Vintage Friends
What a break after a period of hustle and bump to have a whole day-and-a-half of quiet fun at the house of these two, who know even better now how to have fun even than they did when they looked like this.Bobbie I know from summer camp when she was my counselor. The same year this picture was taken I made her to come to Mass with me one winter Sunday in an effort to get her to re-subscribe to the whole long list of Hellfire Do's and Don’ts the Church was so obsessed with then. She was a junior in college coming to see her 12th grade friend, and sat so sweetly through my sermons, then went back to this fine boy seemingly unharmed. I'm just realizing that at the same point in my own college years I too found a fine boy, who almost shortened the life of the people who raised me by being a Protestant.Though the four of us still fly and drive and trudge through epic snowfalls to see each other this past Wednesday I came on my own to our friends' nice stone house. They erved a pork roast that cooked for six hours in a slow low oven; a wine reduction sauce, pears in maple syrup, and a salad of greens, toasted almonds and root vegetables, all preceded and accompanied by two red wines so smoothly great my astonished taste buds almost made my whole head lift clear off my shoulder in delight.I slept like the dead in a cool high room, scribbled my little scribbles, did a Body Pump Class and watched 3 glorious episodes of a favored HBO series with my old pal before 5pm rolled around and she brought me back to the airport.Home now, I look at these pictures and think that they are just the same, these two, still ready to stride out in the chilly sunshine and perch on a log; still willing to open their house to this same old weary traveler.
Bobbie at 20
