Way back before the land of time, I mean cars, people used to travel by horse and buggy. Several hundred yards west of the FM 2978 bridge over Spring Creek, Bogs Gully intersects with the creek.

The location where the gully meets the creek is called "The Bogs Hole." This spot used to be the Sunday afternoon gathering spot for local folks.  They could picnic, swim, pitch horseshoes and the like.

A few yards from this intersection is a spot where people would cross the gully and go a little further, to another location called “The Caldwell Hole.” It was named after a family that lived in the woods.

All along the gully, the Mueller boys and I could spend many days of summer exploring the woods.

Bobby and Charlie were generally too old for us middle aged guys and Tomato Head and Billy were a little too young to tag along. Most of the time it was me, VOP and Rotten Cotton that would make our rounds on the gully and Bimbo would sometimes be there.

The rest of this story begins with a warning. Kids don't try this! It's very stupid and dangerous!

One day during the 60’s, the Mueller boys got a bright idea about digging a cave in the side of the gully walls. They had started the cave before I saw it, but I was eager to help with the work.  In my mind the sides were 40 or 50 feet high, but I'm sure 10 or 12 feet was more like it.

Several days of hard labor had been spent digging this cave and of course shoring the walls was  an un-thought of idea. We were kids and kids don't think! Especially boys! Boys are indestructible! We never die and never get hurt!

That's why shoring the walls or any other safety factor was totally out of the question.

I don't know whose idea it was but we decided that our digging process was a tad slow. We had already created a good-size area of about four-foot by six-foot in the side of the wall, but we decided it was time to blast our way a little deeper.

We went up to Uncle Johnny's gas station and got several gallons of gasoline in a jug. We felt that if we could plant these jugs of gasoline inside our cave, we could create an explosion to loosen the dirt, making the dig much easier.

We had these dreams and ideas of a cave large enough to live in, if we ever needed to leave home. We saw no need of school and doing chores was the pits, so we figured we could hide away in our new home.

We took those jugs of gas and carefully placed them in the hole. We then saved one jug and backed our way from the entrance pouring gasoline as we moved away - anticipating using this trail of gas as our fuse. I don't remember how many jugs of gas we had, but I'm sure it was more than just one. I mean, what's the use of only a minor explosion, when three or four would have caused a bigger blast!

As we exited and poured, we soon lit the match and took off running. Down the embankment, through the water filled gully and up the other side we ran with hearts racing in anticipation of a tremendous explosion! We hit the dirt on the other side of the gully and lain behind a log awaiting the big bang.

Ten seconds turned to thirty and thirty turned to sixty and soon we wondered what went wrong, when a small trickle of black smoke began to emerge from our cave.

Nobody ever told us we had to compress the jugs of gas to make them explode. We had simply put large open jugs of gas in the hole and the jugs simply burned, like a large coal oil lamp.  We waited a while hoping for an explosion but it never occurred.

I think that was the last time we ever went down to our cave. It had became black and soot-filled and occupying the cave any longer was next to impossible.

I think myself and all the Mueller boys ought to get our sons and  make a trip down there soon  to see if our cave still exists after 35-plus years. I'll just need to remember to carry plenty of soap and water.

Clifford.

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