It was a bright, peaceful California
afternoon in San Marino, and the children raced each other across the
lot—little Kathy Fiscus, 3, her sister Barbara, 9, and her cousin Gus
Lyon, 5. Kathy fell behind. When the children looked back for her, she
had vanished. Gus heard faint screams. Following the sound, he came to
an open hole in a clump of weeds. The hole was only 14 inches across,
and the pipe that lined it was rusted and corroded. Kathy had fallen
into an abandoned and forgotten water well. The frightened children ran to tell Mrs. Fiscus. Trying to pierce the
darkness of the well, Kathy's mother called: “Are you all right,
honey?” Faintly, from the dark hole, Kathy's voice quavered: “Yes.” The Rope Went Slack. Down the dark opening, her mother heard Kathy
crying, tried to find out her position. “Kathy, Kathy, is your head
up?” she called. “Yes, it is,” Kathy sobbed. “Is your head down?” her
mother asked. “Yes, it is,” came Kathy's voice, thin and frightened.
Then there was only the dismayed crying of a child beginning to realize
that her mother was not going to make everything all right. Policemen came and lowered a rope. They hoped to slip it over Kathy's
head and shoulders. They pulled gently, felt it tighten, then catch.
They stopped, afraid that the noose might have caught around her neck.
There was no longer any sound at all from the well. The Pit & the Shaft. Around that narrow hole, a community rallied to the
first radio call for help, and a nation anxiously waited for word of
the lost child. Drills, derricks, bulldozers and trucks were rushed to
the lot from a dozen towns. Three giant cranes lumbered through Los
Angeles behind police escort. Firemen ran an air hose down the well,
began pumping air down by a rotary pump. A little more than an hour
after Kathy's fall, a power-drill crew began to sink a shaft alongside
the abandoned well. On the other side, big clamshell shovels clawed an
open pit for exploration. Fifty floodlights were rushed from Hollywood
studios. Volunteer workers—engineers, sandhogs, retired miners,
cesspool diggers—rushed to help. By midnight, the shaft was down 41 feet; by 4 a.m., down 65 feet. Then
the drilling stopped; the shaking of the drill might cave in the sandy
California soil in the bigger pit. As dawn broke hot and clear over the
San Gabriel Mountains, the snorting, clangorous power shovels had dug a
pit 57 feet deep. “Whitey” Blickensderfer, 43, an unemployed
ex-sandhog, was lowered into the crater with a partner—little,
gnomelike O. A. Kelly, an out-of-work carpenter and ex-miner. By
midmorning, they had tunneled to the well pipe, cut a small
exploratory window in its corroded sides. Peering in with mirrors and
flashlights, they saw a flash of pink 40 feet below at a bend in the
old well pipe. There was no movement.
