There Was an Old Woman Who Fell in a Hole

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Elizabeth Pollard, a 64-year-old grandmother who lived with her husband in a rural community southwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was reported missing at about one a.m. last Tuesday by her family.  Mrs. Pollard had taken  her car out on Monday evening just as darkness was approaching to search for her cat - and she never returned home.  Mrs. Pollard's car was later found in a remote area with her 5-year-old granddaughter asleep in the backseat.  

The car was near a small opening in the earth where the ground had collapsed into an abandoned coal mine that had last been active about seventy years before.  Local authorities made the assumption at the outset that the missing woman had likely inadvertently stepped into the hole and fallen more than thirty feet to her death.  Locals referred to that phenomenon - where the earth caves into an existing hole or mine - as a "sinkhole."

Cameras on cables were dropped into the hole on Tuesday to begin a search for Mrs. Pollard, but with no success.  Then crews began the arduous task of digging.  It was first termed a "rescue" effort, but as the days drug on, the project started being referred to as a "recovery" effort.  Finally yesterday afternoon, Friday, the body of Mrs. Pollard was recovered after four long days of searching.  She was reportedly hauled from her temporary place of peaceful repose and taken to a nearby hospital for an autopsy.

I have not heard any news regarding the fate of her cat.

A few thoughts:

Sinkholes are relatively common in south-central Missouri, the area where I live.   Usually they are places where the ground has collapsed into one of the region's many caves.  There are areas where mines were more prominent, like the one that claimed the life of Mrs. Pollard, and they, too, can lead to cave-ins that form sinkholes.

I once owned a home whose entire backyard was a sinkhole - twenty miles north of where I currently live.  It was a perfectly formed bowl or crater that had been in existence long enough that large trees had matured along its slopes.   The realtors referred to the sinkhole as an idyllic valley.  Neighbors close by had their own sinkhole whose vortex was still open.  They claimed that a pair of oxen had once disappeared into their sinkhole.  I didn't have any good stories to share about mine.

Around forty-years ago the city where I now live had its large sewage lagoon collapse into the earth beneath it, which unfortunately was surrounding the aquifer for the area's water supply.  Local residents had to boil their drinking and cooking water for months before engineers and work crews finally were able to get the mess cleaned up and corrected.

As a general rule it's sad when a person dies, but we all do eventually, and I can think of worse ways to go than suddenly being swallowed by the ground beneath my feet.  (Lying in a hospital room being hooked to an array of hoses and beepers with morose people standing around constantly sneaking glances at their watches, as just one example.)   Mrs. Pollard had what some of us would regard as a "grand exit," one that will long be remembered in community lore.

Should I have the good fortune to stumble into a similar grand demise, I would appreciate my heirs and debtors throwing a few good mystery novels into the hole, and then, instead of flowers, pouring in bags of discount store topsoil - and perhaps even some composted manure.

If perchance I don't get swallowed up by a sinkhole, my plan is to be composted.  Interested parties who would like a bag of Pa Rock for their flower beds or cherry orchards should contact my son, Tim, and he will hook you up.

Rest well, Mrs. Pollard.