Personal History

When writing last week's story about the time my father threw a snake at me, I went on line to be sure I had the full and correct title to Roger Conant's A Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians of Eastern and Central North America.  While on line, I saw that a copy of the book - the cherished Second Edition from my childhood, with the original cover! - was on sale at Amazon for a mere $3.99.  How could I resist?  I went ahead and bought a copy on the spot.

The book arrived yesterday - in great shape for a used book, but sadly without the paper jacket.  But you can't judge a book, as they say, and the contents, including the color plates, the range maps, and the reference to "copious quantities of foul smelling musk," were exactly as I had remembered.

This got me to thinking about the life-defining road trip I took across the USA back in the summer of 1969 with my three best friends, camping in state parks and hunting for reptiles and amphibians, Conant's field guide ever at hand.  I had gone through elementary school, at least Grades 4 through 6, with two of those friends, Robert and Doug, and met the third, a "Stephen," through the other two by Grade 6.  We were best of  friends, inseparable, or so we had thought before the rigors of Junior High schedules and of family relocations (mine) ultimately drew us apart.  But in the Summer of '69, the summer between our 8th and 9th Grades, we were still fast friends with identical interests, which largely consisted of lizards, turtles, and snakes, British Invasion rock 'n' roll bands, science fiction, and a budding awareness of girls.

After we were all assigned to different classes in High School, and then after my family moved out of state, we tried to stay in touch, but as we entered our mid- to late-teens, we found our interests and personalities had diverged and that we no longer had as much in common as we had thought.  We never had an official "falling-out" or any big fight or confrontation or anything, but we just sort of drifted apart - Robert and Doug off to college (Emory and somewhere in the upstate SUNY system, respectively) and Stephen and I to the blue-collar work force (I eventually enrolled at Boston University in '76).

So last night, while leafing through Conant, I got curious and Googled my old friends.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of doing that years ago.  Whatever  happened to my old best friends, and where and who are they now?

I couldn't find much about Stephen, other than a few different addresses all within 25 miles of where we grew up, and a LinkedIn profile identifying him as a "Transportation Specialist" for our home town's public-school system.  Fortunately, I didn't come across an all-too-easily-found obituary for him, either.

It turns out that Robert became a well-published professor of plant genetics at U Mass, Amherst. After Emory, his education and the road to his Ph.D. took him through U Cal Davis,  New Mexico State, Cornell, and Melbourne, Australia.  He has a long list of publications on plant DNA technology with those dense, scholarly titles nearly unfathomable to laypersons.  I had always known he was the smartest of our group of friends, and was glad to see that he had achieved his goal of becoming a for-real, bona fide research scientist.  Sadly, though, I learned much of this through his obituary - he passed away in 2010. The obit didn't disclose the cause of death. 

It turns out that Doug, still very much among the living, became probably the most successful of all of us.  He was always interested in the arts and as I recall, he entered college as a Theater major.  It turns out that somehow, like many creatives, he wound up in advertising and is now a Senior VP and Creative Director for a big-time Manhattan agency.  In 2012, Business Insider listed him among the "37 Creatives Most Lusted After By Rival Agencies," and shortly after being added to the Lust List, in fact got recruited by one of those rival agencies.  It's often cynically said that we secretly resent the success of our friends, but in this case, I am truly happy for him.  I reached out and "friended" him through Facebook, and he accepted my request this morning.  We briefly chatted through Messenger, but there's only so much you can say about a 45-year gap in contact, other than it's great to know each other are still alive and well.  He looks good, toned and healthy, dresses like you'd expect a mid-60s Creative Director living in Brooklyn to dress, and posts almost as many anti-Trump memes as I do.  

Picture four skinny boys wearing t-shirts, shorts, and mocs, chasing after a corn snake in a Carolina pine barren during the summer of '69.  Woodstock was just a few weeks away from happening.  No one had head the name "Manson" yet.  America had just landed a man on the moon.  Picture us running, then freeze that frame and cut to the closing credits.  One of us would go on to become an academic and scholarly researcher of plant DNA, one of us would become the Creative Director of a prestigious NY firm, and somebody has to drive the school buses.  

And one of us became a . . . what?  A "very happy 60-something former Zen Buddhist looking forward to a bright and wonderful future?"  A "recently retired environmental consultant?"  A "blogger who goes to a lot of music shows?" What would be their thumbnail sketch of me?