This is the first article I ever had published, over ten years ago: Just friends. We say it all the time. We don’t really think about it, we just say, “Oh, we’re just friends.” In an album my mom fixed up for me, I have a photo of myself with my first best friend. We’re in diapers, playing underneath the spreading branches of a chinaberry tree, that still stands in the yard of the house he lived in. We were over-the-back-fence neighbors, in a dirt road neighborhood. It would be dramatic to say that we lived in the shadow of several factories, so I won’t say it, but we did. We climbed that chinaberry tree, as soon as we could reach the bottom limbs. We played with little green army men in the sand, and then learned to ride bikes together. And then go-carts. And then mini-bikes. We “found” some cigarettes, and tried smoking together. I got sick, and I think he did too, because the subject never came up again. The movie “Walking Tall” came out, and we made Buford Pusser sticks, to clean up the neighborhood with. When his older brother became an MP in the Marine Corps., we started doing our own basic training, with cheap concrete-and-plastic weights. We went Trick-or-Treating one last time before they moved from the old neighborhood, even though we were too old. We called each other a few times, but going to different schools, with new friends, we just kinda stopped. After they moved, we only saw each other a dozen or so times before I got married and moved to Atlanta. I learned that he became a deputy sheriff, after all. I kept up with him as best I could from a hundred and fifty miles away, but my life was zooming along. Other friends took his place, and there were houses to buy, kids to raise, a career of sorts, and not much time left over. For keeping in touch with old friends. Friends. The people who are a big, important part of life. For a while. I guess I learned early that friends aren’t usually permanent, so I learned to hold back. Not let them get too close, so that when they left, it wouldn’t hurt. (So much.) I finally made time for a visit, a few weeks ago. As I checked the dates on the headstone, I couldn’t believe it’s been ten years. I remembered the Archie Bunker impression he used to do. The trick-or-treating. Go-carts, and falling out of trees. The cold wind made my eyes water, so I wiped them, and closed the gate behind me, and drove slowly away from the little red-brick church, on the gravel road. Just friends. Yeah, right. Vernon L Garrett
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 01:26:51 +0000
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