PAT, THE MINER In the early 80s, I was hired by a natural resources company as a Senior V.P. and Chief Financial Officer. Among my duties, I was responsible for setting up and managing their Houston office. We had oil and gas wells in Texas and Louisiana; a galena, flourspar, and barite mine in New Mexico (near Socorro on the north end of the White Sands Missile Range); gold and silver mines in the Mojave Desert of Arizona; and a gold mine in Placerville, California. It was a small company with only 40 or 50 fulltime employees scattered over all the projects, but there was a lot going on. It was during this time that I fell in love with the high mountain desert. I never before or since saw as many stars as the desert sky holds at night. I traveled quite a bit, going to the mines every six weeks or so. On my first trip after joining the company, I went to a couple of our mines in Arizona and made my first visit to Oatman, Arizona. Oatman is located on old Route 66 southeast of Kingman, Arizona, and not far from Needles, California. Over 100 years ago, it was a mining tent camp that quickly grew into a gold-mining center in 1915 when a couple of miners struck a ten-million-dollar gold find, and that’s when gold cost $20 per ounce. The boom was short lived, and most of the town burned down within three years of the find. When Route 66 became Interstate
40, Oatman almost died. When I was there it was an official “Ghost Town” with a population of 200 people. I’ve always wondered how a ghost town can have a population, but that’s what the sign said. Anyway, I made that first trip in August when the temperature was about 140 degrees in the shade, first thing in the morning. Even the lizards weren’t moving. The porpose of the trip was to set up a bank account so the mine superintendent could pay the miners. When I finally found the mine (no personal GPS existed yet), the super was not there, even though he knew I was coming. I eventually got one of the men to tell me where he lived, and when I found him, he was dead drunk at 11 o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t about to hand over $25,000 to a drunk, so I went back into Oatman to call the President of the company. The only phone was in a booth on the street. I don’t have to tell you how hot it was, and on top of that, a wild donkey walked up and stuck his head in there with me. When I spoke to my boss in Houston and he could finally hear me over the HEE-HAW of the donkey echoing in the phone booth, I told him what I had found and asked what he wanted me to do. His answer was, “I’m on my way to my ranch. You just do what you think is right. Click.” Back at the mine, I fired the superintendent and started trying to decide who to put in his place. I called a meeting of all the miners and it was a joke. Those miners absolutely would not talk to me, a woman. I would ask a question and they would answer my husband, Jack, who had only come along as my driver. He knew nothing about the buxiness. They would ask him a question and I would answer, and so our meeting went. I think I might have been found at the bottom of a mineshaft if Jack Cole had not been with me. That was one motley crew, and they did not take kindly to a woman telling them what to do. I must have chosen the right man as the new super, because later that afternoon, we were wined and dined at the Oatman Hotel where Clark Gable and Carol Lombard spent their wedding night back in 1939. Because the new superintendant kept buying me drinks, I staggered to my room drunk as I had ever been in my life. The Bingham, New Mexico mine not far from Socorro, was a treasure trove of minerals. I think something like 58 different minerals had been identified on that property. Every
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Pat’s Horse Tales
