Remember Timex Watches? They still make them!

Back in the Sexy Sixties, when my career took a brief detour into being an underground electrician at a large newly-expanding nickel mine near Sudbury, Ontario, everyone working underground had at least one Timex watch, and most of us had two or three, in case one got damaged during our escapades down in the depths. And that was a distinct possibility, because at that particular time, there was a red-hot union war going on between the Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, and a raiding party from the United Steelworkers, and we all played dirty, and for keeps.

Because there had to be a re-certification of the union officially representing the workers, we had to re-sign members of each competing union, and that got nasty. The old original Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, to which I belonged because they were the ones certified when I started there eventually got beaten by the Steelworkers, and I think by the end of it, we were all glad it was over. I was signing up guys to continue with Mine Mill as it was commonly known, so I was a target for those organizing for Steelworkers. 

One day underground, while I had my head inside a large junction box on a main feed cable running down the drift (tunnel) and a couple of rival Steelworkers were working on an Alimak machine, drilling a raise (vertical tunnel) almost above head, they'd finished their drilling, loaded their holes with Cilgel B70 (dynamite from C.I.L.) and quietly came back down before setting off the blast. The traditional procedure before blasting was to sound a horn with a coded series of toots, but they didn't bother, because I was one of those damned Mine Mill organizers. When that blast went off up above me, it almost deafened me, and it picked me up bodily and set me down three feet to my left, thankfully unharmed. And those two Steelworkers were safely down the drift several yards away, laughing their asses off. So I quietly took out my side-cutters from my tool pouch and cut the specially-marked cable inside that junction box which provided them with their electrical supply for blasting. Then I finished my task, and left. This is an example of why we all needed more than one Timex watch in those days. And those Timex watches were the best. They were cheap, durable, kept good time, and were replaced free if you mailed one back to Timex. We loved them! And I still do....

Tom over in New York wants to see this again, don't you Tom? Enjoy!