CHRIST IN WINTER: The
Irrelevant Memories of An Old Man—
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When our granddaughter was about three, our daughter was driving her to nursery school one morning when she said, “Don’t worry, Mommy, if I don’t say goodbye when I get out of the car. I need to go see my friends.”
That’s the age when we begin to recognize the possibility of friends. If we’re fortunate, all the rest of our lives, we’ll have friends we are eager to see.
In my senior year in high school, for the motto under my photo in the yearbook, I chose: I am wealthy in my friends.
I did not have friends until I was ten years old, when we moved from the bustling inner city of Indianapolis to an isolated farm. That sounds backward, but having a lot of people around does not guarantee friendship.
In Indianapolis, there was a boy across the street. His mother thought it would be good if we played together. We were playmates, not friends.
There were kids in my class at school. We learned stuff together. We were classmates, not friends.
The only other boys in our neighborhood were older and constantly threatened to beat up on me, just because they enjoyed scaring people. We were redskins and palefaces, not friends.
My older sister cut through the alley to walk to school with girls her age. They certainly did not want me tagging along, so I walked to school by myself. I ate lunch at home because Mother had two little babies to contend with and needed me to do mid-day chores, like put more coal in the furnace.
For my first ten years, I just didn’t have a chance at friends.
When we moved to the country, however, I walked a long half-mile, on a muddy gravel road, to get on Jimmy Bigham’s school bus, which had been new about 40 years before. Surely there would be one or two boys my age… Yes, there were. Darrel and Donald Gene. Day by day on that bus, they became real friends. Later, Don moved onto that bus route. And other boys on the bus who were not friends, but they weren’t hostile, either, even when arguing the merits of the Reds vs the Cardinals.
When I got off the school
bus that first day, I was met by Mr. Green, the grade school principal. He led
me through the school building to Mrs. Mason’s fifth grade classroom. On the
way, we ran into Jarvis, the quintessential jolly fat kid. He was also in Mrs.
Mason’s class. “A new kid!” Jarvis acted like it was the best thing in the
world. He led me into the classroom and introduced me all around, just like a
celebrity.
At noon, I pulled a cold chicken leg and piece of bread from my paper sack and ate lunch in a room with all the other kids who brought their lunch. Talking was allowed but difficult. We sat at desks in parallel rows. But we could chat with whoever was across the aisle, tap the person in the row ahead to make an observation, twist around to the person behind to hear a joke. Friendship stuff.
Because we had to declare bankruptcy, and lost our house in Indianapolis, and had to move to the country, I had to ride the bus, and eat lunch at school. Suddenly, I had friends. It was the second-best thing that ever happened to me.
I feel a little bad about that, remembering how happy I was to have friends. My parents paid a high price for that move that brought me friends. My father had lost his sight in an industrial accident and thus lost his job. We had no money. A primitive farm with no indoor plumbing or central heating, and almost no electricity, that was the only place we could afford to live.
But at the same time that my family became poverty-stricken, I became rich, wealthy in my friends.
Friends save us from isolation. They help us learn who we are. They make us better than we are. They are little Christs to us. “No longer do I call you servants, but friends,” said Jesus. [John 15:15]
That’s a problem, though, in old age, isn’t it? Friends die. Darrel and Donald Gene and Don and Jarvis are all dead. So is a whole host of others.
Yes, friends die, but they don’t disappear. That school bus, that fifth grade class, they are still a part of me. I continue to be wealthy in my friends.
John Robert McFarland
Here is an actual pic of my grade school at Oakland City.
