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When I’m traveling alone, I think a lot. My vehicle has satellite radio, Bluetooth and even antique CDs for entertainment, but thinking is my preferred pastime to make miles fly by.
While driving Saturday, I reflected on knowing most of my life is in the rearview mirror. That thought becomes increasingly poignant every time I’m headed home dressed in my Sunday best with a funeral program folded in my pocket.
My parents instilled many good things in me, one being to “choose your friends wisely. Those you call friend will shape your life.”
Ronnie Lilly and I graduated from Mount Pleasant High School among the generation who remember hearing the news at school that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas.
After graduation, Ronnie and I found ourselves as roommates at Kilgore College along with a third partner in our “adventures,” our high school classmate, Mike Williams. We sharpened our skills at pool, late-night card games, overflowing the washing machines at the laundromat across the street from the girl’s dorm, and the memorable night we drove to downtown Dallas in awe of Texas-O.U. weekend activities, then traveled back to Kilgore the same night.
Ronnie had the wheel, I was riding shotgun and Mike fell asleep in the back seat. Arriving at our apartment just before dawn, Ronnie and I went in and hit the hay while Mike continued snoozing in the car. He awoke later that morning, thinking we had stopped for a motel room and left him in the car.
All this fun, yet we still found time to attend a few classes.
By spring, Ronnie and I flipped a coin to determine whose old Chevrolet, his 1957 or my ‘58, was more likely to make a trip to Southern California. During Memorial Day weekend, we headed west in his car, stopping for a night in Las Vegas. We got a glimpse of Dean Martin singing at The Thunderbird. No one was at the door, so we walked in and disappeared into the shadows. The legendary crooner was almost through his second song when a tall man in a black suit offered two 19-year-old kids from Texas some options, the best one being to leave immediately.
We packed a lot into that summer of 1967: Working days to make money for school in the fall; Saturday nights cruising the burger hangouts, listening to the Beach Boys on the jukebox and drooling over cool California hot rods. Sunday afternoons, it was Malibu Beach watching surfers and researching the still somewhat new beachwear fad called bikinis. And there were trips up the coast to Pismo Beach roaming the dunes in sand buggies with my Uncle Bill and his friends.
We headed east back to Texas over the Labor Day weekend, crossing the desert in the night to avoid sizzling daytime temps. We cleared the desert into southern Arizona well before dawn. Sleep was beckoning, but no town within miles had a motel.
It wasn’t the Hilton, but a middle-of-nowhere roadside park picnic table provided a couple hours of shut-eye, and we were on the road again at sunup.
Ronnie’s car made the trip without a hiccup despite the gas gauge not working. That was a problem just once, not far over the state line from New Mexico into Texas. Ronnie hitchhiked into town for gas while I stayed with the car. I’m not sure he ever believed me about the hippies in a Volkswagen bus covered with peace signs and flowers stopping to see if I needed help while he was gone.
“This is Texas,” he laughed. “We left all that behind in California two days ago.”
Someone once said, “Life is an adventure best shared with good friends.” I’ve been blessed with many good friends sharing a lifetime of adventures, but I could never have asked for a better friend than Ronnie.
Friends and family gathered in East Texas Saturday to remember him and celebrate his life. I drove home afterwards, thankful to have counted Ronnie as my friend and as someone who definitely shaped my life.
— Contact Aldridge at [email protected]. Other Aldridge columns are archived at leonaldridge. com
