Pull my finger dude!!! NO WAY!!! I owe ya one! HA HA REVENGE!!!

When I accidentally flushed myself...

The Blunder Years

          

          

‘The Blunder Years’

(copied from a word document - excuse the funky formatting...)

 

It’s around the one year anniversary of the passing of one of my very best friends, Steve aka ‘Stevis’ Warren. Last year shortly before he died, I went on a mad scramble to locate and scan some photos to share with him on what we called the SnBlog, a virtual scrapbook and peripheral link to the Blog that Steve’s wife Sherri kept for him. I put my Blog together because I felt helpless to do anything for Steve, and it seemed he was being smothered with attention; it was hard to get a word in edgewise. I thought the photos of our memories would be a nice way to honor our friendship, and bring a smile to his face. I started to write down something that would tell of my experiences with Steve last year, but was too emotionally overwhelmed to finish. Steve’s mother June, asked for his friends to write something up about their experiences with Steve, so I’ve perused my old journals and old calendars I kept since college. This document is mostly in chronological order, but occasionally hops around. It starts with a lot more detail when we were younger, and a lot less as time passed on due to the increasing responsibilities of age. For some, this may be too much information. For others, I left many details out as you were probably with us at the time of these events. I’ve left some things to the imagination, which just require a little ‘reading between the lines’, and have omitted last names or altered names of people to protect the innocent. I wrote this to reflect on the coming of age of two buddies’ teens/twenties years, kind of a time capsule of those pesky testosterone driven years; pardon any cheese, rambling, or crudities. I hope you enjoy this, and I hope that as friends to Steve you may be inspired do the same thing (in particular Jay, Steve’s childhood friend in Houston, and Mike, Steve’s best friend in Rockwall since the mid to late 90’s.) Who knows, maybe we can cobble together “the Adventures of Stevis…”

 

     I first met Steve in 1983 at the First Baptist Church of Dallas youth camp in June of ’83, held at Mt. Lebanon Baptist encampment in Cedar Hill, Texas (as we jokingly called it Mt. Lebanon Baptist imprisonment.) I was outside the small chapel at the entrance of the campground on a hot sunny morning, and one of the counselors, Ron Cousineau , introduced me to this tall skinny red head with the thickest carrot top I’d ever seen. I later called him “brillo pad” because his hair was super thick and stood straight up. We became acquainted at this point, and I saw him around the church a lot, but we really did not become friends until the next year. In August of 1984, we went on a choir tour to Mexico with the First Baptist Church. I had the good fortune of getting to room with Steve, along with Eric Robertson at the Krystal Rosa hotel in the Zona Rosa in Mexico City. Eric would usually turn in early every night, so Steve and I would stay up late in the dark room talking. As we got to know each other, we found we had a lot of things in common, mainly our sense of humor, and goofiness. We immediately bonded because we discovered that we had both been “stoners” in our junior high years (something a lot of our fellow church buddies couldn’t relate to, as the church we went to was frequently like being surrounded by a bunch of ‘Church Ladies’ from SNL.) Steve helped me realize that no one is perfect; we referred to the junior high era in our lives as “the stone age”, and frequently laughed about all the stupid Cheech and Chong stuff that we had done.

 

 

     Before I met Steve, I had become kind of boring in my pursuit of righteousness, and Steve helped take me out of my dull little structured goal oriented world; he helped derail my train off the straight and narrow, not to take life so seriously, and just relax. He would frequently pop into my life and interrupt my plans, and was a great source of comic relief. He’d joke that I had become the classic Freudian ‘anal retentive’, and that he was the opposite the ‘anal expulsive’. Over the next year we had become sort of the quintessential goofballs, like Bill & Ted, Wayne & Garth, and Beavis & Butthead. We had a lot of funny and moderately stupid, yet mostly harmless adventures.

Luckily for us on this Mexico trip, we all came down with the “Montezuma’s revenge”, and had a really nasty case of the squirts. Little did I know that Steve had a lot of experience with this because of his ulcerative colitis. He happily shared his lomotil with us, and made light of the situation. We both had a really goofy potty sense of humor, and started making fun of the situation. He always made light of his condition with his colitis; He could be up to his neck in a bad situation and still make jokes about it. His attitude and sense of humor always amazed me. He's pulled me through many bad situations by helping me see the "glass half full" and not half empty. To help us cope with our illness, he coined many new terms, “poop soup”, and the hotel’s rough toilet paper “sandpaper on a roll”. Flatulence was known of as “Fred”, and there were many varieties [“Fred with Fallout”, the “Campus Fred” (one that followed you around campus) etc.] Steve came up with a really silly song about us, sung to the tune of the Beach Boys “Barbra Ann”:

 

Ma – Ma – Ma – Ma – Montezuma,

Ma – Ma – Ma – Ma – Montezuma,

Mon–tez–u–hu–mea,

he got  re–ve–eh–nge,

on the choir…

HE’S GOT US RUNNIN’ AND SITTIN’

RUNNING AND A SH*TTIN’

Mon–tez–u–hu–mea,

Ma – Ma – Ma – Ma – Montezuma,

 

I WENT TO THE BATHROOM,

JUST FIVE MINUTES AGO,

PULLED DOWN MY PANTS – AND I REALLY LET IT BLOW!

 

Ma – Ma – Ma – Ma – Montezuma…

 

Eric and I would sing harmonies, and I’d sing a bass line, and Steve would sing the lead in a high voice. I can still hear it to this day.

     The hotel we stayed in had these really hard dinner rolls you could break a tooth on. We called then “gnarly biscuits”. I took one home and varnished it, and still have it. Here’s the tale we called “el Noche de gnarly biscuit” One night, Eric came in late from visiting with his girlfriend. Steve and I had unscrewed all the light bulbs in the room, and waited for Eric. When he came in, and the lights were off, we jumped him with a blanket, and started rubbing gnarly biscuits in his face and stabbing him with them. Eric had just been in a spat with his girlfriend, and did not take this well. Poor Steve was riding Eric’s back as Eric was scraping him on the wall to throw him off. That night while Eric was in bed, we played some pranks on him: we put woolite on his toothbrush, shaving cream in his toothpaste tube, and a blob of shaving cream on the ear piece of the phone. There was a divider in the room we were in, and when the phone rang in the morning for the wake up call, Eric immediately slammed the phone down. He ran around the dividing wall with a big blob of shaving cream on his ear exclaiming,”Jon Drake this is NOT FUNNY!!!” It was so “NOT FUNNY” that Steve and I rolled around laughing for about 15 minutes. Poor Eric; we teased him too much because he was very serious. Later that day we were going to go to the pyramids just outside of Mexico City. Steve and I were out goofing around, and barely got to eat lunch just before getting on the bus. It was a long ride, and we really had to whiz bad when we got there. We bolted off the bus and ran over to some bushes, when the director, David Humphreys yelled out in front of the group, “BOYS! BOYS! WHERE ARE YOU GOING???” Steve replied, “Uhhh, WE’RE GONNA CHECK OUT THESE BUSHES OVER HERE…” David was like “OH! OK!” and the entire group laughed at us because they knew we going to water those bushes. Another funny thing that happened on that trip was when we went to sing at a church in Mexico City, he and I had to find the little boys room. Literally, we were in a bathroom for little kids in the middle of this courtyard, and it had a view (like open windows on top around the entire small structure.) There were a lot of people in this courtyard, and they could see our heads and shoulders as we were laughing at each other: "Hmmm, this is odd. It must be a Mexican custom to have open restrooms with a view out to public court yards..." It did not stop us. We thought the Mexicans had weird little bathrooms, and they just thought we were weird. A few days later, we went to Acapulco. We were on the 17^th floor of the Fiesta Americana hotel which had pretty large balconies, with wide fiberglass rails. Steve showed off his daredevil skills, and got up on the balcony rail, and walked down about five rooms to get to one of the girls rooms. We were all amazed at his skills, but I told him he was lucky he did not get splattered on this huge rock way down below. I heard he was doing the same thing on the Hawaii trip the Choir took in 1985. One of the final things I recall about this trip was us getting a fire extinguisher that squirted a long stream of pressurized water, and shooting it at girls on their balconies or just at people below on the beach at night. Steve took a pair of his underwear, filled it with Pepto-Bismol, and tossed it on the balcony just below ours. I also recall us laughing about a family that was sitting on a beach blanket at night, when the tide rolled in and splashed them washing their shoes out to sea.

    When I got back to Dallas, after the trip, Steve would call me every day just to talk about stuff. Sometimes we did not have anything to talk about, and we would just make stuff up. I did not understand why he was calling me every day, and I guess it kind of bugged me at first, but Steve had a way of growing on you. The fall of 1984 had begun, and I was attending Richland College. Towards the end of September, I had a series of bad things happen: my cat of 17 years died, a good friend of mine went whacko charismatic, and my girlfriend of two years broke up with me. This was the first breakup for me, the kind they sing about in “first cut is the deepest” tune, where your heart just aches. I called up Steve, and he came right over to my house. It was amazing to me how he knew I was really bummed out, and he just came over to keep me company and make me feel better. He and another friend, Moumin, stayed up most of the night just talking with me. Steve was always like this the entire time I knew him. When I got divorced the first time in 1994, he did the same thing. He was always just there for me. You could not ask for a more solid and better friend. Anyway, the winter of 1984, and the spring of 1985 were a time of emotional recovery for me. I was always getting bummed, and lost in the depths of over analyzing things, while Steve would just be cheerful and happy. He set the example that you’re only about as happy as you decide to be. This really helped me to lighten up. I remember buying my first car, a 1971 Toyota Celica, and taking it by the pizza joint (Mr. Gatti’s?) he worked at in Garland to show to him. He called it the “C”. Having a car meant I had more freedom from having the share the family car, and could travel across town to see him more. I lived in North Dallas, and he was in Garland, and it was a minimum of about a half hour commute. He had a blue Toyota Tercel, which we named the “munchee mobile” because we always ate meals on the go in it, and it was littered with hamburger bags, wrappers, and empty cups in the back.

 

     In June of 1985, we both went back to the FBC junior camp at Mt. Lebanon as camp counselors to little kids. To clarify the next story, Steve always called me Toby. This was a nick name given to me by a mutual friend of ours, Greg, who I could also write a volume about our crazy adventures. Anyway, this year at camp was when the goat man thing got started. The kids at camp came up with the goatman thing: "he's half man, half goat, and half devil." Some of the counselors decided to play on it. I'd put a fur on my back and made foil horns from the cafeteria. Steve and another friend Rob were the "Goat patrol" (security guards) and they'd chase Goatman (Toby) though the woods and cabins. Some of the kids were skeptical, so one of the other counselors created a great phony newspaper article about it after the goatman pranks began. One night Steve and I were in my cabin talking about it with the kids, and one of them says, "I don't believe in goatman!" I replied, "Have you ever heard of a Jack-a-lope?" Another kid chimes in, "yeah my uncle shot one!" I then said, "Do you understand anything about biology or genetic engineering?" Then another kid asks, "Is goatman where a man does it with a goat?" Steve and I are doing our best to keep a straight face and nod our heads "yes." Steve loses it a few minutes later and has to plant his head into a pillow on one of the upper bunk beds.

     I started getting regular requests from other counselors to have an after hours goatman visit. We would go storming through cabins, me Baaahing, and Steve and Rob chasing after me with a flashlight. I shook a salt shaker on one kid’s his leg before I took a pretend bite, another kid got catsup. Sometimes goatman would have make a lout fart then plop a goatman poop in the cabin (chocolate pudding.) The kids were walking around the next day, “Goatman pooped in my cabin!” Sometimes we’d go back in the woods and emit a distant “baaahhhh!” to freak them out when they were on the way to Inspiration point (we called perspiration point, or desperation point.) The last day of camp when the kids figured out I’m the goatman, I was honored with water balloons and a swirly. To this day, goatman still comes in handy when I want to get my kids in from the park as the sun is setting. They know he comes out after dark to eat little kids; we can sometimes hear his “Baaahhh’ing” in the distance. Seriously though, google ‘goatman’; there’s all kinds of silly, stupid stuff out on the web about this make believe creature.

 

     Another night at camp, some of the kids were bugging us to get some food at the cafeteria, even though it was closed. I had worked at the camp before, and knew how to get into the back by sliding a bent spoon under the rolling doors (to unlatch them on the other side) in order to get into the kitchen. I set up a plan with Steve and Rob to host a fake “bust” on the kids. When I snuck the kids into the cafeteria, and we slid into the dark kitchen, Steve and Rob busted in the back door with a flashlight right on one of the kids (I called him “swirly Bill” because he liked to give other kids swirlies – the head in the toilet and flush hair-doo.) I ducked under a table, and when Steve said in a loud voice, “WHAT ARE Y’ALL DOING IN HERE”, swirly Bill said in a meek high pitched voice, “We’re with him…” and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb to me, but I was no where to be found… He started to tear up, and muttered “Jon, you traitor…” Steve and I started to feel bad, and turned the lights on and we all had a good laugh. We all had ice cream, and took the kids back to the cabin. There was an empty cabin next door, so Steve, Rob, and I went into it. We sprayed some shaving cream on a mirror, and had a flash light close by, as the shaving cream ran down the mirror, it made some funny reflections on the wall behind us. We were like kids looking at clouds, laughing about what we could see in the reflections. I don’t remember what we saw, but I do recall laughing so hard my stomach was sore. This was a frequent occurrence with Steve. He was a really funny dude.

 

     The summer of ’85 was a crazy time for us. We started out with the goofy fun together at camp, I had just completed a tour playing bass with the Agajanian band to Shiner Texas, and Steve had fun in Hawaii on a Choir tour; we were in good spirits. He’d just graduated from Lakeview High school, and was ready to conquer the world. I remember us modifying the Bryan Adams tune “Summer of 69” to fit our situation, and singing the words “Summer of 85” instead. There was more to this summer than I could ever mention. A lot of things that I won’t because I don’t think he’d want me to. I could best describe this as a time of spontaneity, a non-judgmental, un-structured opportunity to cut loose with an extremely optimistic and carefree attitude to enjoy life to the maximum. We were taking our chances to vigorously consume life without worries or inhibitions.

 

     It was kind of like a right of passage experience somewhere between ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High’ and the ‘American Pie’ movies. Steve frequently would come by late at night to hang out, and would meow, woof, and moo outside my window instead on knocking on it. Sometimes I would have just fallen asleep, and would wake up to this mooing going on and laugh, “It’s Steve!” I’d be up and out the window, and we’d be in the munchee mobile, or down at the park close to my house. One time he came by with Jay, his best buddy from Houston. We went down to Canyon Creek Park, and sat on the bridge with some brewskis, and they shared stories with me about their shenanigans in Houston. There were some guys that passed across the bridge and went back into the woods to get stoned. When they were back there, I’d make some loud farting sounds to crack them up. Ever since then, this place has been of as ‘fart creek’ to us, and is the neighborhood I currently live in. Anyway, there was a curfew of 10:30 PM in the park, so the police were always checking it out. We were walking back to the car, and passed a cop who was requesting for folks to leave, and Steve said “Yes occifer.” So from that moment on, police officers were known of as “occifers.” We kind of had our own language, most of it some sort of potty humor. Steve and I would stay out a lot of nights until 3:00 or 4:00 AM doing crazy goofy stuff. One time he wanted me to play the bass for him at like 2:00 AM. I jammed with the volume down low, while he quenched a bad case of the muchees eating a box of crackers sitting in my bed. Later that night I got in a bed of crumbs; it was funny because he had no idea he was making a mess. I’d go to work the next day at Prestonwood Mall (which has since been torn down - bummer), and would sometimes nap on my lunch break while wearing my sunglasses on a bench close to the big clock. A few times he’d wake me up to visit. He’d always drive all the way from Garland to see what I was up to. I think I only got a few hours of sleep every night that summer. Once we went around blowing up bananas with firecrackers outside the homes of our friends. We did have a few incidents where the fireworks fell into our laps in the car, as we tried to stomp them out. One night we got in the middle of this train bridge behind UTD, and turned around to see the train was heading down the tracks at us. We were closer to getting off the bridge if we ran at the train, so we ran towards the train, then got under the bridge to listen to the rumble of it pass over just a few feet over our heads. We’d place my ghetto blaster and his in the rafters under the bridge, and put in our favorite Cars tapes (Heartbeat city) into both of them. The players played a little bit off synch from each other, and gave an awesome echo effect. Another night we went into a house that was being constructed. The moon was full, and you could see into the house as it did not yet have windows.  With the same tapes and ghetto blaster echo, we went running around that house in the moonlight with our sunglasses on doing air guitar singing and jamming out. Just two goofy kids celebrating life. We spent a lot of our time together doing silly harmless things to entertain ourselves. I guess this was why we liked Beavis and Butthead so much; they reminded us of ourselves, just not as destructive (hence the nick name “Stevis”.) We did a surprise “sing-a-gram” that summer at a Chili’s for a friend’s birthday. We dressed up goofy, and Steve carried my small bass amp on a cord, and we went out and sang a stupid birthday song to a Cars like riff. It was almost totally impromptu, but day after day, we had some new adventure to pursue.

 

     Another thing we did in the summer of ’85 was have little pool parties over at his house during the day. We’d have a few good friends over, and cook on the grill, and enjoy those “California coolers” (wine coolers were in style back then.) I’ve got a lot of good memories of hanging out in his house over in Garland. There was a funny sign on the fence by their pool “Don’t pee in my pool; we don’t swim in your toilet”. Once he went skiing down steps in his folk’s house, and we’d also get in the crawl space under it. There was a football sized bee hive in the tree out front that we’d shoot with a bb gun. We’d do the same kinds of things at my house in north Dallas if my folks were out of town like jump off the roof into the pool. If we got bored, we’d do stupid stuff like dip June bugs in tuna oil, and let my cat have after them. Yummy!

 

     The fall of ‘85 we both attended Richland College. We would park our cars right next to each other; the “C” and the “Munchee mobile” would keep each other company, and sometimes we’d leave stupid notes and pictures on each other’s car. We signed up for the same gym class, and made our own exercises up; for example jumping jacks were where you jump up and down, and move your arms and hands straight up and down, like you were stroking them up and down a pole. I recall driving to Baylor University in the fall that semester to attend a party, and singing the harmonies to the Doobie brothers “Black Water.” Every time I hear that tune, it reminds me of that moment. Anyway, we ate almost every day at the McDonalds that was close to 635 and Abrams (very close to Richland.) There was a meeting room upstairs in the Richland library that had a couple of couches in it and was very dark. We had a long break in the afternoon between classes, and sometimes we’d go up there and take a nap (so it was called the “mush-room” where you could go to “mush-out”.) Sometimes we’d sit in there and tell stories. We had no shortage of those. There was a lot of self disclosure, and mutual support. He always unconditional accepted of anything you had to get off your chest. Sometimes when we had nothing to talk about, it was just nice to be around him. He had the faithfulness and loyalty of a dog; not to compare him to a dog, but regardless of what mood you were in, he was always just there, was a great listener, and source of encouragement. He was a constant and solid presence in my life. He had a way of bringing out the best in other people. We were always supportive of each other. I had some friends that were always trying to compete in school, or work. If I had a success with something, he was like “Awesome!” and I was the same way with him. There was not a jealous bone in his body. He was always generous, sharing, considerate and thoughtful. If I was bummed out that I did not have a date, he’d tell me to ask out one of his gals (and I gladly repaid the favor later.) As a result we went out with several of the same gals when we both lived in Dallas. We were totally cool with each other.

 

     The spring of ’86 was really busy for me as I was pulling 18 hours that semester at Richland to finish an Associates Degree, working on campus as a peer level tutor, and trying to get on the honor roll, so my folks would foot the bill at North Texas State University (this was a deal we’d cut.) I had to get out of the house, as my folks were very strict, and it was driving me nuts. When they caught on to me and Steve’s partying ways, my mom would refer to him in a smart ass voice as “Mr. Steve.” Steve and I were in the same geology class (it was known of as “rocks for jocks”), and took the same PE class again. I recall one night I spent at his house, and he had this flashlight with a colored fiber optic attachment. He put that thing right over my face just before I fell asleep and turned it on (and got a pretty good hit when I freaked out because of it.) I guess it was revenge for the time I squirted sun tan lotion in his ear while he was relaxing on a float in the pool; he said it took him days to get it out. Probably the best joke he pulled on me was a time I was house sitting his folk’s house in Garland. I had a girlfriend over, and we were sitting on the couch watching a flick. The phone rings, and the answering machine goes off. The message being left was, “This is Uncle Tommy. I’ll be dropping by for a minute, and am pulling in around the back of the house now. See ya in a minute.” I did not know Steve’s Uncle Tommy at the time, but I think Steve had this planned out. He had even told me Tommy was somewhat of a “corker” (anal retentive to the extent they hold it in with a cork), and not to get caught by Tommy in the house with a girl. Where ever Steve was (I can’t recall now) he came home early, and knew he could freak me out. Me and my girlfriend were in a hurry to get out the back door, and his little dog topper ran out the back and down the alley. I was chasing topper down the alley, and I could hear a car behind me. By the time I caught the dog and turned around, Steve was out of his car rolling on the ground laughing. The funny thing is that Tommy was nothing like how Steve described him for his prank; I eventually met him, and was always very cool. Steve always had some joke or pranks up his sleeve. We couldn’t make it out to FBC camp at Mt. Lebanon the summer of ‘86, but we did sneak into the camp one night for what we called the “Goat man reunion” to bug some friends and pull some pranks. One backfired, and we got in a bunch of trouble; some name tags ended up clogging a toilet, and messing with the septic system. We had to go issue a public apology to the group, and everyone’s reaction was, “I can believe Jon Drake did that, but Steve Warren? No way!” I was seen as the corrupter here. Oh well… Everyone eventually got over it.

     The fall of ‘86 I went up to NTSU, and we started seeing less of each other.

I was studying accounting, and was pretty busy. I recall he visited several times, just to play Frisbee outside Kerr hall where I lived. When ever I was in town, we made sure to get together. Catching current movies or going to concerts was always a big deal. A few of the concerts we went to were Pink Floyd, the Cars, U2, Rush, ZZ Top, Pat Metheny, Bruce Hornsby, Eric Johnson, Steely Dan, and several of the 4^th of July Freedom fest free concerts at fair park (come to think of it we went to state fair almost every year between 84-91 or so.) After the Cars concert, we thought we had witnessed a rape in progress. There was a guy struggling on top of a girl in the parking lot. We ran over to save her, and she got up and started kicking the snot out of this guy. She must have been a black belt. We watched in awe as she whooped his butt across the parking lot, then shrugged our shoulders and left. After the ZZ Top concert, we got chased by that dude who carries the great big cross. We were running as fast as we could, and this guy was still catching up to us. Later on we figured out that his cross had little wheels on it. The summer of ’87, Six flags had season passes for $30. We could not resist. We went out every Friday night that summer as the park was winding down, and did nothing but ride roller coaters. We must have ridden the shockwave a million times. We’d get off the ride, and run around to get immediately back on again. Our favorite place was the first seat, for the best view. We’d both reach our long arms out, and hold on to the front nose of the car, or try to keep our hands up through the double loops. Sometimes, after we got back we’d hit my pool. I recalled a scene from a movie, ‘Never Cry Wolf’, where this guy who is studying wolves in the wild and pees all over his campsite to mark his territory. Me and Steve used that as an opportunity to harass my little dog scooter (a male corgi/dachshund mix) and we’d whiz in different places all over the back yard just to watch scooter feverishly run around and re-mark his territory on top of those spots. Other whizzing activities were to see if we could write our name on a fence, see who could make the longest stripe on a fence, or just see who could squirt the furthest. I always said that I was eternally mentally 13 back then. I think he agreed that he was the same. I recall another time when bird pooped on his shirt in my back yard, and he was content to leave it there until he could get inside later. I was like, “no bird craps on my bud!” and wiped it off with my hand and rinsed it off with the hose. Around this same time, he was working at a store called the “Christian Emporium.” Our friend Barry called it a “religious paraphernalia/head shop”. Steve had keys to the place, and we enjoyed smashing our faces into the copy machine for silly photos. After hours, Steve and I would climb on the roof, and check out the view all the way to down town. We loved to see the green building.

     The fall of ’87 I was back at NTSU, and we were seeing even less of each other. One time he came to spend the night in my dorm room in Crumley Hall. We did our usual Frisbee game, and walked around enjoying the birds chirping in the trees (there were tons of them on their fall migration) and in other places tons of crickets chirping in the bushes (we called them ‘crickets in stereo’.) We invented this stupid activity called “falling up hill” where we would walk backwards up a hill, using gravity to make our bodies fall toward the ground, and then catch ourselves from falling with an uphill step. He slept in a sleeping bag on the floor, and after the lights went out he’d make meow, woof, and moo sounds to be funny. I’d make them back to him, and really knew we were doing it to bug my room mate Fred, who was kind of a stiff accounting major type. He was also a black dude, and probably thought that us honkies were just weird. I recall that fall Steve was in some canoe race at Richland, and fell in the lake there. He got a mouth full of the water, and it made him really sick. I drove down from Denton to bring him a 12 pack of Charmin, because the hospital had “sand paper on a roll”. I had to sneak it in through the emergency room and get past security when they were not looking because it was after visitation hours. The security guard did give me a nasty look on the way out though. One thing that was new that semester was that another mutual friend of ours, Barry aka “Barry-bob”, was going to NTSU that year. Barry’s best friend was Chad we called him “Chadro”. Stevis, Barry-bob, and Chadro all went to Lakeview High School in Garland. I knew them all from our mutual friend, Greg “Greg-boy”. Greg had gotten married earlier that year, and already had a kid, so it was difficult to hang out with him. Anyway, we had another buddy I’d met through Greg and Barry named JD “Wilshlong”, but most of the time we just called him JD. At some point we started having these bonfire gatherings with the five of us at a property Barry’s folks owned in Van Alstyne, Texas. There was a pond on the property, and we always liked blasting bottle rockets into it. Yes, they still burn and explode underwater! Chad’s dad had a 4 wheel drive, and we’d go 4 wheelin’ in the dark through this field. Chadro had no problem driving that Nissan pathfinder through deep mud and four feet of water. These were always nutty events. We did this a few times a year, and I think the last time we went was back in the fall of 1997. This group of guys became known of as the ‘Stogie Brothers’ over the years, and we just called ourselves the SnB’s. Steve’s good pal Jay “Jayster, or Jaymeister” from Houston also became part of the group, because we’d all hang out when he was in town. I’ve never had a better group of friends in my life. The last one of these parties we had, Steve had already had colostomy. I remember that he would light the gasses from his ostomy bag which would burn a blue color, and laugh about it in the Beavis voice “fire! fire!”. What a nut! I’m surprised it did not blow up and cover us all in poop.

 

     There were a few times all the guys took group trips to Six Flags, and in the Summer of ‘88 they would all come and meow, woof, and moo outside my window, so I could sneak out and goof off with them. One night we were out tossing a ball as we were taking a walk, and triggered a silent alarm after hitting a house. The police “occifers” were on to us, and were like, “What are you kids doing out here this late?” We were simultaneously taking a walk and playing catch, and really just catching up with each other from the previous semester’s events. We also were in our 20’s, so there was not a thing the cops could do about it. One thing Steve and I always did for each other was help move each other’s stuff. In the summer of ‘88 we went to take his folks old refrigerator to Houston for his brother, and the u-haul had run out of trucks. I had my mom’s car for the day, and it had a bumper hitch, so we just rented a trailer instead. I did not ask permission, and my dad figured out I took it by seeing all the bugs on front of the car. I got into a butt-load of trouble for that one, but I moved about four times more often than Steve did, so I guess it all evened out. One thing I’ll always remember about the summer of ’88 was that the SnB’s all took a trip down to Dallas alley to the spaghetti warehouse. Barry-bob’s buddy Jerry aka “Dick”, drove us all down in his van. This guy was a maximum red neck. He was busy insulting all of us at dinner, and I got sick of it and told him to take it to the parking lot; he found some macho way of chickening out of me totally whooping his butt. Since we drove with him, we now all had to get a cab back to my folk’s house. They were out of town, so we stayed up late and went swimming (jumping off the roof into the pool and making scooter whiz etc.) There were enough empty beds for everyone to crash there, and the next day the guys helped me mow the yard. What a cool bunch of buds. My last semester in school, I could not take my parents crap any longer, and after my tuition check cleared, I scraped together what I could, and rented an efficiency on the edge of campus. I already had a job lined up upon graduating, so I just split. Steve’s folks, Don and June, were cool enough to let me stash my stuff at their house until I could locate a place in Denton; they have always been like family to me.

 

     In May of ‘89 I graduated from UNT (they changed the name from NTSU – funny name change for the radio station KNTU to ?) Stevis, Barry-bob, and Chadro came up to see me graduate, and we had a blast the night before. We were on a mission to find a hot tub that night. We had a few gals riding with us, and all packed into a family cruiser on a mission to find an operational hot tub in any apartment complex. We finally gave up, and Chadro said, “hey, we can just fill up Jon’s bathtub, and Steve can sit and fart in it!”

I thought Steve was gonna whoop Chad’s butt for that one

 

     After graduating and starting my first real job in the summer of ’89, I got too busy to party as much with the guys. I also was not struggling as much with my folks or school, and quit keeping journals. My recorded memories were limited to what I wrote down on daytimer calendars that I kept, so there were fewer specifics I can remember. Forgive me if this gets a little disorganized, and I jump around a bit after this point.

 

     In the fall of 1989, Chad and I were working at ARCO Oil and Gas Company as  accountants, and Steve was down at Texas A&M. I drove down for the big fall bonfire they have every year (before it ever collapsed), and Jay drove up from UT Austin. We somehow all crammed into Steve’s dorm room. It was a pretty gnarly time.

I was not a student, and could not understand why the RA kept coming by and snatching my beer away from me if I was in the dorm hall. Steve and JR Wellers got to be pretty close that night, so me and Jay got to hold Steve up and sing, “get it out, out, out, out, get it out” as he evicted Mr. Wellers. Steve’s roomate’s girlfriend let me sleep in her dorm room because neither she nor her roommate was going to be there. Surprise, surprise, her roommate shows up at about 3:00 AM, and I’m hoping she does not notice a strange dude sleeping in the other bed across the room from her. When the sun started coming up, I slid out before I could get screamed at.

 

     Late in January 1990, I went on a ski trip with Steve’s family to Colorado. This was a lot of fun. Steve could ski like a maniac, and would hit these huge jumps, and go airborne for 25 to 30 feet. I never understood how on one hand he had the cojones to ski like a nut, but on the other was frequently too shy to approach a girl. Anyway, Steve’s dad Don pokes fun at me that I was on the way towards being a grumpy old man because I would bitch at Steve, Don, and Tommy for keeping me up late on that trip playing poker all night. I recall Steve and me going to the resort’s hot tub after skiing, and jumping in and out of the snow and back into the hot tub to see who could take the cold the longest. One of the qualities Steve possessed that I liked the most was he was a spontaneous fun loving dude; he was not afraid to live his life to the fullest. If there's one thing I could always say about him is that he always knew how to enjoy life. I was too chicken when they invited me to go to go sky-diving with Chadro, and I’d never bungee jump either, which he did on our Australia trip. On the way back coming through New Mexico, he wanted to stop at this nude natural hot springs spa called 10,000 waves; we were sorely disappointed that there were nothing but a bunch of old farts hanging around there. Oh well, at least we could say we went.

 

     In September of ‘91 we went on this crazy Australia trip. On the way over, we stopped and spent all day on the beach in Hawaii, and hit a sunset happy hour with a free buffet. We had a bit to drink and felt pretty gnarly on the plane. The quote of the hour was, “Please inform the captain that there will be projectile buffalo balls heading towards the main cabin!” I had the barf bag propped up and ready to go, but no one got sick. We were just harassing the people sitting around us. It was a fun trip.

     One of the things we liked to do was catch local bands playing at Dallas Alley, or Deep Ellum. One night in 1991, we were watching a funk band out of Denton “Good foot” play. We had seen them a few times before, and knew they had a routine. During one of the songs a few of the band members would get out in the crowd with the auxiliary percussionist, and beat a cowbell, shake tambourines, and get a train going with the crowd. I elbowed Steve, and said, “Check this out.” I went behind the stage and popped up in the auxiliary percussionist’s station and started playing the bongos! The other guys in the band just cracked up, and I could see Steve in the audience laughing and clapping for me. Too bad I twisted my ankle getting off the stage. We said I got a bad foot playing with good foot.

 

     In ‘92, I hooked up with the girl next door to my folk’s house, Kristen Owens. We got married in the summer of 1993. Steve was the best man at the wedding,

Steve’s parents, Don and June, sat in as surrogate parents at my first wedding because my parents rejected Kristen, and refused to go to the wedding. How un-cool of my parents, and how totally cool of Steve’s. The marriage fell apart after a few years; but my parent’s attitude towards Kristen, did not help the situation at all. It blows me away to look at the pictures from the wedding, and know two of the people I loved the most are gone already. (Kristen remarried, and her son fell in her pool and drowned in 2003. She committed suicide shortly thereafter.) Anyway, sometime around Spring of ‘92, Steve’s dad opened up a CiCi’s pizza. Steve became very busy as a manager, and my time was pretty well consumed between being a newlywed and cutting my teeth in data processing at Zale Corp. It was hard to get together as much as we used to, but when Steve was off work, we would hang out.

 

     In mid ‘95, I hooked up with a gal I had met on the choir tour Steve and I met on back in 1984, Veronica Salinas. I was totally bummed because of the divorce I’d just gone through, and did not really want to meet anyone new. She called me up and invited me to go to Mexico to spend out 30^th birthdays together. I was fairly broke, and tried to put her off, but she offered to buy the ticket, so I had no excuse. We hit it off, and dated long distance between ‘95 to late ‘97. In early ‘97, Steve had his colon removed. I was there the night before with him for his pre-op, and was there every evening after the surgery to help him with bathing etc. I even got him a fan with a remote control because he was having hot flashes, but could not get out of bed to turn the fan on. He was making fun of his catheter, and freaking us out with it; although he was beat, he was still cheerful. Later on he became really funny about his ostomy bag. Once we were in his kitchen, and he was standing up eating a sandwich and said, “Hey, I bet you can’t eat and poop at the same time!” Then he lifted his shirt to show the bag filling as he was eating his sandwich! Some time around then, I remember we drove way out to the country to see the Hale-Bopp comet in the sky after sunset. We both had a stogie, and were sitting on the hood of his car talking, when a cop came by to see what we were smoking. Steve made sure to call him “occifer.”

     We enjoyed the simple things in life, hanging out at the lake, Frisbee, playing catch with a baseball, taking walks, and all the crude stuff we did like belching words or sentences. We had a few belching contests, and he always won. We liked to drive in the Nissan Z car with the tops off singing and listening to tunes (some of the tunes were Genesis “Home by the sea”, anything by the Cars, and the SnB’s liked ‘whipit’.)

 

     Veronica and I got married in late ’97. Steve was the best man at this wedding too. It says a lot about what you think of someone to be the best man at both of your weddings. I was glad to have Chadro there too. I always joked with Steve that if he was a woman I’d marry him because his personality was so cool. Anyway Steve, Chad and I had a great time the night before the wedding, although I felt pretty gnarly the next day.

The montezuma’s revenge got me again, and Steve bolted over to my sister’s hotel to get medications and prop me up for the wedding. It may not have happened that day otherwise. Once again I had a new preoccupation with being a newlywed, and was also in the midst of a job change. We got pretty busy again, but when ever Steve was free, we’d get together and have dinner and a stogie; usually on the patio of the spaghetti warehouse in Plano (we called it the skeddi whorehouse.) He had a way of lighting up a room when he walked through the door, and I was always happy to hangout when we could.

 

     When we were younger, we frequently had the habit of chunking responsibility out the window, and eventually had to get serious about life, family, and our careers. The wild life kind of settled down into routine, and we did not see each other as often as the years went on. Maybe he had a premonition something was going to happen, but I was glad that he found a soul mate in Sherri. This gave him the opportunity to know how cool it is to be a dad, and to have the love of a family to come home to.

 

     It’s funny that we didn’t realize that those crazy times in the mid 80’s were some of the best days of our life at the time. Looking back now, I know it. Those memories of us will stay with me forever; the three months we spent hanging out that made up the summer of ’85 are a capsule of time I will cherish dearly for the rest of my life.

To quote the Bryan Adams tune, just a different year:

 

“look at how the times are changing, everything that’s come and gone”

“I guess nothing can last forever…”

“those were the best days of my life… back in the summer of ’85…”

     When I first heard about Steve’s cancer, I felt guilty about how little time we had spent together the previous several years. I’d spent a lot of time talking to Chad, Barry JD, and Vero about this, and came to the conclusion that it was not my fault or his. We just got really busy. The reality was that since having kids, our free time became very limited for both of us; between our jobs, homes, and families, 99% of our time had been consumed. Here’s a quote from one of his emails:

“Sheri just went over our calendar and we have stuff every weekend until mid June, and we don't even know what Andy's baseball schedule is yet except that practice is Tuesday nights. So my evenings are Boy Scouts on Mon, baseball Tue, real estate team meeting Th, church Sat, kids church Sun. Mix in 50 to 60 hours a week of real estate and that's about most of what's going on....

I was thinking of you a little while ago, driving home listening to Heart Beat City. Man, are we old or what? My memories of you sneaking out your window are over 20 years old!! Let's see, it was 22 years ago when we had summer of 85 and that really doesn't seem very long ago. It's funny how since then there has been good times and tough times, times with money and without, but those memories are still the same. And now we have wives and kids. I'm so excited to see how my boys turn out when they are older - at least I think I'm excited. They will both turn out great though.”

 

And here was from my response:

 

“I have plenty of great memories of all of those times - free from

responsibility - no worries etc. Now I feel the weight of all my responsibilities that I'm draggin' down the road; I feel like I make about an inch of progress every day. Nothing could prepare us for the things to come ahead. I think if anyone knew how miserable you'd feel after many sleepless nights caused by infant children - that no one would have kids. It is a good thing that those days pass by.

It's not that life is bad, it's just different. You have your trade offs; a lot less mindless partying for a couple of beautiful children.

I enjoy my boys a lot. We have fun goofing around.”

 

     Regardless, when we looked at life, the carefree days of zero

responsibility were probably the most fun - and the really cool thing is that we spent those years together. I'd also say that one reason maybe we took our relationship for granted is that regardless of how busy we became, both of us knew that if either of us needed a hand, that we'd drop what we were doing and be there for each other. That was  always a constant and a given between us. We had always been there for each other since our youth; it was always a huge comfort just knowing that.

     The guys had one last chance to visit with Steve in august of 2008. We picked up some lasagna from the ‘skeddi whorehouse’ and drove out past Royce City to visit at his house. As sick as Steve was, he was still in good spirits. He enjoyed telling us funny stories like when he accidentally whizzed on his sweater during a mission trip. The last thing we did was give each other a knuckle knock, and our old SnB handshake we made up after a late night of goofing around back in ’85.

 

     I couldn’t ever imagine having a better friend. Every rough spot I have hit in my life, he has been there by my side; undoubtedly there were a lot more good times than bad. Steve played a huge part in my life growing up, and I really feel like we grew up together. A lot of who I am is because of the influence Steve has had in my life, and he really taught me what it meant to be and to have a true friend. I have been honored to have Steve as my best friend for so many years. He has made my life much richer with all the adventures we have shared together. Steve will always be in my heart.

 

     I know that the last thing Steve would ever want us to do is be broken hearted, depressed, and crushed about him leaving us. I think he would want us to hold the memories of him in a positive light with a smile on our faces about what fun we had together. It's just Steve. He was always seeing the sunny side of things when I could not. I am going to do my best to keep my chin up in honor of him because I know this is what he'd like me to do.

 

     To pull a quote from an email from our friend Jay wrote, “Our lives have taken us away from the fun and silly times we shared when we were young and unwise in the ways of the world. But if life is a journey and your ultimate destination is made up of the points you plot along the way then I am sure glad that our paths crossed at the intersection of Steve ‘Stevis’ Warren.”

 

     I want to wrap this up with something really weird that happened when we were at the funeral home for visitation. As me, Chad, JD, and Barry stood around Steve to say our final words to him, I put my hand over his hand; for lack of better words, this feeling of a "rush" came over my body for a split second. It was like a jolt of energy hit me, extremely quickly, and then dispersed. That split second feeling that hit me was really strange. I am skeptical of this kind of thing happening, so when it happened, it really hit me pretty hard, and left a very strong impression. Maybe it was just my imagination? I don’t know. It was pretty strange, but very cool. He always knew I had become a ‘doubting Thomas’ over the years. Our Pastor said in one of his sermons that the spirit of the dead stays in close proximity to the body for 3 days after death. Some think I’m crazy, but I think this was a spiritual zap from Steve. Veronica said maybe he was saying "goodbye" to me. What happened really put my heart at peace, and I was not nearly as sad as I had been; it gave me an extreme sense of calm at his funeral. It was like my confirmation that I really would see him again, and that he was in a better place. I look forward to the day I can see Steve again beyond this world, to see him on the other side.