The Vulgarians are legendary for more than just their climbing prowess. Most evenings at the 'Wickie Wackie' Campsite ended in the wee morning hours. The Vulgarians also had a fascination with cars and driving them fast. Here is another account from my personal neuron array.

Another element that got introduced here was night time "tower climbing". The most exciting tower climbing was at Minnewaska as this would involve running the gate (which was generally unmanned at night) with a car containing the climbing party. The party would be dropped off in the general vicinity of Minnewaska water tower and then the driver would speed back down the mountain before the guards could get themselves organized. Meanwhile the climbing party, often with a sixpack or two as supplies, would whisk themselves up the metal ladder of the tower.

Typically this could all be done with little fear of detection as Minnewaska and Mohonk had fallen on hard times and there were very few guests, particularly at Minnewaska. The first couple of times this was done, simply getting up and out undetected was satisfying enough. However after a while it began to seem that being completely undetected was taking much of the sport out the venture. Consequently after everyone was on the catwalk at the top of the tower it would become irresistible not to make some sort of noise that would bring out the gendarmes. This produced even better entertainment as from the ground it was quite difficult to tell where these strange seemingly inhuman sounds were coming from. The result was that the watchers on the tower got to see the confused wandering lights of the guards futilely looking for someone or something on the ground. It seemed to beggar the imagination that these night noises might be coming from the top of the tower, but they were.

Tower climbing was becoming a regular source of nightime fun until one fine night one of guards did figure out from whence the noise came and lo and behold found a bunch of strange people hanging out on the top of the water tower. This might have had something to do with the presence of Gary Hemming among the tower party. Hemming liked to keep his life as exciting as possible and as I recall was in particularly fine fettle that night. When the tower climbers heard that the State Police had been called, it was decided that now was a good time to be leaving. Despite the kind invitation extended by the Minnewaska guards to hang with them until the police arrived, the climbing party of some 7 or 8 semi-drunken individuals figured that the cops weren't going to see all the humor in the situation that they did and so they bid a fond adieu to the tower guardians. Actually it wasn't too fond as the Carbinieri made some minor physical attempts to detain the miscreants.

A rapid descent of the mountain now seemed to be in order. There was also the matter of the pickup car as no one wanted to walk the 4 or 5 miles back to Wickie-Wackie. The pick-up car would be cruising around looking for us within the next 20 to 30 minutes. To further add to the fun, the tower guardians had gotten into their guard-mobile and taken off after the tower climbing party. This seemed to make the hotel access road a poor descent choice. So it was into the woods for some night time bush whacking. Eventually the party reached the highway, now all that they had to do was somehow remain undetected by their pursuers, who by this time included the state police, and hail the pick-up car whose driver of course had no knowledge of how entertaining the evening had become.

As walking along the highway was no longer an option due to the presence of both the Statz Polizei and the Minnewaska gendarmes, it was decided to take to the woods. This seemed to be working out alright as the ascent party managed to elude the searchers initial passes along the road. Then salvation suddenly appeared imminent with the arrival of the pick up vehicle. Unfortunately, Roman, the getaway driver, who was driving the pickup vehicle was unlicensed & had little experience driving a standard shift. There was a quick dash from the bush to the road to hail the car and then a quick dash back into the woods when the law suddenly appeared, still cruising to locate the miscreants. Roman heard a yell from the woods to keep on going so he stepped on the gas without downshifting and stalled the car. The stopped pick up car was a dead giveaway of course. And while the ascent party had made it back to the woody shelter, they hadn't made it very far back. So that when the searchers started sweeping the woods with search lights, the jig was up despite some attempts by one or two of party members to try and convince the investigators that we were just fagged out party goers resting innocently in the woods on the way home. Art Gran, however, managed to dislocate himself from the main group and was still being pursued by the Statz Polizei. Eventually one of the officers yelled at Art “Stop, stop or I’ll shoot.” Well naturally Art stopped but later caught a lot of static from his fellow Vulgarians who all thought that he should have kept on running. The affair actually ended fairly amicably. Roman, the driver of the get away car got a ticket for driving without a license and everyone else got some sort of warning. Then on the other hand what was a State Cop going to do with eight or nine guys that he found in the woods at one o-clock in the morning? Tower? What tower?