Finding Childhood Friends on Facebook

Several weeks ago I decided to search Facebook for an old child hood friend. I remembered that his family had a TV back in the 50’s when television was just coming on the scene. Not every household in America had one so it was a real treat when my mother and I were invited over to watch this strange new gadget. My friend and I would watch The Mickey Mouse Club, The Adventures of Davy Crockett, Roy Rogers and the Lone Ranger. My mother and his mother enjoyed the Perry Como Show when our programs were over. I became enthralled with this glowing box that brought music, cowboys and adventure into American living rooms each week.


I have this memory of me, my friend Jimmy and his older brother, Bobby. We were at the back of their dad’s restaurant in the alley that sloped down toward the next street over. The brothers had devised a red, Radio Flyer wagon with a cage of wooden coke bottle crates wired together on top. The idea was that one of us was going to climb inside and have the other two push the contraption down the alley toward the street without crashing, but that is where my memory fails me. I can’t remember what happened next! I think it crashed, but we all survived somehow to be stupid another day.

Jimmy was one of my earliest friends that I can remember. We were like Mutt and Jeff. I was the smaller one of the duo. He could always make me laugh. Train tracks ran just behind Jimmy’s backyard and when a train passed through town the ground would rumble and the blare of the horn was deafening. This was great fun, especially when my friend would pump his arm to see if the engineer would blow the horn an extra time or two.

When my mother remarried, we moved to a farm some distance away. My friend Jimmy and I didn’t get to see each other that often, but when he got to come out for a visit, we had a great time running around the farm and playing like old times. Jimmy’s mom was offered a job out in California, so they moved away when I was around 9 or10, I think. We never saw each other again and soon I lost track of him for almost 50 years until we reconnected on Facebook a few weeks ago.

It was amazing how our lives tended to parallel one another once we began to catch up and compare notes. We both had married and divorced and had children, but the strangest thing was realizing that when we had parted, we were just young kids and now we were talking about our…grandkids. Almost 60 years of life has left big gaps in the space-time continuum. We were supposed to be 10 years old, but now we are grandpas. I found this picture of Jimmy and me as I began working on my “60 Years Project” (whatever that turns out to be).

My next friend, Kyria, turned the tables and tracked ME down on Facebook. I remember her as the cute little girl who lived up the alley and across the street from the apartment where my mom and I lived. The apartment was situated over the bakery of Jimmy’s dad’s restaurant. To this day, I have wonderful memories of the days cinnamon rolls were baked below and the sweet smell drifted up the stairs to our place. Anyway, Kyria and I were playmates as far back as I can remember. She had curly blond hair in ringlets and a sunny smile and I had a crush on her at the age of 5. I remember a sandbox near a church behind the minister’s house. He had two older daughters, perhaps they were teenagers, but they treated us very well, as I recall. We had great times playing in the sand and the dirt of that backyard.

There is one memory that just will not go away, but I don’t know if it actually happened or not. I had just gotten cleaned up and changed into my nice clothes. My mother and I were walking down the alley heading for Kyria’s house. I think we were going to a party there. It had rained and there was this big puddle in the street in front of her house. I got it in my head to sit down in the puddle. It seemed so inviting. So I did to the shrieks and laughter of Kyria and her mom. My poor mother was mortified, but I was happy.

Again, when my mother remarried and we moved out to our farm, those carefree days of play with Kyria came to an end. I don’t remember seeing her after the move and like Jimmy, I lost track of her. When we connected again on Facebook that “old time-warp thing” happened again where we were discussing our grandchildren before I knew it. The years have been very kind to my friend and when I looked at her Facebook photos, I could still see that little girl with the curly hair and the sunny smile. I scrambled through my old pictures to see if I still had that one picture of us playing in the dirt almost 50 years ago. Well, I found it here it is.

It seems like time flies by the older I get and memories of my early childhood and the friends I had back then are fading with each passing year. That’s why this is such a gift to be able to find and catch up on the lives of my two oldest childhood friends, but then life is full of surprises as I approach the big 60.

Food for THOUGHT…