I was 17-years-old and sitting on the steps of our old farmhouse with a couple of my buddies.

Wednesday, October 10, 2001

I was 17-years-old and sitting on the steps of our old farmhouse with a couple of my buddies. It was an early evening of a hot and muggy summer day.

My friends, Bags and Wonder, and I were drinking Coca-Cola in glass bottles.

Coca-Cola in glass bottles with salted peanuts in them to be exact. Such a concoction seemed to help our thought processes. As we talked, our discussion topics varied. It jumped from girls to cars to girls to baseball to girls to farming to girls to The Tower. We all knew what we were talking about when someone mentioned The Tower. Did The Tower have a name? Probably, but if it did, none of us knew what it was. We called it The Tower as though it were the only tower in existence. The Tower was some kind of communications construction erected in the midst of farmland. It was about 275 feet tall and stuck out like a sore thumb in a landscape relatively free of tall structures. Bags, Wonder and I were having a marvelous discussion about a beautiful cheerleader from Ellendale when Bags changed the subject and the path that our lives would travel that day.

&uot;Do you think anyone has ever climbed The Tower?&uot; he asked.

&uot;Sure,&uot; I answered. &uot;I’ve seen a guy climb up there and change the bulbs in that big blinking light.&uot;

&uot;Wow,&uot; marveled Bags, &uot;I’ll bet you get quite a view from up there. A guy might even be able to see the cheerleaders practicing in Ellendale.&uot;

This thought perked Wonder up enough that he issued a Coca-Cola-fueled burp.

There was a long pause in the conversation as we watched a dragonfly sail by us.

&uot;Nice mosquito hawk,&uot; I mumbled in admiration.

Wonder belched a ditto.

&uot;Why don’t we climb The Tower?&uot; asked Bags.

He could just as well have asked us why we didn’t forget about our senior year in high school and enroll in Princeton. You might say that a hush fell over the small crowd assembled on my doorstep. Wonder was unable to produce a burp for the first time that evening. Climbing The Tower was something that had never crossed my mind. I wasn’t afraid of heights. At least, I don’t think I was. The highest spots I’d ever been to were the top of our old barn and to the peak of our Aeromotor windmill. Neither of those places bothered me, but The Tower – I mean, it was The Tower. I wanted to say, &uot;no way.&uot; But there was something in my 17-year-old brain that would not allow me to say such things.

Bags had a history of coming up with bad ideas. Like the time he wanted us all to see if we could stand on the ice of Beaver Lake. Our plans for that fell through. Or the time he suggested we have the power sander races in shop class. We had just collected a round of bets when our teacher put an end to our off-track betting operation.

I sat there on those steps searching for another mosquito hawk to fly by. I was willing to let the climbing idea go.

&uot;Let’s do it,&uot; said Bags.

Wonder and I paused, trying to think up a way to turn down the opportunity presented to us while still saving face.

Sensing our reluctance, Bags added, &uot;I double-dog dare us to climb The Tower.&uot;

That did it. A double-dog dare was something that no one had ever been able to overcome.

&uot;Okay,&uot; I said, &uot;But let’s wait until it gets a little darker. I think there is some kind of a law against climbing towers in the daylight.&uot;

It was agreed. Several bottles of Coca-Cola with salted peanuts in them later, three intrepid teens in a pickup parked near The Tower. We stood looking up at it. It had never looked taller. Nothing had ever looked taller. We began our ascent with a mixture of excitement and panic. We climbed and climbed, stopping only to bolster each other’s confidence and to listen to Wonder’s attempt to belch the entire alphabet. We made it to the top of The Tower and sat on a platform far above the earth. We each spit over the side. That was enough. We climbed down in silence and never told a soul that we had climbed The Tower.

Why did we climb The Tower? Because it was there. The Tower is still there, but I’m not climbing it again, even if I am double-dog dared.

Hartland resident Al Batt writes columns for the Wednesday and Sunday editions of the Tribune.