Why Elton McDonald built a tunnel

We called it "Dick Turpin's Cave", even though it was self-evidently no such thing, but it was damnably cool - both figuratively and literally - and on a hot summer's day, sneaking off from games to go loiter in our brick-lined flagstone-floored cave and play pog or what have you was... special. And probably incredibly dangerous. One end of it was collapsed - it was shaped like a cross with an entrance in the ceiling of one lobe.

I more than understand the appeal. There's some innate human instinct to tunnel - perhaps at some point in our history we made burrows to live in, in the absence of other construction materials - I mean, we lived in caves, so...

  Another favorite pastime was digging a tunnel under his 
  home; he attributed the secret of his success to "visits 
  by elves" while he worked in the tunnel: "While I'm 
  digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me 
  with solutions to my problem."

http://www.gofundme.com/objrxk

Many times the tunnel would collapse, and eventually the construction became an "open-tunnel" process. Digging a hole and then covering it up with a wooden ceiling.

I can still feel the excitement of having our own "secret space" we entirely built ourselves. Constantly talking about how to expand and improve the structure was more fun then actually using it.

For whatever inaccuracies there may be, it's something I always try to keep in mind.

Every summer the teachers would go to the playground and destroy the forts, because they thought them to be too dangerous. Yet, we built them again at the beginning of each school year. Soon after I went to middle school, the adults decided to remove all the bricks.