C3 - Sunday News, August 30, 1981

Woman miner copes with rats. and pin

By ROSEMARY ARMAO

SAINT CLAIRSVILLE,
Ohio (UPI) -- After waiting
on tables, Linda Sabo has
found coal mining a piece of
cake — despite the pits, the
rats and the pinches from co-
workers.

A veteran of more than
‘three years at Saginaw
Mines, Sabo, 38, is now the
only woman at that mine and
one of the few women
miners in Ohio. She hasn't
just adjusted to the grimy,
back-bending work 4'4
miles underground. She likes
it.

“Waitressing is much
harder,” she says. “You have
to take a lot of abuse from
the customers and the boss.
They make you’ work
overtime all the time, for no
extra money.”

As a waitress, Sabo says,
she cleared $65 every two
weeks, plus maybe another
$100 in tips. Mining six days
a week, she takes home $725
every two weeks. ©

There’s the sense of
pioneering too. “It’s funny
how people react,” she says.
“Thad to fill out some papers

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for a loan and the guy goes,
‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I'm
a coal miner,’ and he says,
‘No, not what your husband
does. You!"”

Sabo met the man who
became her third husband at
the mine. She says meeting
Ray Sabo was one of the
fringe benefits of the job.

“I had to win him over,’
she says. “The first time we
met he told the boss, ‘Don’t
ever put me with her again.’

“It was a Saturday and we
were doing dead work,
clean-up. lt was my first time
and the boss was overly
protective. You have to lift
these heavy bags of rock
dust and throw it around, but
he told me to just sit down
and have some coffee.

“I kept saying ‘Shouldn't I
be doing something?’ and he
said, ‘No, no.’ So, I'm sitting
there combing my hair and
he (Ray) is sweating his head
off throwing dust around.”

Sabo remembers Ray “was
the only man who never
cussed at me. He never
mistreated me. If someone
else pinched or slapped, he
told them they were rude
and ignorant

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Sabo, the mother of six
children, has gotten good at
coping with rude behavior.
She laughs about “dirty old
coal mimers” and shakes her
head over the men who “turn
off the lamps on their hats so
you can’t see who it is. Then
they run up behind and
pinch you on the breast or
the rear.”

When a miner on a earlier
shift hung a nude pinup in
the shuttle car, Sabo just
penciled in a dress. She

nicknamed the miner who
insisted on calling her
“Puss,” “Boots.”

“At first it bothered me,
especially the language,”
Sabo says. “But you got to let
it pass. If you called a man
out every time something
happened, the mine’d be
down all the time. I laughed
it off or stayed away.”

She added, “You can
understand it (the
harassment). Coal mining 1s
known as a tough job. When

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a woman is doing it, that
makes the men look less
tough.

“It is tough. But women
can do the work with all the
automation they have. In the
pick and shovel days maybe
not.”

“I've got muscles,” she
says, rolling up a sleeve. “At
first I had to drag the 50-
pound bags of rock dust,
because 1 didn’t like to ask
for help. Now I can just
chuck them up under my

9 to 4 Sat

‘hes

arm and throw it out. I can
carry two on my back.”

She is practical about
other inconveniences in the
mine too — the rats, for
example, “some of them the
size of small pups.” She
feeds them meat out of her
lunch sandwich and recites
what the “oldtimers” told
her.

“Rats mean the area is
safe. 'm happy to see them.
If you see rats running, you
better get going, too.”

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