Main Street Magazine Spring '23

92
I
The hole was wide, maybe five feet across, and hidden in the woods away from those who didn’t know where to look. Grabbing the
rope someone had stashed at the entrance, she lowered herself down until her feet rested on damp brick. The tunnels ran all the
way from her school, which had been built on an old insane asylum, to the local hospital about two miles away. They were originally
created as tuberculosis tunnels and had long since been shut down and closed off. But now they served as the perfect location for her
and her friends to sneak away during school and smoke hand-rolled American Spirits.
II
By Rachel Pincince
I listened to Sarah tell her story and couldn’t help but marvel. I was the poster child for good behavior growing up – the colloquial
goody two shoes. I had never smoked, or snuck out, or gone to parties. The closest I had come to breaking the law was speeding on
the highway. It’s not that I didn’t have a desire make my own fun and crazy stories, but I wasn’t particularly interested in getting myself
in trouble either. And it didn’t help that I grew up in a strict environment that wasn’t very conducive to shenanigans. I wanted to know
why. What made my teenage experience so different from some of my peers? What motivated them to do such dumb things? So, I
talked to my friends and collected their stories.
Stories like Ethen’s, who grew up in Texas, near Fort Hood. He lived by an old milling facility across from the sheriff’s department
that would be completely empty by 5pm; a hub for skaters and smokers to hang out in the empty warehouses. He recalled one night
when he climbed up one of the milling towers to yell dumb shit into the empty silos with his friend. Their performance was cut short,
however, when the police showed up to investigate the lights they could see from across the street. Ethen and his friend jumped a
barbed wire fence and hid in a ditch in the darkness for two hours until it was safe to come back out again.