A Couple of Kids Enjoying Summer

Well today is a milestone birthday for my best friend, Bill Brooks. We met in grade school during the summer between 5th and 6th grades. He went to Hawthorne School and I to Washington, but we only lived a few blocks apart as the crow flies. Sometimes you just click with another person and click we did. We would leave our houses on summer mornings to fish, do paper routes, play baseball, and any number of other things, and return home in time for dinner. Just a couple of kids enjoying summer.

As we got older some of those things occasionally got, shall we say, more mischievous. We were never malicious, but more than once there were "Oh *#>@!" moments when one of our "experiments" went awry. Blowing his family's trash burn basket to kingdom come as his mother walked through the front door with an arm full of groceries and a clear view through their picture window of the rather massive explosion comes to mind. Timing was not one of our talents.

High school saw some changes, most noticeably girls. He helped me through getting seriously trashed by a young lady. We played sports - him football and wrestling and me football and baseball. Our adventures continued in high school, now with cars and disconnected odometers (his) so that his parents wouldn't know how far we had driven, girls, a trip now and then to the ER, and assorted other activities which I will not mention to protect the guilty. His family moved during our junior year to a more upscale suburb some distance away, but we still hung out when schedules permitted.

Upon graduation, we went our separate ways - he to the U.S. Army and me to getting married and Hawaii. But within 2 years, we were on our way to visit he and his wife at the Defense Language School in Monterrey, CA and they to Salem for a July 4th celebration replete with bad Chinese food. Since then, we have not only stayed in touch by phone, but regularly traveled back and forth to refresh our friendship - Alaska, Oregon, Idaho. The toughest visits were going to Seattle and visiting him in the chemo unit at the UW Hospital tied to to 5 bags of multi-colored poison at a time. Tough times, but he's a tough guy and he has thankfully long since passed the 5-year cancer survivor mark.

Friendship is a good thing. So we'll continue on fishing, hunting, swapping stories about kids, complaining about politicians, recalling stories about our adventures back in the day, and generally doing the things that friends do. Just a couple of kids enjoying summer. Happy milestone, friend.