Where did we leave off, anyway?

Visiting with John Snyder

My old team-teaching partner, John Snyder, came visiting yesterday.  It had been years!  At least five and that visit had only been an hour or so.   Before that it had been at least ten years and before that, our get-togethers might have been oftener but were certainly spasmodic.  He and his family left here when their twins were two or three – about the ages John and Kathy’s grandchildren are now.

This time, he brought lunch (sandwiches from Cottage Bakery) and was able to stay for almost three hours!  It was non-stop talking – mostly John and me catching up and taking gallops down memory lane.  Sometimes, I thought I was right back in the early 1980s!  Nyel got a few words in edge-wise and took a picture or two.  The time flew by!

We talked about so many old friends – Jim Sayce and Mike Robinson, Jeff Quigley and Jimmy Campiche, Barbara Hedges Canney and Tom Akerlund. And places, too – the Ark Restaurant when it still had the bar in back and there was music on Friday nights; Camp Sherwood where we took our third/fourth graders for a Friday-Sunday overnight one year; some of the “kids” we had taught who are now married with children (and, in some cases, grandchildren!)

Page 107 – Ocean Park School – The First Seven Decades

I signed and personalized a copy of my book, Ocean Park School, The First Seven Decades (© 2002) for him, secretly embarrassed that I hadn’t sent him one years ago.  Plus, now that I’ve thought of it, I’ll forever kick myself for not reaching out to him when I was actually writing the book.  He probably could have identified some of the kids I had to leave unnamed and, for sure, he’d have had a story or two to add.   (Or wait!  Maybe he did!  There’s a quote from him on page 107.)

We promised one another that we’d get together again, soon.  John and Kathy are in Olympia now – not as far as Everett where they were for years.  And, we’re going to try to do it on a weekend so Jeff Q. and maybe Mike R. can join us…

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