CAVE GRAVE and other oddities'

Perhaps you've been following the story about the spelunker named Jones who died in the Nutty Putty cave in Utah.

Well it turns out that the cave is now a grave and will never be spelunkered again.

Today his family and friends are holding a funeral service at the Nutty Putty gravecave site.

The decision to leave John Jones in the Nutty Putty must have been a hard decision for both the family and the people who own and run the park where the cave is located.

At least I hope it was a hard decision. I'm not one to venture into deep dark holes on the planet's surface so I don't understand the fascination. I'm also one who doesn't have any desire to climb to the top of the highest mountain in the world to check out the view, so therefore I'm not an up or down kind of guy.

My imagination is well developed and I can pretty much go where I want whenever I want thanks to Quantum Physics and the time-travel theorems postulated by Dr. Fred Wolf.

But that really is a story for another time and another place.

Perhaps I lack an adventure gene or perhaps I'm just not a person who enjoys facing physical danger on a regular basis.

Whatever I am or am not, I'm having a problem with leaving John Jones in the Nutty Putty cave.

It just doesn't sound right. In the future his daughter will be saying the following words.

"My dad is stuck in a tiny hole upside down inside a huge cave called the Nutty Putty."

Her show and tell experience in the third grade should prove to be interesting.

There's also a question of common sense when it comes to Mr. Jones. At some point as he squeezed himself into the little tiny passage that proved to be not a passage but a grave, he had to really force himself into his resting place. The moment that he pushed himself through and realized he could no longer move had to be preceded by a moment of....."maybe I shouldn't push this hard."

I know this is going to sound really strange but couldn't they have poured olive oil or liquid WD-40 into the area where he was trapped and then pulled him out. Apparently he was upside down so his feet had to be exposed.

I also didn't realize that being upside down for 24 hours could kill you.

Another thing I won't be trying to do.

So many things not to do and so little time in which not to do them. Could you please pass me the remote?

The Nutty Putty?

The least they could do at this point is rename the cave the

John Jones Memorial Cave.

That's about the only thing that would make any sense out of this story.

Michael Timothy McAlevey