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

Part II – The Tunnel

This is the second installment of a three part story from my childhood. If you missed part one, please go back and read it now. (Click HERE for Part I).

After two years of digging the shaft, we finally had permission to continue with Phase II of our secret operation.

At the very base of the shaft, on the east end of our 18-inch wide, by 30-inch long, by 6-foot deep shaft, we started chipping away at the super hard packed clay. Bit by bit, bucket by bucket, we began to make our lateral traverse.

Since the shaft was a little over six feet deep and we were just young boys we developed an elaborate dirt removal system. Even then Dan was a rope and knot genius and between the two of us we had a multi-bucket pulley system.

Whoever the tunnel digger was would load up a small pail – usually a five quart ice cream bucket – and whoever was “topside” would hoist it out when it was full. As soon as the full bucket cleared the shed floor, an empty bucket was lowered down so that tunneling wouldn’t have to stop while the first bucket was being dumped.

The five quart pail was dumped into a five gallon bucket. We had fifteen to twenty of those. Immediately after we began the project, long before the shaft was six feet deep, we’d run into the problem of getting rid of the dirt. What do two boys do with literally tons of dirt?

At first we loaded it, double bagged, into plastic groceries sacks, looped a bag over either side of the handlebars of our bikes, and pedaled to a discreet dumping site, say perhaps the farm field at the end of our block, or eventually a few housing developments that were being prepared, and then nonchalantly pour the dirt out. We did it just like the POWs in The Great Escape, sprinkling it about so that “no one” would catch on.

That was great and all when we were digging a couple of spoonfuls worth of dirt out per hour. However, once summer came and we started getting into softer dirt as the shaft got deeper, the bike-bag method became insufficient.

Instead, every couple of weeks we’d load all 15 or so five-gallon buckets, each weighing over 50 pounds, into the back of my dad’s work van. Eventually we got tired of carrying the buckets out to the curb and graduated to putting them in our Red Radio Flyer wagon and pulling them out to the van two at a time. Once the van was loaded, Dan and I would “talk” my dad into driving the van to church. Our church had several acres of undeveloped property and a lot of it was very uneven. So really you could say we were just helping out.

As we tunneled we became more and more concerned about cave-ins. Logical, right? But again in our infinite young minds we were prepared.

The answer: Cave-in Drills.

Every time we dug in the tunnel we’d wear our “safety equipment.” It wasn’t much and thankfully it was never required to really work, but we had it none-the-less. In order to dig, we would usually lie on our backs and dig headfirst above and behind our heads. Whoever was tunneling would wear scuba-style swim goggles to prevent the collapsing dirt from falling in his eyes or nose. They’d breathe through a snorkel, modified so that it lay on their chest toward the mouth of the tunnel, in case a large cave-in occurred. Again in our brilliance, as the tunnel got longer, we duct taped a length of rubber hosing to the end of the snorkel to enhance its range.

Bucket by bucket load we awkwardly inched forward. A foot of tunnel became two and then three. And eventually we had an 18-inch wide, 18-inch tall, and 6-foot long tunnel. We called my dad out and after a quick inspection he approved our progress enough to allow us to commence construction of “The Room.”

To be continued… (Click HERE to read Part III.)