Burrows, Shelters and Dugouts

I’m not sure about girls, but at least for boys, there’s a certain age phase when an irresistible urge develops to squeeze into all possible holes, cracks, and crevices. Possibly this instinct, combined with a pressing need to build shelters, could have been quite necessary for the victorious survival struggle of Homo Sapiens at the dawn of mankind.

The Garden City of Tapiola offered unprecedented opportunities for all little boys seized by this mania. Especially in the early 60s, before the construction boom brought about by increased wealth and well-being, there was plenty of natural wasteland all over Tapiola. An own uniqueness to this otherwise favorable situation was brought by the World War I trenches protected from house construction. These structures were in the middle of the Eastern Suburb, bordered by Menninkäisentie, Mäntyviita, Kimmeltie and Poutapolku forming a vaguely diamond-shaped area: the largest continuous complex of trenches, battery positions, and machine gun nests were right there. From the kitchen window of our apartment on Menninkäisentie, there was a direct line of sight to the trenches of Vallihaudat.

There was no need to play any imaginative games since someone had built this playground for boys in the heart of Tapiola. The trenches of Vallihaudat were no safe place. The nearly three-meter deep moats were filled with man-high nettles in summer. The first aid would have been amazed if, in addition to bruises, the patient would have been covered in nettle blisters. I don’t know anyone who fell into the trenches. Such a thing would have certainly spread as a rumor throughout Tapiola. The potential for that type of an accident was evident.

A kind of initiation ritual was jumping over the moats. We started with the ones about one meter wide and progressed to those two meters wide. A three-meter wide one required a reckless jumping speed and a bit of daredevil courage. It was only in my second decade as a secondary school student that I managed to cross the widest spot – even then with knees scuffed.

Building a hut on the trenches was easy. On top of the cleared nettle-filled machine gun nest, birch branches were thrown, and the hut was ready. Of course, this was not enough for the older guys. Before the green grass fields of Silkkiniitty were created, the backyard of the Menninkäisentie row houses, also known as ”the chicken coops”, was nothing but untamed thicket. There, a ghetto of dugouts was born. It took quite a bit of diligence to dig a couple of meters deep hole into the rocky ground with shovels and pickaxes, fetch waste boards from a nearby construction site to cover the hole and also to craft the dugout’s furniture from the same materials.

Sometimes, guided by a friend’s older brother who was in a good mood, we got to admire these dungeons from the inside as well. The smell of candles and tobacco mixed excellently with the strong odor of earth and peat in the cold, damp excavation. On the table made of planks, there were men’s magazines curled by moisture. A couple of guys sprawled on chairs padded with rags found from garbage cans, cigarettes in their teeth, playing cards. This was the good life!

In Tapiola, there was no shortage of boys at the age of building dens and digging holes. The groups of boys from nearby residential areas were constantly bickering amongst themselves. No form of clubhouses or recreational spaces were built by the housing companies. If there were any – like at Menninkäisentie – they were rented out for residential use.

Therefore, we had to build spaces ourselves. These constructs usually stayed intact for a few days before the hooligans from the neighboring street destroyed them. A few days later, we launched a successful counter-attack. Sometimes, the builders of the dens and holes would engage in defensive battles. Stone wars were a traditional way of settling disputes – with predictable outcomes. I, too, found myself more than once in the health center emergency needing stitches for a bleeding head.

During winter, the building of snow huts was the number one activity in mild weather. One snow castle more magnificent than the other rose all throughout Tapiola. Their lifespan, alas, was very short. The defense of the castles was taken care of through snowball fights, which resulted in fewer bloody casualties. In the vicinity of Menninkäisentie, there were only two places where a painstakingly erected, double-story snow castle might last a little longer. Not even the bad boys from Poutapolku dared to embark on their raiding adventures onto the yards of ”the chicken coops”. Another long-lasting option was digging a labyrinth into giant piles of snow that tractors pushed to the sides of yard areas. Shoveling for hours in the crisp winter weather was the best outdoor exercise. Sleep came quickly in the evening.

During winters, the municipal technical services would build and freeze a hill track next to the Tapiola power plant, to the great delight of all children old enough for sledging. If the trenches were potentially dangerous playgrounds, this icy hill slide was truly so. The over two hundred meter long slide, which first turned sharply to the right and then to the left, attracted dozens of children of different ages with their sleds and toboggans on winter nights. Usually, not a single adult was present to supervise the wild fun. It was a miracle that no one lost their life on that hill. 

Initially, the speeds were rather modest due to the material of the equipment; plywood sleds and wooden toboggans couldn’t reach very high speeds. Many children slid down the hill with just a piece of cardboard underneath their bum. On slushy days, glide was almost non-existent. The introduction of plastic changed the situation. Speeds increased regardless of weather conditions. And inevitably in such a group of children and young teenagers, there are those classic school bully types who take pleasure in harming others.

However, most of the bruises and bumps arose from our own defiant spirit: we had to achieve a speed so high that me and my friend, being given a ride on my plastic sled, were whisked down while grazing the last high ridge of the curve. And when you really tried, a plastic sled could fly over the bend. Usually, we escaped a tumble without any major injuries. My own enthusiasm for sledding ended one February evening though, when an ambulance took away a classmate who had knocked himself unconscious. Jukka got away with six stitches and a concussion. Other accidents reportedly occurred too. The ice hill track was not built again the following year.

But the icy hill was not the only lure on the Tapiolan Lämpö property. A new addition to the power plant had been erected in a large hole carved into a tall cliff. It didn’t take long before someone daring enough squeezed deeper into the narrow gap between the building and the cliff. Claustrophobia must have been an unknown ailment for anyone in that age group. The rest of the gang followed the bravest one. The hardest part was at the corner of the maze. You could only get past it by slithering along the ground and exhaling all the air from your lungs. After that, an astonishing sight was revealed before our eyes in the light of the flashlights. The narrow and damp passage widened into a high and spacious cave with a dry floor. We sat in the cave many evenings, telling ghost stories and smoking ciggies. We had found a totally foolproof spot for secret smoking. And this certainly beat the plywood hut cobbled together underneath Seurakunnan Olotila barracks, the church facility for teenagers, which, in addition to the smell of tobacco, imparted a pungent odor of cat piss onto your clothes.

The completion of grassy fields of Silkkiniitty with the surrounding vegetable plots and decorative bushes signaled the eviction of the bunkers. The big boys, along with their girlfriends, had also invented other amusements less susceptible to mold, so the torch of continuity was passed to the hands of the boys in their young teens. Traditions oblige.

Once, while cycling past Tapiolan Lämpö, we encountered an unfortunate sight. A couple of municipal maintenance men were fussing with welding equipment at the mouth of the crevice. The next day, we could only confirm that our cave dwelling life had come to an end: an iron gate was closed with a large Abloy lock. A yellow-black sign read: ”No Entry. Risk of Suffocation!”.

On the same trip, we were pleased to discover that the construction site of the power plant’s extension had reached a stage where it offered plenty of first-class building material for huts. From the concrete wall coating works, waste material such as slightly warped and dirty boards as well as mud-caked rafters were generated, which were useless for the continuing construction work. We had once had a sort of hut in the bunker on the Poutapolku side. Now was the opportunity to build something more durable. And as boys from two residential areas teamed up for this project, the preservation of the building would be guaranteed.

My friend Juha knew someone from the construction crew and therefore dared to ask for permission to reuse the junk materials. The permission was granted, and so the stack of boards and battens was moved through the forest to the side of Poutapolku, near the moats. Hammers and a saw were found at home. As for the nails, we bought them from RAKE at Tapiontori; with just a couple of marks, you could get a big bag of iron nails. Straightening the nails taken off the discarded boards proved to be too laborious.

The rainy autumn day turned into evening before the frame was upright. We wouldn’t have made much progress if it weren’t for Juha’s older brother coming to see our construction efforts and giving us some crucial advice for the success of the framing. Initially, a simple wall turned into a double one because we wanted the shack to be suitable for winter habitation. We used pieces of glasswool ”found” from another construction site between the boards for insulation. As the work progressed, the number of builders also increased. The rule was clear: if you were involved in the erection work, you were allowed to join this exclusive club. We borrowed real roofing felt from somewhere to protect the roof. We also had considered having a window, but creating a window opening turned out to be too technically challenging. Besides, we didn’t want anyone peering inside the cabin’s interior.

September turned into October. From the same boards used for the walls, a table and benches were created. The cabin was ready for use. Despite the insulation, the cooling evenings didn’t entice us to have long club nights. The following week, two club members returned from their reconnaissance expedition that reached all the way to the horse stables. They had information that brought a quick solution to our heating problems. In a pile of junk at Hagalund Manor, there was a rusty but visually intact stove. The absolute ”no” from the owner of the riding stable was a great disappointment.

However, I wasn’t at all surprised when the next evening I climbed up towards the machine gun nest hiding the hut and saw smoke billowing from the chimney protruding through the roof. Did we manage to obtain permission after all? Well, not exactly. In the darkness of the night, a couple of brave guerrillas had carried the stove to the cabin. Inside, it was as hot as a sauna, with the side of the stove glowing red. Now we had a good reason to have a housewarming party. Tomorrow would be Friday, and Juha’s older brother had promised to bring something stronger than soda.

The size of the cabin was probably around five by five meters. However, ten builders managed to squeeze into the small, hot cottage. Cooling the drinks was not a problem in the cold of late October. I had ordered five bottles of strong Karhu beer. As a school kid in the lower grades of secondary school, I hadn’t had much experience with alcohol. After the first few bottles, the atmosphere became joyously hazy, high as the smoke darkened ceiling. Everyone praised each other, thanking one another for the successful completion of the cabin project. As the buzz started to kick in, the excitement heightened when the cap of another bottle popped off. I had only managed to drink halfway through the third bottle when my stomach started feeling queasy. I sat down on a bench near the stove, placing the bottle on the table as I struggled with the growing discomfort, taking deep breaths. That was a mistake. My lungs filled with thick, hot, smoke-filled air. I tried to aim for the open doorway, but hit a totally different kind of bullseye. My vomit sprayed onto the glowing side of the stove. The sound was like throwing a whole bucket of water onto a hot sauna stove, and the result was the same. The cabin emptied out in an instant. The housewarming party had come to an abrupt end.

After emptying my stomach, my head quickly cleared up. I apologized to my friends for what had happened and promised to come the next day to clean up the mess. The event now moved outdoors, but the cold of the night diminished the desire to continue the celebration. The freezing weather that started overnight made my Saturday cleaning shift easier. The stains on the cooled surface of the stove came off easily, in intact sheets of icy puke. There was a slight lingering odor for a few days, but it didn’t bother our cabin activities much.

We regularly gathered at the cabin before going to the movies. Before the era of mobile devices, this was an easy way to ensure the company of like-minded individuals for a movie outing. We often came back straight from Kino Tapiola to the cabin to smoke and discuss our impressions of the latest spaghetti western film. The combination of smoking and the glowing stove was a fire hazard, especially with stacks of comic books scattered on the cabin table and bunks.

One winter evening, my homework had taken me so long that I couldn’t make it to the pre-movie gathering. I was already in the theater lobby, waiting in line to go inside, when a strongly smoke-scented and visibly nervous Cassu appeared next to me. We walked coolly past the one-man control center of Kinosaur, as the owner of the cinema was called, and just as we sat down in our usual seats, my friend whispered some shocking news.

– The cabin is on fire.
– What! What are you doing here?
– I ran away.

The cabin fire was a reality, but only for the wall behind the stove. A natural extinguishing method had provided quick help. The simultaneous urine spray from eight boys suffocated the initial flames. The charred boards were replaced with new ones, and the heat source was moved further away from the wall. The activities at the cabin continued. The incident did implant a certain fear of the danger of fire in my subconscious, as well as in a couple of other boys. Our visits to the cabin became less frequent. Eventually, they stopped altogether. Someone had installed a lock on the door. After expressing our surprise out loud, the reason became clear. The group of older guys had turned the cabin into their love nest. The warm, windowless space turned out to be perfect for such activities.

As spring arrived, I often walked home from school through Silkkiniitty. One day, as I strolled the sandy path towards Menninkäisentie, I glanced up towards the end of Poutapolku, where the trenches were. The municipal workers were bustling around there again, this time involved in demolition work. A vague feeling of relief washed over me. My mood only improved further in the evening as I sat on seat number 101 in Cinema Tapiola. My cheerful friend Cassu sat next to me, holding a large bag of popcorn.

– Wanna have some?
– Sure! Thanks.
– I have some news.
– What is it?
– We’ve been given a club room in the basement of our building. Let’s check it out after the movie. Its name is Klitsu.