The Longest Running Clandestine Operation in the History of the Zakes Family - Part I

Part I - The Shaft

This is the first installment of a three part story from my childhood. It is recalled to the best of my ability. (To read Part II, please click HERE.)

What goes through the mind of a 10-year-old?

There were race riots in Los Angeles, just one state over, as a result of the Rodney King beating. By the time the police, the U.S. Army, the Marines, and the National Guard restored order, the casualties included 53 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damages to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses.

The year before, the First Gulf War had ended. Every night the network news had shown missile launch after missile launch, bombing run after bombing run.

In school I was beginning to learn of and grasp the horrors of the Holocaust.

I knew that smaller race riots had spread to other cities and I had gradually grown concerned that they would move to Phoenix. I wasn’t sleeping well—I was scared.

I went and talked to my dad and told him of my concerns. Thankfully he didn’t laugh at me – instead he sensed I had a solution and asked what I had in mind.

I felt that my family should build a safe space somewhere. Some sort of combination between the European smuggler’s room that Jews were hidden in – this would protect me from race riots or a Holocaust-like nightmare – and a bomb shelter – which would protect me from Saddam Hussein and World War III.

“Well…I was thinkin’ we should dig a room under the house. Maybe put something over it to hide it.” I’d seen The Great Escape where Steve McQueen and the other POW’s had used a stove to conceal the entrance to their escape tunnel—something like that seemed pretty smart to me.

“How do ya think you’ll get through the concrete foundation?” my dad asked.

I didn’t know. I hadn’t fully thought this through—I was only 10.

Being the good dad he was, he had a different idea for me.

“What do you think of starting somewhere on the outside of the house and then digging under it?” he suggested. “Maybe you could start in the shed.”

A plan was formulated. He gave my brother Dan and I permission to dig a shaft down beneath the pool shed until it had reached an ‘appropriate depth,’ then tunnel over until we were under the house, and then, finally, we could dig a ‘room.’

I’d imagine my dad probably thought that my fears would subside in a few weeks and we’d never make it to the ambiguous ‘appropriate depth.’

My dad did get us started though. He cut an 18 by 30-inch section of the plywood shed floor to create our access hatch. We pounded nails into it and then cut them off underneath in an effort to camouflage our trap door—it looked like it was secured just the same as the rest of the floor. We could pop it up with a flat-headed screwdriver in the right spot.

And so…

My brother Dan and I commenced the longest running clandestine operation in the history of the Zakes family.

Quickly we settled into a routine. We’d get home from school, change into our swimming suits, and head out into the backyard for a swim in our pool—that was our cover story anyways.

After a quick dip in the pool, we’d look both ways, then round the corner into our corrugated tin pool shed. If it was even remotely hot outside then the swim wasn’t just a convenient alibi, it was a survival mechanism. It was unexaggerably hot in the shed.

The shed was hot enough by itself, but if the reflector oven nature of a tin shed in Arizona sunshine wasn’t bad enough, we always worked with the door shut. While the project was a “secret operation,” even we probably wouldn’t have gone to that length if it wasn’t for the worst neighbors ever.

No, seriously – the worst ever.

John and Jenny moved in shortly after we did. You’ve probably read books or seen movies where less than stellar neighbors were depicted. John and Jenny trumped them. For instance, one time at Christmas, my brother Dan – maybe 5 years old at the time – took a plate of Christmas goodies over to their house as a gift from our family. My parents had picked Dan because they figured the neighbors would be nicest to him – he was the youngest and cutest at the time. Dan reached up on his tippy-toes and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds of waiting, John opened the door. Dan lifted the plastic wrapped and ribbon-tied plate up to reach John’s hands and chimed, “Merry Christmas.” John looked at the plate, then down at Dan, said, “We don’t eat that stuff,” and turned and slammed the door.

Or one time we were having a stray cat problem in our neighborhood. The cat population had exploded and the cats were inbreeding and infected and dying. So we trapped a few in a humane live trap and took them to the Maricopa County Animal Control. John and Jenny called the police and the story was converted to, “The Zakes family has been trapping cats, loading them in burlap sacks, then drowning them in irrigation canals.” Once the police arrived, a quick look at the records cleared that one up.

Or one time me and my friends were playing catch and an errant throw landed the ball over the fence and in their yard. Rather than tossing it back over, John walked over, picked up the football in one hand, picked up a knife in the other, popped it, and then dropped it in his dumpster (in full view of us).

Or if you need more convincing, their were all of the times they would use their leaf blower to blow all of their leaves into our yard, or the time they called the cops on Dan for “trying to shoot their dog,” or any of the times they yelled over the fence at us to shut up, or fired up their gas-powered and mufflerless 100-gallon air compressor at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, or…you probably get the point.

Needless to say, the shed door was always shut while we were working. It dampened the noise and prevented prying eyes.

The beginning was nearly intolerably slow. We’d taken some of my dad’s tools—“he probably won’t miss this screw driver or that hammer”—and we’d hammer the screwdriver into the dirt and then pry up a chunk. The chunk would go into a bucket and we’d pry out another chunk.

Once we had a small depression in the ground, at the end of each day we would drag our garden hose over to the shed and push it through a little corner of the shed wall that we’d bent aside. With the spigot on for even a few seconds our tiny divot would overflow and that was the end of our digging for that day.

The next night when we’d trot back out there, the ground would be just slightly softer than concrete—maybe more like fresh asphalt. We’d chip away some more and finally, after perhaps a month, Dan who was younger and smaller could curl into a contortionist’s fetal position, and I could close the trap door on top of him.

We were so proud. But it was a mere shadow of what was to come.

For the next several years – I’m not kidding, really YEARS – we pried and dug our way downward. We used every conceivable tool: hammers, screwdrivers, a saw, scissors, a pitchfork, shovels (pointed, flat, even sandbox shovels). And eventually we could both stand up in the shaft and pull the lid over our heads.

The shaft was narrow and looked pretty ominous. The shed interior wasn’t big or bright and so if you stood over the hole, even with the shed door open, you couldn’t see the bottom without accessory lighting. The shaft got to the point that it was so deep we couldn’t get in or out without assistance—the hand and footholds carved into the walls were the only ingress and egress mechanisms.

Every so often my fantastic father would come out and check on us and our progress. At last, the day arrived when he came out and said the hole was deep enough and we could begin the part we’d been dreaming of – the TUNNEL.

And to this point we’d told no one.

To be continued… Click HERE for Part II.