When We Were Young

I met Bob Brower when we were young.  He started teaching in Plainwell in 1966 and I joined the staff in 1969.  He passed away last week and his funeral is today.

Bob and his then wife, Pauline, invited me into their home early in my career.   They set me up on a blind date that never went any further than that first date.  Mary was a nice girl, but she had a child, and I wasn’t ready for a relationship that included one.

Bob taught science and I taught English.   We had a staff that included a lot of young people who developed a work based social group.  The guys formed a softball team – The Fallen Stars –  and played together for several summers.  After losing our first game 44 – 4, we never got “great” but we did get “better”.  (In all of the years that I played baseball and softball, that’s the only score that I remember.)  We partied in each others homes, went out for drinks after work on Fridays, celebrated holidays together, and all in all had a great time.

Bob was one of my fellow hunters mentioned in a prior blog.   He’s one of the few guys that ever fired his shotgun on our excursions.   We hunted but never found our intended prey.  One evening, as we were walking back to our vehicles through a wooded area, Bob thought he saw a racoon high up in a tree.  He aimed at his target, fired twice, but nothing fell.  I don’t know why I remember that, but I do.  Perhaps because shooting our weapons was such a rare thing.

Plainwell opened a new middle school during my fourth year of teaching.  It was a sprawling one story building  and a great contrast to the multi-level junior high that we left behind.   Bob and I met several mornings before the rest of the staff arrived and ran laps through the hallways.  We were trying to stay in shape.  My biggest takeaway from running was shin splints.   I didn’t have them before I started running with Bob, but I’ve kept them ever since.

Bob and I taught driver’s education during the summer.   We were joined by Ken, Jim, Larry, Terry, and Babe.  There may have been others, but these are the guys that I remember best.   All of the cars that we drove back then were provided by the local car dealers.  They were all brand new.  One year we had one vehicle that was more special than the others in our fleet.  It was a red and tan Ford Torino with bucket seats.  It was the most comfortable of all of our cars.

We weren’t assigned cars to drive.  We each selected a car as we arrived for work.  Bob liked the Torino and made it a practice to arrive early so that he could have it for the day.  When you spend six hours on the road each day, you want to be comfortable.  The remaining drivers were envious of Bob so we invoked the Brower Rule.  We each took turns taking  the Torino for the day.  We divided the time in that car as equally as possible.  I expect that the rule was created by Ken, Terry, Jim and Babe.  Larry and I were the newbies to the group so we just went along, but I thought it was a good rule and Bob learned to share.

The movie, Deliverance, débuted in the fall of 1973.  For some unexplainable reason a group of six Plainwell teachers, Bob, Jim, Rick, Irv,  Jeff and I, decided that it would be a good idea to go on an overnight canoe trip on the following January 6th.  We didn’t intend to reenact the movie, but we did think that a January canoe trip was a good idea. We were wrong.

We started out on Saturday morning at a little breakfast place in Grayling, Michigan.  During breakfast we decided who would ride together in our canoes.   Our chosen duos worked out as follows:  Bob and Rick, Irv and Jim, and Jeff road with me.  About an hour into our trip, Jim became ill.  He struggled through the day as best he could.  We stopped in late afternoon at a site that looked like it would make a good campsite.  We had a single tent, built a fire, ate our dinner, and had a couple of drinks.

Jim was getting sicker by the hour and spend most of the night shivering in his sleeping bag.  Jeff drank much more than any of the rest of us.  The more he drank, the warmer he became so he started taking off his clothes a layer at a time.  At one point he sat in the tent dressed only in a t-shirt.

Irv brought a heater for the tent so that we could spend a warm and cozy night together.  It didn’t work.  After the heater failure,  Irv took on the major responsibility to keep the campfire going.   The later it got, the colder it became.  It got down to five degrees that night and the fire was our only source of heat.

We called it a night and did our best to sleep.  Around three o’clock the alcohol had worn off Jeff.  I was lying next to him and I heard … “Pisst, pisst, are you asleep?”

“No.”

“I’m freezing.  Come cuddle up next to me.  This is freaking survival.”

The next morning as we broke camp, we decided that Jim was too sick to be of much help in a canoe.   We had to travel on to where we had spotted a car.   I took Jim with me.  Bob and Rick took all of the gear with them.  Our two least experienced canoeists, Jeff and Irv, were left to fend for themselves.

During the night Bob had gotten so cold that he put on all of his clothes.   He was dressed in three or four heavy layers and still cold.

The second leg of the trip was shorter by design.  Not long after we began that Sunday morning, Bob and Rick, tipped over in their canoe.   The gear was tied down so nothing was lost, but they were now wet as well as cold.  We all made it to shore. By the time that Jim and I reached the group, Bob and Rick were almost completely naked.   They were standing in ankle-deep snow, had taken off all of their wet clothes, and were doing the best they could to find something dry to wear.

After dressing, Bob and Rick, decided to walk out to look for help.   The remaining canoeists paddled on.

When we reached the end of our time on the river, Jim was feeling a bit better, and we found Bob and Rick with all of our gear and our ride home.

I spent eight years from my twenties knowing and sharing time with Bob Brower.  Some might say that group of young teachers “grew up” together.   I know that I am a better man because of the time that I shared with them.   I haven’t seen Bob in over forty years.  While the man may be gone, I’ll never forget the good times we had.