Forty burgeoning adolescents, four parents, one teacher, and one bus driver, in the woods, with a ghost town and a graveyard overnight; what can possibly go wrong?
The tiger trap is a device said to be of Indian origin, consisting of a deep pit dug in the ground, then covered with enough vegetation to hide it. Tigers would walk on the leafy covering, and fall into the pit below where they couldn't escape. The Viet Cong used the tiger tap with some success against our forces in Viet Nam.
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| Antebellum Graves in the churchyard |
Rocky Springs is a ghost town attached to the Natchez Trace in Claiborne County, Mississippi. The State of Mississippi maintains a popular semi-primitive campground there.
My Scout Troop used the site a year before, and I learned you could use a burning ember from the fire to light your own farts. There's no merit badge for that, but there should be.
My Junior High Class had a very loving and very optimistic parent group who got the idea that we could manage a co-ed camp-out there and make it back home with everyone intact.
Mr. and Mrs. Lyle were itinerant and experienced campers. They would keep us alive. Mrs. Seargent was our young history teacher. She was who all the boys dreamed about, and all the girls wanted to look like. She must have loved us because she took us to Washington DC by bus the following year. I hope someone reading this can remember the name of the school's Haitian bus driver. He was a super sweet guy who also drove us to football practice every day. Rounding out our team of fearless leaders was Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They tried to get me to call them Tim and Sarah for forty-five years. It's still not happening.
The plan was to take the bus from school to Rocky Springs, make camp, have lunch then explore the old trace. We were to have dinner while the sun was still up, then visit the ghost town at dusk, come back to camp for the night, have breakfast the following day, and take the bus back to Jackson. That was the plan. We were never that great at sticking with the plan.
Early on in life, I recognized there was something about Mr. Jone's eyes telling me he was a fellow member of my tribe. He must have noticed the same thing because we had a few adventures together.
In the little abandoned town of Rocky Springs was an old church with an ancient graveyard. The plan was to hike as a gang from our campsite to the old cemetery at dusk, have a spooky adventure among the antebellum graves, and return to camp with flashlights in the dark. That was the plan.
Mr. Jones had the idea that he and I would sneak ahead of the bunch and hideout so that as they were hiking back in the dark, we could jump out and scare the bejesus out of them. It would be so funny and so cool. That was the plan.
On the way there, we spied a circular split-rail fence with a placard saying "Old Homesite" with some bushes and kudzu overgrown in the center. That would be my hideout. This was a great plan!
The old church and graveyard among the Spanish moss dripping trees was a pretty great adventure, with lots of giggles and dares as we awkwardly tried to figure out the best way to navigate inter-gender conversations in the dark surrounded by confederate ghosts.
With the sunlight fading, Mr. Jones and I sprung our plan into action. We quietly slipped away from the rest and headed toward the fenced "old homesite" to set our trap. "Hurry!" he said before the rest of the class began their way back.
This was going to be SO COOL! They were gonna be SO SCARED! With a hop, I was over the split rail fence. One step, two steps, one more, and I'd be hidden in the bushes, ready to pounce! This was such a great plan!
By "old homesite," they meant this was the site of an old home as part of the little town of Rocky Springs. The wooden structure was long gone, but the root cellar remained. Nobody told Mr. Jones or me about the root cellar. That eight-foot-deep root cellar lay completely hidden among the bushes and kudzu. The split-rail fence was supposed to keep us out of it.
One step! Two steps! Three... WHOOSH! and I was in total darkness with a thud. I can only imagine the look on Mr. Jones's face as I vanished into the greenery.
"Boyd?" I could see him looking over the edge down at me with his flashlight. "Are you ok?" I was absolutely unhurt. The bushes and kudzu vines themselves cushioned my fall. It took a few seconds for my brain to process what happened, then I bust out in uncontrollable laughter. So did Mr. Jones.
Moments later, the rest of the class caught up to the site of our misadventure. I could see their shocked and amused faces peering down at me over the edge of my pit with a dozen flashlights illuminating my predicament.
I was already over two hundred pounds by junior high school and bench-pressing over three hundred. Getting me out of this tiger trap wasn't going to be easy. As we had no rope, a human chain made by nearly the entire class was chosen as the best option for rescue.
Soon, Mrs. Seargent's hand reached down for me. In her twenties and deeply tanned, Mrs. Seargent was just about the prettiest thing I ever saw. Touching her hand was way out of my pay grade, but I had no choice.
With a solid tug in unison, my class rescued me from my antebellum dungeon. I plucked kudzu leaves from my hair, pants, and shoes on the way back. The plan was to scare the class, but in the end, the only ones who got scared were Mr. Jones and me.
And, that's the story of how the eighth-grade class saved me from my own eagerness and an ancient tiger trap.
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Photo By Kim Wita
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| photo by Kim Wita |
