First, a BIG RUINS ANNOUNCEMENT.
A Film Premiere: The Ruins Project
Friday, April 19, 2024, 7:00 p.m. at the historic Pump House in the Waterfront. 880 E. Waterfront Drive, Munhall, PA 15120
Join Rivers of Steel for the premiere of The Ruins Project, a short film by Robert Tinnell that shares the story of mosaic artist Rachel Sager's epic journey to transform the concrete ruins of an old coal mine into an outdoor gallery that honors the past, celebrates creativity, and delivers on the unexpected! Stick around after the screening for a discussion with Robert Tinnell, Rachel Sager, and Clarence Johnson, a longtime supporter of the project. Moderated by Chris McGinnis.
Reception to follow. The event is free, but seating is limited so registration is required.
We will be rolling out the Red Dog carpet for this one, folks. Register now!
Watch the trailer
And now…
Coal Tags and Car Keys
Erika Johnson has a mission statement.
Not a formal, full-page statement for the benefit of shareholders. Hers is brutal in its simplicity. It leaves out five- and ten-year plans. In fact, it leaves out any plans. But she has the dirt under her nails to own it. Maybe someday she will have it tattooed on her tiny, hundred-pound frame. But probably not. Those of us without tattoos these days are becoming unique in our blank slates.
Seven carefully chosen action-oriented words.
Picking up things and talking to people.
It’s a foragers statement. A communicators conviction. From her bespoke Ruins Tours to her careful cataloging and midnight mudlarking, Erika is squeezing a life from seven words. It’s a life severed from the chains of fluorescent lit desks and Excell spreadsheets. A life without guarantees but with layers of dirty, patinaed potential.
I used to think I was a pretty good forager. And maybe I still am. But Erika takes finding lost things to another level. I’m talking about the things that have been lost for a hundred years. Rumpelstiltskin marbles and Sleeping Beauty spoons. The things that have been dirt napping through World War II and The Great Depression. Quietly sleeping through assassinations, comets, and hundreds of full moons.
Things whose only witnesses have been the trout, the owls, and the worms.
Erika finds the things that were lost long enough that they have become something else. No longer useful for what they were, now they are symbols for what we have lost. The mundane becomes nuanced. The ordinary tool transforms into a worn talisman.
I look forward to watching her expand on her life’s mission statement, but for today’s purposes, I want to zero in on one particular thing that she picks up.
The miner’s tag.
A little round of brass with a number stamped into it and a smaller circle cut into its top. The miners of Banning #2 coal mine each had a number. Their number identified them as human beings crossing the threshold into darkness, daily. Similar to the military dog tag. But their number was also attached to a coal cart. A man was paid by the ton weight, not by the hour. His numbered coal car being weighed was a crucial moment. It represented a day’s shoveling and the difference between his children eating. Or not. Miner’s working between 1893 and 1946, the decades of Banning #2, were mostly subsistence survivors. Entangled in debt to The Company Store, many never had a car or traveled out of the county. Their numbered tag was as important to them as our car keys are to us.
The tag was also important for identifying who was in and who was out of the mine. Upon leaving work, a miner would take his tag off his hat and hang it on a board, signaling that he was out. This simple arrangement could be crucial during the chaos of slate falls and explosions when searching for survivors.
Car keys, to so many humans of today, are the things that cannot be lost in order to function. Unless you live in a big city and use public transport, our world is built for cars. If we lose our keys, we lose our independence. We lose our liberty. Let’s say 90% of those reading this depend on finding their car keys every morning. Even those who operate with the keyless cars, the key fob needs to be on our persons for the car to move.
Think of the miner tags like the keys to your car. Mundane, ubiquitous, but very necessary. We take them for granted. It doesn’t occur to us to contemplate them. But life would come to a screeching halt without them. Car keys, maybe even more than the car itself, are a symbol of getting through the day.
We are quietly, carefully collecting the Banning #2 miner’s tags, watching their numbers grow over the years. I sent one to Scotland for Joy Parker to incorporate into her William Henry Mills Portrait. So, it came back to The Ruins. That felt right.
In Erika’s words…
Metal gathers. The river sorts. If you find bones, you will find more bones. If you find metal, you will find more metal.
If I find one tag, I will look and look for more. But I have only had a two-tag day once.
We know that each tag was associated with one particular person.
When you load a cart, you put your tag on it and that’s how you get paid. The number was your key to getting paid. Once the unions came in, they hired scale watchers to watch as the numbered carts were weighed, to keep a miner from being under weighed and under paid.
In all my many conversations with the people who come from coal, I have never met anyone who talked about the tags being personal. Lunch buckets and helmets were saved and hung on the wall with nostalgia, but never the tags. Is that why we keep finding them in the dirt?
There is tension between my connection and disconnection to the story. As much as I have researched and loved it. It is not my story.
But I can be the finder. I am comfortable in that role.
The tags are very meaningful to me. I tried wearing one as a necklace once.
And I can’t. It didn’t feel right.
From our precious cache of miner’s tags, I have had number 303, cast into sterling silver. Five exact copies of a worn talisman, given new, polished life.
And like Erika, I tried wearing one as a pendant. It was beautiful. But it felt wrong. Irreverent somehow.
My solution, for now, is to use the cast silver copies as the centerpieces for a new series of Rust Belts. For those in the know, The Rust Belt Series is nearing its end. Only nineteen left to purchase from the original 100. Check out the latest six below.
Hot off the Sager Mosaics press and now available on the website. I had great fun going smaller than usual with the filati for the tag versions. I would yell across the studio to Robert as he torched the latest thread, go thinner! Horsehair sized indeed.
Thank you for being here as I keep digging for optimism.
Some days with a shovel. Some days with a hammer. And some days with a pen.
Hope the film premiere goes well. As for tags, perhaps people have never liked being identified as numbers. .but now that the wearers are gone, the tags and their numbers evoke a strong sense of the people who were once attached to them. Their spirits have have outgrown them, and what remains, to continue your analogy, are the keys to their memory maybe.
Exciting news about the film! Stories of tags lost and found so many years later by Ms E. Hope to be by tomorrow in search of the spring ephemerals!!!