This is the memory palace of Nate de Mayo. Picture a nine-year-old boy. Picture an

actual nine-year-old boy. To be nephew or a little brother, your neighbor's kid,

your own kid. Maybe you'll remember yourself at that age. Now picture that boy

in Pennsylvania in 1909, 1913. A mile or so down below the surface of the

earth in a narrow mind-chat. Starting as 12-hour shift as a nipper. Colmeines were

and, of course, still are, miserable places to be. They're cold and dank and

they're dangerous. Setting aside caveins for a second. There's still a fumes.

Methan gas that can leak and kill the canaries and the men who breathe in. And so

to control the flow of the breathable air through the tunnels, they'd build

these heavy wooden doors. And the doors couldn't stay open for very long or the

air would quickly tip from merely stale and oppressive to lethal. A nipper would

sit by the doors for 12 hours. The cold. The dark. All alone. A nine-years-old.

Sitting if he was lucky with a small gas lamp. Too dim to read by, but bright enough

to make the eyes of the rats' glow. You need to wait to hear a card approaching

the door. Carrying tools or men down or a cold back up. Sometimes it would be

pulled by a mule walking blind through the dark. Sometimes it would be on a track

barreling down on man or on mules led by gravity. The boy would have to move

very quickly. The carts could go really fast and he'd have to open up the door

in time for them to get in and then shut it behind the cart so the airflow

doesn't get effed up and then run to the door at the other end and do the same

thing. Which is a bad enough job, but it was also incredibly dangerous. You could

stumble and the dark can get run over and many many boys died that way. But more

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