ATDDTA(10) The Kitchen Zinc [274]

[Keith]

Webb unsuccessfully tries to find leads regarding his father's death  
by loitering around the Miner's Federation office:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Federation_of_Miners

The office was "up on Arapahoe," the same Denver street cited as the  
location of Tortoni's back on [176:22].

Frank gets a pretty clear vibe that Scarsdale was behind his father's  
murder, and ruminates over the sacred and profane social implications  
of the fact that he is not climbing the ranks of the corporation. He  
frets that not accepting Vibes' Agapic offers might be seen as proof  
of his own preterition.

Looking for a way out of this moral dilemma, related in large part to  
the mining of silver and gold, Frank turns his attention to Zinc  
which he hopes will be a source of security vis a vis the instability  
of more precious metals following the 'Repeal in '93':

1893 spelled the end of an era of silver by the repeal of the  
"Sherman Silver Act".
Almost immediately mines and smelters began to shut down in Colorado.  
Silver prices
dropped from .83 cents to .62 cents an ounce in one 4 day period.  
Banks closed their
doors and real estate values plummeted.

The repeal of the silver act was felt around the country but not as  
severely as it was
in Colorado. Colorado was producing almost 60% of the nations silver.  
Thousands of
out-of-work miners flooded into Denver swelling its ranks of the  
unemployed.
http://www.ellensplace.net/hcg_fac8.html

http://tinyurl.com/yw6s6p

Webb's focus turns to Leadville in /Lake/ County
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadville%2C_Colorado

with its quite colorful history, including the fact that Haw Tabor's  
widow died in the Matchless Mine shack mentioned in the text:
http://www.matchlessmine.com/
http://tinyurl.com/2odh37
http://www.leadville.com/history/tabor.htm

Back on 271, a mine skip slipped towards the center of the earth, and  
here Mrs. Tabor is credited with holing up at the mine with a center- 
of-the-world willingness to raise a bit of hell, so in these two  
instances the text makes a connection between mining and hell. In the  
first instance one is slipping down into hell. In the second; hell is  
being raised up.