Ten Funny Stories Complete Collection

Hole to China

Hole to China

Paul R. Wonning

A while ago, I received an email from my brother. It was one of those thought provoking ones that you sometimes get which delve into deep philosophical waters. The email asked a rhetorical question. It read, "Say someone digs a tunnel from New York to Peking, China and then they install an elevator in said tunnel. If you board that elevator in New York and ride to Peking, upon arriving in Peking will you be standing on your head?"

Of course, I passed this off as foolishness. I emailed him back with something to the effect that "some people have too much time on their hands" or some such blatherskite.

Then it got to bothering me.

Would you be standing on your head? Would you be standing on your feet? No matter how I thought about it, I simply couldn't resolve it. I lost sleep over this question. I couldn't concentrate on anything else. Finally, I resolved to answer the question in the only way I could think of. I would dig a hole to China and find out!

Now, an engineering feat of this kind has some preliminary research needed before it can begin. Answers to such questions like "What kind of shovel should I use"? And "How much beer should I stockpile?" These are very important, fundamental questions that I needed to address.

I looked in my tool cabinet at my selection of gear. Should I use a spade or a shovel? Would a trowel come in handy? I just about discarded a shovel with a broken handle, when I thought that maybe, working in a confined space, it might come in handy. I worked slowly, taking the tools I thought I might need, and carrying them to the spot where I was going to dig. I soon assembled a multitude of items. These included shovels, flashlights, buckets, rope, water jugs, a compass, and a note pad. Since I can't speak Chinese, I reckoned if I got to China I could have whoever I ran into write down what they had to say, and I could just read it. Simple, huh? Sometimes my ingenuity scares me.

Now, the question arose about what I would do with the dirt when I got down deep. I thought a moment, and went to get my wife. I told her what I proposed doing, and that I wanted her to stand at the top of the hole. I would fill a bucket with dirt, and tie a rope on the handle and she could pull it up and dump it somewhere. Then she could lower it back down so I could refill it.

She indicated the rope with her foot. "What you going to do when you run out of rope"?

"That's a fifty foot rope", I replied, "It can't be much further than that to China." She gave me a rather strange look, one I've seen before, and turned on her heels and left without saying a word!

Now before I go any further, I want to say there are two kinds of people in this world. There are dreamers and there are Pooh Poohers. Dreamers such as Columbus, Galileo, and Edison sit around and think of new things to create, or places to go. They then make discoveries that other people write about. Pooh Poohers, on the other hand, say things like, "If you sail too far, you'll fall off the edge of the world." Or, "Point your finger like that and it'll turn into a worm". Pooh poohers never accomplish anything. I do not intend to be a pooh pooher.

Now, that rope question did kind of bother me, though. Maybe the rope wasn't long enough. I didn't know just how far it was to China. I suppose they told us in school, but I probably wasn't paying attention. Or I just passed it off as being unimportant. You know how it is, someone tells you something you think is boring, and it turns out later to be something you need to know.

I made plans to get more rope. Then something else got to bothering me. I remembered hearing something about an ocean in the vicinity of China. What if I missed land and bored into the bottom of that ocean? The water would empty out and come out on this side. Geesh, I never thought of that! I wondered how big that ocean was, and if there was enough water in it to flood everything out over here.

These new questions were more perplexing than the original one was. Maybe the technical aspects of this project were more than I thought. I uncorked one of the beers in my cooler, sat down to think about this. The more I thought, the more I vacillated. Finally, I resolved to put it on hold until I could gather more information. Notice I didn't say I would quit! No, siree, I intend to do this sometime, just not right now. That is, unless you, dear reader, want to do it. If so, just let me know, I have all the tools ready. You have to buy your own beer, though.

Ten Funny Stories Complete Collection

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