Thursday, February 21, 2019

                                         Long Time No See, Morris.

     Last week, I got a call on our answering machine. 
“Hi, my name is Kerry and I used to go to school with you. This is my phone number. Call me.”
 
     I knew what this was about, our fiftieth high school graduation reunion, he said as much in his opening dialogue. The cat was out of the bag. No surprises now.
 
     “Are you on the high school reunion summons board?” I asked him, plaintively.
 “Nay,” he answered, affirmatively.

     Well, in so many words. He denied it, but I knew he’d come ‘round to it again. Kerry was like that ‘way back then, smooth, articulate, genius, and it was all because, he said, he read Playboy--for the articles, of course. As did I, in the latter years of my life, looking for the early 1970s issue that supposedly had one of our his classmates in it as Playmate of the Month. She was somebody our mutual friend, Arthur, dated once, he said. I wasn't sure I'd recognize her, as she was only described to me (I didn't go to that school) and, had I attended the same high school, I would certainly remember someone with potential like that.
 
          So I was on guard awaiting this 'Kerry's' real reason for calling. He could be any yayhoo using a name from their year book trying to fool me into believing he was legit. So you're Kerry, huh?

          Well, we hadn’t spoken for years. I don’t recall a fall-out or anything. It was just life and distance that eroded our contact. Well that, and of me being ‘off-the-grid’ for the past five decades. I made sure no one could contact me from the high school reunion committee.  

     I didn't want anything having to do with his old alma mater, not old girlfriends (they’re a lot older now, I suspect), not old teachers (they're mummified by now), or long lost relatives who’ve discovered me on their recent DNA/I Am Me searches.
 
     I moved ‘way away north into near-Canada and changed my name, hair color, I.Q. rating, and declined participation in my community just to be below the radar--in case anyone from that place I used to be from--tried to contact me.
 
     Granted, I may have missed out on a fortune, perhaps somebody who remembered I did them a good turn ‘back in the day’ and then sought me out after they were billionaires, couldn’t find me--then died unexpectedly, with no heirs.
 
    Or more likely, somebody who awoke from a coma, remembered me and bought a new firearm just for the occasion. Alas they couldn’t find me either, but have lived a long and prosperous life awaiting news that someone saw me at their 50th high school reunion, and kept ‘that there gun’ all oiled up and ready to go.
 
     Maybe it's someone from next year’s 50th reunion in 2020. I was stupid(er) back then and she wasn’t the forgiving type. Who knew? Or a current 50th reunion member, (from the high school I did attend), isn’t any more welcoming either. I may have been married to her for awhile now that I think about it..   
 
     This old high school ’friend,’ Kerry, who called me says he’s been retired 6.5 years, and weighs 215 pounds. (HAH! The real Kerry never weighed more than 170 lbs., his whole life, was six feet tall and as big around as a drinking straw.) I don’t know who this guy thought he was kidding. 

     Any actor worth his or her salt would've done a character study, or at the very least looked at a year book photo (and not the graduation pic, because nobody looked like that in real life), and most certainly read what people scribbled on the inside covers and between the pages, like these doosies:

"Hey, let's get together this summer 

and take a road trip in your kick-ass 1958 Morris Minor!" 

 "Kerry! You rock!" 

"Take care of Sue and the baby! 

               Have you set a date? Invite me!"
 
    And isn’t that a strange phenomenon? That despite all the years that have passed that a person still thinks they know the other person like it was yesterday and the years haven’t altered anything about either of you. You just get back in stride, dredging up old memories of things and people with whom you knew in common, as quick as though you carry a reference on your phone.
 
     And so it was, me and 'Kerry', we just fell into a lope, a sort of running commentary about cars and people, just as casually as if we’d never missed a weekly conversation. It struck me, this out-of-the-blue phone call, in which he said he reads the Wannaskan Almanac each week and read my recent story about going to Florida with Jerry & Marion Solom (February 14th entry). 

He said someone in his family has a condo, on AnnMarie Island, 160 miles from Indiantown, that they stay in on occasion two or three weeks at a time. I even got a call from two Golden Valley Township snowbirds who, they said, read the same story. C'mon, who put you up to it?
 
     I’ve written many stories in my life, many that never get such rave reviews, if only because readers don’t commonly contact the writer. Like a billion-and-one other writers, I’m always honored when someone takes the time to comment in any way, although I'm suspicious that this Polar Vortex thing probably forced these people to stay in their houses and they were just bored out of their mind. Even if 'Kerry's' call was just a smokescreen for the upcoming high school reunion, it was slow here at home too.
 
     I have to tell you a little about my friendship with the real Kerry or I'll feel I haven’t developed his character role enough. I don’t want him to seem ‘flat,’ although in reality, if he laid on a level surface somewhere, there wasn't anything that protruded above his belt buckle, from the top of his curly-haired head to the bottom of his sensible workshoes. This guy was flat. So let’s start at the beginning, ‘way back in about 1966 or 1967.
 
     Now I know that a few of you weren’t even born yet, and a few of you may have been in Vietnam or off its coast. Some of you were but gleams in your parental unit’s eye(s), and had at minimum, developed potential after the bar closed. Obviously, you don’t want to even think about your parental units having ‘sex,’ but they aren’t the parental units you know now as parental units. They are two teenagers, or 20-30-somethings, that you’d never recognize lip-locking or hooking-up just as you’ve been doing, thinking you and your generations invented sex. (Good grief, your arrogance annoys me.) 
     
     But back then, the real Kerry and I, were starting Amos Hiatt Junior High School in Des Moines, Iowa, from opposite ends of the city, him from the north Guthrie Avenue area off E. 14th Street, whatever that was called, and me, from the ‘east side’ by the railroad tracks that determined that I attend Amos Hiatt, and not Woodrow Wilson Junior High School, to the east. https://hiatt.dmschools.org/about/history/
 
     Kerry and I, and another guy named Arthur, who lived a few blocks away from me, were three friends through to high school and for years afterward. We shared a host of experiences including three fist fights: Arthur and Jesse in gym class (I was a spectator), Kerry and Mark in English class (I was a spectator), me and Dale on the way home from school (I was a spectator), and another experience that was life-threatening and a game changer for Kerry, as it included a homemade canon and black powder of mine. I was a spectator then too, until Arthur shouted,
"STEVE! YOU BETTER GET DOWN HERE!"
     
     That being said, Kerry lived through it all, but sadly not without impact, and graduated from junior high and high school, ahead of us, as it turned out. The three of us sort of separated in high school because our their school was virtually an inner city trade school, wasted on all but the most with-it students (mostly girls). I don’t remember what Kerry took. Accounting, maybe? I think girls had something to do with it. If I had gone to their high school, I could check my year book, but it is probably buried in one of our four upstairs dormers here at home. 

     Arthur took Aviation and became an airplane mechanic. Yes, that school had its own aviation lab at the Des Moines Airport in 1968-1969-- and he moved to California soon afterward, never looking back.
 
     Me, I wanted to be a large-animal veterinarian, believe it or not, but I let higher math intimidate me, and turned to Commercial Art instead. Although I excelled, I never pursued it aggressively. 

     Kerry got married first, and as he was never one to sit still or idle for very long, he got a good job, started a family, and began working there right out of high school, maybe 45 years, until he retired. Nobody can call him lazy.
 
     Kerry was a well-read kind of guy. He knew shit we didn’t know. And one thing he always lorded over us was how excellent the 1000 Series British car, the Morris Minor was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Minor

https://www.google.com/search?q=1958+Morris+Minor&tbm=isch&source=univ&client=firefox-b&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiggpWP7cPgAhXGz4MKHXWOAUYQsAR6BAgBEAE&biw=1495&bih=1074 

     As we couldn’t afford a Morris Minor, Art and I bought less expensive British sports cars. I had a blue 1968 MGB convertible, and Arthur had a British racing green 1959 Triumph TR3 convertible.  I sold my MGB to purchase my 1972 Land Cruiser. Arthur wrecked his TR3, along some railroad tracks trying to follow me in my Land Cruiser (Hah!) then had to settle for a brand new 1971 Datsun 240Z. (Tough break.)

But as of 2019, Kerry still has his Morris Minor (This guy says). He had the engine rebuilt 35 years ago and to this day, dutifully, turns it over by hand every two weeks whether it needs it or not, just to keep the rings lubricated. 

     This beauty of a little car is positioned, sideways, in his garage, where it’s been these past 40 years to allow other vehicle storage in said facility. Its suspension is supported by jack stands. Its uninflated bias-ply British-made tires are soaked and rotated weekly in individual glass pails of virgin olive oil that are changed out yearly to prevent sidewall rot, and all its steel components i.e., frame, rack & pinions, rear axle, differential, and driveline assemblies have each been paper-wrapped in cosmoline to prevent rust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmoline
      
     The Kerry representative said they plan to drive it, for the first time ever, on their 50th wedding anniversary, in 2.5 years He said he’d call me.