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Sunday, December 18, 2016

"Ronalan" (reminiscence)

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1


Some men spell their first name "Allen."  I think that's the traditional form.  But there's also "Allan" and even "Allun" or "Alun."  But I've always thought the correct spelling was "Alan."

I thought so because at an early age I came to have, well, I could say a "best friend" whose name was Alan B---.

2

I'm not sure when I first got to know him.  It may have been at Mrs. Fr------'s Kindergarten across town where my parents sent me at three years old when my sister was five and was thought to need kindergarten to get ready for first grade.  Maybe they got a discount on the second child.

Mrs. Fr------'s was in the district of our elementary school, and lots of the kids there would naturally have gone on to Wo-------- School, where I went. 

Or maybe it was in first or second grade with Miz Ph-- or Miz Dobbins when I first got to know Alan.

Anyway, it was when we were very young that we were close.

3

He was good at sports.  In our kids' crowd, I was pretty good too.  (Hard to believe now, but true.)  But I don't remember much about playing outdoors at Wo-------- School.   There were two classes in our grade all six years.  I don't know how many children were in each class, but the classes didn't seem huge.  Maybe 20, or 25...

In those days, it must have been the fashion or the convention to use a lot of competitions to keep us kids engaged: like Spelling Bees, the model for most of the contests.  The teacher would put us into two lines and the first ones in line would go to the chalkboard.  The teacher would give the first two students a word to spell.

When we got it wrong, we returned to our desks.  When we got it right, we went around to the end of the line to have another turn later.  There must have been some way of handling the situation when everyone in one line had sat down and there were two or more left standing in the other line.

I think that was how it went anyway.   Something like that.

4

I don't remember kids at their seats being bored, by the way, or not paying attention.  They were probably supposed to be writing the answers down in their notebooks?  Maybe.  Anyway, there was cheering for "your" line and encouraging "your" team-member at the board.  Must have been noisy...

As I remember it now, about 65 years later, the last two left standing were always Alan and me!  That can't have been true, but I'm sure we were in fact leaders and rivals in some (many, most?) of our elementary classes, and we enjoyed it.  From what I recall, our teachers must have valued our enjoying competitive roles and the excitement about learning spelling, state capitols, basic math, and so on that all this generated.

"Yay, Alan!"
"Yay, Byron!"

5

I was in a car-pool while at Wo-------- School.  All six years?  Yes, probably, although I did walk home once in a great while in the later grades.  The School was actually quite close to my Dad's office too, and sometimes after school, I would go over to his building and do my homework, or roller-skate on the sidewalk outside, until he had finished up enough to go home for supper.


But from my earliest memory, my mother used to take her turn along with four other mothers of children - all girls - in my grade, carting us five kids to school about 8 a.m. and home again somewhere around 3 p.m. one day per week, each.  The closest to us lived about two blocks away, and the farthest lived about five blocks away.  We didn't drive by Alan's house every day making those pick-ups or drop-offs, but we just about could have.  His house was about five blocks away in the same neighborhood.

6

Alan's backyard abutted with the backyard of another boy in our grade at Wo--------, who lived next door to two boys who went to private school (their dad was a judge).  Next door to Alan lived a girl in our class whose brother was one year older than us.  About two blocks on the other side of Alan was a boy in our grade who moved into our neighborhood when we were about 9 and who left before we were through at Wo--------.


About two blocks in another direction lived one of the girls in my car-pool, whose brother was a year older or maybe two.


So, maybe it isn't surprising that Alan's backyard was often a gathering place for boys who wanted to play ball.  Sometimes it was just Alan and me playing catch, baseball or football probably depending on the season.  He had a basketball backboard on the facing above his family's garage door too, so we played there too from time to time.  But mostly - as I remember it now - it was in the backyard where we played most.  When another of the neighborhood boys showed up, we just widened the field a little.  It seemed seldom that four or more didn't show up, though, on a good day.

7


Among memories of dozens of unplanned, pick-up football games in the neighborhood that way is one unique memory of a long afternoon one day when someone had planned for a troop of us - maybe this was in Boy Scout years - to spend an afternoon playing football in an athletic field across town at a Presbyterian Seminary.  We had a great time.  And it started as our games often did, with two of the guys being named to chose up teams so long as Alan was on one and "Byron" was on the other.

The teams were bigger than the usual two or three, maybe five.  Anyway, we were evenly balanced and the game looked like it would end in a tie.  But something happened, and one side won at the end.  I don't even remember who it was, probably Alan's team.

But the reason I remember this whole day was that when the whole bunch of us was trooping along together back to the parking lot where our parents were going to pick us up, one of the kids for some reason said out loud: "Well, yes that was the best game ever!  But what I saw was that the player of the day was... Byron!  He was the best of all of us today."

This was a strange thing to say because Alan had already begun to show signs of the athlete he was later going to become, and he usually was by far superior to any of us - faster, stronger, more agile...
But I did have a career day! Gosh, how hard I tried.  I wondered if Alan felt bad about this kid - maybe it was Lester - having spoken up that way.  But he didn't seem to.

8

By fourth grade, the convention was "block assignments."  On Monday, the teacher would assign a big block of work in our English and Math books for the whole week.  The idea was to give each kid the freedom to go at her or his own pace.  During the week, then, every now and again the teacher would say, "Now get out your Math books, and work on your assignment for the next 20 minutes."  Then, the teacher could move around the room, giving individual attention especially to anyone who was having trouble mastering the material.


Pretty soon, four or five of us - including, yes, Alan and me - started competing as to who could get all the work done first.  It was really great, for instance, on a Tuesday, when Mrs. V----- said, "Take out your English book and start work on your assignment," and one of us called out: "Oh, Miz. V------, I've already finished all the assignment."

Often, Alan and I finished about the same time.  Mrs. V------- started sending us to the library or sometimes to the auditorium.

9

We didn't do schoolwork together at home.  But for some reason, one time we did start drawing projects at the same time.  Maybe one of our mothers suggested that we draw that day.  Maybe it was raining.

Anyway, we used to comment on each other's pictures and make comments, "Say, you could..." add some item or use some color.  In any case, one time we ended up spending more time than usual on a particular crayon drawing, both of us.  And when we showed it to the mother nearby, she asked who did it and we said both of us.  Then she asked how we would sign it, you know, down in the right corner.

So we went back to wherever we were working and talked it over.  We ended up writing, "Ronalan" - which was short for "ByronAlan."  Then for a brief time, that was our thing: at school and at home, collaborate on a picture and sign it "Ronalan."

10

By the time we finished elementary school, Alan and I had grown apart.  Why was that?  We had not had a fight or an argument; we liked and respected each other just as much as ever.  Wasn't Alan in the same sixth grade class?  I don't actually remember him there.  I'm not even sure he went with the group of us who trooped together once a week to the ballroom dancing school three or four blocks away, in a big empty room over a drug store.  The Boy Scout experience was over for all of us by the end of sixth grade, but after Alan recruited me into Troop 3, we didn't do much Scouting together either.  We were not assigned to the same platoon, as I recall...

...But none of that would have killed the almost daily pick-up games in the backyard that had occupied us so for, well, it seems from this perspective, for years.  The fact is, we were just bigger.  We rode bicycles all over the place, and a backyard - even a big one like Alan's - just was not big enough for us anymore.

And when we got into junior high, there we were in organized sports... or organized other stuff.  Alan was into sports big time, and I wasn't.  I was in the band, but we didn't practice after school very often.  I can't remember what I was into after school.  I do remember feeling more lonely in 7th and 8th grades than in any other part of my life.  That seems to be a common experience, doesn't it?


I don't think I had any classes with Alan in junior or senior high.  He was a star player in football and basketball.  My high school was well-known in the state, often in the play-offs.  In our junior year Alan and the other guys played in the state basketball championships, and in the senior year, they ("we") won!

I was into the high school paper and the drama club.  We had chosen different paths.

11

So Ronalan was no more after we were about ten.  I don't know if I would have thought back about it now if Alan hadn't spoken to my wife at our fiftieth class reunion a few years ago.

It was only my second reunion, the previous one being the thirtieth.  S----- hadn't come with me then.  So, she was meeting lots and lots of folks for the first time.  I was talking to someone else at the final dinner, after a couple of hours of cocktails and socializing, and I noticed S----- was engaged in conversation with an healthy-looking, athletic but intelligent-seeming... Oh! it was Alan.

Still chatting with the other someone, who was a close friend all through high school, I was inching over toward S----- and that other half of Ronalan.  I overheard him say the most extraordinary thing:
"'Byron' was important to me.  Changed my life."  Now, it was clear the long cocktail hour was having an effect.  "I used him as a model..."

The next morning, this was not one of the conversations S--- remembered.  I hadn't been able to move over fast enough to join in either.  Later, I waved at Alan across the room but he was with other folks.  So I don't know really what he could have meant.  I mean, Alan was the big man on our campus.  He was everybody's hero.  He carried his glory modestly but it followed him...

Now, he'd gone on to Med School and moved to the big city in the east of our state, where he was a  physician all these years.  Had he noticed how I put classwork first, or exercised good self-discipline, as he went through that rigorous program?  The thing is, he was the role model, not me.

Well, I don't know what good influence I could actually have had.  But I am pleased that, at least at that one moment at reunion, my elementary school chum remembered me in a good light.

It embarrasses me a little to tell this story today, but it was a brief but big role reversal.



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