My one attempt at vandalism. Total Failure.
During my junior high school years I spent summers working at a dude ranch just outside of Bandera, Texas. It was a fully working ranch but it also had cabins and horses for people to visit and ride and generally feel like they were cowboys and cowgirls, of sorts. What I remember most about those folks was that they were never happy with the accommodations and it seemed like every time one of the teenage girls stepped into a pile of something that came out of the south end of a horse or cow they were looking for one of us to help scrape it off.
Several of us got roped into (pun intended) performing wild west shows once a day. Lots of firing blanks and over-acting our fights and deaths to be honest. But the tourists loved it. And what young teenage boy doesn’t like making a lot of noise and smoke while getting paid to do it.
Once I understood what was involved with taking care of sheep, I volunteered to do ANYTHING but sheep work. My favorite thing actually was riding the fence line and mending fences. It was quiet and most of the time it wasn’t too hard a job. As long as I had good gloves and the tools were sharp I could fix a broken barbwire fence in just a few minutes. Plus there is something magical about being up at the dawn and seeing the horses breath all steamy in the morning light.
One weekend several of us were bored silly and we got the idea to go into town and see if anything was going on there. It was strictly forbidden to fraternize with the guests, which was just fine with me. So several of us jumped in one of the pickups and rolled into town. Unfortunately the town had rolled up the sidewalks around 10 pm and nothing was open or happening. We were hugely disappointed.
Then we saw the equipment which was being used to repaint the water tower in town. We looked up and only about a third of the tower was painted. An evil thought crept into our minds and we decided to climb the tower and paint our school mascot name on the tower. Bandera had beat our school the year before and we felt like a little pay back was due.
And up we climbed. After about an hour of careful work we were happy with the results and down we went. In hindsight it should have been apparent to us that being up on a well lit water tank might just draw some attention. And it did.
At the bottom of the ladder we found the Sheriff. Smiling and laughing he asked us just what in the name of Teddy Roosevelt we thought we were doing. We stammered lame excuses and looked at the ground a lot.
He thought about it a while and said “I’ll make a deal with you boys.Go back up there and finish painting the entire tower, and I will drop the charges and let you go.” We didn’t have to think long, and back up the tower we went. Around mid morning we were finally done and once again came down off the tower. The sheriff met us and congratulated us on a good job that was going to save the county some money and make him look good to the voters. He even bought us breakfast before sending us back to the ranch.
The ranch foreman was not happy that we were late to work. When we told him what happened we thought he was going to hurt himself he laughed so hard. He took pity on us and let us get some sleep before the afternoon wild west show.
Oh, and I don’t know what is in the paint they use on water towers, but my hands were blue for weeks, and nothing would wash it off. After a while when people would ask me why my hands were blue I would answer that I was just cold. The confused looks were worth it, considering it was near 100 degrees most days in Bandera at the time.