In the morning I’m telling you about, it was a dreadful frost. Some said that it could have been – 35°C, others -40°C, for sure it was that the coldness was horrible. On our way to the place that the car was taking us we could hear how the firewood from the houses was cracking. By that time it didn’t exist any changing room at the mine. You had to go with your working clothes on, from home. This was convenient because it didn’t demand a third line of clothes, clothes which then, after the war, were hard to get. A huge inconvenience was that the dirty clothes didn’t keep you worm as the clean ones. The airless parts of oil or other dirty things stuck on you as an iron plate and still as a plate “kept” you worm. On our feet we were wearing water boots which, although I took as big, so more stocking will fit, kept colder than worm. I was taking a pair of stocking which I covered in a paper; these kept a part of the foot transpiration and our feet didn’t freeze anymore. Some preferred the wheat straws but I couldn’t feel any difference, in better, in relation with the paper. Most of us had a stoking from paper in those water boots.
At the place where the cars were, still nobody appeared. Maybe I was a little earlier. The clock from the belfry shows me I’m right, but usually when it was so cold, the drivers get late. The other mine diggers took shelter at the houses from nearby. From time to time we would rub our nooses and ears, and so that our feet won’t freeze we would scrape it continuously.
The drivers are here. We “rushed” to the car so we would take a safely place under the canvas. The car was old, from the time of the war. We set down. The “privileged” places were the ones from the middle. The ones that managed to get there were surrounded by a human “wall”. A warm wall! But in the middle didn’t fit more than 20 people, while the others were left to be the brick of that human construction. And like any other wall, this one was also almost undefended, after the many holes the canvas had that seemed to be clear. My feet didn’t warm up yet. I wished the car had spent more time in the garage so that we could “get” warmer. But no! Today we are being precise! The driver assures us that on this coldness the engine reduction is very good and the engine would “pull up” much better. The cold was “pulling” us up. I didn’t manage to get a privileged place. Through the canvas holes the cold seemed to rupture my soul. You could not do anything else than bearing ahead. Nobody was smoking.

The frost seemed to weigh on us. Nobody would move, so any warm won’t get lost. We were all quiet. Nobody was taken “at the middle” … We traveled 4 kilometers. I begin to feel that my water boots pinch me. What would this mean? Did my feet gain more feathers? I touch my boots. It was firm as a plate. It contracted. I was still feeling my feet. I was cold, so cold that my bones hurt.
I ask Heni, the fellow besides me, if he is cold too:
– What do you think?
What should I think? I was among the youngest and I was ashamed to complain about being cold. And how much I wished I could cry. So much pain I felt on my feet as if my heart was folding from coldness. I felt I could not take it anymore. The frost was unbearable.
In that moment a few helpmates called out the driver. The car stopped. About 10 men got off and started to run, slowly, behind the car. It felt like someone was pulling us our feet …
After two kilometers of running, although we didn’t warm up that much, we were tired and steam was going out of us.
At a moment of time I felt as if a needle crossed through my ear. After this I could not feel …my ears.
I got out of these at the lowest price, only my ears were frozen. At the fellow Bob the nose got big as an American potato. It had frozen up. Others left with their hand fingers frozen, feet fingers …
After this “warming up” we had, other changed us, now they were running after the car. Our care assembled with the cyclists car from the cyclic cross – the one with the spare parts – just that in here people were running due to the coldness an not for the love of sports …
When we got at the mine, some of us had more “rounds” taken, others just one. We were all walking immobile as robots to our groves.
After 500 meters of grove, I had the feeling I was “thawing”. It seemed my ears were made of flour. All the time it felt like something white was flouring from it.

I got at the appealing board, I could not say I was tired … No …I was good for nothing. When my ears thawed, I had the feeling it split off from my head. I already had aches pulps, than at my feet …
I was looking at my fellow near me. The light was too fainted. He had something white at his feet, first I thought the paper got off from the boots. That’s how it observed at others too …then at me …for real …what I could see were the stockings.
To all of us the boots busted from coldness …
It was not much time left until we busted too, the same as the boots … Now, you tell me, is it possible to relate and redeem with enthusiasm about working men and their work?
I don’t know what else to tell you, for so much time we were being fed with ideals and goals that from what you are saying, I almost forgot we are humans, that we still possess human qualities.
I don’t mean to make a thesis about working men, the friend with same name as Buia, Thomas, continued, about their work, maybe I am wrong, or maybe where I was working was worse, and if you truly believe me I haven’t been to many places and some I can’t even explain, not even now.
– For example …
– Well … at the village, a house with two or three rooms was up to anyone by those times. In the city, to have an apartment house, after 20-30 years of work, was something amazing, a fortune … There are more of these left, but believe me that at the sadness I am filled with, accumulated with the one that each working man feels, there’s no place were that much sadness can fit.
– Forgive me, I know what’s in your soul and I didn’t wish to harrow your scar worse, but what you told me today, although I’m not strange with this things, I didn’t quite think at this in such way. In other words, this reality never got to me, never strike my eye. I was complacent with the weather forecast “taken” from Television. I didn’t know there were countrymen that can tell the exact weather, without listening it to the radio or TV.
– You see, shouldn’t you make yourself a countryman, slowly, slowly!