COMET -- Comet was "a calm little town," with perhaps 50 residents, recalls Harold Giulio, during a recent phone conversation from his Butte home. Giulio, 85, lived there in the 1920s and 1930s.

Calm, yes. Quiet, no.

The ball mill would run 24 hours per day, filling the town with the constant, deafening din of heavy iron and steel balls pulverizing ore.

"You got used to it," he said.

When the mill shut down, the sound of the silence was disturbing.

The quiet "would wake you up," he said.

The smells from his youth were the minerals from the mine and mill.

One of five children, Giulio was born in 1922 in Boulder, and attended Comet School in 1927 with his sister, Jeanette, who was three years older than him.

Only seven children attended the school, which Giulio thought had operated in Comet since the 1870s. When it closed, they went to school in nearby Basin.

When Harold was very young, his father, John, hauled ore by horse-drawn wagons and sleighs in winter. His grandparents, Stephan and Maria Giulio, lived nearby. They had immigrated from Italy in their youth and moved to Comet in 1902.

As a child in the summer, Giulio would hunt for arrowheads with Jeanette and fish for cutthroat trout in the creek. In the winter, there was skiing and sleigh riding.

"There was a lot of snow," he remembered -- it would be at least 4-feet deep and cover the fences.

They would ride their sleds from Comet down High Ore Road, then hitch a ride back on the ore trucks or wagons.

"When we were young, there was always something to be busy at," he said.

That included plenty of chores, such as chopping wood for heat.

Sometimes Comet had electricity, during the years the mine was running. However, if the mine was closed, the town's electricity was shut off and people relied on kerosene lanterns, he said.

By the time Giulio moved to Comet, the businesses were closed. There was no café or stores, he said. The Dailey Hotel, the biggest building in town, was shut down years before Harold's time. People shopped and attended church in either Basin or Boulder.

In his youth, Harold worked down in the Silver Hill Mine, which abutted the Comet Mine. He recalls that the Comet Mine shaft sunk 965 feet. Every 100 feet, there would be a level of the mine that had tunnels.

Mining is hard, dirty and dangerous work, he said, and he doesn't miss it.

"Everything is heavy -- the drilling machines, the drilling and blasting -- and it's wet. You have to wear a slicker. Water drips off the timbers," he said.

After fighting in World War II, Harold returned to live in Boulder and later worked an open-pit mining claim in Comet. He found that more enjoyable.

"I enjoyed open-pit mining. I worked on the veins the old timers left behind," he said.