Old Friends

The letter came out of the blue, hand-addressed and quaintly snail-mailed. “An invitation,” it began.

It was from a childhood friend of my father’s named Howie. He and his wife, Joyce, were hosting a dinner party for two longtime friends and their wives. “By any chance, are you and your wife free that evening?”

They must be ancient by now, I thought. Howie, Norm and Lee grew up with my father, running through the alleys around 16th and State. They were Depression kids and some were war vets, instilled with survival skills that steeled them for the toughest times of the century. Today they’re retired. Their race has been run. I last saw them nearly a decade ago, at a funeral of course.

In a way, I grew up with them. Norm, like my carpenter father, was a craftsman. He taught auto mechanics and replaced a blown engine in my first car, a Ford Galaxie. Howie was scholarly and attended the University of Chicago. He wrote a book-length manuscript on Thomas Jefferson and gave a copy to my father. Lee was the witty one, always ready with the wisecracks.

But that was so long ago. Time has moved on, taking my parents and my wife’s parents. I didn’t spend much time with older people anymore. We’re the older generation now, we baby boomers. Yet I realize I miss that contact with the generation before us, their different worldview, how they see things as the finality of life closes in.

What would they be like today? I wasn’t sure, but mailed back an optimistic RSVP: “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Howie was waiting at the kitchen door when I arrived with my wife, Cathy. Except for a slight tilt to his carriage, he was as I remembered him: tall, somewhat reserved, but always smiling. I could hear voices from the next room: Joyce’s breathless storytelling, Norm’s thunderous holler, his wife Carol’s sparkling laugh, Lee’s exuberant growl.

I walked into the room and recognized their faces. Suddenly it felt like 20 years ago. I felt at home.

We traded updates of our lives, and pictures of their grandchildren were passed around. But it was their memories of my father that really got me. As we sat down for dinner, food my mother could have made – steak and baked potatoes, cabbage salad and green beans – they told stories I had never heard: of hanging out with my father in a State Street diner, drinking coffee all day for a nickel a cup; or the day they replaced the transmission in somebody’s Plymouth and went tearing out to the wilds of Oconomowoc; or how my father, the best man at one of their weddings, had to cancel at the last minute because his young wife was giving birth to their first child. Me.

Coffee was served. The conversation shifted. They grumbled about their health and all the medical procedures they’ve had to endure. After dessert came a switch to politics, with more grumbling, about the new president, race, cultural changes and the like.

I didn’t agree, but didn’t say much. I had a strong sense of déjà vu, remembering all too vividly the arguments with my father as I came of age. We argued about everything from rock ’n’ roll and Beatle boots to Martin Luther King and the war in Vietnam. It was a painful time.

But I remember warmer moments, too – sitting silently with him, head-to-head, over a chessboard; or standing in his workshop, his hand guiding mine as he taught me how to use a wood plane. As I grew older and had kids of my own, my view of his staunch opinions softened, and maybe his of mine. I saw how my own stubbornness had been half the problem.

He died too young. He was 58. I was 35. In his last months, he lost the use of his voice. It seems ironic in retrospect. We’d always had problems communicating. Now that was impossible. We never quite reconciled our differences – or our similarities.

Had he lived, my father would have turned 80 this year. Sitting with his friends brought back, if only for a few hours, a glimpse of my gruff, hard-headed father, but also the big-hearted man with an infectious sense of humor, who turned his backyard into a garden paradise, who would belt out Sinatra behind the wheel of his Mercury sedan, and make my mother laugh with joy every time they’d hit the dance floor.

All past, but somehow present this day, as I broke bread with the old-timers. He was still so alive in their memories. And it occurred to me as we said our goodbyes and headed into the cold that I knew my father just a little better now, as seen through the eyes of his friends.