My new memoir WOODEN & ME is also available here at Amazon

*   *   *  

Friendship Trumps Time and Separation

Tennessee Williams was spot-on when he observed, “Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation.”

Rarely has this been more clear personally than earlier this week when I met up with a boyhood friend I had not seen in a dozen years, if not more. Before that, it had been nearly as long again between reunions.

Jimmy and me: a poor picture of a rich friendship!

Prior to these long lapses, however, during our “Wonder Years,” Jimmy and I were thick as thieves, or scamps, or Tom and Huck. He was, in fact, my first friend upon moving to Ventura from Ohio at age 12.

Jimmy, four months my junior, wasn’t my friend so much as my “cousin” of which I have not a single biological one. Had he lived in Ventura, or I in Pasadena, we would have been “brothers.”

We first met because Jimmy’s aunt and uncle were my godparents. Each summer he stayed two weeks at their Solimar beach home and upon arriving here in 1972 I joined him. It became a yearly rendezvous through our teens.

Those beach days and nights were boyhood bliss. We stayed up late shooting pool and watching TV, slept in long, then spent the remaining sunlight in the waves and exploring tide pools, looking for seashells and ocean glass, playing basketball and talking about girls.

Too, I would annually stay a week with Jimmy and his mom – his father died when Jimmy was 4 and his only sibling, a sister, was 10 years older and already out of the house – in Pasadena. Summer at the beach is an idyllic playground that is hard to equal, but these vacations came close.

Jimmy was a California beach boy straight from Central Casting, with a toothpaste-ad smile, longish platinum hair, and a tan the color of an old penny. But his most striking feature, it always seemed to me, was his laugh.

Even at age 12, his laugh sounded like it came from an old man with emphysema – imagine Billy Crystal doing an out-of-breath character in a Brooklyn deli. Better yet, recall the wonderful hearty snicker of Muttley, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon dog. That was Jimmy’s laugh and he used it readily.

Separation of 70 miles – Jimmy still lives near Pasadena – is no excuse for the years of severance we allowed to pass.

Our last time together was when we saw John Wooden give a talk at the historic Pasadena Civic Center. Jimmy and I shared many similarities growing up and near top of the list was our idolization of the Wizard of Westwood. Indeed, we both went to Coach Wooden’s summer basketball camp and memorized every block in the Pyramid of Success.

Too bad we neglected Wooden’s preaching to “make friendship a fine art” – at least with each other. Annually our Christmas cards echoed sentiments to rekindle our friendship in the New Year, but we kept failing to keep the promise.

Taking the “Initiative” – a block in Wooden’s Pyramid – Jimmy’s 2014 holiday card included wishes of “Peace, Love & Joy” and a specific date in January to meet. When I walked into Brendan’s Irish Pub & Restaurant in Agoura Hills – a midway drive for both of us – the sight of my old friend was a time machine making me young again.

Our 15-year separation might as well have been five minutes. We picked up as if we had just been in the middle of a conversation before one of us left to go to the bathroom – the latter happening a number of times on this evening, causing Jimmy to say, “I guess we are in our fifties and not teenagers anymore.”

An anticipated hour visit lasted nearly four as we reminisced and caught up on wives and kids, work and play, and raised our glasses to the shared loved ones we have lost – his cousin and my second “sister”; his aunt and my godmother; his mom and my mom.

Bidding goodbye, Jimmy and I made plans for another hello very soon, and these words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow came to mind: “Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.”

And the hug and the Muttley laugh, too.

*  *  *

Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Check out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

• Personalized signed copies are available at WoodyWoodburn.com
• Unsigned paperbacks or Kindle ebook can be purchased here at Amazon