During my summer vacation when I was thirteen I worked as a guide at Wonder Cave in my hometown of Decorah, Iowa. The cave was our local tourist attraction. To get there you had to drive out in the country about 4 miles, past Motter’s Ballroom, our local dancehall emporium, and then down a dirt road another half-mile. The owner of the cave and my employer was Stanley Scarvie, a parsimonious gentleman who also owned a neighborhood grocery store a few blocks from my house. Stanley drove me and my friend Donald Fishback out to the cave and home again each day. He’d drop us off and we’d run the show while he was at his grocery store. Donald was the cashier in the cave’s little gift shop. We sold the usual junk to tourists: postcards of the interior of the cave, ashtrays and other cheap souvenirs. Admission tickets cost 75 cents for adults and 25 cents for kids.
I enjoyed my job, particularly because the cave was very cool and Iowa summers can get very hot. The previous summer I had worked picking vegetables, a crummy job I hated. A couple of times I got dehydrated because my boss, a horrible man named Duff Simmons, called me a slacker if I came in from the fields to get a drink. He loved to sadistically taunt kids and I was too much of chicken to stand up to him or quit my horrible job. I didn’t exactly love my new boss, Stanley Scarvie, but he wasn’t mean or sarcastic like Duff Simmons, just an old tightwad who was always suspicious of Donald and me cheating him when he was back in town running his mom and pop grocery store. Scarvie never caught us stealing from him which we did on a semi-regular basis, whenever we thought we could get away with it. Donald and I rationalized that we were grossly underpaid. After all, what was 25 cents an hour, our wages, compared to the big bucks our boss was raking in? On a busy Saturday or Sunday afternoon we’d sometimes see 50 visitors, so if we forgot to tear off a couple of tickets now and then and also forget to ask a couple to sign our guest book, we’d make up for what Scarvie was underpaying us.
On busy afternoons I’d wait until I had a group of 5 or 10 visitors before we’d enter the cave. I’d be all bundled up in a jacket, but I never got over the thrill of entering the cave and feeling a blast of cold air envelop me. It was like walking into a refrigerator. Scarvie had spent a lot of money lighting the cave, blasting out low passageways with dynamite between the cave’s deep rooms, and building steps from one layer of the cave to the next. I’d start rattling off my speal as we entered the cave, giving the members of my group all the facts and figures: when the cave was discovered, when it was opened, how long and deep it was, everything they needed to know. Always I’d warn them to be careful; the paths were wet and slippery. Hold on to the railings. Stay together. There are low paths, so duck your heads.
The grand finale of our underground tour was the stalactite room, a gigantic pit 150 feet deep filled with hundreds of 10 and 20 foot stalactites surrounding one huge 75 feet tall monster. I never grew tired of catching my first glimpse of that giant. It made the entire journey worthwhile.
Once or twice a month the power would go out and pitch us into complete darkness. I’d quickly turn on my flashlight and reassure everybody that the generator would be up and working in a minute or two, and in the meantime don’t panic. It’s an odd feeling, a confidence builder, to be a boy and lead adults, a confidence builder. Usually everybody stayed calm until the lights came on again, but occasionally a fraidycat trapped in the strange darkness would panic, giving me an unearned feeling of superiority because I held the flashlight. When the tour was over we’d see light filling the cave’s entrance and feel the summer’s heat thaw us out. Then I’d head back to the cave’s gift shop and wait for my next group to assemble. On weekdays I’d often have a lot of time on my hands between tours so I’d read boy’s adventure books or shoot the breeze with Donald.
After I retired from my job there I spent the next couple of summers as a rod man on a surveying crew. A few years later Stanley Scarvie’s health began to fail and he closed the cave. Occasionally when I’d return to Decorah decades later I’d drive out to Wonder Cave and walk around the grounds which through neglect had lost its mystic and turned into an overgrown pasture, and as I’d stare at the cave’s boarded up mouth I’d remember the summer afternoons half a century ago when I’d lead groups into its open jaw and then enjoy the mystery of my journey into its dark and cool belly.
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