At seven or eight years old, we moved temporarily to Vancouver, Washington. I was walking home from school and decided I had never seen a baby pigeon. I looked up at the courthouse and noticed lots of pigeons on the ledge of the courthouse dome. The steel ladder attached to the building was not to the ground, so I climbed up the electric boxes and got the last ring of the ladder to start my journey leading up to the ridge, so I climbed. It was a long way to the crown, so I didn’t look down; when I arrived at the top, it was hard to get on the 6” or so ledge, but after a few tries, I made it, but I slipped and fell against the dome, now I am in big trouble. After a few minutes of pure fear, by myself, a woman screams; there is a boy on the courthouse’s roof; he is going to fall. After a few minutes, there are cops and fire trucks everywhere. I see this fire engine send up this ladder, but I can’t move; finally, this fireman is climbing the ladder up to me. He gets to me and tells me it will be ok; he will get me down; he grabs me and starts walking down the ladder; we get almost to the ground. I wiggle out and take off like a rabbit.

That night watching the local news with my family, the news anchor started laughing about a boy being saved at the courthouse this afternoon. The film started rolling with everyone looking up at the courthouse dome; you could see this blonde-haired boy on the smallest of the ledge with his arms spread out and up against the crown, the ladder slowly making its way up to the top. This brave fireman walks up to this boy and carefully takes him down the ladder; at almost the end of that ladder, he yanks himself out of the fireman’s arms, jumps to the truck, and down to the ground into the sunset. The newsman remarked, most likely never to be seen again, my family all laughing. My mother looked over at me and said “laughingly” that boy looked a lot like you, Rick, everyone laughed. (it was years later when I told them it was me, I don’t believe my mother truly believed it was me.)