It's precious

My memory has him at second base. I don't know if that's right or not, and if my memory fails me, I'd not be surprised. I just remember him showing up out of nowhere with the whole gang of public school kids, coming up the hill to the east diamond on the playground cross from our school, the Christian school.

There were no adults. Just kids. Sixth graders, I think. And he and the public school kids came over in a wave, kids we knew but mostly hated because they were the enemy, not Satan's minions, but ball players with some ringers who made them tough to beat. The whole bunch of us--Christians and publics--were on our own. Not a teacher to be seen, not a parent either--just kids playing ball.

I haven't a clue who won, but it seems to me that's the moment I remember seeing this tall kid with skinny legs, the kid my friends said was the new Reformed church preacher's son. Somehow it seemed unfair. First Reformed calls a new guy and some great ball player, his kid, comes along like a free-bee.

Seems to me it had to be spring. If it was fall, we wouldn't have faced off on a diamond. If I'm right, then it didn't take long at all for that kid to become a friend because the town where we grew up, Oostburg, Wisconsin, had baseball teams I'd already been a part of for at least a year. Once our two schools shut their doors for summer, enemies became teammates, buddies. 

And the two of us stayed friends for the next half-dozen years, very good buddies all through high school--football (he was the quarterback, I was a grunt), basketball (him underneath, me outside), track (he was a runner, those long legs started somewhere right beneath his ribs--I was a "weight man" in every sense), and, yes, baseball (first base, third base) because when the Christian school kids got together with the public school boys, we were good. We were very good. We won championships.

In high school, we both went over to the real enemy--Cedar Grove, another Dutch town--for girlfriends. But at OHS we took the same classes, lived in the same gym. We were good kids, the kind parents dream of. I don't remember fighting with my parents; I'm sure the preacher's kid got along with his just as well. High school halls are full of horror for millions; back then, we'd have called it a blast.

One of the most perplexing mysteries of my life with my friend Bob was why we both decided to go to college in Iowa, to Christian colleges 500 miles west but only a dozen miles apart. The only possible reason is tribalism, not Christian vs. public, but Christian vs. Christian. So deep was our devotion to our respective Dutch Reformed denominations that neither set of our God-fearing families even considered sending us--good, good friends, best friends--to the other's college, couldn't even think of it.

So off we went, and so ended, in a way, our friendship. For two years we met when the two colleges played basketball and baseball, but neither of us lasted long on the hardwood when the handwriting on the wall spelled out the end. I remember smiling, shaking hands, and then moving on.

In my life, Vietnam finally dominated. I didn't go (a weird heart, 4-F), and neither did he (287 in the draft lottery). I marched into a late Sixties rebel thing--long hair, bell bottoms, and anti-war activism--just about the time I quit basketball, discovered literature, and began dreaming about being right here with my fingers on the keys. 

Bob stayed in the gym, coached at a couple of area high schools, then returned to the college where he'd graduated as a head bb coach when he was barely any older than the kids. And he was good. He was terrific. He was a great coach, which meant he went up in the coaching ranks until, a few years later, he walked away, not because he didn't like coaching but because he recognized in himself that his whole-hearted commitment made coaching hazardous to body, mind, and soul. He found his way into sports administration and loved it.

Now, in his retirement, he joined an adult writing class, where he followed the coach's game plan and created--and it wasn't always easy--his own story, so that, he told me, his great-grandkids would know who he was and, most specifically, what it was like for him to grow up. Hence, the title Things Were Different Then.

You can buy it on Amazon, but that's not what he's after. He just wanted to put it all down, his life--or as much of it as he remembers and wants to share--for his kids and theirs. 

Strangely enough, real friendships seem not to require a lot of work. They can often go for years without having to be watered or weeded. Male friendships, some say, are especially hearty. They'll make it though anything. I think that's true of the two of us. 

But then we do have our moments, like a couple of magical mystery tours back to Oostburg for high school reunions, a nine-hour drive that, the first time, became so rich with reminiscence that it locked us in the past, so much so that we went to Cedar Grove to drive past our old girlfriends' places even before we made it to Oostburg. 

And then there was this. When my dad died, we had the visitation just before the funeral, all of it on a Saturday. And there he was, my friend Bob, on his way to Green Bay he said because one of his sons was playing for the Packers. All I knew--all I had to know--was that there he was in line to give me his sympathies, a hug. 

I'm sure I was a little weepy when my dad died, but fifteen years later I don't remember crying at any particular time during that long weekend, but that one, when my old friend Bob walked up, tall and thin, in the reception line. That did me in.

It's precious--his book, I mean. To me, it's precious.