Log
Salt Mines
For a few years back in the eighties, the salt mines under Detroit were open for tours. When I was in middle school, I took the salt mine tour with my neighbor’s boy scout troop.
It was a cold and damp spring day—the Saturday before an early Easter. We rode a rickety basket elevator down countless stories to the bottom of the mine, where a mine car drove us through miles of narrow caves that opened into expansive caverns blasted out of the rock salt. It was nothing like the other cave tours I had been on—there were no stalagmites and stalactites, no “sunny-side up eggs” to wonder over. The spectacle was the ambition of modern industry, and impressive it was.
All too soon for a bunch of preteen boys, it was over and we were back at the elevator, waiting to get back to the surface.
And waiting…
And waiting…
It soon became clear that the elevator was not functioning and that we were quite stuck hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth. Over the drip-drop of water plummeting down the shaft, anxious whispers circulated through the small crowd. Fresh on my mind, the tour guide’s stories about plans to use the mines as a nuclear shelter rang true to me as I imagined that I was experiencing something akin to surviving a nuclear holocaust.
I can’t say how many claustrophobic hours we were waiting at the bottom of that elevator shaft: it may have been only 45 minutes, but it felt like an eternity. Eventually the elevator came chugging down the dark shaft and we were lifted to the surface, and I was relieved and happy that the water dripping on me came not from the water table, but from the sky.
(Prompted by The Morning News linking to a Detroit News article, The ghostly salt city beneath Detroit.)
02/20/04 08:22AM My Life
Comments
Add a Comment
Have something to say about what I wrote here? Let’s hear it!
- Your name and email address are required, but your email will not be displayed on the site
- If you provide a URL, a link to your site will appear
- You may use the following HTML:
<strong>bold</strong><em>italic</em><a href="http://url">links</a>
- Double line breaks will be converted to paragraphs.
- As you type, you should get a nice little preview of your comment directly below the text box.
- I reserve the right to edit any comment for any reason (I’ll be reasonable).
Recently Played on iTunes
-
“Heroin”
The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Velvet Underground
11/17/08 16:26 -
“All Tomorrow's Parties”
The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Velvet Underground
11/17/08 16:20 -
“Run Run Run”
The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Velvet Underground
11/17/08 16:16
Lorraine Tsutsui:
How can I schedule a rock hound trip to a salt mine?
12/14/04 12:52AM