Several months back "old" friend Drew Stewart reminded me of the Paul Simon lyrics:
Old friends,
Old friends
Sat on their park bench
Like bookends.
Those words were penned in 1968 as the opening lines to the song "Old Friends" which is one of the cuts on Simon & Garfunkel's album "Bookends" released that same year. After years of separation and estrangement, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel are together again and earlier this Fall set out on their "Old Friends" tour. Simon & Garfunkel were voices of our time. Their music is often in the background of my thoughts of "old" times and "old" friends. Their harmonies are still true. Their friendship endured many years apart. Today they are like a couple of "old" dogs wandering across the country sharing the magic of their music. And once again we can listen to songs such as "Bridge Over Troubled Water," return to a park bench in Remmel Park in our senior year of 1970, and sit in muted conversation with old friends. "Old Friends" concludes with these lyrics:
Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy.
Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears
"How terribly strange to be seventy." Indeed a "strange" thought when we first listened to these words at age sixteen. But now just a step over the line from age fifty, it is not strange at all. Certainly our memories are painted from the same years. Just as certain, we shared many of the same fears, not always in silence. We came of age in interesting times. We are truly children of the 1960s, one of history's more turbulent decades. Fear was abundant. Anxiety took shape in different forms - the threat of nuclear conflict; the experiments of space flight and a stale mate in the Cold War; the apex of racial conflict; mounting casualties in the Vietnam conflict; riots and rising conflict on the nation's streets; assassinations of a President, a civil rights leader, and a presidential candidate; news of the Manson murders; the advent of an open drug culture; free love; and the everyday concerns of a teenager wondering about an uncertain future. "Strange to be seventy?" Goodness, it was strange to be sixteen. But there was the serenity of Remmel Park, a place I could go and live in the moment.
There are few school settings that compare favorably to the one enjoyed by students in Newport, Arkansas. The complex of high school, junior high, elementary school, revered football stadium, a track field, and ancillary buildings remains pretty much unchanged over the last forty years (although the grounds of the "old" baseball field now lie under a new gymnasium). Remmel Park serves as a threshold to all this. It is a place where friends have gathered throughout the years to share cheers, fears and tears. A lot of laughs have been shared there as well!
The Simon & Garfunkel album "Bookends" also includes a song entitled "Hazy Shade of Winter" which begins:
Time, time, time, see what's become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
I can see the winter of my life approaching. It is still "terribly strange to be seventy," but that possibility is taking a much clearer shape. The seasons of one's life are marked by the "shapes of things" at the times new friends brush up against one another and "old" friends melt together. We all begin looking around for our possibilities in the spring time of our lives. Before we know it the leaves of summer in hues of green are turning into the bright colors of autumn, then they're brown and falling to the ground as winter drapes herself around us.
It is the early spring of my life. It is 1963, a Sunday afternoon. I'm eleven years old. I'm sitting next to my father in the front seat of a 1959 Pontiac Starfire as he drives me into Remmel Park. "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter, Paul and Mary is on the AM radio. Dad drops me off on the north side of the park. I see the swans soft upon the water of the lake. I have rod and reel in hand with my tackle box and a sack lunch with plans to fish a while. As I sit amongst the cypress knees, I set my fishing rod out with a cork floater bobbing at the water's edge. I'm very near the city swimming pool that sits across from the junior high school. I had learned to swim there under the watchful eye of Conway Landrum. I don't remember when that pool was filled in and forgotten. My sack lunch includes a small carton of chocolate milk, a ham sandwich, and an apple. In the bottom of my tackle box is a six and a half ounce coca-cola and a bottle opener. To this day I rely on considerable liquid in my diet.
A few days later when sitting in Mrs. Dely Breckenridge's sixth grade class at Gibbs-Albright Elementary, we get word that President John F. Kennedy has been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Walking home I stop for a while to jump on a trampoline in the back yard of the Ridley house just down the street from my home. I don't understand the impact of the President's death on the world around me. Not then, not now.
About the same time that we in Newport were learning of the President being felled by an assassin's bullet, a sixth grade girl was picked up early at the R. L. Thornton Elementary School in Dallas by her father for a planned trip to visit her grandmother in San Antonio. Driving through the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, the girl and her daddy saw a police car stopped in the street ahead of them with a body lying beside it. She stayed in the car at her father's instruction while he got from his car to find a police officer down in the street immediately in front of him. He used the radio from the police car to alert the Dallas Police Department that Officer J. D. Tippitt had been shot and was down. The man who had shot and killed Officer Tippitt was Lee Harvey Oswald, the same person who killed President Kennedy just minutes before. The girl who awaited her daddy's return following the radio call to police headquarters is Kathryn Bowley, now my wife. She doesn't understand the impact of these deaths on the world around her. Not then, not now.
The memories Kathryn and I share about this time in history are drawn by brush strokes from different points on life's canvas. Kathryn's brush was positioned near the center of the canvas on this very day forty years ago, mine was closer to the edge. Three days later we both watched President Kennedy's funeral procession on television as his little son referred to as John-John saluted the caisson carrying his slain father amid a solemn cadence of drums. It was John-John's birthday. It was also my mother's birthday.
Later in that spring time of my life I am riding into Remmel Park once again. It's 1968. I'm sixteen. We're heading to the Legion Hut in Bruce and John Pennington's 1957 Chevy. "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf is blaring from the eight track tape player. Sittin' in the park after dark on the swings, drinkin' a Schlitz beer. Friends are dancing to the music of the Know Body Else inside the hut. My personal world is safe. The world around me is chaos. Martin Luther King is killed by an assassin as he stands among friends on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. A few short weeks later, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy dies at the hands of an assassin while leaving a political rally in Los Angeles. Riots break out in the streets of Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. The body count increases from the jungles of Vietnam. I can't help but think of Dion's song "Abraham, Martin and John" that rose to the top of the charts in 1968:
Anybody here seen my old friend John?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone
Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lotta people but it seems the good they die young
I just looked around and he's gone
Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, it's gonna be one day
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill
With Abraham, Martin and John
We speak of old friends. Those men were seen as "old friends" of a peaceful existence. They abided by a lesson I learned from my dad. He often told me "If you recognize an enemy, invite him to play." Life is more fun when your playing. Especially if your playing with "old" friends. Life is fragile. In the past three months of present day I have learned of the passing of "old" friends and of those who provided me fond memories. Richard McAllister (NHS Class of '72 and brother of littermate Sandy McAllister), Johnny Heard (NHS Class of '67), Eddie Stuart (NHS Class of '68) have departed this life. Also James Hamilton who quarterbacked the ASU Indians to an undefeated season in 1970 passed away recently as have Bobby Hatfield, the blue eyed soul tenor of the Righteous Brothers, and Art Carney, one of television's silliest character actors who I often tried to imitate as a kid. Littermate Paula Jones' father left the company of his family here on earth in September. And in the last few months, the Newport obituaries have included the names of "Frog" Heath and "Doodle" Davis, two men I viewed with admiration in the springtime of my life.
I recall Frog and Doodle standing alongside the fence near the third base dugout at "old" Memorial Field watching boys play baseball on the other side of that fence. Frog and Doodle stood among other men with storied names like Crackie, Peanut, Bezo, Sonny, Ham, Little Red. Watching them from the other side of the fence, I often laughed to myself about grown men with names like that and wondered how they got such names. Now I know. "Old friends." Loving thoughts, loving memories.
Anticipating summer, I find myself in 1973. I'm a college student at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and drive into Newport for a visit in a 1970 Ford Torino GT, my first car. Pink Floyd's "Money" is the music on the FM radio. I'm 21. I cruise through Remmel Park and park my car near the swings and monkey bars where I played earlier in the spring of my life. Nothing much has changed since I walked from the looming doors of Newport High for the final time as a student just three years before, not even my attitude. I am drinking Budweiser now instead of Schlitz. I'm wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up. Ever living again in Newport is not a part of the plan. Simon & Garfunkel's "Hazy Shade of Winter" continues in verse:
Hang on to your hopes, my friend
That's an easy thing to say,
But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend
That you can build them again
Look around, the grass is high
The fields are ripe, it's the springtime of my life
It's summer now, 1983. I'm 31. I've just moved back to Newport from Little Rock. I'm a banker now. I'm a father now. I drive my daughters to Remmel Park in my 1978 Pontiac Grand Prix. Michael Jackson's "Beat It" streams from the cassette player. I push Evelyn and Emily in the same swings that were there twenty years before. We slide down the big slide in the park together. (My youngest daughter Elizabeth will be born in Newport in 1986 and will join us on the slide then). Remmel Park is still a place where you can be a child even if you are an adult. I'm reminded again of life's fragile nature. My father dies that year of 1983. I go to visit him in the hospital the evening of his death dressed as Papa Smurf, a cartoon character, en route to a Halloween party at David and Christina Gray's house. I'm called back to the hospital from the party later that night. My dad breathes his last breath. I drive through Remmel Park. I cry. I go home to scotch on the rocks.
Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time
Funny how my memory slips while looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme
Drinking my vodka and lime
In a "midsummer's night dream" I find myself in 1993. I'm 41. I have moved from Newport again. My children are developing their own social agenda with new friends in a new place. I don't get back to Newport as often as I would like to visit my mother and "old" friends. But when I do get there, I carry my girls over to Remmel Park for a stroll or to feed the ducks. We arrive together in a 1992 Dodge Caravan, one of those family vehicles introduced in the mid '80s. We have our Happy Meals from McDonald's that we eat in the van. I can't tell you the music that is playing on the radio because it is difficult to hear over the din of the little girls' voices. In between visits, I routinely yearn for the serenity of Remmel Park and the carefree comfort I knew in the springtime of life.
But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
It is the autumn of life now. It's 2003. I'm 51. Still a banker. Stopped in Arkadelphia, Russellville and Mountain Home along the way since last moving from Newport. I've divorced. I've married once again. My children are young ladies now. My mother has joined my sister Lana in Las Vegas for an extended time. Many "old" friends have departed Newport as well. Some have returned. Wonderful friendships have been established all along my life's journey. I last traveled to Newport on Veteran's Day. I stopped in on Cherry Lou Smith, Ann Gardner, Mike Brand, Freeman Travis, John Pennington, Miss Margaret Van Dyke and saw many "old" friends at Fred's Grill that day. To and fro I listened to music from all the seasons of my life on the CD player in my 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee. But I especially listened to three CDs recently made for me by Bobby Gray (NHS Class of '69) that he entitled "School Daze" which are filled with tunes from the late '60s. Our Springtime! Thanks Bobby for remembering an "old" friend.
I swung my Jeep through Remmel Park before leaving town. The swans no longer make their home on Newport Lake. I don't know when they last were there. The swings and slides and the monkey bars are no longer fixtures in the park. I don't know when they last enjoyed the company of children or adults wanting to be children. However, the calm of Remmel Park is still present.
But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around, leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground ...
Thanksgiving will be here next week. A time for thankfulness and for forgiving. There is no better time to recall your friendships. Of course our closest friends are family members. Be thankful for the love you receive and the love you share. Be forgiving of life's transgressions. Remember "old" friends. I believe snow is in the forecast. Winter is on its way.
Can you imagine us
Years from today,
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange
To be seventy,
Old friends,
Memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears
Growing up in Arkansas, I have come to appreciate the four very distinct seasons of the year. I look back at my life lived to this point and the corresponding seasons that have passed. Each visit to Remmel Park has been unique. I look forward to the winter. I plan to return to Remmel Park as often as I can. You can find me there. Scotch in hand. The park bench will be awaiting an "old friend." Hope to see you there sometime.
Until then I will be Miles from Nowhere . . . guess I'll take my time.
joe
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