Twenty-one years ago tomorrow, an unidentified man approached
security guards at the Salt Lake City-County Building. He said he was an
architecture student, there to take photos from the highest tower. Instead of
photography equipment, his duffle bag was full of climbing gear and one large
pumpkin. Unseen by the guards, he left his gourd skewered atop Columbia, the
topmost statue on the building. The pumpkin stayed there through the fall and
most of the winter, until it gradually thawed, rotted and fell. Whoever the prankster
was, he may have been inspired by a similar feat at Cornell University in 1997.
Cornell made plans to remove the spoiled pumpkin March 13, 1998. But as
preparations were underway, a gust of wind knocked the unmanned cherry picker
bucket into the tower. The rotten pumpkin dropped twenty feet and splattered on a
scaffold. Neither of the culprits were caught. They may even have been the same
guy.
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