“It takes a long time to grow an old friend,” John Wooden said, and a bookend “Wooden-ism” comes from his Seven-Point Creed: “Make friendship a fine art.”
On the latter, it pains me greatly to confess, I failed regarding the first friend I made in California after moving from Ohio at age 12. Jimmy Hart, just a few months my junior, was the cousin of my godsister, Karen, two years and one day older than me.
Karen’s family lived at Solimar Beach, and Jimmy and I basically spent my first summer in Ventura living there. Boogie boarding, exploring the tidal pools, playing basketball by day and eight ball pool by night, Jimmy and I enjoyed an idyllic summer.
Unfortunately, he lived in Pasadena so we did not see each other much during the ensuing school years.
Every summer, however, we would pick up where we left off at the beach house. Too, we occasionally had weekend sleepovers at one another’s house. We stayed up late watching a new show called “Saturday Night Live” and stayed up even later talking about girls.
Eventually, as happens, we went our separate ways for college and the ensuing roads of life. For a while we stayed in touch with each other’s ever-changing lives through Karen until insidious cancer stole her 26 years ago. Alas, without hers and the beach house’s gravitational pull, Jimmy and I drifted apart until we only caught up with Christmas cards.
This past holiday season, our cards, as usual, shared similar P.S. notes of good intentions: “It’s been too long. Let’s get together soon!”
And that was that until just before Valentine’s Day when I received a text from Jimmy telling me – not asking, telling – we were having lunch the following week. No more ifs, ands, buts or excuses. Pick a day; he would drive from San Gabriel.
Perhaps the best way to describe our reunion is that it was an hour before we stopped talking long enough to order our first beers and half as long again before we took a time out, upon the waitress’s umpteenth visit, to look at the menus.
Jimmy’s hair, once surfer long and Scandinavian blond, is long gone. His face, like mine, has laugh lines and lines caused by a youth spent in the sun at the beach. But what remains as unchanged as fingerprints are his radiant smile and a laugh that sounds like it is infused with champagne bubbles.
For a couple hours it was as if H.G. Wells’ time machine had turned 2023 into 1973. Naturally, we revisited the past, including when we saw John Wooden give a lecture in Pasadena, one of the last times we were together. Growing up, we both memorized Coach’s famous “Pyramid of Success” and always double-knotted our sneaker laces as he advised.
Reminiscing, enjoyable as it was, gave way to catching up on our lives today. We talked about our wives; our children, four for him and two for me, plus my two granddaughters; work, he was a middle school gym coach, now retired – “I always taught the kids about the Pyramid of Success,” he shared happily; and on and on.
Jimmy’s cheeseburger grew cold as did my tacos, and our second pints grew warm, because our mouths remained focused on more import matters. I wish you could have heard us.
If you have an old friend you have lost contact with, I urge you to make friendship a fine art by reaching out. For that matter, reach out to a newer friend and start growing an old friendship.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
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