(l to r, Frank Bonaccorso, Bill Danaher and Dave Nehen)

TRES AMIGOS EN OREGON

As I downshifted into third approaching a turn between the canyon walls, I was distracted from my thoughts by a large yellow splat hitting the face shield of my helmet. I’m no entomologist, but this latest splotch added to the growing pallet of colors, which had accumulated on my leathers and my Harley, had all the earmarks of a Monarch butterfly. As I settled back into the cadence of the twisting road, I returned to my thoughts.

I had not seen either of these guys for over forty years. Both of them had been my closest friends all through high school, but we all drifted off in pursuit of our respective and considerably differing dreams. I had reestablished contact via the internet almost two decades before, but we had never even spoken on the telephone. Two of the most important relationships in the most formative and vulnerable years of my life had been reduced to yearly, if that, emails.

I received a followup email, from Frank, sharing that he was scheduled to hook up with Bill in Oregon for a couple of days. He wanted to know if I would be interested in the three of us getting together. I wrote back that, I was struggling with the uncertainty of some personal health issues and was not sure if I could make a trip across half of my state and then half of Bill’s.
More troubling, In the back of my mind, I was not sure if I even wanted to get together again. I had fond memories of both these young lads who shared and supported me through a very difficult time in my life. Part of me just wanted to hold on to those memories, undisturbed, and not cloud them with the realities of today. Frank shook me from my position by emailing me that Bill would be willing to drive half way so that I would not have so far to drive. At the same time, my wife was urging me to seize the opportunity, that I would regret it if I did not. I have adopted that saying, “Fear is temporary; regret is forever” as a credo and what she said hit a nerve.

I called Bill to make arrangements for the reunion. We agreed to meet at the Apple Peddler restaurant, located in the high desert Oregon town of Hines. I had seen a number of photos of Frank on the internet so felt I would recognize him. I told Bill he would know me by my Harley.
As I pulled up into the parking lot of the restaurant, I immediately recognized my faux pas; it looked like a Harley Davidson convention with about twenty-five hogs filling up most of the lot. Fortunately, I was early, and the three riding groups pulled out about ten minutes before Frank and Bill arrived. As their car pulled up, I could see the passenger pointing at my scooter, and the driver backed in right next to it.

Before I recognized his face, I recognized his walk. Frank ambled across the lot, with the driver right behind. From a distance, I would not have recognized Bill, but once he was up close, he still had that twinkle in his eyes, and his smile was still infectious. I have never been much of a hugger; being a retired police sergeant, I just developed a need for personal space at all times. But there was something about this meeting that not just called for, but shouted out that a hand shake would not suffice. Hugs were laid on pretty heavy. It was good.

Sitting in that sunny booth, we spent several hours catching up on the happenings, some happy and some not so much so, in our respective journeys through life. Despite the vast differences in the paths, and ultimately our current destinations, we found similarities.

One thing we all agreed upon was the positive impact our experience in the Class of 1966 had on each of us. There were teachers, not surprisingly, different for each of us who had nurtured us academically. We reflected on the dedication that our class members had made to serving society through their choice of occupations. We acknowledged the extremely high percentage of classmates who had gone on to college, postgraduate, and even doctoral work. We wondered if this was something unique to our class, or was it something that would be seen in the graduating classes from Alemany before and since 1966.

At some point we realized that the restaurant would probably like to retake the small bit of real estate we had tied up for several hours, so we moved the reunion to the parking lot where photos were in order. After considerable discussion that any 14 year old would have been able to get the auto-timing feature to work on any of our three cameras, Bill finally prevailed in this effort, we think. There was an air that none of us really wanted this to end, but my night vision is not what it once was. I had witnessed several road kills on my trip there. When it comes to a deer versus a motorcycle, neither is likely to walk away. After a needed liberal dose of more hugs, we parted.

I was a little concerned about the trip home. Four hundred miles on a bike is at the top of the daily mileage spectrum for those of us who are too mature to still belong to the iron butt club. Reflecting upon our reunion, I experienced the best ride of my lifetime on my way home. All of my pre-trip fears were unfounded. As I continued to ride along, I realized that the mental image I had of these two young lads from my youth had just been replaced with a more vivid one of two mature men, each of whom had developed into individuals that, I have been and continue to be proud to have called friends for much of my lifetime. For all of our differences that we talked about in our journeys to date, we seem to have arrived as one in the important things.

An open highway, my Road King vibrating beneath me, the wind in my face, the sun on my back, and newer, better memories to carry me until the next reunion. No, life just does not get much better than this, at least not until my dog and wife greeted me in my driveway.

Dave "Jazz Man" Nehen