It was after midnight. My two friends and I pulled my dad’s aluminum extension ladder off the garage wall. We walked out of the garage into the dark, hoping we’d waited long enough for the neighborhood to be asleep.
My parents were gone for the weekend. My house was the closest to the mission target: the water tower. The time was now.
As we quickstepped our way down the street, carving paths around the yellow circles cast by streetlights, the ladder banged against itself. We carried onward, despite the likelihood we were drawing attention to ourselves.
Where my street started to bend left, we turned right and crossed a short bridge. There stood the tower atop a small grassy hill.
Houses surrounded the tower. As did a high chain link fence. Flood lights shone on its bulbous, aqua-blue top. Bold, black lettering spelled the town’s name. One hundred and sixty feet above the town. Easily one of the tallest structures for hours of driving in any direction across flat farmland.
The extension ladder was critical to the mission. While a steel ladder was affixed to the tower, the bottom rung was out of reach of the ground. I could dunk a basketball at that age, but couldn’t come close to getting a grip on that rung to pull myself up. My dad’s ladder would have to fill the gap from the grass up.
Two of us would climb. The other, an all-state lineman on the football team since our freshmen year, had the courageous sense to say no. He had carried the ladder. He had climbed the chain link fence with us. And he held the extension ladder as we ascended.
Adrenaline powered my heart and blood flushed through my body. One rung at a time. I followed my friend. Focused and gripping each rung tightly. Hand and foot, hand and foot. Steady and sure. No turning back.
We had no safety net, of course. We had no harness or safety cables like the workers for the water department used in the daylight. Free solo.
As we climbed, I felt my arms tightening and tiring. As we neared the top, the affixed ladder started to slant back against us. I had never noticed from the ground, in the literal thousands of times passing that tower by foot, bike or vehicle for my whole young life, how the ladder had a mild overhang at the top.
An overhang is more than vertical. If you have seen photographs of rock climbers dangling by their grip on a slanted wall as their feet swing beneath them, they are on an overhang. On the water tower, that meant my hand holds no longer were directly above my foot holds on the rungs. I too could have let my feet hang, nothing but humid summer air between soles and ground.
Worse, the overhang culminated with a squared, flat railing at the top of the ladder. We had to climb over it onto a grated catwalk with visibility through it to the ground. One hundred and sixty feet above virtually assured death if our tired and sweaty grips gave way or our tight arms buckled. No more hand holds as we climbed over the railing.
At the top, my chest heaved. My arms throbbed.
Standing in the spotlights, we became aware of how exposed we were. We watched as a car approached on the road below. Is it a cop? Is it someone who sees us? Will they stop and draw attention or go home and snitch (pre-cellphone era)?
The pulsing of my blood announced the seconds as they passed.
Urgently aware of the risks at hand – man’s laws and the physics at play – we knew we could not linger on the catwalk. We couldn’t take time to rest in the accomplishment. We were only halfway.
Worse than worse, the railing now demanded our most dangerous negotiation yet. We had to fully expose ourselves to the fall, one by one, climbing back over the railing and seeking foot holds on the overhang to begin the down climb.
Many dozens of rungs later, our friend welcomed us back to earth with a toothy smile. He praised our “big brass balls,” for which I am sure I felt flattered. He was cool. A football stud. That he was on the mission with us was already an acceptance. And now praise for doing what he was afraid to do.
I don’t remember our going back over the fence that night. Or down the grassy hill to the street. Or the clanging return we made with the aluminum ladder to my house. Or the feeling of hanging it back on the garage wall.
I don’t remember what we did after that or how well I slept that night. Or if we told any of our friends what we’d done the next day.
But I never did it again.
The Water Tower is #TwentyOne in the weekly memoir series, Among Other Things. What’s it about? Read Introducing ‘Among Other Things,’ A Weekly Memoir Series.
