After I returned from the Amazon, I
put a job ad in "Trade-A-Plane" and received 22 job offers. Most were for
Ag work, which I did not want to do and some were for herding and coyote
hunting but there were 2 that were of interest to me. It came down
to a corporate position flying a jet ranger in support of a coal mine operation
in Kentucky or Chief Pilot of a start-up helicopter division for Jamaica
Airlines. I chose the adventure of Jamaica.
Jamaica has a long high ridge that
separates the country into two sections. The north side has the beaches
and resorts while the south side had Kingston, the airport, and the mines.
Jamaica Airlines came to the conclusion that a fleet of helicopters could
support the mining activities high on the ridge and support the growing
tourist industry as well. They saw my ad, gave me a call and within
days I was off to Boston for an interview.
Jamaica Airlines was considering adding
a fleet of several Hughes 500s and was looking for a chief pilot that was
used to living in foreign surroundings and one that could also supervise
the maintenance end of things. The pay was OK, so I told them I was
interested. A few days later I was informed that I was acceptable
but first I was to go to Jamaica and view the pending operation, at their
expense. They wanted to be sure that the local culture and
surroundings were acceptable for me before spending any real bucks on the
operation. Two days before I was to leave, Prime Minister Manley
told the world that he was going to "Nationalize" Jamaican industry and
the entire operation fell through. So I got on the phone and called
Harbert Construction concerning their job offer in support of coal mine
activities in Kentucky.
A few days later I found myself with
a prepaid ticket to Knoxville, Tennessee, where I was told to wait for
a helicopter to pick me up and take me to the operation. All kinds
of images were going through my head at the time. The starting pay
was good ($14,500) and the ship was a new jet ranger but all I could picture
in my mind was a gigantic whole in the ground and the ugly scares that
such operations leave. I figured I'd take a look see in any case.
Little did I know that I was about to begin 9 of the best and most productive
years of my aviation career.
Dale Bryant was the Harbert chopper
pilot that picked me up in their low skid, canary colored, jet ranger.
He was dual rated and the operation had grown such that he was needed in
the fixed wing end of things so it was decided to get a pilot/mechanic
so that he could keep up with all the service bulletins that were coming
out on the jet ranger. I was given a short tour of the local mines
and then we landed at the local Holiday Inn where I met with the people
that I would be flying for.
Harbert Construction was a large construction
firm headquartered out of Birmingham, Alabama. Years earlier they
had purchased a large coal mine in Middlesboro, Kentucky in order to utilize
their heavy machinery on a full time basis. The operation had grown with
the purchase of several additional mines and it seems they had gotten in
the coal business just as it was beginning to take off. The bosses
flew in from Birmingham on Tuesday and flew back on Thursday. It
would be my primary job to fly them between job sites and ferry needed
local personal, as needed, between the sites as well. I thought,
what-the-heck, so I said OK and was given the job. They gave me time
to return home and pack my things and so I moved to Harrogate, Tennessee
where I stayed for the next 26 years and where the writing of these stories
is now taking place.
In the first week flying for them
it was easy to see why a helicopter was needed. The Great Cumberland
Mountain range was a very long ridge system that ran from Tennessee, northeast
for several hundred miles. The ridge effectively put the farmland
to the east of it and the coalfields to the west. The coalfields
stretched from Tennessee to Pennsylvania and were so vast that it insured
a few hundred years of coal for the U.S. at the present rate of removal.
There was a problem thought and it was the lay of the land.
The valleys and ridges were like those on an orange peel, there seemed
to be no rhyme or reason to them. There is a saying among the people
that says "if you aren't standing on the side of a hill your standing in
the stream at the bottom of one." The lay of the land therefor isolated
an awful lot of people. It took you forever to drive anywhere and
railroads were few and far between. If you got behind a coal
truck that is where you stayed until he turned off then you probably had
another one
in front of that. Our furthest mine site was exactly 23 minutes by
air, it was 2-1/2 hrs by car. As I recall, their chopper was the
3rd of over 160 choppers that eventually would fly for the mining industry
in the coalfields.
The chopper was based, in a separate
hanger, at the main mine, (Mountain Drive Coal Company), that was located
close to Middlesboro, KY. Middlesboro (population 12,000) was
situated in a big meteor crater that was on the Kentucky side of the famous
Cumberland Gap, where Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee converged.
I chose to live in a little town called Harrogate, on the Tennessee side,
so that I would be closer to Norris Lake and Knoxville. Middlesboro
was the main city in the area because it was on the main north/south route
through the mountains. Cumberland Gap became famous because it was
the only gap, of many gaps in the ridge line, which aligned with a similar
gap in the next major ridge that afforded a more or less straight line
to the grasslands of Kentucky. The buffalo found the gap and
made a trail that the Indians followed. Thomas Walker then found
the Indian trail but Daniel Boone seemed to get all the credit for it.
The area is rich in history.
After I had settled in a little I was "unofficially"
adopted by the family of Mountain Drive's head electrician, the Hansens.
If it was not for them, I don't know if I would have remained there long
enough to have given the place a chance. That is where I spend virtually
every holiday and many an evening in between. I watched 3 little
kids grow up into adults and I guess they watched me grow up as well.
Years later, after the mines had closed and everyone was scattered all
over, I was deeply honored by being asked to be a poll bearer at Mrs. Hansens
funeral.
And so I began flying for Harbert construction
as a coalfields pilot.
The End