Old Friends

 I think everyone remembers their first childhood friends. For me it was the boys from Barton Vermont. I was 5 years old, in first grade at Barton Academy. Peter Kambour and Glen Randall. Peter lived up the street on Lincoln Avenue. Glen lived across town on a hilltop farm which I could see in the distance from our front yard.

Peter had 3 younger brothers; Jimmy, Tommy and Teddy. Glen had 3 younger sisters; Sue, Leena and Gail. And I had 2 younger sisters; Gail and Wendy. We were all the older brothers with all that came with that.

There are lots of memories of hiking in the woods, playing in the stream, eating choke cherries and digging holes in the ground. We threw rocks at porcupines and hornets nests and learned the hard way not to do it again. We poked Glen's pigs with sticks and sniffed gas from the lawn mower. We put tabasco sauce on the dogs food and laughed as they ran for water. We roamed the Barton Fair without adult supervision. We tapped the maple trees and sugared off in the spring and sledded in the winter. We swam in the icy cold waters at Crystal Lake. We did all the things that young boys did and were not supposed to do. We were a band of brothers. And one day when I was 9, we moved back to Maine.

I remember grieving the loss of my friends and the life I knew in Vermont. Living just off the Rte. 1 truck route in South Portland I often saw St. Johnsbury tractor trailers and used to put my hand over my heart to honor that lost time. Pete visited for a week one summer in 8th grade and I hitchhiked back during my college years and enjoyed staying with Pete at his camp on Shadow Pond. I never did reconnect with Glen though I stopped by the farm in 2012 and visited with Sue and her father, Earle. 

I tracked down Pete in 2017. He was living in Chelsea Massachusetts and I was in Natick and we spent an afternoon together. He was struggling with a lost marriage, a lost job and a lost license from his alcoholism. And he was grieving the loss of his younger brother Teddy from suicide. His fiancé was also undergoing cancer treatment. But he was hopeful that he could overcome these losses and rebuild his life.

I tried calling him over the following years, but the calls never went through. This week I searched for him online and found his obituary. And in searching his Facebook friends I found Gail Randall and Glen's obituary. They died within months of each other in 2018, both just 66 years old. Peter died suddenly of unspecified reasons. Glen died of cancer.

It has left me with a hollow feeling. Regrets that they are gone and that we had not spent time together before they left. Sadness because I knew them once when life was simple and friendships meant so much. 

So, goodbye old friends. You will always be my first friends. You will always live in my memories and in my heart.

Glen

Peter