An adventure at the stadium

[Keith Henson]

I am not certain when this happened, but it was after I went back to
school and while I was living at 8th and Warren. Perhaps someone on
this list can pin it down. Fall of 1965 is my initial guess, most
likely before the time of the "Blasting in a cave" story
(Thanksgiving). I think all the people involved were known to the
Harlans. The only one I am certain about is my wife at the time,
Karen.

Walking home I came upon a crane on the east side of the stadium that
was picking a steeplejack up for him to change out the stadium lights.
This was interesting so I wandered over to see what they were doing.
It seemed that the football game that weekend was to be broadcast on
TV and they had to replace the stadium lights for them to be bright
enough for the TV cameras. The maintenance guy from the U of A was
sweating rivets because the light replacement was going so slowly that
there was no chance of getting the job done by game time the next day.
This would have invoked legal clauses with the broadcast outfit and
caused him problems with the University administration.

Well, I can fix this problem!

I introduced myself as one of the local cavers or climbers and said it
would be no problem to round up enough people to get the lights
changed. I made a case that the kind of things we did for fun were
much more challenging than changing out a few lights. I might have
mentioned that I used to change out the lights on the 300-foot radio
towers for KTKT. The U of A official was torn between the potential
liability of a bunch of students going up on the light poles and the
certain disaster if he didn't get the lights changed. I think we were
paid a few dollars by the steeplejack guy, but I am not sure. It was
the sort of thing the cavers and climbers would do for fun. It's been
a long time and memory is fuzzy, but I think 6 to 8 of us went at it
the next day, climbing the light poles, hauling up boxes of new
lights, replacing the old ones and cleaning the fixtures. As I
recall, we all rapelled down from the lights by the middle of the
afternoon to the relief of the maintenance guy.

If any of you can add to this short screed, please do.

Keith



Keith