Chapter 2

The Television Tower

The television antenna at the end of the pool was at least 60 feet tall. The tower was a triangular affair, and each side of the triangle was about 18" to 24". There were 5 or 6 ten foot pieces which would slip into each other. The idea was to put your TV antenna on the top of the tower and then winch some or all of the pieces up into the air until you could get decent television reception. The tower was anchored to a concrete block and it was quite stable since once it was winched up to the desired height, guy wires could be attached and tied off to other concrete pads set into the ground.

One day my sister and I got the bright idea to climb up part ways on the tower and then jump off into the pool. Since the tower was set about 8 to 10 feet back from the pool, to hit the pool it was necessary to push yourself away from the tower rather than just jump off. The higher up the tower you climbed, the easier it would be to hit the pool. If you missed, you would hit the concrete apron ... which was not an option.

I was the first to jump. Don't remember how I got conned into being the first one to try, but I was. I climbed to almost the top of the second section, which put me about 20 feet into the air. Once I was high enough, I decided jumping was perhaps not a good idea. However, with the sound of my sister calling me "Chicken," I pushed off and leapt towards the pool. With a lot of relief, I cleared the cement apron and dove into the pool. What neither of us had realized, our dad had seen me dive from the tower. A lot of shouting ensued which consisted of us listening and dad doing the shouting. We were told to never, ever do that again. As so often happens with parents, dad repeated several times that we were never to jump or dive from the tower again.

Now the truth be told, I was scared shitless when I jumped the first time. I felt I was lucky to have made the dive and survived in one piece ... I was perfectly happy to end my diving career with just the one dive. The problem was now that I was forbidden to dive from the tower; the idea of diving took on a totally new aspect. It was FORBIDDEN. One of the things so many of us discover in our youth, quite often the things we are forbidden to do are often the most fun/exciting. Now that diving off the tower was forbidden, I had to do it again.

There were a couple of more dives when I was positive my dad was not around. One day my next door buddy saw me do the dive and told me I was insane to be doing anything so stupid. He proceeded to tell me there was no way he would go up and do anything that stupid. He asked me if my dad knew I was doing something that dumb and when I told him we were forbidden to dive off the tower he told me there was a reason dad had forbidden us to dive. He made such a production out of the whole thing I decided my diving career was over. After all, if he was scared to dive and thought doing it was really dumb, then perhaps ... just perhaps dad was correct and diving into the pool from the antenna was not a good idea ... or very bright either.

The tower is gone and the pool is gone. In my head, the distance from the ground to where I jumped off the tower was impossible to measure it was so high. Now days when I recall the dives I swear I had to wait for clouds to pass by so I could see the pool below. I mean, come on ... how else could the pool have looked so small from where I dove off?

Usually doing something as stupid as diving from a tall tower across a cement apron and into a swimming pool is preceded with; "Here, hold my beer ... I have a great idea." There was no beer. Just a stupid kid who was not going to let his sister tell him he was chicken and most of all, not going to let his father take away the fun of trying to hit the pool from the tower ... even if it killed him!

If pop had only realized how scared I was and that there was no way I would have ever done it a second time, perhaps he might have been a bit more understanding. But as the adult, he could see all of the things that could go wrong with being so stupid ... where as I just thought it was a cool idea. Why my next door friend was so much smarter than I was I have no idea ... perhaps because he didn't have a kid sister calling him chicken helped him think a bit more clearer than I was.