Tragedy isn't the only time you find out who your friends are

I've known Bill since I was 24 and he was 48. How I'm 43 and he's 66.

We've played many hundreds of rounds of golf together and driven thousands of miles to those golf courses, because we like to play in the country—and talk a lot in the car.

On a heartbreakingly perfect summer day Friday, we went around twice at our very favorite course in the world, the nine-hole Pine Hills, in Ottawa, Ill.

And on the way back—for all two hours—Bill read aloud the Robert Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson—mostly the scene on Air Force One in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963—and we each fought back tears at many points and roared laughing at others.

Now, it's a really good fucking book, but ...

They say you find out who your friends are in tragedy.

You can idenitfy them in joy, too—the peculiar joy you feel when you know you are the only two nuts in the country that consider this the perfect way to spend a perfect day.

You were weirdos to begin with, you acknowledge. But through twenty years of communication, you've made each other even weirder—and in exactly the same direction.

And that's where a measure of pride begins to creep in.

Comments

[Bill Sweetland]

David:

The trip back from Pine Hills to Chicago DIDN'T take two hours; it couldn't have! We got back the 95 miles to Chicago in twenty minutes. Or was I dreaming?

I had no idea, I swear, that you were as caught in Caro's toils as I was, choking back tears. I WAS aware that both of us were howling at the assassination antics of that soulless narcissist, LBJ.

Need I say that for me that day was as perfect and unforgettable as you write. It confirmed me in my belief that the greatest happiness in life is conversation. And by that I don't mean idle chit-chat and shop talk--although shop talk can assume the dignity of conversation if it brings ideas and reflection to the fore.

I remember at least a half-dozen things you said that stopped me in my conversational tracks and forced me to ask myself, "Is what he's saying right? Is it defensible? What do I really believe?"

And that, I submit, was what made that whole day memorable. I get so little of that exquisite feeling at any time in my life!

Bill

[David Murray]

I was getting choked up because you were getting choked up. And the reason you didn't know it was that it was none of your goddamn business.

[sac prada pas cher]

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