Side Dish: Queen Mine Tour - Bisbee, AZ 3/5/11

Our country's history, above all, is the story of capital versus labor. Not to descend into Marxist paranoia or anything, but whenever we're honest with ourselves and the legacy of the American Way, we come face to face with broken backs, dirty faces, and the cigar-chomping pigs who exploit them. From Pinkerton goons firing on women and children, to company towns that had all the good cheer and freedom of Stalinist gulags, the nation's poor have chopped, picked, smashed, and choked, all in untold pain for the benefit of a few. I think we all know this in our heart of hearts, but prefer the comforting fable that via the proverbial bootstrap, anyone can be anything, which, translated into Americanese, means we all expect to be rich inside of an hour. Most of us, however, are working people. Maybe not exploited, abused, and tossed aside like so much rubble, but paycheck to paycheck nonetheless. And yet we always keep one eye on that mansion on a hill, straightening our cheap ties in case we're ever asked to the grown up's table.

So here we are in lonesome Bisbee, Arizona - a progressive town nowadays, what with its gay pride parades and hippie ethic - once the epicenter of copper mining in the Southwestern United States. And in case you doubted the official story, it retains the epic scar of the Lavender Pit Mine to prove that while we get so much wrong, we are experts at tearing the earth to pieces for its mineral riches. The pit remains jarring, but such buried wealth built this country, and while we might feel guilty, there's no denying it. Sure, such mines destroy any and all natural beauty in a given area, and the damage lasts well beyond the lives of those who made it happen, but what else have we? Surely windmills wouldn't have powered the United States to the status of a global titan, right? So it's a conflicted legacy, and in a place like Bisbee, we take all the pain, blood, and tears, and spit it back as tourism. And why not? When in doubt, slap on the gear of a miner, sit your ass on a tram, and go where so many went, black lung and all. Only now, it's a theme park. Sixteen-hour days with no health insurance as a vacation.

So why go on the Queen Mine Tour? Because it's only $13 a person and you've never been in an actual mine before, dummy. And while it was slightly humiliating to be the only person on the tour to be handed the XXL yellow slicker, it was kind of cool to be strapped in and outfitted like we were all headed to our doom. They place the helmet on your head, squeeze you into your belt, and pat you on the back with good fellowship. It's not at all an authentic mining experience (first of all, there aren't enough kids to round out the child labor quota), but few can turn down an opportunity to enter the bowels of the earth and return unscathed. And hell, it's only 1,500 feet down, and while cool (the mine is always 47 degrees), no one would have to work up a sweat with a pick-ax. Sure, the man in sitting in front of me was so close to my lap that I damn near felt obligated to tuck a dollar bill in his g-string, but it just felt good to get out of that gift shop before I bought something predictably silly.

The tour lasted 75 minutes, which wouldn't have been half bad had the tour guide hit reliable English more frequently than one out of every ten words. He was a charmer, but he could have been cursing us under his breath and we wouldn't have been the wiser. Though the expected sentence - "mumblemumblemumble ... INSTANTDEATH ... mumblemumblemumble ... GETTHEHELLOUTNOW" - never came, the history lesson wasn't all it could have been had we been led by a firm, full-throated speaker. Oh well. He took us off the tram now and again, up some rickety stairs, and into various nooks and crannies where holes were drilled, dynamite set, and poor mules left to go blind and drop dead, all for the glory of copper. To be sure, the danger of the mine was never minimized, but I wonder how accurate the impressively low death rate actually was. Fine, maybe few died right there and then, but how to account for cancer and respiratory failure? One imagines few lived to collect Social Security.

In all, the mine tour is a must-do, as much as it's always obligatory to visit any place a town is known for. Bisbee itself, while similar to some of the nice mountain towns we've seen a million times, is not the stuff of dreams, often appearing low rent and dilapidated instead of quaint and rugged. We'd have stayed longer, but, well, none of the cafes and coffee shops looked like they would remain standing by the time we emerged from the mine tour. Our visit, like so much else on this trip, was mandatory given that we drove right by two short years ago, but we left with little more than a shrug. Yeah, come if you're in the area (because you're likely to end up in Bisbee by accident), but don't put yourself out too much. Unless you simply must snap a photo of Copper Man. Which we also did.