGwire (back with the Cards), Sammy Sosa et al., NBA’s Kobe Bryant and PGA’s Tiger Woods all escaped that stigma for theirs.

Finally, what’s this business with telephone surveys? Do people with cell and gadget phones escape this annoyance? I don’t know how it is at your house, but at mine hardly a day goes by without the phone ringing with someone taking a survey on something or other. I think it’s an invasion of privacy—after all, our home is supposed to be our castle. Furthermore, because they’re closer to the people, representatives in local government should be able to monitor public sentiment themselves. That’s one reason for the neighborhood ward system, and the casual vis-à-vis sessions are helpful. Otherwise, we may as well go completely plebiscite.

Explosions not a rare phenomenon in local coal mines

As the two most recent tragedies in West Virginia and China show, coal mining is a dangerous occupation and local-area mines of the early 1900s were not immune. The following excerpts are from two books authored by Carolyn Conarroe, “The Louisville Story” and “Coal Mining in Colorado’s Northern Field.”

Mining was hard work for long hours. The early mining was done without the benefit of mechanized, labor saving equipment. Men worked with skill, not fear, although there were dangers.

Mine accidents were recorded in ledgers in offices at the mines. After 1909 when Colorado Governor John Shafroth ordered inspections in the coal mines, the accidents became a matter of state record. Injuries and deaths were statistics, a consequence of working with the danger. A fall of coal or rock from the ceiling of a room caused many deaths and injuries. Coal cars in motion had to be avoided. Coal dust and gas caused explosions.

For decades operators held miners responsible for accidents: they had been careless. An inquest into a fatal mine accident would rule the cause as unavoidable and the operator had no liability.

Explosions were a danger to which miners were always alert. Newspaper reports in 1902 told of Louisville’s Sunnyside Mine having four gas explosions in one month. The last one killed a miner and another was burnt badly.

The Simpson Mine at Lafayette also experienced explosion and fire in 1902. The Denver Times reported that gas exploded Nov. 20 at the mine. Men and mules were evacuated. Air was turned to force the fire toward the shaft and water was then poured onto the fire. The mine was reopened Nov. 24.

The worst mine explosion in the Northern Field was at Monarch Mine, south of Louisville, in the early morning of January 20, 1936. A crew of 10 men had entered the mine to do prep work for the 100 day-shift workers. (Notation: Miracle of miracles, they were not in the mine at the time.) The fire-boss was inspecting because coal dust had been accumulating on the mine floor. The force of the explosion shattered mine timbers and rock falls filled in an area where two passageways came together. It was speculated that two coal cars had collided at the intersection during the pre-shift work and sparks from the collision ignited the coal dust.

Two men in the mine escaped: Nick Del Pizzo and William Jenkins Jr. were able to reach an airshaft and climbed 300 feet to safety.

Losing their lives were Steve Davis, the fire boss; Ray Bailey, Oscar Baird, Tom Stevens, Tony DeSantis, Kester Novinger, Leland Ward, and Joe Jaramillo, mule-driver, whose body was never recovered. A monument to his memory, which was placed over the approximate site of the explosion has been moved and is now in a park area on the north side of FlatIron Crossing Mall.

Monarch Mine was reopened for mining as soon as the debris could be cleared. As in every case of explosion, fire or mine accident, whether fatal or not, the miners returned to their work at the first signal of their mine’s whistle.

Addendum:

One of the signal pleasures of my life when my family and I published the Louisville Times from 1965 to 1998 was to take a few minutes away from my work nearly every morning to join the conversations at Joe Colacci’s Blue Parrot coffee club, just down the street from my office. Almost any topic was fair game, but I always considered it a privilege to listen whenever the old coal miners who happened to be there would open up about their experiences, not only the “close calls” but some of the humor they shared as well.

Joe himself started out to be a miner, but gave it up. Traditionally, fathers took their sons into the mines at a tender age to teach them the skills. Joe (who is now deceased) said he was working alongside his dad Mike in a room when they heard a crack snap across the roof. Ready for lunch anyway, the two decided to go into another room to eat. Crash, the ceiling where they had just been working collapsed. It would have buried them alive. A similar event claimed the life of Rome Perrella’s dad only a few days earlier, Joe said.

John Madonna Jr. told of his dad taking a job at the Columbine Mine near Erie, a distance that appears to be about five miles from his Louisville home. No matter the nasty weather or physical exhaustion, he walked both ways every day.

On a lighter note, John Jr. (now 91 years old) was working in a mine when the anvil in the mine’s machine shop turned up missing. Weighing a guesstimated 250 pounds, it was traced to a burly miner who confessed to just picking it up and carrying it home after dark. The boss told the absconder to return it. And he did, carrying it back.

City and County are barking up the wrong tree

With apologies to the renowned poet Joyce Kilmer, I too think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree. There may be justifiable reasons for killing off a certain variety of these living organisms, but in at least one case I have my doubts.

Having grown up on the high plains of east-central Colorado at Calhan (alt. 6,507 ft. vs. Longmont’s 4,979 ft.) and not being an arborist, I can only cite my experiences. In that region it was difficult to grow almost any kind of a deciduous tree, especially out on the open prairie, because of the soil condition (mostly adobe), scarce moisture with a lack of live water, and little or no irrigation. Evergreens thrived in the rocky hills to the northwest of Calhan in the Black Forest. But out on the prairie the most likely to adapt were deciduous trees, notably the Cottonwood, which is truly a water guzzler, the Chinese Elm, and the Russian Olive. Fruit trees and most hardwoods were scarce. Hardy buffalo grass, chokecherry and lilac shrubs, soap weeds and pear cacti rounded out the greenery.

In defense of the lowly Russian Olive tree, Elaeagnus angustifolia, which the U.S.D.A. 50 years ago recommended for planting but later declared it a noxious weed and ordered its eradication, most of the farmers and ranchers that I remember left it alone because it provided not only cover and sustenance for birds and wild animals, but offered shade and often windbreak for domestic animals as well. In the rare riparian areas, its roots helped knit the precious topsoil to keep it from washing away when the rains did come. Like some varieties of locust trees, the Russian Olive does produce thorny limbs.

But that unpleasant feature can be forgiven for the beautiful silvery leaves it produces which offer an interesting contrast when mixed among other tree varieties, as currently seen in the grove along the east side of Highway 42 just north of Baseline Road in Lafayette, at the old Beauprez dairy farm. Those beautiful Russian Olives have been there a long time without spreading like weeds.

It would be a shame to deliberately kill those trees “because they’re weeds,” and I’m sorry to see our Longmont and Boulder County open-space authorities engaging in this senseless war against a tree that has gotten a bum rap. Let them live , , , for only God can make a tree.