On a partly cloudy, but very cold, day in 1937, in Butte, Montana, Mike Eckerson turned to his wife, Melanie, and barked, "Mel, it's too damn cold in this house!" Now Butte was a poor town, and the Eckersons were about as well-off as anyone else in Butte at the time, which meant that they weren't very well off at all. In any case, it was not an uncommon occurrence for Mike to complain about the Farenheits of their modest dwelling on the east side. Melanie then explained to him for the thousandth time that in order for their house to be warmer, they needed more coal to burn, of which there happened to be a shortage.
"But don't forget your cousins are coming tomrrow," Melanie said, trying to take Mike's mind off of things.
"Woman! Why did you have to remind me? They're positively UNnatural!" grumbled Mike.
"I've told you before, they are NOT gay," interrupted Mel, "and gay or not, you will be hospitable to them while they're in this house!"
The next day, the Eckersons went to the train depot and picked up their sexually ambiguous cousins. "Hi Pat! Hi Chris! It's so wonderful to see you two again!" explained Melanie excitedly. "Let's go back to the house for some whiskey."
But when they got back to the house, Pat and Chris were too cold to do much of anything, except complain, especially since they were from Florida. So Mike told them that all they needed was a little coal, and they would be toasty as toast in a toaster; all they had to do was go down to the mines and find some. Pat and Chris were so eager to feel warm that they jumped up that very second and ran out the door to get some coal.
As soon as the door slammed behind them, Melanie jumped out of her favorite chair and yelled at Mike. "What the hell is wrong with you, sending those poor boys out there to the mines?! What if they get lost? They could meet their death!" But Mike simply shrugged.
Meanwhile, Pat and Chris ran to the tops of the mine shaft openings, where one enters the ungerground mines that go all over under Butte. They climbed down and started looking for coal, but soon lost their way and all sense of direction. They had been hopeless walking around for hours, when they saw a small speck of light up ahead. They hurried towards it, thinking that it was a way out, but when they got up close, it was just a man with light on his forehead and a very long beard.
"Haven't seen anyone down here in 20 years!" the older man exclaimed. "Not since the big accident in '17. The corridors just collapsed in on us. Everybody died, everybody... except me. The name's Jeremiah Johnson." He told Pat and Chris that he knew the mines very well, and that he would help lead them out to safety. So the boys followed him around the tunnels, making lefts and rights, and rights and lefts. All of a sudden, the odd party of three approached an underground layer made all out of coal. Pat and Chris could tell that the man had led them to the man's own creepy dwelling, rather than out of the mines.
Suddenly, Jeremiah grabbed an axe and swung it at Pat's head! Chris tackled him, however, grabbed the axe, and swung it as hard as he could into the back of Jeremiah's head instead. He was definitely dead, as his blood and cerebrospinal fluid spurted out of his head. Pat and Chris were upset about this, and still needed to get out of the mines, so they left. They had the foresight to grab a bunch of the coal first, however, so that if they made it out, they would at least be warm.
The two soon noticed that every time they saw a rat, it was heading the same way. And since everyone knows that rats hate water, Pat and Chris realized that the rats must have been traveling in the opposite direction than the Berkeley Pit, and so followed the rodents to safety out of the mines. As soon as they were free, they raced right back to Mike and Melanie's house, and because of the coal they had had the foresight to grab, for the whole rest of the winter, all four of them were, indeed, toasty as toast in a toaster.
Moral: If you're going spelunking, have the foresight to grab a map first, as mines and caves are quite easy to get lost in.
Moral 2: Stay away from Butte. It's cold and full of weirdos!
Learn more about the mines of Butte.
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