Ray Holden documented the terror that at times accompanied work in the mines

Back in 1952, the rain was interfering in Ray Holden’s work and he was getting restless. His sweet wife, Josephine, suggested that he sit down and write the story of the scariest day in his life. She even thought he should send it to Reader’s Digest. He never sent the story to the Reader’s Digest. But Ray’s son, Gene Holden, has shared Ray’s handwritten memory with us. The Sentinel may not be the Reader’s Digest but we can get Ray’s memory in print. This is Ray’s story (punctuation added).

I have been a lead and zinc miner for 23 years [since 1929] in the Joplin [Webb City] Mining District. I have prospected and mined for myself and worked for large companies, so naturally I have had some narrow escapes.

At the instigation of my wife, and as I haven’t anything else to do, I will tell of an experience I had when I first started into mining. In the little town I lived in there was an extensive lot of prospecting and mining on a small scale for shallow deposits of lead and zinc. They would lease so much ground for a royalty on their ore, if they made a strike they would usually build a little derrick, maybe put in a horse hoister that was geared so the horse would go around in the same circle so many revolutions to twist the cable and bring the bucket out. They would clean this ore on hand jigs. When they mined their deposit of ore out, they would go somewhere else and start again. I was about 18 or 19 years old when another fellow (J.F. Ryburn) and I thought we would try our hand at mining, as jobs were awful hard to get.

Sometimes in those days, the miners would not mine all their ore out, or it would cave in or something. There had been several gold strikes hit by going in some old ground supposedly that had been worked out. Well, we knew of a big cave, where there had been a big ore deposit and some prospectors had sunk a shaft in the edge of the cave about 20 feet deep and driven a drift through the lime, out about 30 feet from the shaft, then they had started taking out lead. Well, they had mined it so lightly and wide there was no support for the ground and big slabs would break loose sometimes. We worked there for a few days without anything happening, but one day, we got the scare of our lives.

The drift driven out of the shaft was a small drift and it had been filled partly up with mine tailings. And we had to crawl to get to the room we were working in, where there was a large lime rock they had neglected to move as it was rather large and heavy. So, being greenhorns at mining, we squeezed between the rock and the roof, which was a big slab of rock about four feet thick and 25 or 30 feet long and it was loose on one end, resting on some loose dirt.

Well, we had been at work about two hours that morning and things were beginning to get interesting as we had found some good lead, some pieces weighing 25 to 50 pounds or over. In our excitement, we had forgot to “watch and listen,” as we were always skittish of that place.

Suddenly, we both heard a report like a pistol shot and right after that a rumble. We got nervous and started to investigate. The first thing we thought about, was our way out. So I beat it over to our hole, when to my consternation I couldn’t even get my legs between the rock and the roof. Well, I heaved on the rock but couldn’t even get it to budge. So I went over to where J.F. was watching the other wall, expecting another slab to break loose. We talked about both of us moving the rock if we could, but he advised against it. If we did and it came on down as we were crawling out it would mash us, so he thought it would be better to stay there and risk it. Well, while we were arguing the slab turned loose again and made an awful racket. What made it worse was some of the others (rocks) were loosening and you could hear them work and growl. Well, I really got scared that time, as I figured if we stayed in the room we would be doomed anyway.

I was so scared I would take a chance on anything, just so I was trying to get to the surface. To this day, I don’t know how I ever done it. But I reached down and lifted that big rock aside and dug my way to the shaft. My partner,J.F., was right behind me, and when we reached the surface the first thing he said was, “How in the name of God did you move that boulder?” Well, I was very thankful to get out, and I know I had had some other help besides me. So I answered, “That is just the way it was moved (with the help of God).”

You don’t realize how pretty the birds sing, how bright and pretty the sun shines, how pretty all nature is until you are shut up like that and expecting to never see those things again. Then you can really appreciate them and count yourself very lucky.

What a great memory (with a happy ending). It’s a memory that would have been lost if Ray Holden had not taken a moment to write it down. And thanks to Gene Holden for sharing it with us.