Another Old Buddy

When the girls were in Scouting they learned a sweet, cute little song about friendship, which went:
Make new friends
But keep the old
One is silver
And the other is gold
While I was at my dad’s house this last time, there was a knock on the door and my dad said, “Oh, there’s Mr. Brenner!”
“I know a Mr. Brenner.” I started to say, when in walked a distinguished looking gentleman with a pencil-thin, Clark Gable type mustache who was an old friend’s dad. The mustache was a little lighter in color; otherwise he looked almost exactly the same.
“Say. You’re tom’s dad, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How are they doing? I’d sure like to get back in touch with them again.”
So Mr. Brenner gave me a card with an address and phone number for one of my oldest and best friends and I called him last night. It was strange, because it was almost like talking to a ghost, but Tom has always been an easy person to talk to and we fell right in and talked for an hour like it was only a few minutes. He’s still in radio with thenumber 1 morning show in the Dubuque market. We caught each other up some and talked about new and important stuff, too. Like, I never knew that Zebulon Pike had named another “mountain” (It’s a 500 foot bluff overlooking the Wisconsin and Mississippi River Confluence) “Pikes Peak.” We talked about life in the two places, I told him how we will occasionally have mountain lions walking down the street here and bears in people’s backyards and he said that they have a lot of eagles there because of the river and I told him about antelope and we just had a good time talking. We talked about how things have changed back home, as well and I told him I was glad that his dad was neighbor and friend to my dad and found out that he had seen my dad several times out walking mom’s dog, but had no idea who he was.
He said he plans on stopping by here from time-to-time. He doesn’t have a blog of his own, or even a website, but I guess I can’t hold that against him.
In a totally unrelated story, I talked to another old friend, older (in length of time being my friend, not age) that either Tom or Carter, and that was Harold. We have talked before and I have tried this year to keep my resolution to keep in better contact with people. Harold doesn’t even have a computer and doesn’t seem too worried about not having one! What a strange idea. He manages a fast-food place in Shawano and told me he saw my old boss, Ray, the other day. It really is a small world and all of my friends are getting old. Sort of golden oldies, I guess. Too bad Carter’s not just old, but he’s ugly, too.
Remember, the Good Book says, “Thine own friend, and thy father’s friend, forsake not…”