{"id":5805,"date":"2009-10-05T13:04:36","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T17:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=5805"},"modified":"2016-01-12T14:24:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T19:24:42","slug":"perfect-moments-birds-of-an-earnest-young-feather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/perfect-moments-birds-of-an-earnest-young-feather\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Moments: Birds of an Earnest Young Feather"},"content":{"rendered":"H<\/span>ow do people form their first enduring friendships, anyway — I mean, their very<\/em> first friendships (like at age 5 or 6), and very<\/em> enduring (like spanning decades)?<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s different now, what with parents arranging “play dates” and similar activities. But when I was a kid, these things (looking back on them now) seemed to develop haphazardly, utterly by chance, with friendships forming and disappearing like condensation on the inside of a window…<\/p>\n

I have dim memories of my very first friendships, because those boys moved away within a year of my meeting them. (I remember, specifically, a name — Craig Brashear<\/em> — although I’m not sure of the spelling, and\u00a0 no longer recall if he was the one who lived on Walnut Street or the one who lived on… was it Edgewood Avenue? Oakford? Craig, are you out there?)<\/p>\n

But I do have specific memories of my friend Ron: I think he was the first one I started hanging out with on my own, rather than as a mob of boys who’d gather (say) in the Clipsham family’s side yard to play football.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\nO<\/span>ver the course of the years, Ron, his sister, and their parents lived in a variety of places around our small hometown. The one I remember best was a three-story half of a white-clapboard side-by-side duplex; Ron’s room was on the third floor. One reason this house stands out in my mind was its location: across the street from our elementary school, and right next to — I mean, like, mere yards<\/em> from — the town’s one firehouse.<\/p>\n

(A partially fictional memoir I wrote of those years said — completely non-fictionally — “you never knew when the siren would go off, interrupting your ponderous discussions about life and television by stopping the beating of your tiny heart. [I] thus always had the feeling, at Ronnie’s house, of skittering close to the edge of panic.”)<\/p>\n

And I remember, specifically, a conversation with him on the front step leading up to the porch of that house.<\/p>\n

It was October, 1962; Ron and I were both 11 years old at the time, in Miss Pearson’s sixth grade. We were not discussing, ponderously or otherwise, the World Series that year (Yanks vs. Giants, the former — of course — winning). Also not on the agenda: Johnny Carson’s taking over The Tonight Show<\/em> (we couldn’t stay up late enough to care); the release of the Beatles’ first EMI single, “Love Me Do” (the, uh, beetles<\/em>? huh?); James Meredith’s registration at the University of Mississippi (that was in the Deep South, and everybody knew that might as well be another planet); our growing fascination with certain suddenly-willowy girls (the same ones we’d been ignoring for six years, practically our whole life); or… well, or much of anything else.<\/p>\n

No. What weighed on our tiny hearts that fall day was the Cold War, and the\u00a0 — obviously impending — destruction of the United States (specifically Philadelphia and our little town) by nuclear missiles launched from Cuba.<\/p>\n

Somehow, we’d picked up on the national nervousness — who knows how. Newspapers, TV news, parental conversation (probably muted and thus of special interest to curious little ears). Whatever its source, we were sort of freaked out. We discussed, earnestly, the odds that our town (population less than 5,000) might contain targets of potential military and\/or economic importance, and if so whether the first to go would be the cardboard-box manufacturer, the scenic riverfront, the railroad bridge over the creek…<\/p>\nR<\/span>on was the first friend with whom I had this sort of talk — talk about things we’d be embarrassed to bring up at school or the dinner table. And he continued to be this sort of friend for years.<\/p>\n

O<\/span>ver time, we each acquired other friends. By the time we graduated from high school, we were still friendly when running into each other but our lives (our words, the beating of our tiny hearts) no longer intertwined. As adults, I moved away from that town and Ron didn’t. I’d hear word about him from time to time, and he continued to touch my family who still lived there.<\/p>\n

(In the mid-1980s, Ron was on the town’s Board of Education at a time when my mother worked there as a school secretary. Throughout the two years while my father was dying of cancer, Ron ensured that Mom suffered no penalties for extended periods of absence. For that kindness alone, I’ll always think of him as one of my best friends.)<\/p>\n

Imagine my delight when I got a Facebook “friend request” from him, just a couple of weeks ago. Although I’d hesitated to respond to some people from those days, Ron got an instant acceptance. I checked his profile, saw his email address, watched as he started to post family pictures of his wife and daughters and grandkids (and commented on one photo of his parents and Ron, probably around age 3 or 4). I pulled out the memoir I mentioned above and looked it over, thinking he’d get a kick out of the passages applying specifically to him and his parents, especially his dad. (Other friends are mentioned by name in it — all of them first name only. But only Ron had a section which was about him almost as much as about me.)<\/p>\nR<\/span>on died the other day. I don’t know for sure, but I’m told he was mowing the lawn, and just, well, died. Through Facebook I located his wife, and from her I learned that he’d been able to retire early a few years ago. He’d been working part-time at a local golf course, so managed to enjoy plenty of free golf during that time. He loved gardening, she told me — a fact which likely would have surprised the 11-year-old Ron as much as it surprises me now.<\/p>\n

I hadn’t seen him in person for over 20 years, but I could see him<\/em> in my mind’s eye even unaided by school and yearbook photos. I like to picture Ron and me still sitting on his front porch, earnestly discussing worrisome impending disasters.<\/p>\n

And although your mind knows it can happen any time, sometimes, when you’re least prepared for it, the siren goes off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ow do people form their first enduring friendships, anyway — I mean, their very first friendships (like at age 5 or 6), and very enduring (like spanning decades)? Maybe it’s different now, what with parents arranging “play dates” and similar activities. But when I was a kid, these things (looking back on them now) seemed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,247,599],"tags":[29,4144,1061,1427,1428],"class_list":{"0":"post-5805","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-backwards","7":"category-ruminations","8":"category-perfect-moments","9":"tag-friends","10":"tag-perfect-moments","11":"tag-death","12":"tag-ron-brooks","13":"tag-friendship","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1vD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5805"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17653,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5805\/revisions\/17653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}