To most folks, a bluebell is a flower. Or maybe the name of a favorite milk cow, if you live on a farm. But to my grandmother, Momo, and her family, it was “home” for more than a few years.
As I look at the photograph Momo took of this place, I’m reminded again how thankful I am for those who take pictures. I’m not one of them, by the way. Although it’s never been as simple to capture a scene as it is now – just point your phone and click – I still rarely do it. I can’t imagine Matthew Brady, who for the one million pictures he took of the Civil War, had to set up a tripod, carry many pounds of equipment, and say “Hold still!” And after all that, he died a pauper, many of his glass negatives sold as enclosures for greenhouses. That’s a bummer.
My grandfather was the “hoisting engineer” for the Bluebell Copper Mine, back in the 1910s and 1920s. He was good at his job, and had steady work, even during the nation’s cycles of “hard times”, as the old-timers call them.
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Mining towns are hastily-built places, defined by the purpose they serve. People flock to them, and saloons and schools spring up, usually overnight. Then, when the ore “plays out”, everyone leaves, and the buildings stay, stark reminders of loud voices, marriages and deaths, laughter and prayers.
Right after my grandmother died, in 1976, my mom and dad went back to Bluebell to look around – a sort of pilgrimage for my mom, who spent many hours on the town’s main street, or playing tag on the rocky slopes. I asked them to bring me a memento – something from the mine building, or their house. “Sure!” my mom said. “How big?”
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When they got there, though, there was nothing. No mine. No houses. No foundations, even. In fact, they had to walk around a bit, my dad sure that my mom had the wrong hillside. “A town doesn’t just disappear!” he said. But it can. And it did.
All they had for me when they returned was a square nail and a piece of slag from the mine, cold and gray-blue, defiant in its disregard for the passage of time. It stood upright in the rock gardens of our houses, as we moved from place to place, a source of history for me, and a fixture to our kids. Ron left it, by accident, when we moved to California. I’m sure the new owners of our house in Colorado threw it away.
Thanks, Momo, for climbing the hillside with your box camera and preserving part of your life, and our history.
It was gone too soon.
