The Height of Folly Kevin

O’Brien

1st Place Creative Writing Celebration: Memoir

I have been talking to myself for quite a while now, and over time have enjoyed a number of spirited and edifying conversations. The topics vary widely. Recently the discussions have turned more to past experiences, whether glorious, crackbrained, regrettable, or I’d do it again. Some incidents are so embarrassing I can only talk about them in the dark. As a good interviewer, I ask myself probing questions such as, “What did you want?” “What were you looking for?” “What was going through your mind at that moment?”

Lately I’ve been thinking it would be good to widen my audience, so I’ll share an episode so improbable, I have trouble believing it myself sometimes. But I was there.

That summer I worked at Tomorrowland Terrace, the largest fast-food operation in Disneyland. I blopped Thousand Island on an endless parade of burger patties coming out of the grilling machine. Other times I worked a bank of deep fat fryers, turning out nearly a quarter ton of fries a day. Despite the heat I wore long sleeves against the spits of boiling oil. I sweated like a galley slave. I broke out in pimples. No matter how many times I showered or how often I changed my clothes, I carried the smell with me. I would be talking with someone when there would be a sniff, a pause, and the question, “Are there hamburgers and French fries cooking around here?”

The manager wore shiny suits, smoked fat green cigars, and read The

Racing Form in his glassed-off air-conditioned office. From time to time he passed through the kitchen, snarling to improve morale.

“Ehhh, what’s this, huh?” At my side, poking my shoulder, pointing to a corn dog adrift in the hot grease. “Why don’t you just throw a dollar bill in there, ehh? And get a haircut!”

Every few days, as I walked from the locker room to the Tomorrowland Terrace kitchen, I would see the Disneyland Matterhorn climbers up on the slopes of the grey and white artificial mountain that looms over The Magic Kingdom. They climbed slowly, leapfrog fashion, to the summit. Once on top they waved, leaned out backwards over the abyss, and rappelled down in great swooping arcs.

Sometimes I passed them on the way to the break room. They strode by, arrogant and free, carabiners clicking on their equipment slings. They wore grey climbing boots and Lederhosen, Edelweiss suspenders, red shirts, and red Tyrolean hats. I felt like a white worm in my chef’s suit and ridiculous puffy hat.

I wanted more--I wanted to be one of them. I’d been rock climbing with the university mountaineering club for a couple of years; I knew I could do it.

So one day after work I stopped by the Talent Office and told them about my climbing experience: I could lead climbs and belay to stop a fall, use carabiners, place pitons, and rappel, mostly. When could I interview for the Matterhorn? They scheduled me for one of my days off the next week.

I met the climbers in their dressing room. One was a cheerful, blond sunburned surfer dude. The other had dark hair and eyes and didn’t say much. Surfer Dude called him Cap’n. I can’t remember their actual names. In a dream, I put on my alpine regalia.

“Well, Cap’n, whaddaya say?” the blond one looked at his partner. “Mhm.”

We clumped off down the hall and came to an elevator.

“Going up, Cap’n?” “Yup.”

It was a tight fit. There were only two buttons, one up and one down, and no floor indicator. We seemed to go up for quite some time. The door slid open and we stood in a large, cone-shaped empty space. Narrow wooden steps zigzagged high up to a trapdoor at the narrow end of the cone. Everything looked unfinished. Off to one side a flight of wooden steps led to a balcony about thirty feet up, looking like it was made of two by fours. A climbing rope hung from a bolt in the side of the wall next to a gap in the railing.

We were inside the Matterhorn.

Cap’n tossed me a length of webbing and a carabiner and gestured with his head to the balcony.

“Let’s see you rappel.”

I wrapped it around my waist, secured it with a flat, non-slip knot, and clipped the carabiner through the webbing belt. Up on the balcony I wound several turns of the rope through the carabiner. I put a leather glove on my right hand, then passed the rope behind me and brought it back to my right side. Normally you wear gloves on both hands, but I’d done this many times before and knew my right hand would be enough to slow and control my descent. I leaned back and stepped off the balcony.

About halfway down, the rope unclipped itself from the carabiner and I began to fall. Instinctively I grabbed the rope with my bare left hand. The rope zipped and burned, but I couldn’t let go. Not quite falling, I landed hard on my tailbone. A flash of pain shot up my spine. Somehow I managed to get up. More pain from a sprained right wrist.

Silence, then Surfer Dude said, “Well, let’s climb some.”

Here the Interviewer breaks in:

“What?! They let you keep going? What about your injuries? You could still go on? You even wanted to go on?”

“Yes, of course! I had a second chance!”

Cap’n opened a door in the wall and we stepped out onto a narrow ledge about a third of the way up the mountain. We waved to the crowd below us and roped up. Surfer Dude led the first pitch of the climb, Cap’n clipped into a bolt and belaying him from below. Then he joined Surfer Dude and it was my turn.

“On belay?” I called up to them.

“Belay on!”

“Climbing!”

I found some small foot and handholds and began to make my way up. Scoffers will say, “It’s a fake mountain! There are hidden steps everywhere! It’s easy to climb!”

That isn’t so. It’s slick, painted concrete; random bulges, hollows and tiny ledges are all you’ve got to go with.

My partners nodded as I came up to their ledge high above the park.

“Let’s cross over a bit.”

We traversed one at a time until we were directly below the summit overhang.

“Now wait a minute! Wait a minute,” The Interviewer interrupts, “aren’t you afraid of heights?”

“I am, yes.”

“You get butterflies just standing on a stepladder!”

“True. I was terrified on every climb I made. To keep from panicking I would focus on the rock face in front of me and try not to look down.”

The Interviewer shakes his head but says nothing.

By now the hope and exhilaration of the day were fading. My hand burned; my wrist throbbed; my tailbone ached. I was nauseated and my stomach kept trying to join my feet. A steam whistle hooted. Far below, I saw the Mark Twain Riverboat making its way along The Rivers of America. Tiny cars sputtered and popped in Autopia and hundreds of ants swarmed in The

Happiest Place on Earth. Oh my God.

I forced my eyes back to the mountain and the overhang. Cap’n was already at the summit belaying his partner climbing up. When Surfer Dude reached the overhang, he braced one foot on a little knob, pushed up, and grabbed the overhang lip with both hands. His legs swung out into the air. Doing a pullup, he swung one leg up and over the lip, rolled over, and disappeared. His head and shoulders popped up a moment later. Cap’n and he looked down at me.

“Climbing?”

“Yeah, climbing.”

“Belay on!”

Slowly, I came up to the little knob where I had to push off. A deep breath. Come on! Almost there!

Now!

I stepped up, reached for the overhang, slapped both hands over the lip, and pulled. My sprained wrist gave out and I peeled off the face of the mountain, falling backwards into space. The rope brought me up short with a sharp yank and I dangled upside down, arms and legs working like a spider trying to scuttle away. My hat fell off and I watched it float down, down and land on an upper deck of the riverboat as it passed underneath.

My partners began hauling me up with short tugs of the climbing rope.

When I drew up to the overhang, Surfer Dude grabbed me and pulled me in to join them. We stood in a sort of crow’s nest built into the summit. There were no words for a while.

Cap’n spoke up. “Guess we ought to head down.” He pulled open a trapdoor in the floor and we went on down the steps to the big room where it had all started maybe a year ago.

Surfer Dude was coiling the rope into a neat figure eight as I handed Cap’n my webbing belt and carabiner.

“Thanks.”

We looked at each other. Surfer Dude cleared his throat.

“They’ll call you.”

Cap’n nodded. “Sure.”

I rode the elevator down and changed. At the first aid office the nurse looked at my burned hand and gently squeezed my sprained wrist.

Ooh! Ow!”

Reaching for gauze pads, tape, antiseptic and an Ace bandage, she asked how it had happened.

“Climbing the Matterhorn,” I said.

She pursed her lips, raised her eyebrows, and began to patch me up.

I hobbled to my car at the far end of the huge parking lot. Unable to turn the key in the ignition switch because of my sprained wrist, I reached over with my left arm to start the engine. On the drive home I winced and gritted my teeth every time I needed to shift. In the kitchen next day Mike the lead cook asked how I’d gotten hurt. I told him I fell.

“So how did you feel after all that?” the Interviewer asks.

“Like a complete idiot. Humiliated. Defeated.”

For many years I felt that way and told very few people this story.

But now I see it differently. On that day I fired the first shot in the uprising against “You can’t have that. You can’t do that. You don’t deserve that. Who do you think you are?” It was the opening skirmish in a long war to become who I really am, against an enemy who knows me as well as I know myself. I never worked another food service job again.

I got a job as a school bus driver. It was the first time anyone had ever entrusted me with so much responsibility and showed me I had the skill to carry it out. I put up with the kids but loved my bus. It was a diesel that snorted and huffed, with an air horn that went BLAAAAT!

We growled along the streets of Anaheim for a time. Then I went off to another place and a different story.

An image from those days has stayed with me all these years. Lying in bed one night, I drift into that mystical state between waking and sleep. I hear shouts, galloping hooves and see a troop of winged cavalry waving their sabers and whooping in defiant joy as they ride to meet an implacable foe.