I believe I was three or four years old when I took my first visit to the Chalk Mine near North Loup, Nebraska. Growing up there each summer, and with each subsequent visit to the mine, the experience of being surrounded by a cooling white chalk was both effervescent and full of young wonder. Heading back into the mine last summer as an old man, after a break of about 40 years, proved yet another interesting example of how sometimes things change beyond the fateful recollection of the shared memory.
The old historical marker was still there! It had been moved, but these special markers pock important places in Nebraska and they are certainly, and awfully well, done. You can actually read them, too!
Here is what used to be the entrance to the mine. When I was young, the mine entrances were open. No cages. No bars. Now, the mine is locked up, I guess because of minor mine collapses in places! Now, if you want to visit inside the cave, you have to pay up and give a tip, too!
Janna and I were early in our morning visit — so, first we trekked up Happy Jack Mountain while waiting for the mine to open — and when we returned from that first hot descent, and in anticipation of the next, cooler, one, the “office” was officially open. The entrance to the mine is inside this log cabin looking thing.
The wonder of the Chalk Mine has always been the white glow you get when the natural sunlight bounces around the interior of the mine walls. Well, those days are done. With the mine locked, and closed off, the white chalk appears mostly grey and dingy in the new darkness. You need a flashlight to see. There is some electrical lighting along the way. Oh, sure, some of that aging is due to time and tide, but you don’t get “enwashed” by the brilliant natural white chalk anymore. Those days are now dead and gone, and not even giving a good tip can bring them back!
That said, being inside the mine again was a wonderment experience. It is naturally cold and explorative. Our tour guide showed us what she thought was interesting — she was in training — and so I mainly just focused my camera on capturing new moments for exposure here, and in discovering the fossil relics preserved in the chalk. Plus, as ever, there was enough degenerate graffiti, and standard defacement, to prove the sadness of a bored society.
When the brief tour was over, our guide shared with us some stuff recovered from the early days of the mine. These were new to me! There was a respirator and a camp stove!
After the tour, I shared a memory of the Chalk Mine of my childhood with our tour guide — who said she heard the rumors before, but didn’t know if the stories were true or not. Oh, I reassured her, the telling was true: The Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang would take over, and camp out at the Chalk Mine, for a few days every summer on their trek to wherever.
We were visiting North Loup one summer in the 70’s, and my grandfather — Bill Vodehnal, the North Loup pharmacist — told me we could not visit the Chalk Mine because the Hells Angels were encamped there, and it wasn’t safe, and we couldn’t even look around outside because the gang had blocked the entrance with their bikes. He actually drove us by there in his 1966 Plymouth Fury II (with positraction!) to show me all the motorcycle choppers lined up inside and outside the mine.
Side story: Our tour guide said in the 1950’s there used to be (non-Hell’s Angels) motorcycle races inside the mine — all in and around all the cubby holes of the cavern! What noise that must have made, and what a sight it must have been to behold.
So, back to my grandfather’s story about the Hell’s Angels. Learning the gang had taken over the Chalk Mine made me feel both fascinated and scared! My grandfather went on to explain the gang never stays long — they’re just there hanging out and hiding drugs and guns deep in the mine… or they’re on site to collect the same… depending on the season, their need, and the seasons of the dead drop. I asked him if anyone ever went in later, after the Angels had left, to look for any gun stashes or drug shares, and he said a few tried, but failed because, he said, the Hell’s Angels had booby trapped their hold way back in the mine where it was dangerous too stay for long. I guess the idea of their boobytrap was, if you touched the wrong thing, the mine would collapse on you!
I’m not sure my tour guide bought into my whole story — I still testify to it all to this day; my grandfather was not a jokester, he was an always serious man on the far side of humor, and didn’t appear to ever lie, or share a false face because it would have been bad for business. Our tour guide said she’d been asked about the lore of the Hell’s Angels staying at the mine in the past, but she didn’t really believe it. Now, she told me, she believes; and isn’t that the whole point of collecting memories and later sharing them?