The Friends

A couple of years ago, cleaning out the Arizona house and thinking about enchiladas made me think of days gone by. I do that from time to time. I wrote “The Friends”.

I love the rain. I loved the rain on the roof of the house where I grew, in San Dimas Canyon. The coming rain made it seem like a good day to post “The Friends”.

Father and Carroll White were great friends. Such great friends that we, their children, call them The Friends. We have a great picture of Carroll and Jack, taken in about 1938. The families were camping. Carroll had a concertina and they both loved to sing.

When father was young, he had a terrific bladder infection. These were pre-war times, depression times. My mother was packing oranges and Carroll had been called to go see Jack. Ah, yes, the days of the house call. Carroll came to the packing house in La Verne and called my mother off the line. Mom saw him standing down below and he asked if she was Mrs. Beckman. She said yes and Carroll said, “You have a sick husband. You need to go home and take care of him.” Father was so sick he once asked Mother to make the lady stop shredding cabbage at the foot of the bed.

Carroll came to see Jack again while he was recovering, up in the canyon, and Noche, my folk’s black Cocker ate Carroll’s hat. My mom felt so bad she got him a new hat, and that started a friendship that lasted a life time. Vesta, Carroll’s wife, became one of mother’s closest friends.

Father said Carroll used to come by the grocery store… the Prune Parlor as Father always called it… and visit. He practiced surgical knots on the radiator cap of Father’s Model T behind the store. The Whites had a movie camera. There are movies of Carroll and Father building a block wall at the White house. Carrying furniture in the Model T. There was camping. They sang in the choir at the Methodist Church.

Then came The War. It was always referred to as “The War”. Carroll went all over the US and then to France. Father went to Camp Roberts. Father taught boys to shoot, march and drive and Carroll patched boys up. Vesta told Mom one time that for years Carroll had nightmares and woke trying to crawl under the bed.

Father closed the grocery story in 1952. Carroll was treating colds and sore throats. Everyone went to Doc White. Father started working for the State Board of Equalization. Carroll loved to sail and spent every other weekend on the boat. But, they remained great, great friends. By this time my folks lived at the mouth of the canyon. There were enchiladas, New Mexico style, in front of the big windows looking across the canyon. The enchiladas had a bit of fire to them and Carroll didn’t have much hair. Mom would give him a T-towel to tie around his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes.

Each Christmas morning, there was the open house at the White’s, before brunch was popular. Father sang at all five White children’s weddings. Carroll had many funny sayings, limericks, doctor jokes and just sayings. Still to this day, if we remember a funny saying, I will say, “Doc White?” Ruth always says, “Gotta be.”

In 1970, my folks moved to Arizona. The Whites visited. Any trip back to the LA area included a visit to the Whites.

Stephen, Carroll and Vesta’s middle son, visited Father and Mother in Arizona some times, while driving to school in the midwest. He wrote in a letter, “Jack and I were looking at some beautiful Arizona vista when Jack said, ‘You tell your Daddy I think about him… Not when I am party’n but in my quiet moments… I think about him.'” Stephen said, ” I did tell him, in just those words a day or two later. He took it in. He didn’t, couldn’t speak. He was quiet, but he took it all in… and so did I.”

Later Carroll began to feel bad. Something was wrong with his liver. Before the days of scans and other modern techniques, they did surgery. When Carroll woke up, the first thing he asked was what time it was. It had not been long, and he knew they had just closed him up again; cancer. A couple of days later, a clot killed Carroll quite suddenly in his hospital room. His office nurse, Doris, called the folks and said, “We have lost our friend.” I asked Mom how she and Father were doing and she said, “We are walking close to the walls.” They soon packed and went to La Verne.

There is very little I regret in my life, but not going to the funeral is one of them. The funeral was at the big Brethren Church because so many wanted to come. Father sang. Hundreds and hundreds came. About 15 years later, Vesta and Mom passed away less than a month apart.

Stephen stopped by about a year ago. We had enchiladas, New Mexico style and talked about The Friends. Father was gone by then and we hoped they were having a great time, singing in heaven.