Coals To Newcastle

YOUR ARTICLE “THE BIGGEST MINE ,” by Timothy J. LeCain (Winter 2001), reminds me of a personal story. In June 1967, as a young civilian engineer working for the Army, I had to travel to Tooele Army Depot in Utah to conduct some tests. One day when we had an errand to run in Salt Lake City, the locals in Tooele recommended that we stop at the Kennecott Copper Mine in the mountains and take a look at the big hole there. The claim at the time was that you could put the Empire State Building in the bottom and look down on it. It was quite a sight indeed.

On the way out we passed through the old company mining town. It looked completely abandoned except for a single gift shop. There I bought my wife a nice pair of solid-copper earrings as a souvenir. When I got back to New Jersey and gave them to her, she turned them over and noticed in small embossed letters the words MADE IN JAPAN .