Isn't it weird how weird things sometimes happen in bunches?
I left Massachusetts as a fifteen year old, some 31 years ago. Initially, I kept in touch with some of my friends, but you know how that goes, we were all young, and you just move on into life and forget over time. It happens, and in my experience, unless you live near where you grew up, you don't stay in touch with many old friends...
So I was pretty surprised a while back when I received an email that read, "Hi, My name's John Bott, and I'm looking for the Eben Atwater who lived in Concord in the 60's and 70's and had a dog named Calvin." John was a hockey and school buddy; we played wingers on the same line for years. When we were younger, sometimes he'd stop by and ask my mom if Calvin, (The dog), could play, and just take him out running or skating in the fields without me even knowing he'd been over. When Cal got hit by a car, it was John who found him, at the vet where the person who hit him had taken him. We hung out in John's basement a lot, which had a poster of Petula Clarke on the inside of the door to the upstairs - I don't know if his dad or his mom was the fan. That's where we had the first party with both boys and girls where, well - That certain electricity was in the air for the very first time, shall we say... Absolutely nothing happened, of course, but we sure thought it might! I remember that a Jackson Five album was a highpoint of that particular shindig... John had gerbils, and a huge cage system. Once, sleeping over, I dreamed that electric shocks were running up and down my body, then woke to find loose gerbils everywhere, running around on top of my sleeping bag and destroying the rug by the door in a frantic, gerbilly effort to go further afield... He's a banker, like his Father before him, and a single dad with a young daughter, living in New Hampshire, which is where he's lived ever since he went to college there.
Then, after that, I got another email, this time from John Roberts, asking if I was the Eben Atwater who'd grown up at 339 Main Street in Concord. John lived 2 doors down, had a great book collection, and a very cool old Colonial house. He said he'd gotten married recently and was waxing poetic to his wife about The Lord of The Rings, which had come out in the movies, then he said he had a flash memory of seeing me walking down the alley on the other side of his place, with a copy of the Hobbit in my shorts pocket, so he decided to see if I was still around... John was the youngest of three kids and a year or two older than me, but I was the youngest of four, so we jibed well. His parents were quiet and scholarly, and always seemed to be faintly bemused with us, even though I had no doubt they knew exactly what we were up to at any given time... We used to blow up army men, (And melt 'em, too!). We made 'Beenie Boppers' in the Reece's apple trees down by the river; these consisted of a nice, flexible apple branch stripped of leaves and all. You sharpen the end, and then put a nice, semi-rotten apple on, and then use it as a launcher to send the apple down onto the nice people who rent canoes down around the bend and float this way headed for the Old North Bridge. Then you hide in those really tall ferns so they hopefully don't know quite where the apple came from. Sometimes, you put firecrackers in 'em, just for added fun. And you run like hell when a pissed off young man beaches his canoe and heads your way to defend his girls honor... John does advertising in The Big Apple, where he's lived for a long time now.
And then a few days ago, I get yet another email from the former Susan Stockwell, now Susan Andereck. Susan lived right next door from age 4 through 8. She had about eleventy-hundred brothers and sisters, so they musta been catholics, huh?! Her parents were very kind and very tolerant... We went to Kindergarten through Third Grade together. She recalled walking that cold, snowy mile to school, in fact she says we were the last houses within the one-mile radius... She remembered stealing wonder bread from my kitchen and running up into my tree fort to eat it, going back to the railroad tracks as a shortcut to school, (Absolutely verboten by parents, and as such, done quite often), throwing rocks at freight cars, putting pennies on the tracks to get squished, and talking on the railroad phones, (Which the guys on the other end didn't find funny), lots of skating, and making sure to be good friends with the people who had swimming pools. We played kick the can non-stop in the summers, using three or four adjacent properties for the playing field... They moved out in the middle of a huge blizzard in the winter of '68. Susan is now a music teacher, married to Tony, living in Ohio for the last 11 years, with three boys of her own, a little younger all around than ours. I sent her a few of my faith songs for her to try out...
So whataya know - It is a small world, and maybe we do make long-lasting impressions on each other after all, even though we moved apart long ago. Maybe we still do keep in touch, even through all those years. I didn't know I ate Wonder Bread...
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