Jimmy Halley was notorious as a collector of bugs, lizards, and poisonous snakes. Mom remembers the day when she heard, two houses away, Mrs. Halley screech, “Jimmy, what is that?” when he brought home his first copperhead. The copperhead was soon followed by skunks, hampsters, and who knows what else Jimmy had collected in the cages out behind his garage.
The standpipe, a dark, hundred foot cylindrical, riveted steel water tower, stood on the peak of Marshall’s Heights, just at the border of the Halley’s back yard — a strange symbol for such a conservative town. We often tried to guess the circumference of the thing. None of us thought to wrap a rope around it, then measure the rope. Instead, we guessed if thirty kids joined hands in a giant hug, the chain would probably reach around it. A narrow steel ladder, just wider than a grown man’s two feet, drew a line straight up from the rock and concrete base foundation to the reservoir’s edge over a hundred feet in the air. Knowing the tower held the entire town’s water supply, we often wondered if a top protected the water from roosting birds or other missiles flying through the air. Every time we took a glass of water, we boys imagined big buzzards puking their guts out while flying over the standpipe. If there is a cover on the top, why does the water spill over whenever the water purification station at the river pumps fresh water into the tower? That question burned…
