{"id":1236,"date":"2016-08-12T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2016-08-12T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2016-08-14T10:14:19","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T17:14:19","slug":"make-new-freinds-but-keep-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2016\/08\/12\/make-new-freinds-but-keep-the-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Make New Friends, but Keep the Old"},"content":{"rendered":"

That\u2019s one of the first songs I learned when I started in Brownies as a first grader:<\/span><\/p>\n

Make new friends but keep the old<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

One is silver and the other gold.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Pat McAdams Hall, one of those gold friends, came to visit this week. \u00a0The McAdams family moved to Bisbee the year Pat and I were both in fourth grade. \u00a0By the time her dad, \u201cMac\u201d McAdams went to work in the mines, my father had quit Phelps Dodge and launched companies of his own, the Warren Construction Company and Warren Redimix. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Pat\u2019s house was less than a block from ours on Yuma Trail, but to get there you had to go down the passage between our fence and Mr. Corbett\u2019s garage, through the Corbett\u2019s yard, across Cole Avenue, past Harriet Smith\u2019s house, and then into the McAdams\u2019s carport. \u00a0Because I once saw a rattlesnake in the western portion of our yard, walking past Mr. Corbett\u2019s garage, especially at night, was always a breath-holding experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pat and I became instant best friends and were pals all through grade school and high school. \u00a0There were seven kids in our family. \u00a0There were only two in hers, Pat and her younger brother, Ted. \u00a0She had a bedroom all to herself, and we spent hours playing with paper dolls on the floor of that bedroom. \u00a0This was long enough ago that one of those sets of paper dolls was devoted to Queen Elizabeth\u2019s coronation. \u00a0(A couple of years ago, Pat tracked down one of those sets on E-bay and gave it to me for my birthday!)<\/span><\/p>\n

At Bisbee High we were in many classes together and in band as well. \u00a0As juniors we were in Rachel Riggins\u2019s Journalism class, and as seniors we were co-editors of the school paper, the Copper Chronicle.<\/span><\/p>\n

When it came time for college, she went to NAU in Flagstaff while I attended the University of Arizona in Tucson. \u00a0We saw each other through first boyfriends and first and second marriages. \u00a0We worked our way through divorces together and saw the births of both kids and grandkids. \u00a0And we shared the tragedy when, years apart, we both lost younger brothers. When it comes to tough times, she and I both know where all the bodies are buried.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, we had a lot to talk about this week–mulling over old times, appreciating the way our parents raised us, reminiscing about the teachers we mistreated and the kids from our class who died before making it to their 21st birthdays. \u00a0We also had plenty to say about the \u201cold codgers\u201d like us who are still around to remember \u201cway back when. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We\u2019re both over seventy years old. \u00a0We\u2019ve been friends for more than sixty of those years. \u00a0We had a lot to talk about and it was great fun.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks for coming, Pat, but I don\u2019t envy your going home. \u00a0Returning to Florida in the dead of August won\u2019t be a walk in the park, and I don\u2019t think I could do it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That\u2019s one of the first songs I learned when I started in Brownies as a first grader: Make new friends but keep the old One is silver and the other gold. Pat McAdams Hall, one of those gold friends, came to visit this week. \u00a0The McAdams family moved to Bisbee the year Pat and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-jW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1238,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}