Maplewood Mania - Part 1

Moving to Maplewood was no easy chore…with my health problems and Kris with his…we relied a great deal on my son Ben, my daughters and my friend Ron.

Now, Ron and I have been friends since we were fourteen. I could never have had a more loyal friend. Before I went to stay with my sister, and was in and out of the hospital all the time he and his wife Karen asked me to stay with them. They are both pretty wonderful. To prove how good a friend Ron is…he has helped me on almost every move that I ever made. He has always been right beside me trying to make things better the best that he can. We both grew up on the East Side of Saint Paul, went to High School together, partied together, started the University of Minnesota together (it was a waste of time and money on my part…because of my partying I am the only one that I know that ended up with a negative GPA).

I just had a recollection of one of the many pranks that we pulled on each other. Now you must remember this was during Jurassic times. I had a briefcase that was very much like the Atticus Finch carried in To Kill A Mockingbird. I also had courses where you were required to buy five or six books. It was a very cold February afternoon, and the classes that I chose to go to that day were done…so I headed for a couch in Coffman Memorial Student Union (made famous by Max Shulman’s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis), put my briefcase at the end of the couch, “scrunched up” my jacket to use as a pillow, took off my shoes and went to sleep.

Ron took the briefcase, filled it with large boulders, took my shoes and went to sleep on another couch. This is the “old Minnesota February” where it stayed 20 to 25 below zero for weeks at a time. I woke up before Ron and I just knew that he had taken my shoes…so I took his and started off across campus. When I got to the car…I found my shoes, and saw Ron trudging across campus with his leather gloves on his feet…he reminded me of a chimpanzee or gorilla. Neither of us said a word about it, I had already changed shoes…so he put his on and we went home. It wasn’t until I opened my briefcase at home that I found out what he had done…he had left me a note…”these will probably do you just as much good as your books because some of them haven’t been opened.”

Ron and I disagree on politics, religion, philosophy, and just about everything else…but we would do absolutely anything for each other. When I look for a definition for friend…it always turns out to be a picture of Ron.

He helped us move into the house in Maplewood and swore that he would bring his axe and use the hide-a-bed for a bonfire before he moved it again.

It was pretty nice having more space and a fenced-in back yard for Ellie (Kris and Lynsey’s Long-haired Chihuahua)…I thought it was hysterical that the previous tenants had a Mastiff and the yard was posted with BEWARE THE DOG signs. We got settled in and things were pretty good.

More about this next time…