“As our past led us to the future, our present leads us to the past. Friends are the weavers of the treasures in the trunks stored in our mental attics.”
My niece, Barbara Gard, sent the above about my column “There’s No Friend Like an Old Friend.” While I was writing it, names . . . impressions . . . events . . . whirled around in my mind.
I left out a very important person from my youth. Classmate Eddie Fort was one of the few people who loved reading as much as I. “Real readers,” as old Granny called us, have a special bond. On our way home from school, Eddie and I used to stand on the corner next to my house and talk books, relive books and luxuriate in books with that satisfaction that only dedicated readers achieve. Our encounters as adults were infrequent, but one of us always asked, “Read anything good lately?” Alas, Ed is gone now, but I remember . . . I remember . . .
Different people from our formative years leave unique imprints on our beings. When I was about six years old, Lois Frazier, a neighbor lady who lived three houses away, came into our yard where Mother was hanging out washing and introduced her little daughter who was two years younger than I. That little girl was Wanda, and the small-town childhood that we shared during the late 1940s and early 50s determined the adults that we were to become.
After they left, Mother said, “Now, you probably noticed that Wanda’s and her mother’s skin is darker than ours. They may be of a different color, but they are just like us underneath the surface. Some ignorant people use a very ugly, nasty, hateful word about people like them that hurts their feelings.”
She told me the word and said, “Rose Mary, if I ever hear you say that word, I will slap you!” Now, my mother was a gentle person who never even spanked me, let alone slap me, but I believed her. Thus began her lessons about accepting all people and the start of one of the core friendships of my life that blessed me with a depth of understanding that many people never have.
Our present leads to the past: One of the delights of my elder years has been to become reconnected with Wanda Frazier Smith. Time was when she was either at my house, or I at hers. Then, without our intending it, our paths diverged as paths do. When she got to high school she ran around with her classmates and I with my classmates and the Nicitinos. I went away to college, and she came to Indianapolis to work for the government and later received her college education. In later years I saw her only when her parents and her sister, Barbara, died and at a Knightstown school reunion three years ago. We promised to call one another, but didn’t.
I came across her name in our address book a few weeks ago and called her on the spur of the moment. We talked for over an hour, and she came for lunch two weeks later. Oh how we talked and talked and talked — for four hours — and we still aren’t done!
We caught up with our lives and families. She gave me a copy of a fascinating article about her family’s history in the Knightstown area published in the magazine of the Indiana State Historical Society to which she donated pictures. She met Bill for the first time and saw pictures of Vicki, Tom and my perfect grandsons and showed me her pictures. Then we dove into the deep pond of our shared childhood: Knightstown, its people and society’s attitudes about race. She said, “You and I didn’t worry about that stuff. We were just kids, growing up. Rose Mary, we are friends forever!” wclarke@comcast.net