A friend of mine died a few days ago. It was one of those deaths that don’t make any sense because he wasn’t sick or doing anything out of the ordinary. It was one of those deaths that remind all of us that we don’t have any guarantees of tomorrow. It was also one of those deaths that take your breath away when you hear of it.
I couldn’t even go to the funeral or visit with his family because I’m on the other side of the world, and even though I have a good reason to be here. for the moment, thatreally stinks.
His family and mine have lived in the same neighborhood for almost as long as I can remember.
William was one of those men who spent his time looking after every one else even when he didn’t have time.
He was a skinny teenager when we first went coon-hunting together. He had an old Walker gyp that was even skinnier than he was, and to put it gently, she wasn’t the best hound in the woods, but still, she was better than the worthless mutt I owned, and we certainly had fun wandering around the woods at night. We hunted together for years, his dogs kept getting better, although somehow mine never did.
William was milking a herd of holstein cows by the time he graduated high school and as hard as he worked he still had time to hunt. One of my best memories was of a night when, while waiting for me to retrieve a hound, William fell asleep sitting against the side of the truck.
When I returned, I could not find him in the dark, and for three hours I walked up and down the road, whistling and shouting, even honking the horn on the truck. I made so much noise that the local residents loaded their guns and came to see what was taking place in the river bottom.
After three hours I was convinced that he had fallen into the river and drowned, but while I was trying to explain this to the angry farmer with the shotgun, he suddenly appeared by the truck and wiping the sleep out of his eyes, asked what all the fuss was about.
Another time, as we returned from the woods, we were challenged by a man who lived nearby waving a large rifle and demanding to know what we were doing there.
Having permission to hunt the land we were on and being on a public road gave us some sense of confidence so Williams answer was to point to the two hounds on the leash, the coon I was carrying, and the rifle his little brother was carrying, and reply “Bass fishing! “Caught one too! “How ’bout you?”
After a little more conversation in which William reminded the gentleman that we indeed had permission, and were legally hunting and walking on the public road, and that He needed to take his rifle home and go back to bed.
Their family farm was next to ours, and as neighbors do, we shared work for years. Putting up hay, fixing fences, working cattle, and visiting at the feed store when we happened to meet.
William’s greatest impact in my life was his visiting my parents two or three times a week after they got old and weren’t able to get out. At the time I was working two jobs and taking care of the farm, so I wasn’t able to do as much as I needed to do, but William never failed to look in on them, to listen to their stories, and to fill them in on the neighborhood news.
A few years later, I remarried a city girl, and since I was still working nights, when the weather was bad, he would never fail to stop in and make sure she had a good fire built and everything was put up for the night.
A good friend of mine died a few days ago. It was sudden, and I’m not going to pretend I have the words to express my sadness to his family. I’ll never be able to tell them properly how much he meant to me, because he was, to them a son, and a father, and a brother, and as much as I lost, they lost even more.
William died like he lived. He was working. He always worked. He lived the principles I admire most. He worked hard, He helped people who needed help. He detested free-loaders and liars and cheats. He paid his bills and he took care of his animals. He was good at his job, and he was proud of his heritage and his family.
When William stepped in front of the truck that killed him, he was living the life that made this country what it is today. Because he was working for the State, there were flags flown at half mast all over Missouri in his honor, but that honor should be rightly bestowed on him, not because of the way he died, but because of the way he lived,
I lost a good friend a few days ago. I will miss him every time I hear a coon hound running a track in the bottomlands. I will miss him every time I see a holstein cow or a field full of big round hay bales. I will miss him on the cold winter nights when the wind is blowing, but I will remember him when I see his two sons growing up on the same land he lived on. I will remember him because he was my friend.
