In August, 1966, less than a week after Charles Whitman’s Tower massacre, while going back to my apartment after a summer class I turned the corner in front of the old Varsity Theater (now a CVS & Wells Fargo) on the Drag to walk westward on 24th.
About halfway down the block there was an extremely loud & sharp “bang” like a gunshot, and I dropped to the sidewalk as did two other guys not far in front of me.
It was a scary moment before we got up to realize what happened - the Castilian dorm building was under construction and the massive work crane alongside it apparently had lost a load when the cable snapped and dropped it several stories.
There was a good size cloud of dust billowing above the plywood barrier fence by the construction site and some workers were shouting. Luckily nobody was hurt in the accident.
I and the other jittery pedestrians dusted ourselves off to resume our journey back to West Campus.