John Dogecore (The Digger) AKA Hole_Man
by Dominic Jackson
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Shane Lindel, Store Clerk - "One day he showed up with his shovel and that wild look on his face and started digging. Whole towns been changed since he started."
84 years ago, John Dogecore the Digger for some unknown reason, purchased a sizable amount of farmland in rural Georgia, USA.
Betty White, Housewife - "I was watching him from my porch before he started. He had these two rods in his hands, divining rods? I think that's what they're called. Just walking back and forth out there where the hole now is until something clicked."
John removed enough dirt to fill 60 football stadiums using only a shovel. The hole is 145 meters in circumference with a spiral path running along its walls down into its depths. He shored the walls of the pit with hickory tree logs to stop the earth from eating itself.
Ron Littlefoot, Cobler - "He came in one day asking me to repair his boots. After I cleaned out all the mud in the grip I found 3 teeth lodged in the soles. People around here say all kindsa crazy stories about old man Dogecore but he was always nice to me. He tipped me handsomely and when he shook my hand his grip was like a vice. It was like shaking my old fathers hands. I never did tell him that I found those teeth in his boots, I kept that to myself."
Geographically this location in Georgia has no rare minerals or ores. It's a great place to grow crops but not somewhere you'd be needing to dig into the rock. This is what caused most of the initial confusion around John's actions, what exactly was he digging for? There's scratchings that look like hieroglyphs carved into the wood shorings that nobody can understand. Instructions maybe only for the person who put them there.
Frank Reed, Owner of Reedie's hardware "Yeah I knew the guy. He would come in here buying fresh pick axes, buckets 'n gloves every other week. He didn't speak much and he smelled real bad. But he paid and was polite so I let him get on with whatever it was he was doin out there. Something about eggs?"
If you were to walk along the walls of the hole it would take you an hour to get to the bottom. Iron stakes protruding awkwardly from the bedrock support oak planks that spiral into the darkness below. Despite how long they've been here, it's still a solid construction. It's a wonder how one man made this happen.
George Goldsmitt, Taxi Driver - "Oh yeah we'd have people coming from all over to see it. Hell I still have some fliers somewhere from back in the day. Drunk city kids would flag me down outside the train station asking for a ride to see John's huge hole. I used to run people back and forth, they'd just go watch him digging and head back home. Different times I guess."
400 tons of earth were removed to produce the hole. Nobody is quite sure what he was digging for but John Dogecore (the digger) just started digging one day. He arrived with a shovel and a dream and left a crater that can be seen on google maps. As you walk down into the slopes of the hole you'll notice the water pooling in the grooves he made in the wood as he walked. The endless repetition of walking the spiral as he carried the dirt upwards.
Roger Miller - hot dog man - "I'd see him coming towards me like the walking dead at night. Covered in muck with the street lights and moths bouncing off his head as he lumbered my way. If I didn't know who he was I would have run away. But everyone knows the fella, he might be strange but nobodies got a bad word to say about him. He gave me a 20 dollar tip on a 2 dollar hotdog that night."
The mound of dirt next to the hole once cast a shadow over the town, until the Home Owners Association brought it down. In an unanimous vote they ordered the state to remove the debris John had piled up and had to spread the dirt across state lines there was so much of it.
Mary Townsend, Nurse - "I'd see him outside his tent from time to time staring at the stars like he was looking for something. But mostly I'd just see his back, hunched over, digging. He was absolutely obsessed with his hole."
If you were to roll a nickle down the path he walked, from the top of the hole to the bottom, it would make poor Thomas Jefferson's face revolve millions upon millions of times as it rolls its way to the centre of this site. The state had to fence off John's hole after a number of accidental deaths due to falling from the spiral walkway.
Jimmy 'Barnacle' Jones, Roller Rink DJ - "What? Yeah people would place bets on who could go down there and come back up the fastest. *unintelligible noise and disco music* "Tane is a myth he ain't ever coming back."
Whatever he found down there, nobody knows. There's a square block of earth missing from the epicentre of the hole which was meticulously removed with precision instruments. Cut delicately out of the bedrock. Nobody saw it being removed, they only noticed the digging had stopped when John dissapeared.
Rabbi Haroune - Rabbi - "We analysed his hole and what we found was too unique to be a coincidence. The real question is why and what? All I can do is tell you that his pathways are a near perfect Fibonacci Sequence leading to the centre. Whatever he found down there.. He knew what he was lookin for."
Some speculate that John Dogecore (the digger) was in search of an old folk legend. It's not very well known, having being passed down from tribes that only had oral histories that have inhabited this land long before Europeans brutally colonized the Americas. But some say the last dog eggs were buried there, deep in the ground.
John was never seen again once the digging stopped. Having finally dug himself out of his huge hole, he was missing and then presumed dead years later. A sign on the rusting fence surrounding his work warns people to stay away, nothing of value is here.
5 comments
I’d always wonder how John was so rich for a man who digs all day
rip john the dig man, he still be diggin whereva he is now. dig on
this hole ate my son
God I love bread so much mm bread
Excellent piece of writing, i enjoyed it thoroughly. Came for raccoons shirts, didn’t expect this. Wherever John is, space or earth i hope he’s taking care of the dog eggs.