Mineros — Rockdalians remember hard work and life in their new country

Back before the invention of draglines, in the early 1900s, mining lignite in Rockdale was strictly a man and mule operation. Men and boys hacked away with pickaxes for nine to ten hours a day inside spaces no larger than an elevator to earn a wage. Mules pulled thousands of tons of coal up out of cavernous holes around Milam County every day. During these times there were no unions, no labor laws, and no safety regulations. The work was arduous, exhaustive, and dangerous.

Many of the men who worked the mines traveled from Mexico. They were fleeing from the fallout of the Mexican Revolution. And it is their descendants that make up the majority of the Mexican American population of Rockdale. A few of the children of these miners recalled their parents' trials and tribulations for The Rockdale Reporter.

“My Daddy was a soldier for one of the parties in Mexico. It was a volunteer position,” said Domingo Juarez of his father, Dario. “My granddaddy, Estanislao, pulled him out of the ranks. I'm glad he did because I wouldn’t be here today. He probably would have died.”

The Mexican Revolution was brought about by the disagreement among the Mexican people over the dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz. The Mexican people had no power to express their opinions or select public officials, and wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few. Around this time, young people arose who wanted to participate in the political life of their country. People like Francisco Villa, Emiliano Zapata, and Francisco I. Madero. There was lawlessness and plundering similar to the state of events in present-day Iraq.

“They would grab kids eight and nine years old and put them in the army as long as they were old enough to carry a rifle,” Natividad Zapata, the oldest of the 13, remembered of his father, Feliciano Lumbreras (Chano) Zapata.

Both Chano Zapata and Dario Juarez came to Rockdale by way of Eagle Pass in the early 1900s. They worked in the mines with nearly 2,000 other Mexican nationals as the town was having a minor boom. The heyday of the lignite business was between 1910 and 1920, and as many as 45 to 50 railroad cars of lignite were sent out each day. During World War I, lignite brought $5 a ton.

In the history of Milam County, there were 12 coal mines operating at the time, creating plenty of opportunities for work. Each mine had a camp and a store with a saloon. The saloon, according to Margaret Eleanor Robinson’s “A Pictorial History of Milam County,” 1949. Communities like Big Lump, named after the Big Lump Coal Company, were established with a hotel, boardinghouse, commissary, and post office.

“I don’t remember any pay checks to hold up in a frame,” Basilisa Masiel remembered. “However much or how little you made, the work you could barely make ends meet.”

Jose Angel Mireles, who worked in the Vogel and Lorenz mines, was paid in tokens that could be redeemed at company commissaries. Workers were often hurt but stayed on the job until they healed. To get to the mine, they were left off at the tracks and went up to the tunnel. One shaft was for freight, and one was for a small rail car. The car was loaded into the main freight/elevator shaft, and the coal was lifted out of the mines by windlass. A windlass is a machine made of a drum with a rope turned by a crank, similar to how a water well operates.

Domingo Juarez said his father told him that many of the tunnels under the homes were abandoned in the mines when they were worked through. Injured miners were brought up to the windlass and out of the coal shafts. The cars were hoisted up and down filled with coal by the windlass, then transported. Sometimes injuries were sustained from falls.

"My Daddy got hurt on the elevator platform when the rope broke and he fell all the way down," said Domingo Juarez. "Doctor Barkley tended to his broken rib. The other man riding with Dario Juarez was killed in the accident."

Basilisa Masiel remembered her father suffering from bouts of pneumonia during the winter months, caused by years of working in the mines. When he was out of commission, Masiel’s mother would have to find work in other cities to support the family. Masiel recalled one particular time when her father, Jose, fell and broke his rib. The doctor pronounced him good as dead due to the prolonged pneumonia.

"Doctor Barkley told him to go home and wait until he died," Masiel recalled. "Luckily, a little boy came by and gave him the address to a yerbatero (herb doctor) in Mexico. Jose Mireles wrote to the yerbatero, who wrote him back with strict diet guidelines and a white powder to mix with water and drink every day. I remember a cyst developed under his right arm, right where his lungs were. It came to a head and burst, and after that he was better," Masiel recalled. "Doctor Barkley was surprised to see my daddy three weeks later at the drug store."

When miners were healthy, their workdays were long. Chano Zapata would wake up at 4:00 AM, eat breakfast that consisted of beans and tortillas, dress in clean bib overalls, walk three miles to work carrying his lunch sack, and work from 6:00 AM until the noon lunch whistle. After lunch, he would work until 4:00 PM, then walk home. "You could hear that whistle for miles," recalled Natividad Zapata. "It was a lot like the fire station horn we hear at 6:00 now."

Chano Zapata's daughter, Amelia Montelongo, remembered the black coal dust that covered her father's skin and clothes. "My momma always had a clean set of clothes laying outside for him, and he took a shower outside by the shed. He was too black to come into the house," she said. "Momma had to wash his uniform every day by boiling water in a pilas (cauldron) and scrubbing the overalls."

Workers were issued two sets of bib overalls, a pickaxe, and a cap with a carbide light on the visor. "The caps were similar to caps worn by railroad engineers," Natividad Zapata said. "They weren't hard hats, they were made of cloth and had blue and white stripes. You had to turn them on with a match."

Simon Aldama, a Rockdale resident, remembered his father being covered in soot from head to toe. "He was so dirty, not even our family dog could stand him," he said. "My momma said my daddy's dog, Africano, could meet him at the railroad tracks and help daddy take off his dirty clothes."

Many Rockdalians with the last names Villarreal, Garza, Moreno, Juarez, Ledesma, Hernandez, Lopez, Acosta, Mendez, Jimenez, Flores, Mora, Rodriguez, Romero, Ruiz, Sanchez, Zapata, Zamora, and many more have relatives that worked in the mines. They were hardworking and dependable people.

Amelia Montelongo recalled her father, Chano Zapata, saying, "I never heard him say he was tired. He got home, and there were horses, cows, and pigs that all had to be tended to. He started working right when he got home."

Mr. E.A. Camp gave him a piece of land where he planted a garden. "We would eat everything from the garden that we could," she said. "Mr. McCoy gave him credit for the land. Many of the landowners in Rockdale had a large number of Mexicans working for them. They sharecropped the land and built homes along the road just north of the Great Northern Railroad tracks in an area called La Reculta. The area housed a schoolhouse where the Mexican children attended school during the days."

La Escuelita (little school) was built next to the shack owned by the International Mine Company. "We used to go in the mine entrance at 4 a.m.," Natividad Zapata remembered when he was just a boy. "There were thugs, and we were afraid we were going to be attacked. We would get to work just as soon as they said so."

The adults at La Reculta kept their children away from the mine openings for fear of cave-ins. It was a common problem in mining, especially after a heavy rain. The worst mining accident in Milam County was recorded in October of 1913. One miner was killed and seven others were trapped inside a mine tunnel for six days.

John Esten Cooke wrote in the October 16, 1913 issue of The Rockdale Reporter: "At 12 o’clock today during the torrential rainstorm, the Vogel-Lorenz lignite mine, three miles east of town, caved in and filled with water. Seven Mexican miners and a track mule were caught in the mine. All neighboring mines shut down and sent men to help with the rescue.”

The October 28 edition of the newspaper gave the details of the harrowing ordeal and listed the names of all the miners trapped in the cave-in.

One of the tunnels of the Vogel-Lorenz mine ran directly under a small creek. By noon, a torrential rainstorm that hit the town transformed the creek into a river. The creek bottom caved in, and the water catapulted into the mine some 70 feet below.

The miners had just returned to work after the noon hour, and there were about 30 men underground when the cave-in occurred. All who were on the main shaft side of the break escaped via the shaft elevator. Eight others were trapped in a tunnel that was sealed off from the shaft by water and dirt.

The seven who were rescued after six days were Farino Mireles, Jose Mireles, Andres Cruz, Mesed Hernandez, Regis Sanchez, Doroteio Flores, and Eustacia Rodriguez. Another miner, George Lopez, was caught in another part of the mine and died apparently of suffocation. His body was later recovered.

Cooke wrote: "It was indeed an animated scene at the Vogel mine Tuesday night when the seven miners who had been imprisoned for almost six full days were brought to the surface alive. There was a crowd of several hundred present, all classes of life being represented and apparently all class distinctions being forgotten for the nonce. Rockdale citizens, regardless of station, seemed as happy over the rescue of these men as if they had been old-time friends."

Jose Mireles, who was 18 at the time of the cave-in, was interviewed by The Reporter in 1974 and he talked about the experience. “I guess I was scared, but you know I was just a boy and didn’t really realize the danger I was in,” he said.

He was the first one pulled out of the mine and seemed to fare better than his older coworkers. “We could hear the rescue workers digging toward us and we never gave up hope,” he told The Reporter.

The miners huddled together and the mule that was trapped with them “followed us around like a dog,” Mireles said. And it was the same mule that led the rescuers to the men. When the rescue party broke through, the mule’s eager braying brought the news to the imprisoned men that their salvation was assured. It also brought the news to those on the surface that there was great hope of finding the miners alive, too.

The men were found 100 feet from the shaft and had to be carried out. “That daylight sure did look good,” Mireles said, remembering the ordeal 61 years ago when he was interviewed at 76 years old. He stopped working for the mines in the late Twenties “when the great number of oil and natural gas fields throughout Texas almost eliminated the lignite market,” according to Batte.

It was a great relief to his family and daughter Basilisa Masiel especially. “I was always scared my daddy was going to die. I was glad when he left the mines.”