If You Have Ever Been My Friend...
If you have ever been my friend … chances are pretty good I am going to miss you some time or another. You are particularly in danger of being missed if there are multiple years between encounters. I recognize this sense of loss may be simply a function of crossing the big 7-Oh No birthday. I’ve probably got more years and friends behind me than in front of me although I try to stay alert for opportunities to make new.
In pondering this sense of loss that plagues me, I must admit this isn’t really a new thing spawned by long distance and the years. Friends who knew me in the rip-roaring ‘70s and ‘80s may recall unsolicited calls that coincided with the closing of the local bars. In those days, a couple simply picked up the phone and greeted me with “Don’t you have a watch Hallmark?” before I had chance to introduce myself.
Now I’m retired and I don’t really have a bedtime or wakeup call. My wife has instilled good manners, so I don’t reach out and touch anyone by telephone anymore even though I carry the thing 24/7.
Yet I still want to get in touch. I don’t care if we vote differently or worship differently or disagree on all the major or minor details of life. If we were ever friends sometime in our lives, we still are in my mind. Even today, I think we share more in common ground than the chasms the media leads us to focus on. I think recognizing common ground would start the healing.
Facebook provides some salve, but a lot of my friends are not on social media. Truth be told, some of my friends are more likely to be on anti-social media, since some of them are getting old and crotchety. Not everyone is aging backwards like me.
This need to reconnect was a theme in January when Jan and I made a trip through Texas for a family wedding. We were able to catch up with Doug and Cindy Young, friends from Texas Tech, who had breakfast with us in Dallas. We also touched base with the mercurial Baytown, Tx cousins, Steve Braswell and Ronnie Garrett, who strangely were on such good behavior I scarcely recognized them. I think everyone was curious to meet Jan, the anticipated saint who had solved the bachelor riddles I pondered my first 39 years.
Our family has made a traditional “Boys Trip” to spring training in Florida several times, but the last was in 2020. That year, we were on our way back after seeing the Yankees and Pirates play only to hear the entire season was cancelled due to Covid. The Boys were overdue.
Another driving force for the trip to Florida spring training was Dale Baggett, my best friend from high school, had moved from Virginia down to Florida. He now lived somewhere just south of where we would be in Tampa. I had only seen him once in about 40 years, when Jan and I took a route to Pennsylvania close to his Virginia home some 10+ years back and we had dinner. I checked my expiration date, but the Lord doesn’t make it legible until it’s too late. Nevertheless, I felt a longing to reconnect with my friend.
Harvey Dale and I were introduced by Bradley Sowers as we were mid-year new kids at Houston’s Landrum Junior High. Bradley sort of collected new kids, maybe because he didn’t run in the cool circles and so was determined to forge one of his own. I had seen on Facebook Bradley had recently passed and had expressed condolences to his older brother. I hadn’t talked to Bradley in 50+ years, but still felt guilty for losing touch before Bradley's expiration date had come.
Dale had moved to Spring Branch from Florida while I had come back to Texas by way of Mobile, AL and New Orleans, LA. We first united over pickup basketball, a love that expanded into high school where we were members of a group who held the secret to breaking into the Spring Branch High gymnasium anytime a game was afoot. We left no footprints, took only memories and mystified janitors for years.
We also had the shared experience of being younger members of families headed by older, distant fathers who had problems with alcohol. Dale’s dad drank at home while my mother didn’t allow alcohol in her house, so my father drank in taverns like the “Inn Cognito”. We also shared being heavily influenced by long-suffering, worried mothers who felt their grip on us slipping for a while.
In high school we also became members of another group, “Barcia’s Backdoor Delivery”. At Barcia’s, you could bring in three times the usual price for a six-pack of beer and one would magically appear outside the back door. I grew sideburns to make myself look older for the approaches, which spawned a high school nickname of “Sammy Sideburns”.
Just as the old ‘70s documentary “Reefer Madness” warned marijuana can lead to harder drugs, Barcia’s Backdoor Delivery led to harder drinking and wilder times. One I remember most vividly, as well as sheepishly, concerned a trip to Gilley’s, the inspiration for the movie “Urban Cowboy”.
We had a friend who was two years older and had just returned from Vietnam. I’m going to protect his identity as I’ve lost touch with Bachelor 3. Batchelor 3 probably became a preacher somewhere, but at this time was on a higher plain of Hell-raising than we two local mice could muster. He convinced us to drive all the way across Houston to Gilley’s in Pasadena. Our friend had a head start on the drinking and from the back seat proclaimed he was going to be “discerning” that night and find just the right girl.
Dale and I paid the cover charge and turned around to find our third member gone. We looked around and about 20 feet from the door saw him perched between the two biggest girls in the honkytonk. I realized then Batchelor 3 had a broader definition of “discerning”.
We did our best to be supportive. Dale and I took turns dancing with the girl who wasn’t getting our friend’s attention. It may have ruined our reputations for the night as we didn’t get any other acceptances elsewhere to our offers to dance.
Mickey Gilley, the singing namesake for the club, had a hit a few years later with “The Girls All Get Prettier At Closing Time.” There was a phenomenon at Gilley’s that happened about 1 a.m. where a silent bell went off and every lonesome cowboy in the place suddenly jumped up and asked any girl in sight to dance. I always called this the “Desperate Hour”, but Gilley made more money by describing this in music and rhyme. The song made a great theme song for the Urban Cowboy movie.
Dale and I determined these discerned girls weren’t going to get much prettier, no matter the lighting or the hour. After closing time, Dale and I were walking through the parking lot a few paces ahead of our friend, who staggered a little between the girls, an arm around each for fellowship and support. Dale was lamenting his fate, as he had been tasked with entertaining the undiscerned girl. I offered him a second option … make a run for it.
We looked at each other and grinned. Then we took off running, laughing like fools, dodging the puddles and potholes of Gilley’s shell parking lot. We fired up my Chevelle and burned rubber out of the lot with Batchelor 3 yelling at us. We knew the girls would give him a ride home. We also accepted there would music to be faced when he got sober and caught up with us. The trade still seemed to favor our end.
Dale grew up before I did. He went through the army, college and a first career in the oil business before realizing the problem was the alcohol we had inherited from our fathers. He started watching a televangelist and that led him to wander back into the Southern Baptist Church of his youth. He met and married Marjorie, who is several years younger, in a Baptist church. He is now retired and may no longer suffer from maltuition after getting all his kids through college.
I was a slower learner. I didn’t give up the Goodtime Charlie life until age 35 when I wandered into a Methodist Church at the end of the trail. I had determined after much living and some learning I couldn’t be the final conjugation of life on earth. There had to be someone with the answers to the test as I had none. Turned out His name was Jesus.
Four years and lots of prayer later a blonde I had noticed in the new morning “baby choir” showed up in the Sunday School class where I was the oldest living young adult. Domestication began surprisingly shortly. I recently had breakfast with a church friend, who marveled at my accomplished wife. The unspoken question between us was “how did YOU ever land a woman like Jan?” I don’t know either. Life's designer works in very mysterious ways.
Sometimes the best laid plans of Mike and other men go astray. I wanted to see my friend Dale, but when I went to get in touch, I discovered my contact for him had disappeared. I retired in January and evidently, when I deleted my work account his contact info lived there and was lost.
I dug up a possible address and sent a letter but didn’t hear back. A few days before my grandson and I were to leave for Tampa it occurred to me to try one of those online databases searches. I got some phone numbers for the low price of $11 and sent texts. One reached Dale’s daughter, who gave me his actual cell number.
I was too late. He already had two of the days of our visit allocated to a prison missionary effort and then was going out of town. We vowed to do better next time.
I did get a friend fix on the trip as my grandson Kody and I went a little out of our way to go through Alabama so we could spend the night with two of my best friends, who happen to be married to one another, Tony & Kathy Overfelt. Tony has recently retired as a professor at Auburn and Kathy is a retireless real estate agent. They took us on a tour of their 30 acres in Waverly and then of Auburn, both the town and university.
My only regret is Jan was not there to see the Overfelt’s antiques and property. Kathy’s prize possession is a Bible from 1675, which is the crown jewel of her collection of The Good Book. Their joint pride is Sammy, a large stone Samurai statue who Tony used his doctorate in engineering to somehow get deposited in the middle of an island in their lake.
The only downside to the visit is I had triggered my spring sinus infection by mowing the day before and so arrived at their house with chills that dampened the visit. Kathy loaded my bed up with a couple of thick blankets and I sweated enough to feel better in the morning before we headed to Tampa.
Kody and I had some quality guy time on the trip. We saw my Yankees lose to both the Red Sox and the Pirates. Kody wore his Yankee gear on Wednesday and then switched to his Pirate gear on Friday to honor his dad’s favorite team. At least he went 1-1 while I was 0-2 for the week.
We also golfed one day at “The Babe”, which is a municipal course named for Babe Didrikson Zaharias, the best women’s golfer of the 1940s. Tampa hasn’t had much rain over the winter, so it was impossible to take a divot in the hard ground. I didn’t have enough bounce on my wedges. We got souvenirs, so nobody should be shocked when we show up at our home course with “BABE” on our hats.
As we pointed the car northward, I thought about Harvey Dale and made a mental connection I hadn’t previously. My wandering into a church at the end of my rope in 1988 mirrored his example from a few years before. Turned out to be a pretty good move in both cases. You can rarely see the design of your life in the present, but if you’ve got a span of time to ponder, the maker’s fingerprints are evident.
The boys will likely make another spring training trip to Tampa since my son Kevin and littlest grandson Kooper couldn’t make this one. Dale and I just need to make sure between now and then we don’t solve the mystery of our expiration dates.
Until then, I’ll miss my friend.
