Ten years ago today we lost one of
the most amazing guys, and one of my best friends! I don't need to write about
all the stuff in the hospital, or about how I heard about the accident, you did
an amazing job! I just wanted to write a few small stories that I remember
sharing with Derrick.
I remember...
I spent the night at your parents'
house across from Kelloggsville Church to hang out with Tim and Derrick. We
were probably around 8 or 9years old and had been shooting our little yellow
and red recurve bows obsessively. I'm pretty sure we kept the local archery
shops in business because we had to buy so many new arrows because our old ones
were stuck in trees, bushes, or buried in the grass too deep for us to find. We
thought we were pretty cool, and I'm sure we were! We would watch hunting shows
at night and then wake up and go shoot bows. This morning we had planned a
little something for the squirrels that lived in the giant tree behind your
house. We were going to hide out in the back yard with our bows and wait until
the squirrels came down the tree. If the squirrels came out that morning, we
were convinced that our finely honed skills, and dull, wooden, aluminum pointed
arrows would take down an squirrel that came into sight. We planned our hunt
probably better than any 8 year old ever has. We walked through the shoe-porch
and quietly closed the door behind us so the squirrels wouldn't hear us as we
got into position. I don't know how well we thought we would be hiding, but we
were probably about as hidden as 3 young boys can be in a freshly mowed
backyard. We had this amazing plan, but it started to rain. It didn't take much
discussing for us to decide that we were going to sit out and "hunt"
anyways. Thinking that we were the ultimate hunters, we took pieces of wood,
plastic, and Styrofoam and built 3 huts, all in a line, in the middle of your
backyard. There we sat under scrap pieces of stuff from your garage,
determined, dry, and armed as heavily as our parents would allow. We waited for
a while, bows in hand, and finally got bored with it. We couldn't figure out
what had gone wrong with our plan. Being eager to shoot our bows anyways, we
launched a few arrows towards the big tree and talked about how "we would
have gotten one for sure," but the rain must have kept them holed up in
their nests. Not our most successful hunt to date, but one I'll never forget.
I remember...
I was over at your parents' house
again shortly after Derrick got the "racing saturn." We were both so
excited to be able to drive and now Derrick had his own car! We were grown up
now. We had heard people say they had to do some work on their car, and now
that Derrick had his own car we figured we had to find some part of it to work
on. Neither of us had any idea what part of his car we could work on. It ran,
steered, had 4 tires and a steering wheel, we had to really dig deep to find
something on the saturn to "work" on. We got it. It needed an oil
change and the tires could be rotated, we thought anyways. So we took off the
tires and got all greasy and felt pretty good when the 4 tires were back on. We
now looked like guys working on their car! Perfect! Now to change the oil. We
first had to go buy oil. We spent 30 minutes driving around trying to find the
right type of oil and how much his car needed. Back in the driveway we set out
to find out where in the world you go about draining the old oil, so we could
put our new, high-performance (I'm sure that's the type we used) oil into the
car. We looked and looked. We consulted the car manual and figured out that the
oil filter and drain bolt were obviously in the most hard-to-reach place under
his low-riding car. We squeezed under the car taking turns trying to figure out
how we were going to get a wrench on the bolt and the oil filter. After 45
minutes of searching, and another hour of working and talking about how car
manufacturers could make the location of all these pieces much more accessible,
finally we got it, and I don't' think we were ever so proud of ourselves when
we crawled out from under the Saturn completely covered in oil and small rocks
from the driveway. We figured we were experienced enough now to ask your
parents if they needed an oil change. It took some convincing, but we were
persuasive and experts at changing 1 car's oil. Off to the oil store. We spent
another 30 minutes driving around trying to find a different type of oil for
your parents' car. When we got back we learned that not all oil filters and
drain bolts are located in same place. After another hour and a half or so of
laying on the ground, and scratching our knuckles and arms on the underside of
the car and on the pavement, we were sufficiently covered in oil and certain
that we had gotten enough of the new oil in the car to make it run much better
than it had before. We spent the whole summer afternoon changing the oil on 2
cars, and I think about it every time I bring my car in to Valvoline to get my
oil changed.
I remember...
There were many day’s at Cowden lake when we spent most of, if not all of our time out on a boat fishing. We would go out in a canoe, paddle boat, the row boat, or the speed boat. If we were going fishing, it didn’t matter. When we were freshmen in High school we fished all day. I think we only stopped once to get lunch and we fished until well after dark. As we made our way around the lake for the 10th time, and it was by now pitch black. Derrick heard some people on shore talking by a campfire. He told me “I bet there are some girls there that we should meet. We should fish close to shore and see if any of them are hot!” So we passed by within casting distance of their dock and could hear people talking but couldn’t see any of the girls. Derrick said, “I bet if we cast out and snag their dock they’ll come out on the dock to see what’s going on. Then we can meet them!” The plan sounded flawless to me. We went by the dock again and both casted and snagged the dock severely. Derrick shook his pole drastically so the spinner bait blades would jingle on the wooden dock. The people around the campfire looked over to see what was going on, and who in the world was fishing so close to the dock in the dark. “Sorry, we snagged your dock accidentally! Derrick said innocently. None of the people around the fire got up. “I can’t believe you casted onto their dock!” I said loud enough for the camp-fire crew to hear. No one budged around the fire. We got the boat up to the dock to free our lures. By then the people had all gone back to chatting. I couldn’t stop laughing as we tried to untangle our lures from the planks of the dock. After a lot of blind twisting and pulling we were unhooked. “Sorry for hooking your dock,” I said. As we pushed the boat away from the dock, Derrick smiled and said, “They were all too old anyways!”
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