We had planned to hike to the Dish, but it was too cold. So John and I walked around Lake Lagunita and through the Quad, reminiscing as we passed over class year plaques. Weeks earlier, at the 1998 Reunion, we'd heard that the Band Shak would soon be torn down, so we headed over to pay our last respects.
Too late. A chain-link fence with a padlocked gate surrounded the razed site. We couldn't read the numbers on the combination lock in the dark, but when I rotated the dial, it opened.
Emboldened by fate, we entered. All that remained of the Shak were sections of its foundation, a huge pit and an entrance to the infamous steam tunnels. Next to a eucalyptus stump, we could make out the concrete pad of the old water tower. The sight brought memories of an old caper, an escapade of typical Band élan and ingenuity.
The year was 1981. One of the engineering students in the Band was taking a course called Small-Scale Energy Systems. For his class project, he designed a solar water heater for a huge hot tub. Although the professor considered the design purely theoretical, half a dozen Bandsmen set out to build this hot tub inside the unused, 25-foot-high water tower behind the Shak. The solar panels would be installed on the Shak's roof.
But there was a problem. The floor of the water tank, although some 13 feet above the ground, was still about 12 feet below the top rim, while it should be only 5. So the floor had to be raised about 7 feet and the space beneath it filled for support. A source of sand was found, but not enough to finish the job. There had to be something that would take up a lot of space and bear the weight of sand above it.
Somebody thought of a Dumpster, and the Business School conveniently seemed to have an extra. The conspirators wheeled it to the Shak easily, but getting the 600-pound behemoth up and over the side of the tower posed a challenge. Fortunately, musicianship and engineering skill are not mutually exclusive, and the group soon found a solution involving two pulleys, a 30-foot aluminum streetlamp pole, a steel cable and an old Mustang convertible.
I don't recall when John arrived, but I showed up just as the tires started spinning. Sandbags in the trunk and backseat gave the car just enough traction to hoist the Dumpster up. Three strong Bandsmen, perched on the rim of the water tank, rotated the elevated Dumpster around the pole and positioned it over the tower. The convertible slowly backed up, and -- other than a momentary panic when the Dumpster wedged itself diagonally part way down -- the operation went off smoothly. Someone had the bright idea to pierce holes in the now-inverted receptacle so that when the tower was filled with water it would not float up and destroy the wooden decking that was planned.
Though the Dumpster was in place and buried in sand, one further calculation brought the project to a halt. Considering the natural convection heat transfer from the sides and bottom of the water tank, we had to build huge solar panels and a substantial pumping system to achieve a comfortable 105-degree water temperature. But we were well into the project before anyone estimated the cost of materials: $5,000. Clearly, this was beyond the Band's means. So we quietly abandoned the enterprise -- very quietly, as the Business School issued an APB on its missing trash bin.
This chilly December night 18 years later, John and I spotted a pile of metal from the demolition and went for a closer look. Next to the stack of steel sheets, I-beams and thick cables -- the unmistakable remains of the water tower -- was a barely discernible rectangular shape. At its corners were wheels, partly crushed. It was the Dumpster -- upside down, but still in remarkably good shape after almost two decades buried in sand. I could make out small punctures on its surface, as well as huge gouges evidently made by one of the giant backhoes parked nearby. After a short but reverent benediction, we climbed into the cab of the biggest backhoe. If only there had been keys in the ignition, we would have returned the borrowed bin to the Business School with an anonymous and long-awaited explanation attached: "You must have searched high and low, but high enough you did not go."
James Bertsch, '83, of Palo Alto, is a manager at Hewlett-Packard.
