The Secret of the Western Hillls Elementary School Roof Revealed!

The Western Hills roof as seen from space!

By STEW MAGNUSON

Omaha Public School’s Western Hills Elementary after 63 years has met the wrecking ball.

Now that a new building is taking its place, it’s time for the secret of “The Roof” to be revealed.

This is the story about three young teenage boys with too much time on their hands, who pulled off a visually spectacular prank one night involving 16 garbage cans and the north side of the school’s façade.

It is a prank almost no one witnessed and is probably remembered by only these three individuals, now all middle-aged men.

Although the statute of limitations for teenage pranks and petty vandalism has long since passed, the other two culprits in this affair are still residents of the greater Omaha area and do not wish to be named. I, however, live in Virginia and my crack team of lawyers will fight any attempt at extradition. My two partners in crime will be known as “Chester” and “Ratso.”

Ratso and I attended Western Hills from kindergarten through 6^th grade. Chester started there in 5^th grade.

To begin this story, the secret of the roof must be explained.

Many who attended the elementary school may have known that it was ridiculously easy to climb up onto the roof from two sets of ledges located at the front door. This spot was also secluded — not visible from the relatively busy Western Avenue. The only risk that someone would spot you was the occasional dog walker.

The architect created an easy two-step “ladder” to the roof, which could be accessed by first stepping on the ledge of a window pane, pivoting, then grasping on to the edge of the door’s overhang. From there, you could either get a boost from a friend or take a running jump and grab the edge and pull yourself up to the roof.

For many years, there was a tall pine tree growing to the right of the door that made it especially easy to make it on the ledge. It was eventually cut down, but the structure remained.

The roof could be easily accessed from the ledge by the front door.

I didn’t discover this myself, but I had seen older kids make it up there when I was too little or too afraid to do it myself.

One day, the summer after we had graduated from Western Hills, Chester and I were hanging out at the school grounds, when we spotted some kids on the roof. They were climbing up there in broad daylight to retrieve a Frisbee. Chester had no idea that you could climb up there. I told them how they did it and we went to the front door and for the first time, climbed on top. As I said, it was the middle of the day, so we only stayed a few minutes before scrambling down.

But this began a relationship with “The Roof” that would last more than a decade, and into “adulthood.”

The roof on summer or weekend nights soon became the center of our lives outside of our homes. The names of those who joined us in our escapades up there changed — we brought many of our friends up there — but Chester, Ratso and I were the core.

The early years were marked by petty vandalism and mischief, I must admit. When we were about 12 to 14 years old, we would break the floodlights with the gravel that covered the roof, knock over vents and throw fist fulls of pebbles at cars driving by. The most fun was when one of these drivers got mad enough to jump out of the car and run up to a row of bushes, assuming that we were hiding there. They never guessed that we were above them containing our laughter.

I wasn’t there, but a cop did spot Chester and Ratso on the roof one night. However, there was an escape route at the back doors. You could hang off the ledge, drop down about six feet, scurry up the hill and disappear into the neighborhood.

The “mischief” years soon gave away as we grew up and the roof became more of a place of quiet contemplation and solitude. We would talk for hours, telling jokes and stories and occasionally confessing to each other our secrets. The skylights along the hallways below us gave off an eerie glow. A barn swift, we simply called “the bird,” would dive at us from time to time. The highest point and the best view of life below was above the gym/lunch room. It was a hundred foot high imposing brick wall that would have withstood a siege in the medieval days.

The stars shined through as best they could with the city lights, and we could watch thunderstorms flashing like paparazzi cameras as they rolled in from the west.

The big prank was just before Chester was about to move to Ralston when we were about 14 years old. I’m not sure how I got the idea, but one night I decided that we would take the school’s garbage cans and put them on the roof. I was so enamored with the prank, that I stayed awake half the night cooking up the caper.

It was a Saturday night when we executed the plan. Ratso and I told our parents that we were doing a sleepover at Chester’s house because it was last weekend there, but it was really because he was the closest to the school and it was easy to sneak out of his back door and walk a short block to the school.

We began the operation after midnight.

Western Hills still placed its refuse in aluminum garbage cans. There were 16 of them, all mostly empty. The wall next to the janitor’s entrance where the garbage cans were kept was almost as easy to climb as the front, with three tiers to the top. However, it was not nearly as secluded. Passersby could see the whole area. Step one was knocking out the flood lights to lessen our exposure.

With Ratso, being the tallest, standing on some plastic milk crates, Chester and I took the garbage cans as he handed them up. We had to listen for cars, and wait them out but part one went off almost without a hitch. “Almost” because at one point, a garbage can we thought was empty in fact had a significant amount of filthy, putrefied garbage water at the bottom, which spilled all over Chester’s pants. Despite the gag-inducing funk, Chester soldiered on. That step took the cans up to the roof over the janitor’s room, but not onto the roof over the school.

We then retreated back to Chester’s house — where he changed clothes — and waited an hour to make sure no one had spotted us.

When we returned, we had a second ledge to haul the cans up to. This was still not out of the line of sight of the street, so we had to be careful.

About in the middle of this part of the operation, Ratso was handing me a can, and I lost my balance. I had an instant decision to make: try to let the can down easily but probably fall directly onto the cans below, or jump clear of the cans and let the can go. I chose the latter and escaped serious injury by landing on my feet but had to fling the can away from me.

It crashed on the roof making the kind of racket only remembered by those who recall what those noisy old cans sounded like when the garbage man arrived at 5 a.m. In the still of the night, you could hear a beer can tossed out of car roll down a hill three blocks away. The impact should have woken up the whole neighborhood. We dashed south out the escape route, with Ratso and I arguing the whole way about who was at fault. (It was him, of course.)

An hour later, we returned, but nothing had changed.

So we proceeded with step three, the most physically taxing part, moving them up to the roof above the gym. This part was completely shielded from the street. There was a metal ladder built in to the side of the wall to make climbing up there easy for maintenance workers. We handed them up, walked them across the roof and placed them a few feet out of sight.

We returned a third time just before dawn to place them on the ledge. To put a cherry on top of the prank, each can had its lid.

Our mission complete, we returned to Chester’s house to get some sleep.

After about three hours, around 8 a.m., we woke up and walked up the hill to see the fruits of our labor.

It was quite a picture: 16 garbage cans, perched on the ledge of the wall towering over Western Avenue, the soft light of the morning sun reflecting off the silvery aluminum. It was both a stunning and absurd sight. A few motorists slowed down to take a look.

The genius part of the prank, I believed, was that since we had done this after midnight, the cans would remain there all day Sunday. Who would be around to take them down? We went back to Chester’s house and fell into the kind of deep sleep only teenagers can enjoy on weekend mornings, pulling ourselves out of our stupors sometime after the noon hour. Once again we went up to revel in our work.

But they were gone.

The 16 cans were placed above the school name.

GONE!

We couldn’t believe it. Put back in their proper place. Already?

All our planning and hard work seemed to amount to nothing.

Some 39 years later, it is a prank remembered by only three middle aged men, perhaps a few early birds who passed by, and the poor fellow or fellows who were tasked with removing the garbage cans on a Sunday morning.

We continued going up on the roof into our college days and a few years beyond. Ratso got a serious job, which he would have lost if he had ever been caught up there, so he was the first to stop going. I left Nebraska after I graduated from college, but Chester and I would climb up on occasions. Eventually he lost the will as well. I for one, would have required a step ladder to get up, having put on a few pounds.

I will remember fondly the seven years I spent as a child at Western Hills Elementary. But knowing that The Roof is gone, saddens me the most. 

Stew Magnuson will give a presentation about Highway 83 at the Great Plains Black History Museum, Crossroads Mall, Omaha, Nebraska. Thursday, September, 29 at 6:30 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Stew Magnuson is the author of The Last American Highway: A Journey Through Time Down U.S. Route 83: The Dakotas, and  The Last American Highway: Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma edition. His book The Death of Raymond Yellow Thunder: And Other True Stories from the Nebraska-Pine Ridge Border Towns was the 2009 Nebraska nonfiction book of the year and was recently named as one of the state's 150 most important literary works. Both are available online or at The Bookworm at 90th and Center Streets in Omaha.