His hair may be grayer now, he may weigh more
or less. I don't know. I haven't seen him in nearly
20 years. But this is how I always think of Randy.
It is nearly noon. My friend Randy, with whom I worked in the summers of our high school years and who has been my best friend since we were 16, should be about halfway through his triple bypass surgery.
When Randy comes out of surgery — at approximately 2 p.m. (Central) — his ex–wife has promised to call me.
In the meantime, I've been thinking of old times. I've been thinking of the days when Randy and I worked together in the summers. We were on a summer maintenance crew at a small college. Mostly we painted dormitory rooms. Once, we were dispatched to a tennis court, given sledgehammers and told to break up the surface so a new one could be put in its place.
On one memorable occasion, a truck loaded with fresh manure was brought on campus and the maintenance workers had to get in the truck and shovel the load into the flower beds.
Randy and I did some traveling together when we were teenagers. When we were in high school, we drove to St. Louis and spent a week with his oldest brother. In 1981, when he was a young newlywed with a young son and was living in northeastern Arkansas, I was a college student in northwestern Arkansas, but I traveled across the state to visit him in the summer. Several years later, after his first marriage had ended, he moved to St. Louis and remarried. I drove up to visit him, to meet his new wife and to go to some baseball games at Busch Stadium.
On those trips in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I remember listening to a cassette I had of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in concert. One of the songs on the tape was called "The Waiting." I guess you'd have to be at least 35 to vaguely remember when it came out, and you'd have to be at least 40 to remember those days well, but younger folks have probably heard the song occasionally on the radio.
And when I hear it, it always reminds me of my trips to St. Louis.
The refrain of that song has never seemed truer to me than it does today. The waiting truly is the hardest part.
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