Why Does the Gem Cross the Road?

THE Gem of Egypt, which looks something like a cross between a lobster and a skyscraper, stands 20 stories high and weighs 7,000 tons. Tearing up earth at a rate of 200 tons per bite, the Hanna Coal Co.'s Gem (actually an acronym for Giant Earth Mover) has stripped the top 80 ft. of soil off the area around Hendrysburg, Ohio, so that other machines can gouge out the underlying coal. Now the Gem wants to move across Interstate Highway 70 and chew its way toward Barnesville (pop. 4,300), ten miles to the south.

Back in 1964 the Hanna Co. persuaded federal and state officials to agree that its equipment could cross the highway occasionally. But two of Barnesville's more redoubtable matrons, Mrs. Norma Schuster and Mrs. Aida Rissi, are ready to argue in court that this agreement never envisaged equipment as mighty as the Gem, which requires that the highway be closed for 24 hours and covered with a 12-ft. protective blanket of earth while the Gem creeps across it at 1/2 m.p.h.

If litigation fails, the two women will try to get a change in zoning rules that would set up a five-mile green belt to protect Barnesville from the machine. Meantime, the Gem crawls ever nearer the road. It is already so close that motorists sometimes stop to marvel as the Gem's giant bucket dips and crunches into Ohio's good earth.

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