OPEN FORUM: Friendship

By DELMAR LEATHAM

I have twin grandsons who remind me of Romulus and Remus, the Roman twins that were raised by wolves.

If one of my grandson’s heads downstairs and one heads outside, I don’t worry too much. But if they both head in the same direction and things get suddenly quiet, I know that trouble is on the way.

All children tend to remain friends throughout their lives but some friendships endure better than others. Romulus and Remus established Rome together and both wanted to rule.

Their friendship ended when politics got involved. One brother decided he wanted to be king and he needed his brother out of the way. So, Romulus killed his brother and ended up playing in the sandbox by himself.

Other friendships are longer lasting and not as violent. A pair of boys grew up together on separate dairy farms in the Moapa Valley. They worked together, they played together and they went to the barbershop together.

One friend had a very large and distinguished beard, the other friend detested hair. If a single hair touched his ear, it was time to see the barber.

The bearded man was already in the chair. So the friend, rather than sitting down, decided to make a phone call. Those were the days when the phone was attached to the wall near the barber’s chair. He calmly walked to the phone, picked it up, and also picked up the barber’s shears and ran them through his friend’s beard. The beard was a complete loss but their friendship endured.

Both were rather large men and when one of them returned from the doctor with the diagnosis that he was a muscular mesomorph (short fat man), these two friends decided to go on a diet together.

After dieting for a week, on of the men declared that he had lost 5 pounds. His friend responded “That’s like throwing a suitcase off the Queen Mary!” That ended the diet. But their friendship remained.

I still exchange Christmas cards with my college roommates. We try to get together once a year to remember old times. We lived in a third floor apartment and our bedroom windows faced the parking lot.

I was working under my car on a Saturday morning, when a water balloon dropped from a third-floor window landed and in my lap. I crawled out from under my car and questioned their genealogy. Some of our neighbors questioned my lack of vocabulary. After 50 years we are still friends, my vocabulary has improved and the story grows new details with every telling.

In high school my best friend was a bookish fellow. His ability to study and find information served us well. I would think up an idea and he would figure out a plan.

How do you make nitro glycerin? Read a book, gather a few items and head to the hills.
Knowing the danger we were getting into we built a machine to automatically mix the ingredients at a safe distance. It was a plate on one end of a balance and the acid in a cup on the other side. The idea was to shoot the plate and drop the acid into the other chemicals and create the nitro glycerin.

We then shot the bowl containing all the chemicals and we waited for the explosion. Nothing happened. We were eventually able to get a cloud of purplish smoke but no explosion.
We were lucky and we all know that it is better to be lucky than to be smart.

It’s strange how we don’t remember the difficulties from those long-ago days. I guess after 50 years, a bump or two in the road just doesn’t matter. Beards grow back, hard feelings are forgotten and we avoid all explosives.

Call an old friend and see if their memory is as good as yours.