About My Friend Growing Up

In my last post I mentioned my next door neighbor. I learned a long time ago that using names in some kind of internet post is not always the wisest thing. I'm not sure what I have done in past posts but for the most part in the future I will use few, if any, names. That being the case I will not use his name although if he reads this he will certainly know who he is. Also anyone who knew me in my younger years will also more than likely be able to guess his Identity. In June of 1956 my family which consisted of my paternal grandmother, my dad, mom, two older sisters, myself, and my younger sister who was not to be born for another 4 weeks or so.....but she made Mom big enough that I feel it only right to count her into our numbers. I had seen the house once or twice before but being not quite 8 years old I really wasn't all that impressed. What did impress me was that we lived close to a lake and that lake had a beach and we were allowed to go to that beach...woohoo. Moving day came although I'm sure that it was far more than a day but my mind has it all rolled into one experience. My parents along with the help of another couple that were friends of my parents used a rental truck and moved us lock, stock, and barrel all by themselves. I did my part to help by not helping at all. For the first part of the move the three of us kids were at the "old" house playing and not paying much attention to the work that the four adults were putting into the move. Finally enough had been moved that Mom and the other wife were to leave the "old" where they were helping to stage the move and go to the "new" where they would start to distribute our belongings into their new home. It is at this time that my two older sisters and I were transported across town to our new home. The place we would call home for many years and the place that we would all consider as the place where we grew up (that is assuming that any of us actually "grew up"). Of course having new neighbors moving in was exciting for all the kids on the street and I will say that our street had a lot of kids. This included my new next door neighbor. He had just turned 7 and was right over in our front yard as soon as he saw that there was another boy about his age that was going to be living there. As with most kids that age we were instantly friends and that is what we have stayed. As of this writing it has been nearly 60 years and I still consider him one of my very best friends....if nothing else he has an awful lot of seniority over all my other very best friends. Oh sure we had our spats here and there but I cannot remember us being mad at each other for very long....usually only minutes and if it was really something serious a few hours. Instead we raked in so many memories of things we did with each other that it would take 10,000 blog posts to relate them all. Some I have he probably totally has no recollection of and I'm sure that it is the same with some of the things that he remembers. I am also sure that telling the same story his would be different than mine. Neither of us would be lying or even wrong but it would be just how we saw things. As this blog continues I know that he will come up many, many times in more specific stories but I wanted to say that we didn't "meet" but we just melted together one afternoon in mid 1956 and in many ways have been one ever sense. That's it for today....more tomorrow!