My View from 1958

Good friends are hard to come by.  Friends who stick together for over 55 years are even more of a rarity.  My great friend Randy and I still talk about how we met so many years ago. We first met when we got into a fist fight with each other…a great start to a relationship. There is no way to go but up!

The community high school where I grew up used to have open gym on Sunday afternoons.  You could go to the gym to play basketball; shoot some hoops or get into a pick-up game. Mostly I went just get out of the house, away from parents and mess around. I was never a good basketball player. I think I finally realized that in 8^th grade after two years (junior high) of sitting on the bench and maybe getting a total playing time of 1 minute.  I only played when our team was way ahead, or way behind which was usually the case.

To add injury to insult, when you were on third string like me (we had 4 strings so at least I was not at the bottom or the abyss), you had to earn your way into getting to “suit up” for the games. Getting to suit up meant you got to be part of the team that was allocated a uniform for the game.  For the scrubs, only a few of us got to suit up. There were only so many uniforms.  If it was an away game, we got to go on the bus ride to the other school as well. That was always pretty cool.   You have to realize that back in 1970’s taking a trip to another town and school was very exciting.  Driving 40 or 50 miles to another school was like taking a trip to the moon today. A new town, a new school and of course new faces….and cheerleaders!

For the scrubs, to earn the right to suit up we had a free-throw contest. Third and forth stringers had to compete against each other, and the ones who made the most free- throw shots out of 10 tries got to suit up for the game. I was a lousy free throw shooter (of course), so I did not suit up very often. Again, I am not the brightest bulb on the block, but I did realize early that my options for a basketball career were limited.

Anyway, back to the fight. After a few hours at the gym, my brother and I decided it was time to go home. It was January, with a nice blanket of snow on the ground and yet it was warm enough to cause a bit of a melt.  A perfect day for building a snowman…. or making snowballs.

We walked outside the gym and I immediately got hit with a snowball…..and then another…and another.  I looked in the direction of the incoming projectiles and there was Randy throwing yet another snowball at me.  I do not think our paths had crossed before, so I was taken a bit by surprise when another volley came at me.  I have no idea why he started to throw the snowballs, but  I had to retaliate and so I did. Before long we were circling each other with the white projectiles trying to hit each other with the knockout blow. All the while my brother was egging me on and Randy’s brother was egging me on (RIP Jim). Soon we were locked in mortal snowball combat surrounded by a cheering crowd. Before long throwing snowballs was not enough. Fists were raised. I am sure we wanted to make contact with fists.

It’s a bit of a blur to me after this….no there was no knockout blow. Hey, this was 55 years ago. Randy claims neither one of us ever made contact. I suppose we just got tired of it and decided to move on, go home and have supper.  That had to be it. We tried our best to fight, but much like basketball, fighting was not our forte. No punches were landed. We both swore we would continue the fight Monday after school, but I don’t think either of us really had the ambition. There were too many other worlds to conquer. Randy says I tried to talk a friend of mine into being my proxy at the next round, but I don’t remember that….although it would not surprise me.

I am not even sure how we became friends after all this, but for many, many years (and even today to some extent) we were inseparable. Perhaps we both realized it was a draw and to continue any violence was a waste of time. There was too much other mischief to be had, and we were both game.  The good news, in regard to mischief, we were both on the first team.