“Every young man should have the fun of digging a hole in the ground,” the 70-plus year old man told me, as he stood next to the hole I was digging to install a sprinkler system in the yard adjoining his.

“You think so?”

“Sure, I do.  I dug one when I was 6 or 8 years old.  I think each of my boys did.  Did you ever dig one?”

“Yeah, I did.  Only got about waist deep.”

“Your boys dug one yet?”

“No, but I bet they do.”

Incidentally, Austin was working with me that day, not much over seven years old himself, and heard our conversation.

It wasn’t long, and I saw the beginnings of a hole being dug on the north side of the tree row north of our place. 

The hole was still an infant, maybe a couple of feet deep, when we had a rainstorm of enormous proportions.  I saw a sheet of water rolling across our yard from the field to the south of us, perhaps 2 to 3 inches deep. 

The next morning, the seven-year-old boy was shocked to find his newly constructed hole filled to the brim with water and all the flotsam that the deluge from the day before carried with it.

Whereupon once the ground dried out and digging operations could recommence, the dirt being extracted from the hole was piled into a berm approximately 1-1 ½ feet high around the project.  This berm was continually modified, lengthening, and winding farther and farther away from the hole as the days and months came and went and more and more dirt was mined.

The hole was nearing the five-foot mark.  I happened to have a mini excavator rented for a job we were doing, and, unloading it from the trailer that evening, began the circuitous slow journey around the east and then to the north of the yard to the hole.  The family followed along, at first asking repeatedly where I was going, and then, as we got closer, what I was going to do.

I set up to the east of the hole, right on its edge, and took the depth down to the 9-foot mark.  Next, I backed up a little and cut a step out of the east wall about two feet up from the bottom, and then corresponding steps all the way up to ground level.

A new flurry of activity commenced north of the trees.  A hefty sized board was found that was long enough to bridge across the hole.  A rope and pully were bought.  A bucket was attached to the rope, and a tie off point down at the bottom of the hole was pegged into the wall.  This way, the lad could dig a bucket full of dirt, reef on the rope to lift the bucket to the top, run up the stairs, grab the bucket, and empty it onto the ever extending, neatly constructed berm.  Even the dirt pile I had piled to the side with the mini was carefully carried away to additional berm construction. 

Construction plans now included mining a few more feet down, which stopped at a depth of 14 feet, then tunnel construction towards the back door of the house, which was located some 75 to 100 feet away.  I got down there myself, then, and helped install a ceiling with supports in the four-foot hollowed out area to the left of the main shaft. 

Progress slowed and soon stopped, as the lad who had pioneered this epic effort morphed into a young man, although there were sporadic forays on days when the mood and frustration of the young man was such that the parents couldn’t be of much help.  There seemed to be a good amount of therapy gained down there, the young man armed with a pry bar and sledgehammer, gouging away at the side wall of the cave area.

The hole, with its 14-foot depth, seemed a bit of a safety hazard.  We learned this when we climbed down there a few months later and came face to face with your typical western Kansas prairie rattlesnake.  

We covered the construction site with several pieces of tin, and largely forgot about it for the next few years.

Until J. J., one of Austin’s friends, was over for the evening.  Turned out to be a rather tumultuous evening for him.  First, he was stepped on by the horse.  Later, when the boys were racing around the premises on foot, playing I don’t know what game, the boys circumvented the tin while J.J. elected to run right across it.  It didn’t hold, and after a muffled shout of surprise that ended in a thump far below, we looked down, panic stricken, to see what bones might be broken.  We were lucky.  None were broken, just a few sore spots and a scraped area where the edge of the tin had caught him as he traveled past it.

And then, after we covered it back up with the tin, we forgot about it, excepting the odd times we showed it as a tourist attraction on the place.

*****

Ten years slid by.  We had a wonderful rain one night and I was out, slowly walking down to the pens to see how sloppy they were, when I saw the gate to pen 4 leered jauntily ajar at me.  And, I saw five fresh trails of beef prints leaving there and heading west.

They were the hoof prints of 5 steers I had been fattening up to have butchered and sell parted out.  It wasn’t a problem at all to track them in the soft oozy mud.  I guessed their track to be less than an hour old, which would coincide with the sunrise spreading enough light around for them to see the gate had been left open, by none other than yours truly.

But when I found them, down at the bottom of a milo field a quarter mile away, there were only four of them. 

I got the boys, and we worked those four back up out of the waist high milo, back up to the home pens.  They herded easily enough, and it was soon they were back where they belonged.

But where was number 5?

We had four blacks in the pen; I knew the fifth was red and, I thought, would surely be easy to spot against the surrounding landscape. 

We looked for a couple of hours, though, and couldn’t find it anywhere.  I dismissed the boys and said I’d look for it on my own.  I started again, back down by pen 4, and followed the trail.  All five sets moved westerly towards the milo field. 

And then I saw it.  About halfway to the field, I saw the prints of one turn back towards the east.  They moved back into and were lost in the trail leaving pen 4.  I saw them emerge from the slop of the trail near the bottom fence of pen 4 and move in a northerly direction.  I followed them north and east, then saw them double back on themselves, before finally turning back to the east. 

East, along the north side of pen 4, then farther east along the north side of the north tree row . . .

I remembered the hole, and was pretty sure I knew what I’d find before I got there.

Sure enough, the tracks went by the hole with the tin covering it, circled back, and for some odd reason, tromped right onto the tin. 

I looked down, down, and there he was, wedged in the bottom of the crevasse. 

I was amazed at how diminutive his 800 pounds looked, all bunched up and forlorn like.

I called the boys over and we brainstormed about how would be the best way to get him out.  One option was to dig him out with a mini excavator.  But that was soon ruled out as being costly and time intensive when other work and customers were waiting even as we stood and planned.

One of the boys suggested getting the tractor and scoop over there, getting some of our wide tie down straps, and hoisting the poor fellow out.

We all agreed that was the best idea so far, and set up accordingly.  But.  Who was getting down in there with that beast?  The hazards included broken legs, should they get squished on either side, or, worse case scenario, getting trampled. 

I said I’d get down there.  The fellow seemed fairly calm, if not very sweaty.  But I had no way of getting the straps under him, so I climbed back out, and we reconnoitered.  Bryce suggested bending a large sized wire (we seem to have numerous sizes on the place) and use it to fish under the guy to catch the strap and pull it to the other side.  I honestly didn’t see that working at all, not wishing to practically stand on my head while I tried to fish blindly to the other side and under a steer with blood in his eye.  And I for sure didn’t see it working when I saw the boys had rigged a fishing pole out of conduit with the wire, pre-bent, attached to it with the idea of doing it all from the rim. 

And it worked!  I scampered back down there and fastened the tie strap to the fishing wire.  It wasn’t long and we had two straps under, back up, and attached to the scoop. 

I leaped into the tractor, and going completely on the hand signals of the boys, began to lift the poor guy slowly out. 

And then we ran into an unforeseen problem.  When our adventurous steer was lifted to within eye level of the rim, he presumed he was ready to go and, grabbing the edge with his front feet, took off.

And back down. With a tremendous whomp sound that made me fainthearted thinking of how many legs he had broken. 

Up to that point, we were pretty sure he had faired the first fall in a decent manner. 

He was a lot more agitated on this go around, and it took longer to get the straps fished under and back up.

Ultimately, we did, and this time, the plan was to have the tractor in reverse, clutch in, while lifting our fellow out and, once close to the top, begin reversing for all we had, dragging him the rest of the way over the lip and out onto ground level.

Another small conundrum presented when the fellow took off towards the west, still tied up in the straps.  But that righted itself when he kicked a few times and came free on his own.

I jumped on the four-wheeler and ran some flank pressure on the fellow while the boys ran down to pen 4, opened the gate, and formed a human fence line for me to bring the bruiser along and he penned easily.

Oh.  No legs were broken, but I guess you caught on to that already.