Iron Mike (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781977223975)

Mike Lucas was born in 1906 in a small coal mining town in northeastern Pennsylvania. His father was killed in a coal mining accident when he was seven years old. He lived with his mother and older brother Lukey that worked in the coal breaker for $2.80 a day, and he was the sole support of the family. When Mike was in second grade, he got a job after school at a shirt factory cleaning up. They Struggled for several years, when in 1918 the flu virus hit and killed over 700,000 people in the US. During the flu, Mike was a good Samaritan, helping the sick. He then quit school when he was 12 years old and went to work to help his mother pay the bills. When Mike was 13, he was working down in a mine shaft and the elevator operator took him and his boss up over the top of a 100-foot-high had frame. At the last second Mike leapt off and grabbed onto an upright beam and his boss fell to his death. Years later Mike was working in another mine that flooded with water, and five of his fellow minors drowned, Mike was the only one that survived. Several of the miners hung the rude arrogant mine boss that caused their death. For years after that, the boss's ghost could be seen along the road where he was hung. In the 1930s the Ku Klux Klan was very active, and Mike and his friends ran them out of town. During the depression all of the men were out of work, so they dug their own coal mine. The coal barons claimed they own the land and had their own police force shoot many the miners to run them off of the land. Mike and his brothers were the first ones to stand up to the coal and iron cops. Mike was one of the best boxers in the country and was scheduled for the heavyweight boxing championship of the world. he was known as iron Mike. In 1925 Mike played football for the Pottsville maroons, who won the first National Football League championship. Mike had his own coal mine and struck a vein of coal that was a gold mine. A greedy coal Baron that had several crooked politicians and a judge in bed with him, made a deal with the Department of mines, where they could go and steal Mike's coal.

While Mike was working in the mines, he had several brushes with death.