Crazy Secret Underground (Mexican) Tunnel
by I remember when I was a strapping young lad, one summer, my brother and I decided to dig a tunnel from our fort in the backyard to the shed, about 15 feet away. This would be a super secret passageway that we would sneak through to get inside the (usually unlocked) shed for exciting espionage trials. Unbeknownst to my brother, I had secret plans to further extend the tunnel from the shed into the crawlspace of our house. I would then be able to cut a trapdoor in my bedroom floor to give me unfettered access to the shed, the fort, and beyond. Oh, the sneaking I would do.
Inside the fort, we began digging. About 9 inches down, maybe 12, we hit a boulder. This was not a problem. We simply started digging it out. Turned out the boulder was pretty huge, so we got the garden hose and tried to "power-wash" some of the dirt out of the hole. This didn't really work out well. We pretty much just created a muddy mess inside our small hole in the ground. We decided to take a break, and go back to the drawing board.
Well, being strapping young lads, we had plenty of bike riding to do, football to play, and various other activities to keep us distracted. So we kinda forgot about our devious scheme after a couple of days. We would get back to digging soon, though. Soon.
So school started in the late summer, and eventually we came home and found the boards from our fort on the street awaiting garbage pickup. Around the house, in the backyard, our hole had been filled. And, our dreams were dashed. My father (who somehow found out about our top-secret tunnel project) had taken the matter out of our hands.
(The wood from the fort ended up getting used to make a lemonade stand - which found some success in the local area - but the garbage men seemed to think it looked more like garbage than a lemonade stand and took it away.)
So, while my grand scheme of constructing a system of tunnels connecting the various structures on our property was ended before it even began by an annoyingly large rock, I am inspired by the ingenuity of our amigos from south of the border (yes, this soliloquy is going somewhere). 
These guys built a 2,400' long tunnel 85' underneath the Mexican border, right into the U.S. of A. This thing has ventilation, lighting, a high ceiling, and a private entrance and exit. Wow... the sneakiness that could be accomplished with this thing really fires the imagination.
Of course, these guys were doing illegal things with it. But that is a cool tunnel.
While my childhood tunnelling didn't work out as I'd as hoped, in the future I would still love to have some sort of secret passageway available for my sneaky use. The whole idea is fun. An underground tunnel would be great, but I'd settle for a revolving bookcase, or a trapdoor. Anything that lets me disappear here and appear there. Maybe I'll build another fort. Start digging. And see where I end up.
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38 Comments
this may be the best insight into ian's mind that i've ever seen
i'm scared. i may have revealed too much.
Man our imaginations so great when we were younger.
I started making underground fort for myself, until my dad told me that's really a bad idea because it could have collapsed on me. That was a startling truth for me, didn't realize that could happen at that age.
The hole was deeper than I stood, it was great.
I figured the forts above ground were much more fun. Plus you can do rope swings off forts, kind of hard underground.
yeah! that's totally what i'm talking about. an underground fort is an awesome idea
TL; DR
OH SWEET TUNNELS! man.. tunnels are scary
i want a secret passageway house so bad
like a mystery house
and like a huge painting that i could look through the eyes
yes! i would LOVE it! although the painting with eye-holes is a bit creepy. too "voyeur". but like a secret hideout with a secret entrance would rule. oooh maybe like a panic room! haha
yeah but if you have a party and one of those paintings you can look through and see if people are really enjoying your party!!
haha
yeah i really wanna put a secret room in our house, and it's like almost possible, if we just add on another room and make that the laundry area and close up the laundry room and then make a secret entrance from the linen closet! it would be perfect!!! but everytime i mention it i usually just get weird looks from Chris. haha
Lex Luthor has a panic room. You could be Lex Luthor, Ian.
michael rosenbaum is a fox
I think it's the bald head. 'Cause I didn't like him in "Zoe, Duncan, Jack and Jane." But now he's cuter.
Leave it to Phil to wreck perfectly good underground tunnel plans. :)
totally! hahah
hahaha... me and matt never tried this... and im somewhat shocked. We always did things above ground that left us room to fall and break bones, usually in trees or on roofs. Ask funky sometime how he got stuck in a tree trunk and we had to hack him out of it with axes... hahahahahaha
Oh man, that photo is so misleading. Before I finished reading I thought it was a picture of your tunnel, that would've been so awesome. Anyhow very cool story. Is there already a thread on elaborate childhood schemes??? There should be one.
well, i did put the picture at the end of the story for a reason... haha
and THIS is the thread for your elaborate childhood schemes! or i guess you could just make a new one
ian your writing moves me. seriously, very interesting read
matt, your HOTness moves me, so i guess we'll call it even.
SEXUALLY HARRASS'D
take this to the macking forum please....
Ian, i wish i knew how to quit you!
I concur with matt.
great read.
needless to say secret passages are a ever yearned for, rarely attained accomadation in houses today.
But speaking of forts, my good friends Justin and Jarad and I built this really awesome one, and you couldn't see it until you got close. It was hidden in some dense foliage, and really extreme. it had like old school, metal mattress supports as floors, and was so so cool! I remember running through the woods when a car came on the main street, and taking a quick right into the dense foliage to come upon the greatness that was our fort.
Also my cousin Kevin and I designed a really hardcore fort. It was only 10-15 feet off the ground, but it was probably 200 square feet of floor. We cut down 5 trees with hatchets and hoisted them up to these 4 other trees. we attached the fallen ones with rope and 9" nails, and designed an elevator to get you up. Very cool. Not very secret.
the thing about secret passageways is: you want to show them to everyone.
My tunnel is cooler than your tunnel:
http://www.boingboing.net/bomb.jpg
under the Bulgarian capital Sofia there's a thousands of kilometres of tunnels built between Roman times and Communist regime. They shelter about 20 000 people
http://www.standartnews.com/archive/2006/01/25/english/
awesome tunnel, but definitely not sneaky enough
Ian, I hate to break this to you ...
but I put that bolder there. Sorry man.
Hahah, uncle dan, you sir, are a big jerk. haha
i want to build a tunnel like this into Poland
like, from under your house, into Poland?
precisely
This is the funnest news story EVER.. the reading was very fun and brought me back to when i lived in my grandmas house and hoped i would find a secret passage somewhere becuase the house was so old i KNEW there had to be something. there was even a maids corner in my grandmas house there had to have been something. But in all my hide & seak games there i never found one. I had always dreamed of secret passages and doorways and book cases and fire places and cubby holes and places in my house I only knew of. Reminds me of the movie clue & that episode of saved by the bell when they did dinner theatre and they found a secret passage through a fire place.
to be a kid still is good times. i dont think i really have grown up. I still dream of passage ways & think of journeys to go on. ha ha.
btw way anyone up for an adventure? i havent been on an adventure for mm about a year.. my adventures really just consist of getting lost somewhere or milling around an abandoned house and being scared. Any takers. It's pretty fun! I always bring my camera too. ha ha
hey im still a kid soo you know maybe eursaleen and me should go dig a secret tunnel so we can sneak out. hmm but i think our parents would find out when we're digging and the pipes explode, but they might not notice. but anyway, that's very inspiring to the kids of America and Mexico.
Ohhh, AWESOME
http://www.hiddenpassageway.com/
I vaugely remember your fort, slightly vaugely
hahah, awesome. sup matt!
That door at the end of that tunnel reminds me of the movie "the Ring"