Kids sometimes
do some crazy things and so do teen-agers. We might go so far as to say
that grown-up folks do the same. But this tale is about
teen-agers.
Louis and I were room mates in the big city
of ?>ml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Fort Worth in the mid
thirties. We had come to the city on scholarships to attend Brantley-Draughon
College and each of
us had been promised that we could support ourselves by accepting jobs
that could be found by the college. They did find jobs for us – Louis
worked at the Moose Café and I labored at Bybee’s. Bybee’s was on Commerce
directly across from the side entrance of the Palace Theater. We worked
about an hour and a half at lunch time and about two hours during the
evening meal.
Since this was a Saturday we did not have classes at school and we
had a little free time before we had to go to work. We left our bedroom on
West 5th and walked downtown to see the sights. I suggested
that we try to get to the top of one of the high buildings and see what
the town looked like. Louis thought it was a good idea so we started
looking up. One that appeared tall enough was located about 7th
and Main. We went inside and approached
the elevator operator.
“We’d like to go to the top of the building and look around.” I
told the old fellow standing at the controls.
“You can’t get on the roof, and there’s no place to look out on the
top floor.” he explained. We walked out a little disappointed and looked
up toward the top of the building. On the outside I noticed the steel
stairs zigzagging straight up to the top.
“Do you see what I see, Louis?” I asked. “We can climb those stairs
all the way up and get a good look – at least toward the east. I could see
that he agreed. We walked up the alley where the stairway came to earth
and noticed that it was about eight or ten feet to the end of a
counter-balanced section that could be pulled down to climb. It could also be used to exit the
escape by walking out on the steps and waiting for it to extend slowly to
the surface. Since I was a little taller and perhaps a little lighter
Louis lifted me and I grabbed the end of the stairs. It descended smoothly
and we began the climb. The section came up behind us and we continued the
ascent.
About three stories up the stairs opened on a flat graveled roof
and continued the upward climb on the main section of the building. We
leisurely strolled across the roof toward the stairs feeling quite proud
of our ingenuity!
Suddenly a window opened near the escape and a man stuck his head
out. “Hey1” he yelled in an unkind voice, “Go back just like you came and
I mean now!” We didn’t stay to argue with him and didn’t even discuss the
situation between ourselves. We just turned around and started back down.
We were about half way down when I saw the policeman standing where the
alley opened on to the street. Before I could say anything a police car
came down the alley from the other direction and stopped a few feet from
the bottom of the stairs. We
continued the descent.
We had barely stepped off of the stairway and let it begin its
upward journey to its resting place when the two policemen from the car
and the one from the street grabbed us and had us handcuffed together
before we had time to think about the trouble we might be in. Before we
could start to explain that we were just climbing the building to look at
the town they pushed us into the back seat and drove way. I guess they
took us to the police station. We were taken to a relatively small office
where a middle aged man in uniform was seated at a desk.
“Here’s the fire escape burglars. Caught ‘em coming down the
stairs.” One or the policemen told him.
“Oh, yeah!” he glanced up at us with a nasty scowl on his face. “We
got some calls about you. Burglarizing an office building. Pretty serious
business!”
“Want me to lock ‘em up and hold ‘em for the judge?” asked the
policeman. The man behind the desk then began a long lecture about how
serious the burglary charge was and that we could get a lot of jail time
for that. He asked us where we lived, what we did and a lot of other
questions. We told him we were just wanting to look the town over and that
we had no intention of stealing anything. Louis also told him that we had
to go to work about eleven o’clock and that we needed to let our bosses
know if we were not going to be able to get there.
“What do you think we ought to do with them?” he asked the
policeman. “I don’t think we could get a judge till Monday.” Then he pointed his finger at us
and said. “Don’t ever let us catch you going up a fire escape again. Only
come down one in case of a fire or other emergency.” His final words were,
“Take them back where you found them. I think they have learned their
lesson.”
That was the last fire escape I climbed. I don’t know about Louis
because I never saw or heard from him after that summer. I have always
thought a little more of policemen after that one didn’t have us locked
up.
A few weeks later I saw the city from the top of the Blackstone
Hotel. Frequent trips to the top floor to see the radio shows enabled me
to become friends with one of the building maintenance men who gave me a
grand tour. I also saw Dallas from the tops
of the Adolphus, the Baker, the Magnolia Building and others when I worked
for an elevator maintenance and repair company after the war.
I have been trying for many years to see where the fun was in that
fire escape escapade! I think we will just say that the moral of this tale
is to only go down fire escapes. Never up!
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