The outcome of this story may have had a different ending if it wasn’t for the sun coming out. Personally, I think the sun coming out saved my life!
  Aha summer, a time to sleep in, zzzzzzzzzzz. Then, a knock on my bedroom window!
  “Wake up, wake up!”
  For a split second I thought I was in a Tom Peterson TV commercial. Tom Peterson sold furniture and ran late night TV commercials that started with him yelling, “Wake up, wake up!” Dean was one of the guys that I ran around with and for some unknown reason he was knocking on my bedroom window. As I was getting up; Dean opened and crawled through the window and said, “You got any of this stuff, rope, candles, matches, Kool-Aid, flashlights, candy, bread, gum? If you do, go get it, and come with me!”
  I got some of the stuff on his list, then I said, “What’s up?”
  Dean said something about his brother and a cave. “Hurry lets go!”
  Dean and I went over to his house where some of the guys were waiting and others were just showing up. Laying all the stuff on the living room floor from each of us, and looking through it, we all decided that we had everything we needed for an adventure. About this same time Dean’s older brother came in with a older boy that I had never seen before. Dean’s brother yelled out, “Quiet, everyone stop talking, we got something to say!“ Then the older boy that was with Dean’s older brother started telling us about a cave and said, “What I’m about to tell you guys I have never told anyone ever before, and I‘m probably the only one still alive that knows how to get in and out of this creepy old dark cave. After he was finished telling us what it was like inside the cave he stopped talking, and looking each of us in the eye he said, “I’m going back today, you guys want to go, you in, or out, or what?”
  None of us said a thing for a second or two, we just looked at each other. Then like someone turning a light switch on we all began talking a hundred miles an hour and making noises like a bunch of wild animals, then suddenly; everyone got very quite, and out the door we went. At that moment I thought we were ready for any situation.
  After walking for sometime I realize that we were heading to a place in the city that we had all been to a number of times and yes, we had even been in a man made cave in the same area.
  I wondered if this was the same cave that we already had been in, and if it was, we also knew that you could only go in for maybe a 100 feet before you ran into water. The further you went in, the deeper the water, so we had always turned back; did the older boys find a different way in? I had always been curious about what was under all that water, now maybe I would find out!
  As we reached the entrance to the cave the gang and I took turns shining our flashlights in and as always it was full of water.

We hadn’t noticed that the older boys didn’t stop at the cave, they just kept going. When we realized that, we had to run to catch up. When we caught up to them they were standing on top of a giant pile of boulders.
  “This is the cave, it’s under all these big rocks!”

  The pile was at lest 15 feet high by 20 feet wide. For some unknown reason someone had piled a big bunch of boulders over the entrance of this cave. It was probably to keep kids like us out but this older boy had found a way in.
  Dean’s brother and his friend climbed down off the pile and pointed to a certain boulder in the pile and told us to follow them. The gang and I watched them as they squeezed their way in and through the big rocks and out of sight. Then it was our turn; for 7 or 8 feet, like snakes, we each squeezed through, under, around, and over boulders until we finally made it to the other side and into the cave.
  Once inside the cave it was just as he described: it was pitch black without our flashlights, there was a big cavern with small tunnels leading away from one another. Some of the tunnels had deep holes in the ground, some of the holes were so deep that all of our ropes tied together weren’t long enough to reach the bottom. If you fell into one; that would be it. Also, there was a lot of wooden beams lying on the ground and some looked like they had been in a fire.
It felt like our time in the cave went pretty fast but we were there for two hours. When it was time to leave we just had to find our way back to where a sliver of sunlight shown through the boulders and we squeezed through.
  After we got back home we talked about the cave for days and days. As days turned into weeks we all decided it was time to go back but this time we would take more rope. We all had things to do in the morning so we decided to meet up at the cave at noon.
  I was the first to arrive. By 1:00 o’clock I was getting impatient. It was getting cloudy and I thought it might rain so I decided to get a head start on the guys and snaked my way into the cave without them. I started looking around; I felt like I had everything I needed, a rope, flashlight, candy; I even had candles and matches.
  After sometime had past I was wondering if anyone was going to show up. I decided to go back to the opening. I thought maybe I had taken a wrong turn when I couldn’t find the sun shining through the boulders. I started climbing over the rocks and tried squeezing my way through different spots I thought looked familiar but only to return and try again and again. I realized no one else was coming and I was trapped, maybe lost! Then in that dark moment the clouds outside moved and a beam of light peered through the rocks.

Grandpa Tom