The Wilmette Street Incident

Memories are strange. Some stay forever and others are fleeting. Some we wish we could forget and we know there are things we should remember. Childhood memories can bring happy thoughts or agonizing pain. Then there are the memories that just make you smile, your private little story.

Well, this is one of mine.

It was the summer of 1966. A long time ago now, memory starts to fade. There are some things that stay with you. Your first real girlfriend, first real kiss, that first puff on a cigarette, and your first proper drink of alcohol those kinds of things. Also your first gang and your first secret gang operation.

Like I say 1966 was a long time ago, but standing in my old hometown of Quincy, Illinois on Wilmette Street, it was like it happened yesterday. A flood of memories ran over me just like a big Mack truck, which thankfully slammed on its brakes and missed me by mere inches.

Let me get out of the street and fill you in on the ‘Rats’.

Billy Lane was the leader of our little group, the ‘Hampshire Rats’. Not particularly blessed with leadership abilities he had what we, the ‘Rats’, considered more important. He was a full head taller than the rest of us and he could hit harder. That made him the leader. Not to get the wrong impression we really weren't that bad but in a small Illinois town on the Mississippi River, we were all we had.

We stole the occasional glass bottles from porches for the return money, smoked cigarettes we had found up at the 'A' field, and rode our bikes everywhere, and in 'formation'. Funny it took me years to realize that the 'A' stood for Athletic.

Our biggest caper was the “Great Escape Tunnel”. We had just seen a moving picture about a bunch of guys breaking out of a prison camp so we were primed for the summer of 1966. This was our summer. Next school year we would be 4th Graders and that's when things started to get real.

It started off OK, there was this old rotted-out oak tree stump on the corner of Hampshire and Wilmette. A good place to hide the entrance to 'Hank' the tunnel. That idea came from ‘Slants’. His real name was Oliver Yu, we just called him ‘Slants’. I went by the name of Chuckles. Billy, we called Red. He was a redhead. We also had a 'Puke', 'Randy', a 'Wop', 'Spit Ball' and a guy we just called 'Jack'. This was way before “PC” remember.

Well, we spent all summer pretending to hide from prison guards and marching around like little soldiers, and we dug. Man did we dig. Many an afternoon I had to hose off with the neighbors garden hose before going home.

Now not sure how we didn't get killed but damned if we didn't build quite a tunnel. We had wood shoring, built an air system, based on one we found in a book. It just got deeper and longer. It was the best thing the Rats had done in a long time. Last summer was good but we were little kids then, this was big kid stuff, this was for real.

Unfortunately, we really didn't know what we were doing and didn't pay much attention to which way our little excavation was going. To be honest, I don’t remember ever having a destination in mind, we just wanted to dig.

One rainy night it all came crashing down along with a fairly large chunk of the intersection.

In the newspaper article of the collapse of the corner of Hampshire and Wilmette, it was described as a twenty-five-foot-long excavation of unknown origin by unknown perpetrators. Well, we kept shtum and never did let on to anybody. The Rats made a pact. Rats don't squeal.

Been a lot of years since that summer but if you run into Billy Lane don't let on you know, he hits hard.