TOO MUCH LEAD IN OUR PENCILS
by Bryce Martin

A kidney-shaped region on a geologic map represents the most polluted territory in the United States. The region takes in parts of Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, and is part of a massive clean-up operation funded by our federal government. Today's children living on the contaminated soil have lead blood levels high enough to cause immediate concern. Mining activities ceased decades ago, but a full clean-up will take decades more.

My grandfather, Noah Martin, was born in 1879 in Tipton Ford, Mo. A wagon trail led from there directly to Joplin, Mo., the largest town in the vicinity. In the late 1890s, he ended up near Joplin just over the state line in Galena, Kans, which was then a lead and zinc boom town with a Main Street known as "Red Hot Street."

Miners were often paid in silver dollars. Companies came and went and record-keeping was not much of a priority. When he reached retirement age, he could not draw his pension because he either did not have proof of employment and earnings or he was not always supplied with such information. He had to work into his 70s to become eligible, and he went back to the lead mining business.

I imagine he was given some consideration because of his age. He worked graveyards as a derrick "hoisti'man" in his latter years. That's how he pronounced it. It might have been "hoisting man," or hoistingman." The derricks were rickety and seemed ready to topple when the winds blew. It was his job to lower men in a barrel, with the aid of winch and cable, down into the shaft, and to bring the barrel back up when the men filled it. He would then tip the contents of the barrel down a chute. Fortunately, such work in his younger days had left him with a strong grip

On paydays, I would sometimes go with him. I was once treated to a fabulous display of colors. Laid out on the ground, on half-shingle size strips of balsa wood were core samples. The samples, like strips of toothpaste, were of just about every clay color imaginable, but leaning more toward pastels. I had thought there was nothing under the ground except brown dirt. The company geologist was explaining to my grandfather what it all meant. All I could decipher was that it meant work, and a job.

After he finally retired, he would sometimes pull his truck off the road at a pasture between Galena and Joplin. Just over the fence and in some weeds was a rusted piece of machinery with big iron wheels, a relic from his wood cutting days. He said it was a "widder-maker," that some less fortunate he had worked with were killed using such a machine. It was tricky to use and dangerous. He would sit and study its machinations from a distance, the gears, brakes, sprockets and chains. Each time he would come to the same conclusion: It had been a killer machine and a lot of poor boys had been its victims.

Long after the mines played out, the ground around Galena was littered with chunks of lead ore and jack (zinc). Broken chunks of lead were as smooth as glass and shone like a mirror. Now, those chunks are all gone. Lead became valuable enough that townspeople, many too young to even remember the bygone mining days, rounded it all up and sold it.
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