When I was 12 years old I moved to a new town. I moved to live with my dad.
I didn't know the town, hell I didn't even know my dad. It was all completely new for me.
It was late June 1982 in an old iron ore mining town on Minnesota's iron range. I met a lot of new kids before the school year started in the fall. In the summer time when you don't have school classes to separate everybody out by grade/age the kids just kind of blend into bands of similar ages. I became friends with this goofy high energy kid that was a year younger than me. There were quite a few of us that hung out & did things together, fishing, exploring old mines & caves etc. But we were 2 of a kind, wild mischievous, adventurous.
We were good friends, always on some sort of adventure in those days. Times were pretty tough, everybody was poor, (everybody we knew anyways). But nothing that we did ever cost any money. If our parents knew half the things we got into back then we would not have been allowed to be friends.
Not so much bad things, just dangerous.
Always goofing off & exploring by these old iron ore mines. A lot of that stuff was pretty dangerous.
We once led the way on an adventure which took our group of elite explorers to the bottom of an old pit mine. The old mine in question was very deep, the sides went straight down & you couldn�t see the bottom from the top.
I had learned of an old cable ladder that had been used long ago by the miners, story was that they had better means of getting up & down the mine but this was sort of an emergency ladder.
I had heard that the ladder had been used by some adventurous kids in the 50�s & early 60�s. But it�s location had become lost for many years.
My friend & I searched diligently for the mysterious cable ladder. Legend had it the cable ladder was broken on one side, it hung from one side only and was undoubtedly camouflaged with moss along a shaded cliff wall of the old mine.
I remember the day we spotted it from the opposite side of the pit. It was very hard to see as it had taken on the colors of the cliff wall. It wasn�t going to be easy, to our surprise the cable ladder did not go from the bottom to the top, you would have to climb down part way to where the cable ladder hung.
We assembled our band of explorers & set off to conquer the depths of �the china pit�.
We used a rope to climb down to the cable ladder. The ladder did only hang from one side, the other side had been frayed & broken for who knows how man years. The rungs were steel bars attached to each cable side, some of the rungs were attached to one side only, some rungs were missing completely. The ladder hung a little crooked from the top.
The ladder didn�t follow along the cliff wall for very long before the cliff wall tapered inward away from the old rusty cable ladder. From there down the ladder hung free from the cliff wall high above the rocky bottom which we could now see.
It was a long ways down, we knew we should only go one at a time down the old broken ladder. Everyone was scared, but this conquest, this adventure, it would separate us from our peers. We would become legends amongst kids for generations to come.
I went first, as I often did on such adventures.
My good friend was shortly behind me, if I remember correctly there was only one other that would go through with it. The ladder hung a bit too high off the bottom, you had to hang & drop.
Once on the bottom, a great feeling of accomplishment, a feat of bravery.
It was only one of many such adventures we carried out together as children.
The last time I saw my friend we laughed like kids again & he reminded me in detail of adventures such as this one.
I got word yesterday that my friend has died.
I believe he left behind as many or more than 5 children.
As I understand it the papers read that he died unexpectedly of natural causes.
I never knew him as an adult, met up with him a few times but only for short visits. He hadn't seemed to have changed from The friend I knew. He was a brave, adventurous, funny kid.
Here�s to my friend Thad. I�ll never forget you for who you were buddy.
Dave