I was going to say metal cranial plate! ha! Wonder if my aluminum anti-alien hat will increase range?
I had just turned 18, and was in Mansfield, Ohio for Thanksgiving with my dad's family. We stayed at the home of my uncle the real estate mogul, who had a son my age. Steve was in pre-med at Kent State and I was changing oil in cars at the local Mobil station, so our paths were in the process of diverging. But as is the way of youth, we didn't understand that yet. Thinking about it now, I think I was the only one didn't understand it, but regardless - we spent the better part of 3 nights getting into more trouble than I’d been in until that point.
Besides being a brainiac and one of the most overdriven people I know - Steve was a full-on wild-child at this juncture in life. The night before I was leaving for home, he and I were shooting pool in Uncle Dan's basement. It was 10:00 PM or so and Steve said, "I'm bored. Let's climb the radio tower". My uncle's property was just off the end of a road, and at the termination of the street on the adjacent property there was a TV tower. Last night I tried to determine its height but couldn't. What I can say for sure is that it was high - very, very high.
We walked over (less than a quarter-mile). There was a fence surrounding the tower and cinder block building and signs posted on all 4 sides reading, "CAUTION! PROLONGED EXPOSURE TO MICROWAVE RADIATION CAN CAUSE GENETIC DAMAGE!"
We pondered the situation, and Steve (being the premed student) formulated a plan. We went back to the house and encased our "family jewels" in a couple of layers of aluminum foil, using our tighty-whities to hold things in place.
Having secured our yet unborn progenies' future genetic integrity, we returned to the tower and scaled the fence, carefully avoiding the barbed wire around the top.
We began to climb the tower. At a point about halfway up, I began to ponder my situation and the wisdom of blindly following my cousin (who I really barely knew, and was liking less and less by the minute) quite literally up a pole in the middle of the night. But once a thing is underway, the thing is underway, and on we climbed. After about a half hour on the ladder to the sky, we were within touching distance of the stuff on top of the tower. From that vantage-point we could see pretty much all of central Ohio - the towns of Mansfield, Ontario, and Lexington quite clearly, and other places on the horizon. Cars were tiny, houses little matchboxes.
We spent about 20 minutes up there hooting and hollering, baying at the moon, etc., whereupon we began our descent.
As we got closer to the ground, Steve noticed a car pulled up next to the fence, partially hidden in the trees, and not moving. His immediate concern was that it was a cop, but after getting a bit closer, he determined it was two young lovers "in heat" seeking a bit of off-street parking (as it were). At this point, he got to within 30 ft (+/-) of the ground, cleared his voice, and in his best Charlton Heston said (with great authority),
"This is God speaking! I SEE YOU! Get your hands off of her! Put that thing back in your pants! Turn from your evil ways!"
I heard a little scream, and after a few seconds the car started, the lights came on, and the car headed back to the street, gravel flying. I nearly fell off the tower laughing. We climbed back up a bit to see if anybody else would pull in.
Someone did- in a sheriff's department cruiser. He had a spotlight, and began sweeping up and down the tower. We initially scrambled up to get out of the range of his beam. But I assessed the hopelessness of the situation and was (belatedly) getting tired of Steve's idea of "fun". I was also starting to get really, really cold. I headed back down. I got to the base of the tower, and while I was engaging the officer (by laying face-down on the ground with my fingers laced behind my head), my cousin dropped onto the cinder block building roof, and made a running leap over the fence and into the woods.
Once he grasped that I had given myself up, my cousin disgustedly came out of the woods (apparently, "surrender to the cops" was not in his ethos). The deputy gave us a "stern talk", and dropped us off in the driveway of my uncle's home, not even knocking on the door. I suspect he was laughing about it with his deputy buddies on the radio as soon as we slipped inside.
I think that was my last Thanksgiving in Ohio as a single kid. Steve went on to be a successful general surgeon and medical school professor. Last I heard, his eldest son was a first chair violinist for some symphony somewhere, and his middle daughter was an Olympic swimmer (an alternate, but still). He probably still has all his hair, although I haven’t seen him in 30 years when I decided it’d save everybody a lot of time if we just collected copies of 1040s to compare, rather than get together for reunions.
Uncle Dan is still kicking - 94 years old or some such, still a zillionaire
I came back home to Buttscratch, Nowhere and lived my life. I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out.
