Old Friends are the Best Friends

A couple of weeks ago, on my way to Boston, an old friend gave me a ring on the cell phone.  He asked what what I was up to.  I gave him the usual response, “Working, you know, but I have next week off, and plan to clean up the back lot at the lake house.”

His immediate response was, “Well, hell Harold, I’ll just come up and give you a hand.”

Now I have to tell you, my first thought was, “He’s out of his freaking mind, or maybe he’s having problems with the wife or, he’s out of his freaking mind, and I’m opting for both the first and the last of the three possibilities.   So I say in my usual, sensitive and indirect way, “You’re out of your freaking mind!”

You have to understand that I’ve known B, (I won’t give you his real name so that he might avoid  the stigma of being known as  “one stupid hillbilly by those who might know him”) for 45 years.  We played football together, chased young women in his orange GTO, and kicked our share of Kentucky ass in our younger years….  despite the fact that we were congenial and good natured young men, and never went looking for trouble, we sure seemed to piss a lot of people off.  I still can’t quite cipher that one…

I remember one time we were at his Dad’s truck stop having a Coca-Cola  when a care full of boys pulled up, the driver got out and started berating B for something he’d said to the fella’s girlfriend (I think he’d asked her out on a date), when the young fella took a swing at B.

B is about six foot three, sorta lanky with long arms, and had a punch like a piledriver.  I kid you not, I once saw him knock another guy right out of his shoes.   Mind you, they were slip on shoes, but I was still mightily impressed…   If memory serves, that was over a girl too, but I digress.

After I saw the punch thrown, the only thing I was interested in was keeping it a fair fight.  There were four other young men with him, and I could see they wanted to get in it.  I held up my hand, palm to them and said, “Let’s keep it fair, boys.”  And so it went for a few minutes until it became obvious that B had the upper hand, and one of the fellas he’d come with ran to help his friend.  I couldn’t have it, so I grabbed him from behind and threw him down on the ground.

B’s dad’s Truck Stop was a working truck stop, and there were tire irons all over the damned place.  As luck would have it, the kid I threw to the ground landed right next to one, picked it up and took a swing at me.  Fortunately, I was closing on him, and he didn’t manage to hit me in the head too hard with it.  He was on his knees, I hit him once in the face, picked him up and stuffed him into a fifty gallon oil drum head first.  He was kicking like crazy, but I banged his head against the bottom of that drum more times than I can remember.  I was kinda sore over the tire iron, you understand.  Finally, one of the boys that had come with him pulled me away.  Helton (woops, I’ve given his real name) was standing over the young man who’d started it all screaming “get up you sissy,” or words to that effect… while the guy who’d pulled me away was now trying to pull his friend out of the oil drum.  He wasn’t successful, and had to tip the drum on its side to get him out.

Well, the long and short of it was, we won the fight, B had some bruised knuckles while I ended up with a pair of broken glasses and six stitches over my left eyebrow from the tire iron.  Let me tell you, I suffered for this friendship, so when the son of a bitch said he was willing to drive about 1000 miles, work for a week for nothing but room and really, really spare board, I figured I’d collect a little of what was owed me, and for the last week that’s exactly what I got.

My good friend drove 999  miles to Vermont, stayed out at my lake house and we cleaned up about 5000 square feet of ground that had been used as a dump for all the tree trash in a tree infested area for the last 30 years.  It was a hell of a mess.  We worked every day in beautiful 60 degree Vermont weather, except for the two days when it dropped to thirty degrees and we had a spring blizzard (B remarked, “Spring ain’t like this in Kentucky), and we got the job done.   We chatted the whole  time… stuff like “You work pretty good for an old man,” (he’s six months younger than me), and I doubled his pay every day he was here,  “What’s two times zero, anyway?” I asked him.

Yep, we had a great time, and got a lot of work done, and our old friendship was both renewed, and strengthened.   It was a great week.  One I’ll carry with me to my grave.  Yep, old friends are the best of friends, but the way I figure it, he’s only worked off about three of those stitches, and the son of a bitch still owes me.