My First Cave Adventure
By Hubert Crowell
As a boy of fourteen I was always looking for adventure, and my first cave trip was one that I will
always remember. I accepted Jesus as my Lord at an early age, I was about nine or ten and I
know that from that time on I have had someone watching over me and with that knowledge,
every time I had a close call or brush with death I thanked God. I had three close calls in the six
months we lived in Spring City, Tennessee.
My dad was a coal miner from west Kentucky and during my teen years he opened several coal
mines in Tennessee. One was on the mountain just above Spring City. Spring City in 1955 was
a wonderful place for a teenager, with fishing at Watts Bar lake, Parks and streams to play in and
even at the age of 14 I was allowed to hunt alone with my 410 shotgun. I shot my first quail
along a small stream just south of town. It was this stream with a bridge, which I loved to
explore, swim and jump off the bridge. Just north of the bridge along the east bank is where I
found the small cave.
There are only three caves listed for Rhea County Tennessee in Caves of Tennessee by Thomas
C. Barr., Jr. This cave is more than likely still unknown or ignored by the local caving groups.
Before I describe my brush with death in this cave, I would like to share my other two close calls
in Spring City.
During the school year I signed up for swimming, I was not much for sports and swimming
seemed to me like an easy sport and I even won a race in the breast stroke event. One Saturday
we were swimming at the public lake and toward the end of the day we had started to get a little
wild. We had a boat and were using it for a diving platform, In order to get a little higher we
would stand on another swimmer shoulder while they were seating and dive into the water. The
shore of the lake at the park was protected from the waves by large rocks which covered the
shore line and extended down into the water. I was unaware that the boat had swung around to
the edge of the bank, when I quickly jump up on the shoulders of one of my friends and dove
head first into the bank.
I am amazed that I was not knocked out. However, I walked up to the front of the concession
stand and asked someone to call my dad, I then rinsed my head under the water faucet that was in
the front yard. I remember that there was a lot of blood and it seemed like forever before dad
arrived. I was standing there alone and I guess that everyone thought that I was OK. When dad
got there, I slid into the back seat and passed out. Dad told me later that he was sure that he had
lost me. I looked so pale from the loss of blood. At the hospital I had many stitches in the front
of my forehead at the hair line and unknown to me a large gash in the top of my head also. To
this day I still have a lump on the head and two scars.
Just before summer vacation started, on August 22, dad was coming home from the mine and he
told me later that he had the strange sense or feeling that something bad was wrong and he was
worried about his family. We lived in a small trailer park on the south edge of town, dad had
bought the trailer and mom was excited to live in a trailer at the time. Trailers were the fads in
the 50's and the movie The Long, Long Trailer with Lucille Ball had just come out. We first
lived at Hale Town on the Tennessee River just west of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where dad
opened his first mine in Tennessee. Later that same year we moved to South Pittsburg,
Tennessee where I enjoyed climbing all over the mountains around town. The mine on the
mountain above Hale Town played out so dad leased some land on the mountain above and west
of Spring City and opened a coal mine on the side of the mountain.
At 3:00 P.M. on that partly cloudy day a southbound Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific
Railway Co., freight train traveling at an estimated speed of 50 mph struck a Rhea County School
bus with 49 students on board. The crossing was in the center of town and I could hear the crash
at our trailer, I had just gotten home from school. Everyone was walking toward the crash site to
see what had happen, sirens were going off every where and there was a lot of confusion. I had
walked those tracks many times after school and although I did not ride the bus. Just being that
close to a major disaster can really make you pause and think.
The road from the mine crossed the tracks at that crossing and dad crossed it twice a day. There
were no crossing gates at that time only lights. The school bus driver claimed the warning
signals at the crossing were not in operation. However the train engineer reports and one witness
along with several passengers on the bus stated that the driver did not stop and that the lights
were working. Once the bus driver saw the approaching train, he attempted to accelerate through
the crossing. Two school children on the bus said they saw the approaching train and warned the
driver but he replied by saying he intended to cross ahead of the train. Details of the Accident
are from the Interstate Commerce Commission report No. 3547. 11 students died, bus driver and
33 other students injured.
40 years later, I was working in Kennesaw, Georgia for Ray Jackson, who was born in Spring
City, Tennessee and although he was not alive at the time, he remembered talk of the bus
accident. I believe that God directs our paths and brings us into contact with others for a reason,
even though we may never know why. And for some strange reason events and places play
strong roles in these "chance" meetings.
I had seen the cave on several occasions when I would be hunting or just checking out the rocks
in the stream. It was about 5 feet up the bank and the opening was no more than 4 feet high and
wide. I was alone as I usually was when playing in this area near the trailer park, there were not
many children my age living there, and I had brought a flashlight in order to investigate the cave.
Of course I had not told anyone of my intentions or where I was going. At 14 the world was
mine and nothing was impossible.
I entered the cave and crawled a short distance, just out of the light from the entrance. I could
still turn around but not stand up. The passage ended except for an opening sloping of to the left
that gradually became steeper as I inched into it head first. I soon realized that I could be in
trouble if it got tight and I was on my head unable to back out. So I backed up to where I had
more room, turned around and started in feet first, feeling around for a foot hold as I got deeper
into the hole.
I reached a point where I could not feel anything with my feet, it was as if I were dangling on the
edge of some large void. Try as hard as I could with my feet I could not touch the bottom or the
sides. Had I come this far and still would not know what was there? I thought about my
situation for what seemed like a long time, though it was no more than a few seconds and then on
some strange impulse which to this day I cannot explain, I let go!
This was maybe one of two times in my life when my life flashed before me in a second. The
other time was in the Adirondack mountains of up state New York on the Appalachian Trail. I
worked for Eastman Kodak Co., at the time and was in New York taking some training classes
and wanted to check out the north end of the Appalachian Trail as I had hiked the trail in
Georgia.
After class I left Rochester, New York and drove up to the park where you could park and take
an approach trail up the mountain to the main trail. It was late and I was in a hurry so I stopped
by McDonald's on the way and picked several hamburgers. I ate a couple on the way and still
had one left when I started out on the approach trail. There were warnings everywhere about the
bears in the area and the trail information box were clawed up badly. I was dark when I reach the
main trail and camp site near a lake. The shelter was taken so I looked for a suitable place to roll
out my sleeping bag. I found a nice clearing and settled in. Thinking about the hamburger in my
pack and the bears, I found a high limb, through a rope over it and pulled my pack up and out of
reach of the wild life. It was a clear moon lit night and the dew was already falling, so I took the
flap of the sleeping bag and put it over my head. I could still make out the moon and tree limbs
through the material.
Sometime during the night I was awakened by a snort and a strange shadow crossing over me. I
had my knife in the bag with me along my side and I clinched it and froze. My hold life flashed
before me and then a strange calm came over me and I knew that I would be all right. The bears
under sides brushed the top of the sleeping bag as he crossed over to look for my hamburger. I
dozed back off and then awoke again when the bear crossed over me again.
The next morning, it all made sense, I had placed my sleeping bag on the trail to the lake and the
tree where I hung the hamburger was between me and the lake. There was no other was to get to
the lake or the hamburger except to cross over me. I gave my hamburger to some hikers who had
been on the trail for a while and after visiting for a while hiked back to my car and returned to the
hotel for the rest of the weekend that was enough excitement for one weekend.
The drop seemed like eternity and I found myself standing only a few inches from where I had let go. The floor was smooth and level, I got down on my knees and continued through the passage toward the river and after about 20 feet ended up in a small room that I could almost stand up in about 5 feet around. It was a nice little hiding place, though I never returned. I managed to climb out by bracing against the opposite wall and did not think much about it for the next 20 years. Looking back, my bones could still be in that small cave had someone not been watching over me.
I feel sure that I could still find that cave and thanks to Google Earth I don't even have to leave
home.
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