Maybe someday geneticists will know if fears are inherited. If they are, I got my fear of heights from my father. He got queasy climbing a stepladder. For some of you, climbing a grain leg is second nature; for me, it’s like an out-of-body experience.

Some recent conversations with people caused me to reflect on my own fear of heights. Joy McClain, author of Joy’s Reflections, penned a column coming soon about her experiences ziplining in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Is she afraid of heights? You bet! Did her husband and the ticket seller convince her ziplining would help her overcome her fear of heights? It sounds that way. Did she complete the course? Yes, there wasn’t much choice. Did it help her overcome her fear of heights? Not in the least.

I could have written her story. Except I don’t intend to get close enough to a zip line to find out.

Here’s another example: This spring a friend started working for a local farmer. During his second week on the job, an employee who doesn’t mind heights was at the top of a grain leg. He needed another tool and someone to assist him. The two employees with more seniority looked at my friend. He knew he was it.

He made it up the leg, but reports things got kind of shaky toward the top — that is, he got shaky.

My stories

Here are my stories. I was 21 and tired of my fear of heights. My dad milked cows and still made silage. The silo was only 36 feet tall — a baby by silo standards. Every fall someone had to climb to the top of the silo to fasten the pulley over the edge so they could pull up the blower pipe. Dad never did it, but I decided I could make it. After all, it was only 36 feet. I climbed up the outside on steel rings. There was concrete as far as the eye could see around the silo, so a false step and it would be a hard landing.

The closer I got to the top, the more I wondered why I was up there. I made it, but the pulley needed to be 6 feet from where I climbed up. I looked down. That was a mistake. I was so petrified, I couldn’t move — not an inch. Instead, I carefully climbed back down. Someone else had to climb up and place the pulley. That was my first and last attempt to conquer my fear of heights.

The second story happened to a friend. He was part of a camera crew capturing the Farm Progress Show decades ago. The crew leader decided they would be at the site at 6 a.m., climb the grain bin leg, and get awesome shots of cars pouring in the lot.

There was a heavy dew that morning. My friend took one look at the slippery metal first rung on the ladder, muttered something about “my momma didn’t raise no fools” and left. His assignment at Farm Progress Shows for the next 20 years was working traffic. I know … I was his parking lot partner; at least you can do that job from the ground!  

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