To my birthday buddy … I knew this kid once that moved to Holdenville in the late 1960’s. He lived on East Main and loved to ride his bike and play baseball. I think the first time I noticed him was at the Little League baseball games at Pancake Park. He got in a fight with my brother, Cheddy! They were shagging foul balls and bumped into each other fighting over a ball. Next thing you know, this new kid was throwing punches with my brother. I got to know this kid right away. I liked his guts and his fearless approach to things. We would talk baseball and ride our bikes downtown on Saturday. We would buy candy from the candy display at Ben Franklins. … We would park our bikes and sit on them and watch people shopping – back when people still shopped in downtown Holdenville. Sometimes we’d even wear our baseball uniforms on these trips, even though our games would not be until that evening! We’d go over to Amos Drug or Stanford’s Drug and buy a coke and sit around like old folks. Mostly, though, we’d talked about baseball, and bikes and girls. We knew a lot about baseball and bikes, but not some much about girls. Somehow, that hasn’t really changed for me, and likely not him either. So that’s how we became friends – spending our free summer hours together in the best little town in the world. I remember how we once talked about riding our bicycles over to the golf course at Wewoka to play golf. We had no interest in playing GOLF. We just wanted to drive those cool battery-powered golf carts! We both graduated to older baseball teams and motorcycles … and my friend moved over to Country Club … He bought his first cycle from Jandabury’s Cycle Shop in OKC. It was a Honda S90 … and we had some wild times on that motor cycle. We’d throw our paper routes on it and sometimes drive down to Cy’s Coffee Shop for early-morning pancakes. Tippy, the black and white spotted dog, would often chase along-side the cycle as we’d head off on some adventure! We had fun … but we had a couple of pretty good crashes on that old Honda. Once, we turned the corner down south of Thomas School and flat-out ran into a ditch and through a barbed-wire fence. We were hurt a little - but both fell of the cycle laughing. We did the same thing over at Billy Moss’ old slaughter house off of Oliphant street … My buddy was driving and we were jumping these small hills .. but he landed wrong and we landed wrong and … never mind! Silly boys, we never learned. We would ride our cycles up that steep hill down in the projects, not too far from where his maternal grandmother lived! Luckily, I don’t think either of us ever crashed on that steep climb. We were both good baseball players and always made the league all-star teams … One summer we made the all-stars and went over to Wewoka to play their all-stars. But when we got to Wewoka, the all-star coach benched us and didn’t let us play until the very end of the game. Coy Robinson was mad about it and put together an all-star team of just our two teams. We came back to Wewoka and beat those all-stars worse that our full all-star team did. Me and this one kid, we had a ton of fun together. He was a person who never talked behind your back about you. If you were in a corner, he was exactly the kind of friend who would step in to help you. I have always admired this guy and thought he was truly one of the good ones. We are old and kind of gray … but I still treasure the times we shared. On his birthday, I wanted him to know it. He no longer lives in Holdenville, and neither do I. But across the miles and across the years, I wanted to reach out to him and tell him that his old buddy was thinking about him on his birthday. I won’t give away his age, but he is somewhere north of 57 and south of 59. That’s all I am going to say on thag subject. If you know who I am talking about, please do not post the name. His privacy is very important to him and I respect that. I pray that you will too. I was lucky to grow up in such a wonderful little town. Having a good friend like the birthday boy made it that much more special. I just want to say ‘happy birthday’ to my old buddy. I hope and pray this will be the best year of your life. You are a good guy and your deserve it!
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 07:17:19 +0000