Playing Under Van Buren
Have you noticed the construction going on at the corner of Van Buren and Garriott? It's really hard to miss. As I was driving by the other day I caught a glimpse of the huge hole they had dug on the northeast corner of the intersection. They were replacing those large square and round concrete pieces, that when put together, form an underground drainage system.
It only took a second to realize they were digging up one of my old stomping grounds. Back in the day, the thing to do was to walk the middle of Boggy Creek looking for tadpoles. We would follow the creek all around Indian Hills and always found it fun to hang out under the bridges.
Across from the Champlin Mansion and next to the apartments the creek finds it's way under Garriott. Have you ever wondered where the creek goes from there? We did. My buddies and I would follow the creek under Garriott and dare each other to go as far as we could.
The beginning of the drainage area is large enough that eleven and twelve year olds can just walk right in and with a little stooping can walk almost all the way underground to Van Buren. I remember going as deep as we could, sometimes running into large round drainage areas. For some reason we named one area "Spider Tunnel". My best guess is that we ended up near Van Buren before we would stop. We could hear heavy traffic coming from the little drainage areas along the corners of the streets.
We didn't spend a large amount of time in the tunnels but thinking back it seems like we did. What might have been a 20 minute trip into the tunnel is now remembered as an entire day of treasure hunting and adventure. It's funny how the simple things we did as kids are the things we remember the best and the most vividly.
Those days, running around Enid without much worry, are the memories that I will never forget. And even though I'm only best friends with one of those guys today, that group of friends will always be my best set of friends. I've long forgotten that we slowly drifted apart and think of us as the best of friends even today.
It was great to finally get to see where our old "Spider Tunnel" really was and know that as kids we used to listen to ours moms and didn't play in the street... we played under the street.
It only took a second to realize they were digging up one of my old stomping grounds. Back in the day, the thing to do was to walk the middle of Boggy Creek looking for tadpoles. We would follow the creek all around Indian Hills and always found it fun to hang out under the bridges.
Across from the Champlin Mansion and next to the apartments the creek finds it's way under Garriott. Have you ever wondered where the creek goes from there? We did. My buddies and I would follow the creek under Garriott and dare each other to go as far as we could.
The beginning of the drainage area is large enough that eleven and twelve year olds can just walk right in and with a little stooping can walk almost all the way underground to Van Buren. I remember going as deep as we could, sometimes running into large round drainage areas. For some reason we named one area "Spider Tunnel". My best guess is that we ended up near Van Buren before we would stop. We could hear heavy traffic coming from the little drainage areas along the corners of the streets.
We didn't spend a large amount of time in the tunnels but thinking back it seems like we did. What might have been a 20 minute trip into the tunnel is now remembered as an entire day of treasure hunting and adventure. It's funny how the simple things we did as kids are the things we remember the best and the most vividly.
Those days, running around Enid without much worry, are the memories that I will never forget. And even though I'm only best friends with one of those guys today, that group of friends will always be my best set of friends. I've long forgotten that we slowly drifted apart and think of us as the best of friends even today.
It was great to finally get to see where our old "Spider Tunnel" really was and know that as kids we used to listen to ours moms and didn't play in the street... we played under the street.








Park Avenue Thrift




2 Comments:
Thanks Curtis. We were told not to play in the creek; but of course that made it much more interesting. I also remember climbing into tunnels under the roads, near the bridge over to Hoover Elementary School. The sides of Boggy Creek were also good for sliding down on cardboard.
As I recall, if you take the tunnel all the way, it comes out in Gov't Springs park, near St.Marys Hospital where the old locomotive use to be. Our gang made the trip several times in the 60's, but time has made it very fuzzy to recall. We tried it once using flares for light, but soon learned it was difficult to breath. Flashlights worked better. The gang did a lot of crazy things back then. Times change
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