Column: Goodbye dear friend

Dear readers,

Look closely at the photograph accompanying this awesome column.  The tall boy in the middle, the one with the mischievous grin, is Larry Robertson. Flanking him in the front row, left to right, are Mark Jessup, Mike Jessup, and me.

On closer inspection, everyone has a mischievous grin but me. I just look goofy with eyes closed and one arm around Larry’s shoulder and the other across Mike’s chest. I must have sensed they needed a hug that day.

Larry’s recent death brought all of my childhood memories of him to the surface. I have always believed that friendships born in childhood are much stronger than those created between two adults.

Psychiatrists share this belief. Reasoning that children’s brains are still developing and the neural pathways associated with that person met in childhood become woven into our emotional architecture. The result is that the death of a childhood friend is like losing a part of oneself.

There is a scene in the movie “Dead Poets Society” where Robin Williams, playing the incomparable John Keating, shows his students a photo of deceased students. Keating has his students gather around a dusty case of old photographs. He tells them to lean in close, to listen.  The dead have a message, he says.

“Carpe Diem.”

Seize the day.

That movie came out in 1989. Our photograph was taken more than twenty years earlier. No one told us to seize the day. We just did. We were too busy to wait for instructions.

Larry’s family consisted of his parents, Paul and Myrtie, brothers Rock and Robbie along with little sisters Mala and Deena. Larry’s grandparents on his father’s side of the family had a farm just outside of Flat Rock. His grandparents on his mother’s side (McNeely) owned McNeely Greenhouses in Hope. 

It wasn’t unusual for me to tagalong on visits to Larry’s grandparents.  Larry had a large extended family filled with aunts, uncles, and cousins.

I have fond memories of spending time with them, but my best memories all happened when the adults weren’t watching.

Warnings to “Use Only With Adult Supervision” hadn’t been invented when we were kids. Cigarettes vended themselves from machines without a single surgeon general’s opinion. Lawnmower blades spun merrily along with no warning to keep hands and feet away.

We drank beverages sweetened with cyclamates and our clothes were laundered with phosphates. No seat belts in cars and I don’t remember ever even seeing a bicycle helmet.

Danger lurked everywhere in those days.

Comic book advertisements not only included the usual X-ray specks and hand buzzers, but also a kit to melt lead and make little toy Civil War soldiers. It was around the 100^th anniversary of the Civil War, so all things Civil War were popular. I even had a uniform and plastic sword.

Anything ordered from an advertisement in a comic book took 6-to-8 weeks for delivery. Lucky for us, we didn’t need to wait to play with some molten lead. My grandpa, being a 19^th century man, had everything we needed to start melting lead and making things.

In no time we had everything we needed all set up in the basement. The lead melting kit featured in the advertisement showed the lead being melted in a small ladle and poured into a mold. 

We had an electric cauldron with a spigot to dispense the molten lead.  Grandpa used it to make bullets. It came with a supply of lead and a mold that made a bullet called a “mini ball” like the ones used in the Civil War. In no time we had a supply of freshly minted mini balls.

Larry loved fishing. The night before a river expedition, we’d soak the lawn with the hose, wait for darkness, and creep out with flashlights to harvest night crawlers. Fat, glistening, perfect bait. Next morning, bicycles loaded with poles and worms, we’d pedal to the river like Huck Finn on a Schwinn.

At some point, we decided our future demanded a bait shop. Besides, our stash of mini balls were useless without a musket. We melted down our Civil War arsenal and recast it into fishing sinkers. If we ever were to open a bait shop, we had a good inventory of sinkers.

Sometimes we would ride our bicycles to Flat Rock to Larry’s grandparents’ farm. In the summer we would camp out in Larry’s backyard. 

Larry owned a go-cart and we would take turns driving it in his back yard. It was a small back yard. The go-cart track was an oval the size made by steering the go-cart in the tightest circle possible around the swing set.

Mike Jessup died a couple of years ago. Larry is now gone, but everything from making bullets to taking turns driving the go-cart along with the photograph of me hugging those guys all those years ago lives on. Not only in the amber of my childhood memory but since I launched this column into the ether it is stored somewhere in a data center.

As Paul Harvey famously said, “Now you know the rest of the story.”

See you all next week, same Schwinn time, same Schwinn channel.