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Jim and Bob's last chance power drive
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Published: September 13, 2009
Everything — it's been said in conversations that range from science to religion — changes.
Some things change a lot. Some change a little.
Through Labor Day weekend, Skel and I covered just about all those bases. (The metaphor was intentional but I'll get to that shortly.)
Skel is Bob Skelston. We grew up on the same street in Ashland, N.J. He lived a few houses down from me on Carolina Avenue. But in a neighborhood teeming with Baby-Boomed kids, those few houses were a buffer between factioning packs of rug rats.
We met when Nixon was president. But we first learned of each other around the time LBJ was trying to get civil rights legislation enacted into law.
There is almost no one outside my family I have known longer.
In fifth grade, we worked together on a science project. That is to say Skel constructed a seismograph out of a paper towel rack and a pencil and I signed my name to the index card affixed to it.
The story seems innocuous enough. But during the time we were supposed to be working on the simplified version of an earthquake detector, I betrayed Skel to some thugs who were in our class at Holy Rosary School.
Our friendship hit the skids after that — I learned what Judas felt like and Skel, well, he had another cross to bear when the bullies got their hands on him — and it didn't rebound again until we were in high school.
We moved intermittenly through different cliques. I had a group who really loved the Philadelphia Flyers as much as I did (Ashland, as the crow flies, is less than 10 miles from Philly) and with others with other interests.
Skel had other pals at school.
But back on Carolina Avenue, the herds of kids redivided over the years and Skel and I ended up in the same pack.
Together, with our other friends, we hung out in the woods and played street hockey and baseball at a sandlot that adjoined a water treatment facility. We called it the sewer plant park.
Then one day in the summer between our junior and senior years, Skel came up to me at the parking lot of the volunteer fire station where a game of stickball was under way and said he was thinking about joining the Marine Corps and asked what I thought.
I said I hadn't considered it before, but got instantly excited about the idea and so we left right then to the recruiters office.
Long story short: The Navy recruiters had a better sales pitch, and by November of that year (1978) we were both signed up to be sailors.
We entered the Navy near the end of August 1979, a little more than 30 years ago.
I would end up doing six years on active duty. Skel retired from the Navy in 1999. For both of us, our time in the service was life changing.
In March 1984, I was at the Subic Bay Naval Base in the Philippines. My ship, the USS Ranger, was in port getting repaired after catching on fire several months before.
I was jogging around the base and heard "McNally" coming from somewhere. I stopped, looked around and eventually saw Skel.
I hadn't seen or spoken to him in probably two years and had no idea he was there. We reconnected, and Skel — who can make me laugh like no other person on earth — showed me some of the more interesting aspects of what Navy-types called the PI.
Anyway, almost every year around the anniversary of entering bootcamp, Skel and I talk about making a road trip.
Many years ago, we referred to such a trip as "a last chance power drive," taken from a line in a Springsteen song.
We finally took it.
With our beloved Phillies now the defending world champions, the theme of the trip was baseball.
Skel — who lives in Palm Beach County, Fla. — flew to Charlotte, rented a car and pulled up to my driveway.
And we were off to Baltimore and Camden Yards (the Phils were out of town).
We watched the O's get beaten by the Texas Rangers and then shoved off to Cooperstown, N.Y., and the Baseball Hall of Fame, where we found the busts of Schmidt and Carlton and Ashburn and wondered why Rose wasn't there.
And then it was off to Pittsburgh, on Sunday, where we watched the Pirates pull one out in the ninth against the Cardinals at PNC Park. Exciting stuff.
But while baseball was the destination of the trip, lifelong friendship was its impetus.
Skel has two daughters the same age as my two sons. His oldest recently started college, while my oldest recently decided against furthering his education. They are, within days, the exact age Skel and I were on our first day of bootcamp.
Skel was part of the small group of groomsmen at my first wedding. I was his best man. Skel's younger sister lives in the house he grew up in on Carolina Avenue and my older sister lives in mine.
Today, Skel and I have more pounds and less hair than we did those many years ago when paper towel holders were seismographs. We both worry more about bills and the future than we did when time was endless.
But, like baseball itself, we learned on this 1,800-mile, three-day journey that the boys inside these now middle-age men are still there. They can still be awed by sounds and sights. They can still laugh at silly jokes and old references. They can still feel the hopefulness and excitement of an adventure. They can still be filled with the joy of friendship.
And while we sometimes forget they are there, those things don't change. At least not that much.
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