Best Friend Ever!
Our housing
development, Pennington Hills, was built in the middle-to-late 1950s, and most
houses were GI-loan houses.
At least
ours was.
Many of the houses had the
same floor plan.
Across the street from
us, the house was mirror-flipped but otherwise identical.
Soon after
my folks moved in at my birth in 1956, the Hefners moved in across the
street. At our house, Robert was the
oldest, then Sue, a year younger, then me, nine years younger than Robert and
eight years after Sue. At the Hefners’
house, Debbie was the oldest, then Pam a year or two younger, then Tommy, who
was about six months younger than me and therefore in the next-lower grade. I think the age spread between the Hefner
kids may have been about six years.
Anyway, I
grew up with Tommy as my soulmate.
Ray Bradbury wrote something similar in describing Will Holloway and Jim
Nightshade in the classic novel
Something Wicked This Way Comes -- that they had their fingerprints in the Play-Doh of each other’s
souls, or some such.
In this
photo we are on the steps of the Hefner house.
Tommy’s the one all bundled up while I look like Red Skelton’s “Mean
Widdle Kid.” I am about 1½ years old and Tommy
just turned one.
The story
goes that I used to push Tommy off the porch until he got big enough to push ME
off. After that we got along better.
When we
were in second and third grade, we would play Superman (after the George Reeves
syndicated show). At that time, Tommy
wore glasses and I didn’t. So, he got to
be Clark Kent/Superman. Hardly seemed
fair.
By the time
we were around eight years old, Tommy had spent a year wearing an eye patch for
amblyopia (aka “lazy eye”) and no longer wore glasses. However, I then needed them.
The
sensation of wearing glasses for the first time was disturbing. I had ridden my bike up to Dr Fooshee’s
office to get my first pair when they arrived.
My perception was so different that when I hopped on and pedaled away, I
tumbled my bike two or three times before I got used to seeing things in a new
way! When I was much younger, Mom had
let me wear her glasses for a few seconds.
The floor as perceived through her lenses was about a foot higher than
it really was, and I kept trying to step up to it!
Anyway, now
I was the glasses wearer and Tommy wasn’t.
In 1968
we went to the Tom Mix Museum in nearby Dewey,
OK.
In between?
We played nearly every day together.
On Saturday mornings, whoever woke up first
would get dressed, dash across the street, and scritchy-scratch on the others’
window.
We rode our Sting-ray-style
bikes everywhere.
In our
neighborhood, the garage floors were somehow more polished and smoother than
the driveways.
When we spotted an open
garage door and empty space within, we would whip into the driveway and into
the garage, hitting our coaster brakes and leaning into the skid.
We could whip a perfect 180-degree turn and
end up still upright with our feet down on each side of the seat.
This was our patented Bat-Turn.
Speaking of
Bats … When Batman came on for its two nights a week, one night it would be
at my house, and the next at Tommy’s.
His parents were gracious enough to let him keep an HO car set on the
floor of the living room by the sliding porch door, and we would wipe out on
the HO track as we watched the Riddler or King Tut get decked by Batman and
Robin.
When it
came to role-playing, I was at another disadvantage when The Man from U.N.C.L.E. swarmed into our ken. When we played U.N.C.L.E., Tommy was blond
while I had dark hair. That meant that
HE got to play the cooler guy, Illya Kuryakin.
Then, in
1969, my world ended.
More on that later.
