28 Mar Hometown friends

Hometown friends

There are no friends like the friends you grew up with, especially if you come from a small town where everyone knows everyone else.

They started kindergarten with you, and some of them were your very first friends you met.
Some lived on the same block as you, all your life. We were blessed to grow up in this special place, and we have memories that will last a lifetime.

It was a small town filled with city influences from all the people we got to meet every weekend they came up to vacation there. We knew each other’s parents, the ones who owned the local bar, the dry cleaners, or the local hair salon. We couldn’t get away with anything because by that night, it would have gotten back to your parents.

We had the mountains to hike through and find salamanders after the rain. We had the lakes that we water skied in, the crystal clear rivers to jump from rock to rock. We jumped off waterfalls and swam wherever we found water.

We skied in the winter and drove snowmobiles for miles from one person’s house to another through the woods. We went ice skating on the ponds and sat in a little shack in Deyohes Park and drank hot chocolate together.

You don’t have to explain to others things like “The well” “The old Airport ” as we all knew these were where the parties were at, the launch, Dillion hill, the Chalet or the DU.

We were locals, so we knew these terms. We hung out with people older than us and people younger than us. These were the people you saw at parties, at the diner, or the roller skating rink,and we all hung out together.
There was no discrimination, as we had interracial families in the days when people were still so closed-minded, yet we saw no color, we only saw friends, that’s all.

We had drag queens and gays, single mothers, Jewish and Christians, Black, white, and Chinese, all living together in one small town. We had all worked or knew someone who worked in the “hotels,” “The Concord, Kutchers, The Pines, and Grosssingers.” We didn’t need to have to have a ten minute conversation about what a bungalow is or what bungalow bunnies were, who the pickle man was, or what a casino is because we know.

We know Jamesway, Leftys, Gagers, Ellorys, Joe Rotas, Gigi’s Pizza, and The Car wash. There is no need for words because it instantly brings back memories.
We speak the same language even 40 years later, and we can pick up right where we left off.

I am blessed to have so many of us who now live in Florida, and we get to once again be part of each other’s lives, remembering old memories and making new ones.

So today, my friends, if you are as lucky as I was to grow up in a small town and still be friends with your hometown friends, then you are blessed. Life-long friends with a lifetime of memories are the best.
“Be the change you want to see,”
@TreadmillTreats