A fellow that I ran around with in high school passed away not long ago - Tim Hambee(sp). We lost track of each other over time, but he was an interesting character that I remember well. We had common friends and ran in the same circles at times. He cheated death at least once not long after graduation. He was working on a cooling tower for a power plant in Florida. One of those tall circular concrete towers that you see from time to time. He was working on the scaffolding an lost his balance. He fell over the side, but as he was falling he managed to grab a cable. He was hanging on for dear life as his co-workers wrangled with him and go him back onto the scaffold. He took the rest of the day off, but was back at work the next day. If it were me, I probably would never have started a job working at such heights, but after a near fall like that then I would have called it quits.
He also married not too long out of high school, but that marriage lasted like 2-3 months and he got divorced. We told him that he didn't even have a chance to get the bed warm. He said that he liked doing what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do and his wife did not fit in with that life style so he parted ways.
He had a similiar mentality when his power got turned off. There was some dispute with billing with the electric company so they disconnected his power to his house. That night he got his revenge. He had a lever action .44 caliber rifle. He went down to a power substation and emptied his magazine into the transformers. I was not there, but I guess that sparks were flying.
But the story that I tell most frequently is about a weekend before graduation. Tim was a year behind us, but was riding around with me and my friend, Mike Truax. Mike was riding shotgun and Tim was in the back seat. We had a can of spray paint and had written "77" on several road signs and on a highway under pass. We were going through town so that I could drop off the guys. As we were getting close to the stoplight in the middle of Lewisburg, Tim says, "Slow down, slow down." So I braked the car and we were creeping along. As I was getting ready to say what do you want? Tim leans out the car window with the spray can and proceeds to spray paint a line down the side of the Lewisburg police squad car. We were like WTF! Dude! Needless to say we high tailed it out of town.
Fortunately, no one saw us - or if they did, they did not report us. But Tim was one of the wild and crazy guys, I would have liked to have seen him one more time just to see if he settled down. I was sure that the younger Tim Hambee would have ended up dead or in jail.
