St. Louis Trip - Part 1 Reconnecting with Old Friends

I have been looking forward to this trip to see Tom, Stacie and the kids for a long time. Even though we had all been together in June it still seemed as though a lot of time had passed. Part of that feeling comes from simply trying to keep up with the kids and their crazy busy lifestyle. I know it was a lot like that when we were raising our kids but I know for sure that I couldn't keep up now. Between their jobs and the kids school and activities it is go go go. They're really fortunate to have Jackie living close to help out when schedules and activities overlap.

The trip to St. Louis was a lot of fun for so many reasons. I got to reconnect with friends I had not seen since 1980 when I stopped in Apple Valley, California for a couple of hours the first day. I spent time with Al and Patty Maples friends from the '60's. Al and I were best friends and teammates in high school and college. He and Patty have been married for almost 48 years. Patty's sister Pam was married to another friend from that time, Ted and years after Ted passed away she married another high school teammate and friend, Johnny. Because I had to get on the road we only spent a couple of hours visiting and catching up but my plan is to stop again on my way home.

For sure, the older I get the more blessed I feel when I am able to reconnect with old friends. If you've read any of my previous blogs you read about some of the others and my hope is that there will be posts about even more as I continue to blog.

Al and Patty's Wedding Day

The last time we saw each other in 1980

Part of this quest I am on to find "the guys" is the fact that to often I hear that one of them is no longer with us. Paisano called me just a couple of weeks before I left on this trip to tell me that another of the Devils had passed. Mike was on a motorcycle trip to the mountains when he stopped at the last place he had run into Mike Biswell. People told him that Mike had passed from complications with diabetes in 2013. RIP Mike 'Papa Bear' Biswell.

Mike Biswell

I write about the friends we've lost not to mourn or be sad but to share the good times we had with anyone that is interested. 

I was reading this book right before this trip and finished it while I was traveling. It is a book I just randomly picked up on my last trip to Colorado Springs. In the book Miller talks about what he learned about his life while he was basically editing a memoir with two other guys with plans of turning it into a film. One particular passage really stood out to me and it wasn't something that Miller himself wrote he was quoting something that his friend, Marcos said. What Marcos said was;

"...essentially, humans are alive for the purpose of journey, a kind of three-act structure. They are born and spend several years discovering themselves and the world, then plod through a long middle in which they are compelled to search for a mate and reproduce and also create stability out of natural instability, and then they find themselves at an ending that seems to be designed for reflection. At the end, their bodies are slower, they are not as easily distracted, they do less work, and they think and feel about a life lived rather than looking forward to a life getting started.". 'He didn't know what the point of the journey was, but he did believe we were designed to search for and find something. And he wondered out loud if the point wasn't the search but the transformation the search creates.'   

I don't know what, if anything, I'm searching for but I know that I don't want to miss out on opportunities to continue the search. I do know that part of the search and a result of the search is finding old friends and sharing the present as well as memories of the past.