OLD FRIENDS

They say you can't go back. Well, in a lot of ways I guess that's true. But if you keep your mind sharp, and you are a nostalgic as I am, in other ways it's not true. The other day I proved once again, that yes, sometimes you can go back.

I met my friend Kim Stillwell on Facebook. Some say that site is a waste of time. I beg to differ. For one thing, my life would be a sadder place without Kim. But that's not really what this blog is about, so I'll save Kim for another time. This blog is about going back in time.

That brings me to Scot. Scot Peeler. Until last Saturday, since May 1983 I had not laid eyes on my old classmate Scot. Yep. That's a lot of water under the bridge. The last time I saw my friend, in fact, he was trying to hold things together out in his garage when the cops finally showed up to bust up his senior graduation kegger. My one and only kegging experience, and I got the full meal deal--well, minus the drinks! Got to see a bunch of my school buddies acting drunk and stupid, giving me all sorts of good laughs in my completely sober state, and then on top of it all I got the fun of watching everyone scatter like rabbits when someone shouted, "The cops!!!!" Great fun. I know, you might argue that it would have been more fun if I was drinking too, but that's the subject for yet another blog!

So anyway, Scot has been living in Germany with his wife and daughters, but apparently he comes back to the States now and again, and I didn't know this until his cousin Kim Stillwell let me in on the secret. So we arrange a get-together, another "full meal deal," where I got to not only meet Kim in person (and she's beautiful, I might add!), but I get to see Scot again and have a long overdue reunion. So we meet in this place in Idaho Falls, Idaho called the Sandwich Tree, Scot's favorite place to eat in that town.

It was amazing the years that vanished when I laid eyes on Scot. If you've ever had a good friend and not seen them for, in this case, more than half your life, you probably know a little of the feelings that went through me when I saw Scott sitting there, some twenty-eight years after the last time. He was the same old Scot, believe it or not. Not all of my classmates have survived so well preserved, but there he was, and he was still Scot. And as a bonus, Neccia (Jensen) Hahn was sitting there with him, a total surprise. Neccia was my fifth grade crush, although she probably doesn't know it even to this day, because I was too shy to tell her, then or now.

It wasn't enough to sit and gab with old Scot and with Neccia at the sandwich shop. My wife Debbie and I even followed Scot back to the old home place and visited for a few more hours, and man, the memories we dug up. For many years I had this memory in my head of Scot, but somehow, I guess as too many new entries were being made into the data banks of my mind, this particular file got put into deep storage. But somehow Scot remembered it and reminded me. Way back in the first grade, when I was scared to death of other kids and horrified to be in mean old Mrs. Blake's first grade, surrounded for the first time by more kids than I had ever laid eyes on, Scot was the first person to befriend me. We kicked one of those soft red balls back and forth on the asphault beside Shelley, Idaho's Dean Goodsell Elementary, and that was when I decided maybe school wouldn't be so bad after all. I have Scot to credit for that, and I'm thankful he saved that memory all those years and carted it out for me. It was a bit of nostalgia I won't let go back into deep storage again.

Sometimes you can go back, I've found, and the memories can sure be sweet. Old Scot. I remember going home for lunch in the third grade, Miss Hone's class, with money from him in my pocket, and on the way back to school stopping off at King's department store to buy him a box of Lemon Heads, or Red Hots, or whatever his pleasure was that day (and skimming three or four off the top as my "fee," although I never admitted that to him until I placed an oversized box of Lemon Heads in his hand the other day at the Sandwich Tree). I recall Scot with his long-ish hair flapping in the wind. He used to have this jouncy walk that helped it do that. Now he doesn't have so much of that long hair left, but he's still Scot, and I find after all these years I'm still just as fond of him. He's one of those guys who's pretty hard not to like. Some things you just can't shake--a bad cold, or a good friend. One you don't ever want to see again, and the other, like Scot, you don't ever want to lose.

AUTUMN IN THE AIR

Something whispers to you in the wind, and you can't tell quite what it is. Some days are still hot--some even VERY hot. Yet there is a certain something you can't put a finger on. Is it that the sun is a little farther to the south? Is it that the nights are cooler even when the days still grow hot? Is it the sun coming up later in the day? Going down earlier? I don't know, but somehow as I grow older, even without looking at a calendar, I can always tell when fall is around the corner.

I don't know if "fall" is really the fitting term for this season, unless it means another year is about to fall. It just seems so unpoetic, for a season that is so beautiful, spectacular, and yes, in a way, melancholy. Autumn looks and sounds like such a beautiful word that as I get older I find myself using it more and more. So autumn it is. My favorite season of the year.

There is an odor that comes with this glimpse of fall, an odor you can't associate with any other time of the year. Perhaps it is the scent of decay, but a soft kind of warm, glowing decay, telling stories of the gradual death of the summer grass, the leaves of the hardwoods. Subtle changes come into the sky, into the clouds. The light seems to hit them a different way. The birds seem enlivened, perhaps by those coooler nights. I've noticed my beautiful meadowlarks singing more, serenading me from the sage behind the house. This was particularly true when a grumbling and rare early morning thunderstorm woke me up early yesterday morning and made me run out to cover the last of the hay, which I had neglected to put the boards back over. While I was at the barn, the rain came down, and I went inside and listened to it patter pleasantly on the roof. Then, for a few minutes, the sun came back out, and I made my dash for the house.

After I came back in and the rain charged over the mountain in one very heavy, dark sheet that I could see cascading toward us like a ghost in a B movie, it began to soak the land, if only briefly. It was after the rain that the meadowlarks came out in droves, and I lay in bed and thought of my friend Stephanie, who so loved the meadowlarks. It was such a moment as this when I would have loved to call her and share, would have loved to hear the excitement in her voice. Like me, it was the simple things about life that brought joy to Stephanie and made her eyes sparkle and put a huge smile on her face, dimpling those cheeks. But since I can't call Stephanie anymore, I sat and remembered her and dreamed her near. My beautiful little wife, Debbie, and I lay warm under the covers breathing in the fresh, clean air and listening to those meadowlarks, and the day was as perfect as it could be. And somehow I knew Stephanie was out there in the sagebrush, or walking through the forest to the west, and she, too, was listening to those meadowlarks.

The lightning flashed, and the thunder cracked sharply, and then, like a stubborn child, it lingered and grumbled and rattled its way on into the distant mountains. Fall is on its way. Autumn, beginning with September, "The Hunting Moon." Or, in Cheyenne, the Moon of Drying Grass; Kiowa, Moon When the Leaves Fall Off; for Sioux, Moon When the Plums are Scarlet. So maybe the Indians had a much more poetic way to describe their "moons," or months. Our name, "September," means simply the ninth month. But I guess it's poetic enough, in its own way.

The important thing is fall is almost here, and although it signals a coming time of cold and dreary days, it is a glorious season that no one should miss being in the middle of, even if it means getting away from the TV and going for a walk in the mountains. Maybe we'll run into each other out there.

Vaya con Dios.

Safe drivers

I've given a lot of thought lately to how the roads would be if all of the people who drove "wrong" were taken out of circulation. You know, those who drive too slow, those who drive too fast, those who rubberneck everything they pass, those who drive while drinking, eating, talking on the cell phone, or reading books.

And in case you're wondering about that last one, I'm not joking. I've seen people reading novels that are sitting on their steering wheel as they drive 75 mph down the freeway. If anyone ever deserved a ticket for inattentive driving . . .

One day I was sitting behind some lady with three or four kids in her car, and there was a green light in front of us. I waited a couple of seconds, thinking maybe she was having trouble shifting. Then I realized she was eating! Not just a sandwich or an ice cream cone, mind you, but a meal! In her rearview mirror I saw her swear, out of anger, not embarrassment, and suddenly she tossed a styrofoam box full of Mexican food right out of the car into the middle of one of the main thoroughfares of town. I went by her and let her know I had seen, which she couldn't have questioned anyway, as I was fifteen feet behind her, and her response was to extend her middle finger in my general direction, and I don't think she was waving. Looking back, that was one person I should have turned in for littering, and with whom I would have gladly gone to court as key witness. But at the time I was too shocked to call the police.

Another time, I was in the turn lane, and another car was directly in front of me at a red light. The driver was conversing with the driver of the car next to him, in the straight lane, and the light turned green. I gave them a couple of seconds, then tapped the horn, thinking they were simply too busy and hadn't seen the green. The response? Again, this guy gave me the one-finger salute. Had I been a serious road rager that day, I'm pretty sure that one would have ended badly.

Being a former Wells Fargo driver, who put 170 city miles on a 10,000 pound truck six days a week in Phoenix, Arizona, a cop in a city of 52,000, and now a firefighter in the same city, I have numerous opportunities to watch stupidity and rudeness at work on the road, and I feel safe in saying that if every rude and unsafe and simply, uh... "non-intelligent" driver were taken off the road, it would be like we were all living in ghost towns. I swear, the municipal bus system in every city would have a boom like we can't envision, and trains would come back in bigtime circulation. I'm pretty positive that there wouldn't be 1 out of 5 cars still on the road.

Heck, maybe some days mine would be one of them!!!

Losing a Best Friend

Have you ever lost a best friend? Have you ever felt the heart-wrenching feeling of knowing you can't pick up that phone and call them and hear that voice on the other end, the voice of the one person you know will understand you, and who will stand by you no matter what stupid mistake you've made? You can't open the computer and compose an email for them to tell them how your day has been. You can't even sit and watch the moonrise, or the sunset, and know you will be able to tell them about it later. All of the little things in life that you passingly thought were "nice" become priceless. Every meadowlark singing in the sagebrush, every butterfly, even the smallest pink stone, lost among a million others along the bank of a river. A blue forget-me-not, blooming in the spring, becomes some kind of a beacon, sent to you, you fancy, by that friend you can no longer see.

Have you ever woken to the emptiness of longing for one last hug, one last word of praise, one last touch? Have you ever walked through a forest or along a gurgling stream and thought of God and eternity and wondered why, if you can't be with your best friend, you ever came to earth in the first place? Have you ever dreamed of the past and wondered if you could have changed it, had you only known what was out there? What was waiting around the very next bend?

Have you ever stared into the vastness of the sky and watched the clouds, those silent castles and dragons, wizards and ... angels ... and wondered if your best friend is somewhere looking at them too? Have you ever felt a passing breeze, cool on an otherwise hot day, or warm on a day when winter is not far gone or fall is waning, and wonder if that breeze is the touch of your friend, a wish for you. Does your friend long for you as you do them? Do they keep secrets that no one else will ever know because you were the only person they could tell them to, the only person who would listen or even try to understand?

Simon and Garfunkel sang "I am a rock. I am an island." But in the grand scheme of things there should never be a rock of that kind, nor that type of island. Every person should, at least once in their lifetime, meet that best friend who changes the way they think about the universe, about life, about love. If you are not looking and you let that one best friend who could have been but never was pass you by then the blessings you could have had will be sadly locked away in a treasure chest you will never see. Will you experience the pain of losing that best friend? Perhaps. Only time knows that. But it is a promise that you will cherish their memory, and it is reflections of them that will carry you through some of your darkest days. Reach out. Touch. Give. When you find that best friend you will know it. Then hold onto them as tightly as you can as long as time will let you. You just never know when fate will choose to carry them away.