Have you ever visited Big Brutus? If you have not, you might pencil it in on your bucket list! It is located in rural West Mineral, Kansas which is about 45 minutes from Webb City, Missouri. I grew up a "coal miner's daughter" so I've always had a special place in my heart for Big Brutus. He put food on our table, a roof over our heads, and clothes on our backs. My dad worked as one of the operators of Big Brutus until April of 1974. On that very sad day in April, dad finished his shift and crawled out of the operator's booth one last time as the Pittsburg and Midway Coal Mining Company shut down the mine citing it too costly to keep it going. The other operator climbed up in the operator's booth and walked Brutus to where he sits today.
We spent many evenings visiting dad at the mine. Mom would cook supper, we would eat, then she would load us kids up and drive out to the mine and take dad something to eat on many occasions. The other men working the same shift were kind of jealous of dad getting a home-cooked meal and they opening up their dinner buckets to just a sandwich and potato chips so mom started sending three separate containers of whatever we had for supper!!
After the mine shut down, dad went to work for a friend that owned a construction company. There he worked for several years and learned to be a master concrete pourer and finisher. When dad heard that P & M had bought the Asbury, Missouri plant, he was able to go back to work as a coal miner once again. He worked out at the Asbury plant until it closed in the 90's and was given a choice to move his family to Wyoming or New Mexico and work for P & M at either of those locations. My dad didn't want to take his family clear across the country so we stayed and mom took a higher paying job transferring from teaching High School Home Economics at the Vocational-Technical School to teaching High School English. Dad went to work for Empire swabbing toilets in the administrative building...low man on the totem pole. After a year there, he was able to go right back out to the Asbury power plant doing the same thing he was doing before only making more money and eventually moving up the ladder to plant operator until his retirement.
Each year, Big Brutus has a reunion for former employees. Dad never went in his earlier retirement years, but since life has moved on and probably wounds have healed, he has taken our family and his grandchildren out to Brutus to show us what he did and how Brutus worked. One of the funniest things that one of the kids asked was "hey Grandpa, where'd you go to the bathroom at!?" That was a good question because there was no bathroom on Brutus.
When you walk into my parents home, the first thing you see in the entryway is a beautiful picture of Big Brutus sitting in front of the sun setting in the west. Throughout the years, dad was given gifts for each accomplishment or big year of employment. These gifts are scattered throughout the house on display or put up in a cabinet. Big Brutus was good to our family and I think it is pretty awesome knowing that my dad's name is on the plaque in the Operator's Room as being one of the two operators of that giant beast that is known by many across the country as Big Brutus.
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