One cold winter we were drilling off Highway 1 doing some mineral exploration. We had a warming shack hauled in by a Cat to our worksite. We were too far from any town to go for lunch every day and the road into our drill site was boggy in spots. This meant we had to carry all our supplies in every day and our samples out! Winter finally came and it all froze up, so at least we could drive to the work site with chains on all our wheels!

On one drill hole, Donny our driller hit rock down about 40 feet. We put some casing down and cleaned it out so we could cut some of that rock to get a sample of it and see if it was bedrock? Then I walked around to the front of the drill. On the drill deck were 20’ sections of casing. Donny put on a core barrel that belonged to the drill operator before him. He started to cut the rock and suddenly, the core barrel stuck and then twisted off in the ground. That upset Don a lot. He shut off the drill and started throwing things – his gloves, his hard hat, a shovel and a couple of wrenches (which we would eventually have to go get for him)!

He then walked 60’ behind the drill raised his arms to the sky and said, “Why me Lord?!”  

And out of nowhere (from in front of the drill and through a piece of casing) a voice responded and said, “Because Donny you tried to date that woman last weekend and I told you not to!”

Our boss fell off his bucket and was laughing hysterically lying in the snow! He then got up and said, “Don, I’ve heard you talk to the Lord many times through the years, but this is the first time that I ever heard him answer you back!”

Donny replied, “It would appear so!!”