Some stories are hard to beat.
 
In our family, the story of how our Dad climbed Mt. Hood in tennis shoes when he was 18 is one of those. We know it is true because we have a photo of a bony young guy in goggles at the summit. I suppose it could have been faked, staged on Rocky Butte near his Portland home. But enough details have emerged to convince his five sons that he really did it.
 
That was in 1938.
 
In 1961, I had my own parallel adventure on a much smaller scale but in some ways just as perilous and in retrospect, kind of crazy, as young men sometimes can be.
 
We were wearing suits and it was Thanksgiving. There were four of us, all from Highline High School, buddies and in our senior year. I don't remember why we were wearing suits and London Fog raincoats. It may be because  it was raining. Our shoes were polished, our hair trimmed and we looked like proper gentlemen.
 
That seemed like a good time to head out in the early evening, after a big dinner, and climb the Space Needle.
 
We parked on Thomas Street on the south side of the grounds that became the Seattle Center. The yellow lights of the city colored the mist and fog  that hung over the town. We weren't cold because our London Fog raincoats were lined with an amber-colored faux fur. And, we were 18.
 
We crouched low like escaping prisoners moving toward our pinnacle, which seemed to grow in height with each step  through a partially built man-made landscape that what was to become the World's Fair.
 
There was no pavement, no walkways and only the dim light of the guard shack, a short wooden trailer on the east side of the base of the Needle. There were no sounds, no watchdog and only the little trailer in the haze of moist light.
 
Duckworth was the first to cross under the massive legs of the Needle, then Doonas, then Gummy and Kenny Wong (that's me. Don't ask.) It would be five months before the Needle was ready for public use and it appeared like an unfinished Erector Set left by a kid on the floor.
 
The Needle was already wearing its’ hat, but there was no elevator. Instead, there was a construction ladder made from wood.
 
That is what we climbed.
 
 The rungs and rails were rough and damp to the touch as we climbed. Our hearts began beating wildly with the first step. Cool air swirled around us as we moved upwards, being careful not to look down once we passed the twenty foot mark.
 
We were climbing on adrenaline, like a pack of monkeys on the hunt, struggling our way toward some sky high prey. There was no other sensory intrusion beyond gripping the fibrous rungs and driving our bodies upwards on numb legs. We were in a tunnel where sensation was limited as we focused on getting to the top.
 
Climbing was slow. The long coats pulled against our legs and slowly eroded our energy. But we were young and strong and dauntless and not very bright. Hand over hand, we grappled upward. Once in a while, we would chance a look out over the shrinking city. But only for a moment.
 
Time and hyperbole could have changed the dimensions of the construction ladder. But I recall it as made from two-by-three lumber. The sense of that must have been to allow a man's hand to fit around the rails. Two-by-four lumber would have been a little too thick for safe holding.
 
About halfway up, Duckworth, the strongest of the group, called for us to stop and rest. Gummy was strong, too, a star gymnast in high school, with those long strong muscles gymnasts gets. Doonas was a bit chubby, but tall and fit enough. I was bony thin and not all that strong. But I looked good in Ivy League clothes.
 
"Okay," Duckworth called, and we climbed again. The air seemed to thin as we got higher and our fingers began to record the effort of grasping and clinching and releasing and repeating. Our top coats kept us warm and the effort made us all sweat.
 
We stopped again, but did not know the height. The buildings below looked like those in a model train setting and except for the movement of automobile traffic around the edges of the site, seemed wonderfully scaled down.
 
Progress was punctuated by the occasional loose rung. Duckworth would call out when he grabbed lumber that felt like it wanted to come away in his hand with a good tug. This information had an odd effect on us. It made us want to find a restroom. But at hundreds of feet in the air, we were on our own.
 
It took more than a half hour. But we finally reached the top of the ladder. Beyond that were the skeletal underpinnings of the top of the Needle, which eventually became the revolving restaurant.
 
Here is that memory thing again. We counted 564 rungs, spaced roughly a foot apart. Duckworth was the sole high climber because he was leading. So I can't claim the big number. But if I subtract our heights from the top rung, I climbed about 540 rungs.
 
If you have some esoteric knowledge about he length of that construction ladder, don't tell me. It's my story and the one I tell my kids and grandkids.
 
The descent took just as long as the ascent because it was dark, our long coats caught on the rungs on the way down and we were wearing dress shoes with slippery leather soles, not dampened by the night air.
 
But wait. There is more. Once we got on the ground, and like true Ninjas, exchanged knowing smiles but no words, we moved west across the grounds. We had not been detected but man or dog. It was a successful mission.
 
We got a six-foot wooden fence and all scaled it at the same time, dropping onto a dirt bank below.
The dirt bank was the soft edge of the site excavation. Our feet sank into calf-deep mud, nearly taking our shoes. We pulled ourselves out of the mucky mess and got on the sidewalk, just as a Seattle Police patrol car came by.
 
The cops stopped. The driver rolled down his window. We were caught.
 
Gummy decided to fess up.
 
"We were just walking around the site here, trying to get an idea of what it is going to look like. We wanted to get a closer look so we walked up to the fence behind us and didn't realize the ground was so soft."
 
"Okay. Well. Be careful. Get yourself cleaned up. Happy Thanksgiving," the officer said and drove on.
 
I say, "Happy 50th Birthday, Space Needle." We knew you when you were young.

Ken Robinson is the Managing Editor of Robinson Newspapers. You can contact him at kenr@robinsonnews.com