Tommy and me.

One day, when we were about 13 or 14, my best friend Tommy and I were walking down the railroad tracks near my house. We walked everywhere in those days. Some of the biggest, blackest, juiciest briar berries I have ever seen grew along those railroad tracks. Life was a delicious mystery then.
When Tommy and I walked, we talked. We talked about any and every thing - from the mundane to the philosophical to the abstract. On this particular day, while engrossed in one of these "deep" conversations, a train whistle blew. We quickly turned and saw that the train was about 20 feet behind us! You should have seen us tear through those thick briars down into the ditch - screaming through-out the whole procedure. We never heard it coming - or felt it. Of course, it was traveling very slowly, and I think the engineer was having fun with us. But, boy, that whistle was loud!

Once, when we were about 15 and our town was a quieter, more wooded, far less populated and all around better place, Tommy and I were walking down the highway, really late at night. It was dark and there was no traffic (an unheard of thing, now), and we were quietly talking. We were nearing my aunt G.'s house, when behind us we heard "clip, clop, clip, clop." A horse, hooked to a buggy, was slowly making his way down the highway. The buggy was empty and the horse was in the correct lane, as if someone was steering him. We just stood there and watched him pass. It was a very odd thing to see in the middle of a black, misty night.

Tommy has been gone for about 30 years now. I still miss him. I think about him almost every day.
Life is so fragile.