Did you ever seriously consider what having friends meant to you? I always took friendships seriously and tried to be a steady friend like I want my friends to be. I think back to my teenage era and think of Ted Parker and Elmo Dickerson, two sons of neighbor families in Germany Valley, Rabun County, Georgia. We were friends and playmates and went to the same little Baptist church in our valley. Boyd Hooper was another friend in my youthful days. All these friends are now gone and few of my age remain.
In high school at Clayton, the county seat, I had as my best friend Billy Long. He and I were like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, going on weekend hikes, fishing and camping outings. We explored Tallulah Falls Gorge and camped in the gorge at least twice. Billy carried a pistol and pulled it out to show a farmer who gave us a ride. The farmer almost ran off the road and we had to plead to get him to carry us on to Tallulah Gorge.
At Truett-McConnell College I had a roommate whose name at the moment slips my mind. He was a humorous fellow and his mother – his father deceased – had a big farm in central Georgia where on visits we went dove hunting over a baited field. It was ok as his mother dated the local sheriff.
All through my Air Force career, at key or critical junctures, a friend seemed to turn up when I needed one. On Luzon Island my wife and I met an older couple, Fred and Toni Barrington, who became the longest in time friends of our lives. Fred died some years before Toni, but we continued to visit her in Pensacola almost yearly for some years. One of the sons still corresponds regularly.
Once years ago, after I retired from the Air Force in August 1971, on the street of our local town, Clarkesville, Georgia, I parked my pickup after an early morning turkey hunt and met a lady with two granddaughters. The little lady was limping and I gave her a walking stick I had fashioned that morning while sitting against a tree, waiting for a gobbler, which didn’t come along. The lady, Josephine Turney, and I remained friends for many years until she died and by then a couple of her daughters had become friends and still are to this day.
In the Air Force, while in a lengthy stay in a US Army hospital in Japan, a lady specialist in rehab saw I was moping and arranged for a 12-year-old girl with a badly burned chest from a home gas heater explosion to join me in the daily whirlpool bath. The girl remained cheerful throughout our time together and helped change my mood and outlook on life.
One of the best meetings of my life was in school at Truett-McConnell College at Cleveland, Georgia. A black haired co-ed named Florine and I began to date and fell in love. She had another year to go while I left and entered the Air Force. Later, not knowing I was about to be shipped out, Florine and I married but soon after I was sent to Korea for a year. The marriage ties were strong and we later had one child, Amy, who today is happily married to Keith Pointer and they have two children, Alex and Kelley, now in college. While married life has been like a roller coaster as to changes and moves occurring and my trips out west to camp, fish and explore, life has been varied and interesting.
