Don’t Lick the Walls
When my father would leave home in the morning for work he would often say, “I’m off to the salt mines.” I had no idea what that meant but I remember thinking it didn’t sound like much fun. Well, two weeks ago I actually went to a salt mine in Kansas and I’m pleased to report that it was as cool (literally 68 degrees) and creepy as you can imagine. Too bad I missed their Halloween Party last weekend…
The connection between work and salt dates way back to the Roman Empire. The word “salary” comes from the Latin word salarium, an allowance that was paid to soldiers for buying salt. People used to actually fight over this valued commodity; it was extremely expensive. But now we just pass it around the table or sprinkle it on the icy driveway without giving it a thought.
Over time the word came to mean 'fixed periodic payment for work done,' and that’s how we got the English term “salary.”
Since 99% of you probably have never been – nor will ever go – to a salt mine, I thought I’d share the highlights, or should I say, low lights, of my visit.
Strataca, a.k.a the Kansas Underground Museum, is built within one of the world’s largest deposits of rock salt.
Right off, they gave us the shaft.
In keeping with miner’s tradition, we took a 6-ton hoist down over 650 feet beneath the Earth’s surface in complete darkness. (The ride back up was a bit better. A child in sneakers kept jumping up-and-down nervously which made his shoes glow-in-the-dark. No one asked him to stop).
The elevator door opened to what could only be described as the largest Man Cave you have ever seen. All that was missing was the Big Screen TV and the snacks. It was vast – 300,000 square feet of mined out area – with a grey-white somber hue.
We had our hard hats on and rescue breathers over our shoulders (just in case…) and were given explicit instructions not to lick the walls. I was not even mildly tempted but evidently the same people who lick icy poles in the winter get a thrill out of tasting salt mine walls (but they only lick the jagged rocks once…).
The walls of this intriguing space “act as ancient scrolls of the earth, revealing secrets of the strata formed by the Permian Sea some 275 million years ago.” Over 500,000 ton of rock salt is removed each year (by only 12 miners), primarily used to de-ice roads across the mid-west and eastern US (they love it when the call comes in from Chicago).
Mike Rowe, host of the cable show Dirty Jobs, joined the miners a few years back to film them detonating a packed wall of explosives and demolishing a massive salt wall into small, minuscule blocks.
Hollywood loves salt mines, too. With its 68 degree constant temperature, relative humidity, and not a live critter in sight, they use this cavernous space to store their original camera negatives, television show masters, costumes and props.
Medical and business records, oil and gas charts, and God knows what from the U. S. Government, are stored underground as well. In fact, it would be the perfect place to sit out a World War or environmental disaster.
But first you have to get to Kansas.
