The Bachelor’s Shack and Bottled Oxygen

Enjoy Scott Varley's 2025 second place non-fiction piece from the Boar's Tusk 2024/2025 Journal. For more information about Boar's Tusk, click here. 

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It was 1975 and I was working at City Auto Sales, an AC Delco auto parts distributor, part-time while attending Western Wyoming Community College. I went to work at 3:30 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and was able to work beginning at 1:00 on Tuesdays. I had Thursdays off but had to work all day on Saturdays. The schedule worked well with my class schedule, and I had experience with auto parts sales, due to my previous work at Auto Parts Co. Therefore, I was fairly confident in my ability to execute any assignment directed at me by my bosses. 

 One afternoon, I was summoned to the office and assigned to deliver breathing oxygen to a client. The boss asked me if I had experience with bottled gases. I said, “I have assisted pipeline welders and other metal fabricators, who were using oxygen and acetylene, but I don’t consider myself an expert in any sense.” The boss said, “Well, this is different. You are going to deliver ‘breathing oxygen’ to a customer. It is straight forward, but you will need to provide any assistance needed, to place the regulator on the new tank, and make sure that you place a safety cap on the empty cylinder for transport back to the store. Do you think you can do that?” 

I thought quickly, if I didn’t show confidence, the boss may think I was incapable, or that I needed assistance. So, I nodded, and said, “I’m sure I can do that.”  Then the boss presented me with paperwork that included the name and address for the delivery, along with an invoice, showing the serial number of the tank that I was delivering and the cost, shown as “amount due”. He said that I should receive payment, before leaving the customer’s location and that I should get the customer’s signature on the delivery slip. 

I went to the delivery truck, which was a quarter-ton pickup. I backed it up to the bottled gases rack and began searching for the ‘breathing oxygen’ bottle that had the serial number shown on my paperwork. I had previously unloaded semi-trailers of bottled gases into the storage racks and had loaded the empty bottles from the racks onto the semi-trailers, so I knew the storage system. It only took me a few minutes to find the desired ‘breathing oxygen’ bottle and get it loaded into the back of the pickup.   

It was springtime in Rock Springs, which meant that the wind was blowing at a steady 35 miles per hour, the temperatures were fluctuating wildly, and snow and ice remained wherever there was shade, while mud appeared wherever there was afternoon sunshine. I drove carefully across town and wound through the crooked streets of one of the older neighborhoods of Rock Springs. I finally found the address at the top of a hill, above the Kiwanis baseball field, on what could only be called a dirt alleyway. The house number that was tacked on the tarpaper wall, adjacent to the door, matched the delivery address on my paperwork, so I parked the truck as near to the house as possible, while trying not to block the alleyway entirely. 

I went to the badly weathered white wooden door and rapped on the door. It trembled under my knock, and I was afraid the resident might be frightened that I was trying to break in. Finally, a small figure opened the door and peered out of the dim interior into the bright afternoon sunshine. The little man shrunk back into the house and looked at me with bewilderment. I quickly introduced myself and announced that I was here to deliver oxygen. I held up my paperwork, as if it was the evidence he might need to agree to my intrusion. 

Finally, the man nodded and smiled a tired smile. He greeted me with a “hallo”, with a strong accent that I believed was from eastern Europe. I pointed to the oxygen bottle that sat in the corner of his tiny living room and said, “change for new”. He looked at me and nodded, giving a hand motion waving me into the room. I noticed that this fellow was very small in stature. He was wearing very worn denim bib-overalls that had clearly fit him in prior years when he was at his physical peak. I also noted that his hands were considerably larger than one would expect for such a small man. The hands told a story of hard work, as the veins in the hands were large and very visible, having delivered the strength and energy to swing a pick and shovel in the coal mines over a long underground career. 

I also noticed the pungent aroma of an inhabited closed space over many months of winter.  The little man wore a plaid wool shirt, over waffle weave long underwear. It was apparent that he was a member of the “bathe once per month club”. His grey beard whiskers were at least 2-weeks along and gave his face a grey-blue tint. The mustache was as full and bristly as a scrub brush, hiding his mouth entirely. While his scalp had few hairs, his eyebrows were substantial, and I imagined a hummingbird’s nest in the thatch. 

 The man was bent over, and he shuffled about the room, as I recorded the serial number of his oxygen tank on my paperwork. I opened the flimsy door and went out into the alley to retrieve the new tank. I carried the tank to the door, to prevent tracking mud into his house, although it appeared that the floor may not have been cleaned since the Fall snows began to stack up.  He seemed to notice the care that I was taking, and he nodded and smiled. We closed the door as soon as I was across the threshold, in an attempt to contain some of the heavy, smelly, warm air.  

As I began taking the protective cap off the new oxygen tank, I glanced around the home.  I would estimate that the total shack was 12 ft. wide and 24 ft. long. It consisted of a room that served as the living room/dining area. The room contained one very worn armchair with a foot stool, a small threadbare couch, a two-person wooden table, and two wooden chairs. Through a door, I could see a very small kitchen with a room behind that was clearly a bedroom, containing a small single cot. I anticipate that there was a bathroom in the back, with the bedroom, but I wasn’t confident that it contained either a shower, or bathtub. There just didn’t seem to be space for such convenience. 

The home was heated by a ‘panel ray’ gas heater, located near the door. There were two small four-pane windows in the front room. The windows were covered by tattered cloth curtains, in an attempt to block some of the endless wind that attacked the exterior of the shack. There were a few magazines and a newspaper on the table by the armchair and a transistor radio played in the background, featuring the only local radio station, KVRS.  There was about 25 feet of clear plastic tubing that lay tangled on the floor and served as the lifeline between him and the oxygen tank. I turned off the old tank, removed the regulator, installed the regulator on the new tank, and placed the safety cap on the old tank for removal. He scrawled a signature on the delivery slip, and he handed me a money order that covered the “amount due”. I gave him a copy of the slip and wrote “Paid in Full” on the paper. Then I rolled the old tank to the doorway. 

The little man motioned to me to come into the kitchen.  He pointed to an aluminum percolator that sat steaming and gurgling on the stove and said, “coffee?” I thanked him and did my best to let him know that I appreciated the offer. I struggled to make him understand that I had other deliveries to make.  Finally, he smiled gently and offered his hand. I shook the work worn hand, feeling the fading muscles of a man who’d earned his living through very hard work in the depths of the local coal mines. He said, “thank you, friend”, as I left his house, closing the door quickly against the cold wind. 

As I did a K-turn in the muddy alleyway and began my drive back to the store, I found my mind stuck on thoughts of the old timer and his circumstances. I had lived in Rock Springs for years and had often heard references to “bachelor shacks”. I never really thought about what they were, until this visit. While the old miner didn’t seem comfortable trying to converse with me, I was struck by his nobility. I thought about his likely age and what his work life might have been like. It was 1975 and I expected that the man was between 65 and 75 years old. That meant that he likely started digging coal between 1915 and 1920, which was well before any significant mechanization came to underground mining. 

I began to think about this immigrant who had spent his adult life underground, digging coal by hand. It was sobering to see how little he had to his name, after such a challenging life. Black lung and a worn-out body were his legacy. He had walls covered with tarpaper to fight the wind, along with a gas wall heater and kitchen stove to provide what little comfort I could detect. He didn’t have television but got along with the company of a radio and some newspapers. I had seen no vehicle, so I imagined that he had some friends or family who helped him get groceries and other necessities. I thought how fortunate I was to live in a modern home and to have the potential for a career that was much less difficult and less physically demanding than the old timer had experienced. 

I was amazed over the next several weeks as I traveled about Rock Springs, just how many bachelor shacks that I noticed. They sat in back yards and side yards. There were lots containing multiple shacks in certain neighborhoods. Many of the shacks were well kept and painted to match the primary homes. Others were dilapidated, with paint peeling and cracked windows.  Almost all of the shacks I observed were occupied. Many were inhabited by old miners like the man I had encountered on the oxygen delivery. However, many others were serving as housing for the large number of single workers who had descended on Rock Springs during the industrial boom. The only difference seemed to be that the new workers owned vehicles and were seldom in their homes, preferring to while away their free time in the bars, while the old timers stayed in their shacks, drank coffee, and waited for their social security checks. 

I hoped that I could escape such a fate. I had no desire to work a lifetime, only to end up in a bachelor shack with little to show for the back breaking work. I also had no desire to live the wildlife of boom chasing laborers, drinking their way from payday to payday. I was resolved to continue my education and seek a profession that would allow me to avoid a bachelor shack as the terminus to my life. 

Later, when I was about 55 years old, I got an education about the bachelor shacks of Rock Springs. It seems there were three basic processes that caused bachelor shacks to exist: 

The first was where a miner would purchase a home lot. With little money, they would utilize their greatest skills – digging. They would dig a hole in the rear of the lot and place a wooden cover over it. This underground abode would serve as their first home. Then, as they saved money, they would build a couple of rooms over top of the sunken living quarters, resulting in a better living experience. Finally, they would dig a real basement in front of the original shelter and have a home built over it. This would provide a real house, with the original dwelling still in the back yard. They would then rent the small dwelling to a bachelor miner to augment their income. My wife’s grandfather pursued this path.  

The second, is where a resident would accumulate some additional money, allowing them to build small ‘shacks’ in their yards or adjacent lots. They would then rent those dwellings, enhancing their income and net worth. 

Finally, there were those who built small dwellings to use in the surreptitious production of alcoholic beverages, during prohibition. The buildings posed as laundry shacks and storage shacks, but the smell of brewing liquor made the neighbors aware of their true purpose. The making of wine for personal consumption was key to the cultural tradition of persons with European roots. These folks used the ‘shacks’ to make illegal wine and liquor and this use was continued by emigrants who were used to making their own wine in their home countries, well after prohibition. 

If you have the opportunity to drive through the older neighborhoods of Rock Springs, pay attention to the surprising number of small buildings in the yards of the older homes. These are the “bachelor shacks.”