|
|
|
Reviews
A ROOM FOR THE SUMMER: ADVENTURE, MISADVENTURE, AND SEDUCTION IN THE MINES OF THE COEUR D'ALENE
|
by Fritz Wolff
|
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2005.
Illustrations, notes. 264 pages. $29.95 cloth. |
|
|
| E.T.A. Hoffman's 1819 The Mines of Falan ("Die Bergwerke zu Falun") gives readers the archetypical story of the youth who receives his vocational calling to the mines. In Hoffman's sentimental nineteenth-century work, those who hear the calling of the earth spirits — those with a sincere love for the metals and ores — will come to understand the secrets of life underground and, instead of a life of danger, toil, and early death, will find the mines a place of satisfaction where riches and wonders are revealed. |
1
|
|
A Room for the Summer is Fritz Wolff's memoir of his early career in northern Idaho's Silver Valley. The story is no romantic fairy tale, but there are similarities to Hoffman's tale of a youth's seduction by the mines. At the start of the memoir, Wolff, raised in a middle-class Seattle suburb, is a sophomore at Whitman College. He helps a family friend, an experienced mining man, at his mountain prospect, where the wild setting and the tales of mining adventure — along with some beer — change everything for the young Wolff. Drawn to the mining life, he rustles a summer job in the Bunker Hill mine while waiting to be accepted at New Mexico's School of Mines. Thus begins Wolff's recounting of his six years spent learning the profession of mining engineer from the bottom up. |
2
|
|
A Room for the Summer will appeal to readers who are interested in mining history or are drawn to examination of mid-twentieth- century industrial life. Much historical writing about the Coeur D'Alene District focuses either on deadly and dramatic conflicts between union and management or, as company histories, on the founding and operation of a single mining company. Readers who want to flesh out the story of mining in the Silver Valley will find a personal and human story in A Room for the Summer, where they experience 1950s life in Kellogg through the characters encountered by the young Wolff. Wolff addresses all aspects of mining-camp life. Readers see into the lives of working partners, shift bosses, hoistmen, teenage girls, and manager's wives as Wolff writes about his experience with them all. Wolff's view is broad. He recounts digging the Kellogg Tunnel, takes readers into the miner's boarding house, and even explains the rationale for the physical layout of stairways in a house of prostitution. As a mining engineer in training, Wolff was yoked to management's point of view, but his position as a working miner required union membership; consequently, readers glimpse both sides of the union/management debate without the struggle being presented in Ptolemaic terms. |
3
|
|
Wolff looks back on his time at Bunker Hill with fondness and few regrets. By the end of his apprenticeship, Wolff had found his place in the mines. He did not encounter Hoffman's earth spirits enticing him ever deeper into the mines, but he did find satisfaction and wonder at being the first human to stand in a blasted opening that was formerly solid rock. Wolff's memory, fifty years removed from the experience, tells us that friendships developed in mines are lifelong, mining society was safe, and mine managers were honest brokers. Other writers tell us other stories; A Room for the Summer tells us Fritz Wolff's story. |
4
|
| JOHN KOERTH
|
| Helena, Montana |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|