TUNNEL BLUES

That old mining machine was broke down again. What a piece of shit. Now we had to blast fucking rock...and rib and lag the tunnel. This meant hours of holding a 40 lb. pneumatic clay spade over my head. We had to manually drill and shoot the rock. My arms felt like two toothaches, every night at the end of our shift. I had no trouble raising the shot glass to my whiskers, however.

The dynamite powder gave me a headache every day. We were jacking 48-inch pipe. A man can't stand erect in these bastards. We put in our own ventilation lines, set and bolted our track for the dinky, put hydraulic hoses together, welded with hard surface and #7018 rod. A lot of our work was done on our knees. Kneeling on concrete all day ain't hard when you are in your 30's. Now I walk with pain every day. I never thought I would get old.

I'll tell you something though...I was glad to have the work, back then. It was winter in the Midwest and at least it was have ways warm in those clay tunnels. I was lucky I wasn't laid-off and had the winter work.

My crew and I stayed stoned on pot all day long. I carried a pint of Seagram's 7 in my rubber boot. Being high made the job more bearable. I know I got the damned arthritis from jobs like this.

I bet the wealthy never had to kneel down on concrete or weld in confined areas...at least most of 'em. I read in the newspaper that the major corporations don't have to pay any taxes, and the rich just got a tax break from 35 down to 25%...That means that working guys like me have to pay more taxes than these Mercedes driving, cigar smoking, two-thousand dollar suited bastards. Gas is approaching five bucks a gallon, and they are stock piling it. What a crock of shit. This is America, home of the unfree middle class, and land of the thieving rich.

The wealthy are pushing to bust the unions in this country. Miners like me, are always screwed one way or another. They want to pay us Walmart wages. "We all need to tighten our belts", they say. So here's the thing...They don't get dirty, they don't pay taxes, they don't live from check to check, and they are making millions upon millions of dollars, without hiring any Americans. Is there something I don't get with this picture? I've got the tunnel blues.