Railroads, Rivers, Route 66 and Running: "WE REMEMBER MOMENTS"

In several recent posts I talked about and shared a trip that Clarence JR Green and I took. We spent a lot of time talking and "walking down memory lane" if you will. One thing that became apparent to both of us during one conversation is that we crammed an awful lot of living in a relatively short time between the time we, as a group began hanging out, and the time that five of us left to go to boot camp together in February 1968. The majority of us graduated from high school in 1966 and 1967 and while some of us went to school together, we all didn't know one another until after high school.

I asked JR, "How is it that such a small part of our life can be such a huge part of our memories"? He had an interesting answer and it made sense when we discussed it further. He said, "We remember moments". A lot of the memories that I have and that we shared are actually multiple memories of some of the same events so instead of remembering several different events, we remember parts of the same event multiple ways. I'm not sure that makes sense to anyone else but it does to me.

I've spent the past two days going through old albums, year books and photos and still have many more to go through and then I still have hours and hours of work left to organize them and try to make enough sense of them to make it possible to share with people who weren't there through my blogs. In this particular post the moments I want to remember and share are some of the many that the five of us who enlisted in the Navy together shared.

One reason that this became somewhat urgent for me is the fact that while JR and I were sitting in a bar and having a beer my final night in Athens we decided we needed to try to track down Fred, we had tried in the past and both of us had spoken to him once or twice over the past forty plus years but we have never connected. When we left boot camp, Fred went to the East Coast and other than visits I don't think he ever moved back to California.

The good news is that we were able to get in touch with Fred and had a great, but brief visit over the phone. The bad news is that we asked about Rob and found that he had passed away about a year and a half ago from a heart attack. I felt the same way as I did when I heard that Ted had passed away, very sad, that we never stayed in touch over the years. Fred stayed in Florida, Ted returned to and stayed in California, I moved to New Mexico and then Colorado before returning to California in 2011 and Clarence stayed on the east coast and eventually settled in Georgia where he has been for over thirty years. Our paths seldom crossed.

The irony is that we all went into the Navy on the 'Buddy Plan' because we were friends and we knew our draft numbers were coming up eventually when we quit going to college, some never started, and the Navy, spread us all over the country after boot camp. Clarence went to Georgia, Fred went to Florida and Rob, Ted and I all went to Memphis for varying lengths of time before splitting up again.

Even though I haven't seen them for many years and we all lived different lives I miss Ted and Rob and I'm saddened by the loss. I'm glad that Clarence and I have stayed in touch and have managed to get together in Georgia twice. I'm scheduled to go to Florida in January to see my grand children and Fred and I are planning on trying to get together.

Here are some pictures to share some of those moments that we remember. There will be more in future posts I'm sure because there were a lot more than just the five of us who had a major impact on each others collective lives.