Holes

In the New Mexico desert your choices for creative fun were limited.

Mesquite bushes had thorns and were not tall enough to climb. We had sagebrush on flat prairies that stretched all the way to the horizon. Not much to do with that except set it on fire which I did, once.

Nope, about all we could do for fun was build forts, but even that had limits. You could find a thick patch of brushy mesquite and hack a path through to the center. But the only protection it provided was from the thorns that more often ended up in you than the enemy.

No, if you wanted a fort, you had to dig. Kids who grew up in the desert in The B.V. (Before Videos) Era spent a lot of time digging holes. The dirt is soft sand for the first 6 to 12 inches -- until you encounter caliche.

Caliche is the bane of desert diggers. It is a hard chalky rock made up of calcium carbonate. It usually showed up as huge boulders that were difficult to pry out of the ground.

Because we kids didn't have access to dynamite (usually) we had to dig around these rock monsters and then find a way to break them up or haul them out of the hole.

We lived about 5 miles out of town in a sparsely populated area that provided plenty of area for digging.

One summer we decided to go all out and build a super fort. It would have multiple rooms connected by tunnels. Candles on tin can lids stuck in the dirt walls provided lighting.

The roof would be shored up with plywood covered with dirt to keep it hidden from potential intruders (aka parents or sisters).

Our partners in this endeavor were the Busby boys who lived about a half-mile down the main road. Rodney was my age and strong, a good quality when you're messing with caliche. His older brother, Reuben, was big, soft and fat. For some reason he hung around us whining that he should be the leader of the group. We mostly ignored him.

My brother and I found the ideal site for the mega-fort.

Digging began in earnest and soon we had one large room dug out. We encountered minimal caliche and what we did find provided an excellent floor to the fort's first room.

We supported the plywood roof and made sure it was camouflaged. Once the hole was enlarged so that all four of us could sit comfortably we started on the tunnel that would join the second interior room.

Reuben was not around when we started this part of the fort because he was sick and had to stay home -- which suited us fine. Soon we had a 4-foot tunnel connected to a second, interior room. We stocked it with canned goods, comic books and candy bars.

The candles provided spooky lighting for the telling of ghost stories. The fort was awesome!

We also decided to vote Reuben out of the club because he was bossy and also took up too much space. A couple of days later we headed out to our fort for a day of hiding out.

Reuben was well now but irritated that we had built the fort without him and kicked him out of the gang. He followed us as we scrambled into the back room of the fort hoping to find a way to block his entrance.

Reuben managed to get into the front room yelling about what he would do to us. He started crawling into the tunnel. We heard him scuffling angrily but then his tone changed. He was stuck!

We had made the tunnel just big enough for us smaller kids to fit. Fat Reuben was lodged in tight! The tunnel couldn't give because its walls were hard caliche. His rolls of fat had sort of shifted as he struggled and caused him to become lodged even tighter.

This provided a great opportunity for serious mocking on our part. We threw pebbles at his screaming face. Candles were waved menacingly near his ears.

As Reuben became more agitated and started crying, we realized something. We were trapped as well!

With him stuck in the tunnel we couldn't leave. Now we got a little panicky. Our parents didn't know where we were. As expert fort builders, we knew no one could find our location.

There was only one way out. The three of us would slowly stand up, pushing the plywood and dirt roof up as we stood. The fort would be ruined but we saw no other way out.

With much effort we stood and pushed out the roof, getting really dirty in the process. We climbed out of the hole and dejectedly headed back to the Busby house for a round of Kool-Aid.

We left Reuben in the tunnel, crying and screaming, after telling him we needed to get shovels to dig him out. What we didn't tell him was that we would take our sweet time coming back. We weren't in any hurry.

Served him right for wrecking our fort.

-- Devin Houston is the son of Herald-Leader columnist Louis Houston and the president/CEO of Houston Enzymes. Send comments or questions to [email protected]. The opinions expressed are those of the author.