I received a phone call the other day from someone I hadn't heard from in years. It was a guy that I had gone thru grade school and high school with and he was wanting some information about another classmate. I knew the moment I heard his voice who it was. Loud and brash and full of bravado, he hasn't changed since he was in a kid in those respects. I remember my mom saying he reminded her of a little banty rooster. I think that growing up in a family of eight kids, he just had to make a lot of noise in order to be heard.
He specifically called to find out about a fellow classmate that he heard had been diagnosed with cancer and was not well. I wasn't able to give him any news but I promised to call around and see what I could find out and let him know if I found out much. We chatted a bit more before I hung up the phone and I could only shake my head and smile, that some people never change and in some ways that is a blessing. I know most people that knew him, would roll their eyes or shrug their shoulders or give a knowing nod upon hearing his name, as if that explained everything. He has had a bumpy road in life, and I am sure his cocky ways only added to that bumpiness.Having known him since the second grade, I have just come to know that is who he is and accept him for it.
I went to a small country school growing up. It wasn't actually that small in size compared to most rural schools. The building had originally been a high school and was later changed to a k-8th grade school with the older students bused off to a bigger town with a high school.
It was big and square and made of red brick. Upon entering the two wooden double doors, you met a wooden staircase that lead upstairs to a landing. Off of that landing were two very large rooms to the right, two very large rooms to the left, and a small room towards the back which served as a library. It wasn't much of a library, having a bookshelf on either side of the room, a water fountain in the corner and on the back wall, two small wooden doors that when the brass bar above it was pulled down and released, opened the doors into a dark tunnel that one slid down like a slide,as a fire escape. Going downstairs there were a set of steps on either side of the main wooden steps that were concrete and painted grey. At the bottom of the steps on the right was a gym with a small stage for school plays, at the bottom of the stairs the girls restroom. At the bottom of the stairs at the left side was the boy's restroom and directly to the left was the lunch room, next to it a door that lead to a janitors room of cleaning supplies, another door to it's right that lead to the boiler room. In that room was a door that lead to a set of steps to the outside, and the other door lead to what use to be the old coal room.
Upstairs the one large room on the left, and one large room on the right side were both used for the classrooms, and the other two large rooms were used for storage and for playing indoors when the weather was bad. The floors were all pine wood, and narrow slatted, with one small set of wooden steps off to the side that lead up to what was the teachers office. The one and only phone was kept up there, along with a roll topped desk, the copy machine, and a door that lead up another flight of stairs up into the attic.
The large room to the right on the main floor was called the "little room". It housed grades k-4th, and the large room to the left was called the big room, and contained grades 5th thru 8th. The total combination of both rooms was roughly 35 kids. In my grade class there were mainly four of us. Me, my twin bro, and the guy who called asking about the other 4th member of that class. Thru the years, another kid might move to town and for a year or two or there might be someone else to join our class of four. One kid who moved in the area with his family joined our group in the 7th grade and went on to high school with us for a couple of years.
He was the strangest fellow that I had ever come across. His sister was a brunette, his mom and dad had dark hair and he had the biggest mop of the reddest hair I had ever seen. His hair only took second stage to his freckles. Wow, did he have freckles. Big dark blotches of freckles that literally covered his face, his neck, his arms and feet. He was short, and wore big thick black framed glasses and was cursed, or blessed, (however you look at it) with the name of Earl.
So between Earl, me, my bro, that banty rooster tow headed guy, that left one other guy in our class, the one now that is sick. He was an only child in his family and had the misfortune of taking after his mother's side. His dad was a tall, strapping farmer, whereas his mom, although tall, was thin almost to the point of seeming sickly herself.
Every single day that he attended grade school with us, he was always so neatly dressed, with blue jeans, oxford type shoes, a button down shirt and a sweater vest. His hair was trimmed neatly and never seemed to be out of place. He wore brown glasses and had only a smattering of tiny brown freckles across the bridge of his nose. He was small and thin, very close in size to the banty rooster guy, except his hair was brown instead of blond and he was quiet. But I guess all of us were more quiet than our one classmate.
My sweater vested friend gradually changed as he entered into high school. Long gone were the neat vests and buttoned down shirts, replaced with t-shirts and faded jeans. Glasses were traded in for contact lens and his neatly trimmed hair had grown longer and more straggly. He grew taller but still retained his thin frame. When he graduated from high school he moved on and drifted a bit before finding a career in the police dept. He had married, divorced, had one son of his own. I have to admit, I am not sure if I would recognize him now if I saw him.
I have thought a lot about him this past week, along with those other few classmates. When I think of each of them, I don't really think of them as I last saw them in passing or even on our graduation day. I think of Earl with all his freckles, happy go lucky, and hopefully just as happy go lucky in his adulthood. I think of banty rooster guy and how he never changes, always a loudmouth, yet some how endearing with his bravado. I think of me and my twin bro and how we have changed, and I think of sweater vest guy, and how he is just a darn kid, and too young to be dying of pancreatic cancer. I think of all of us as kids and wondered just when it was we grew up. I don't think it was a particular time or place, but in a moment. It's in a moment when you realize that life and things change,...like fashion trends and sweater vests.
