High School Story/Reflections/Memories:
Steve Halgren taught me to make every minute fun. He was the coolest guy in the school, and my debate partner for summer and fall senior season. In the summer of 72, we drove in his red Alfa Romeo with black leather seats and with the top down, our long hair blowing, to a debate camp at Brigham Young University. We are staying in these seven story dorms in the only patch of the US where crew cuts were still in style. As we entered Provo, Steve turned to me and said, “Our goal here is to raise hell and not get in trouble.” And that’s what we, and his recruited co-conspirators did for the next two weeks. In the two weeks I had a master class in pranks and learned nothing about debate. Our pranks crescendo came on our last day.
There was always a large gathering of students around the outdoor basketball court.
Boy’s with their shirts off. Girls pretending to watch the game.
Then Ashby and Tonga (coconspirators), seven stories up, near the edge of the roof, started a fight. With all the realism of professional wrestlers, they went at it.
I was supposed to yell, but some naïve young freshmen volunteered with a scream that echoed off the buildings. “Look, they’re fighting!”
Then Tonga threw Ashby down on the roof, out of sight from below, and pick up a dummy dressed just like him, and heaved the dummy off the roof.
Some could see it was a prank because the dummy, stuffed with newspapers, floated in slow motion, drifted on the wind to the settle center of the basketball court. Others were convinced it was real because the dummy took a morbid bounce as it came to rest at the center of the basketball game. The BYU coed next to me stopped screaming and said, “Do you think he is dead?”
Then Steve and I ran up, grab the body, drag it to the Alfa. Threw it in the back, and took off home.
Steve and I never had success as debaters, but he taught me to make every movement fun.
