Al Stone

 

 

When I found the obituary online, I was saddened but not surprised. When we last spoke more than fifteen years earlier, he told me about Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder passed genetically from generation to generation.  The disease had reduced his dad to having the “mind of a five year old”.  Al had it too. He wasn’t sure what the future would bring, but suspected a similar fate.

First time I met Albert Paul Stone was in Mrs Templeton’s third grade class, Miller Valley School.  Mid-morning, a new kid was ushered in, a new move-in. He was assigned a desk in the back of the room next to mine.  As Mrs. Templeton droned on in front of the class, Al and I engaged in conversation. It was the beginning of a years-long friendship.  Not long afterwards, I found myself at his house after school. 

When Al moved to a house down the street from me, we hung out more.  I was in sixth grade when I got my first paper route. A few months later Al joined the ranks.  When we collected our papers each morning at a 24-hour laundry, there was plenty of adolescent shenanigans as we rolled our papers and prepared our individual deliveries.

Al joined my Boy Scout troop, a church-sponsored unit. The two of us and a dozen other rambunctious adolescents drove our Scout Master crazy. Brother Blair wasn’t the most patient of souls. On one outing, our middle-of-the-night mischief prompted him to empty a five-gallon can of water on our campfire. Intentional or not, our sleeping bags caught some of the deluge. On another camping trip, Brother Blair led us on a “short hike”. When he got turned around and lost direction, our outing turned into a grueling hours-long affair, accentuated by a dozen thirsty, hungry and whining boy scouts. 

Al’s mom and dad always welcomed me into their home. I slept over at times. A hilarious giggling fit at 1:00am woke Al’s dad. He came into the bedroom with veins bulging, threatening our lives. Ha ha - I was honored. Mr. Stone treated me like his own.  I was thrilled to be invited on a family camping trip,  my first trip to the White Mountains.

Al’s grandpa ran a second hand store. When Al’s dad took a trip to Phoenix to pick up inventory for the
store, Al and I tagged along. While Mr. Stone did business, Al and I slinked off to a nearby bike shop.  It was in that shop that Al first laid eyes on the irresistible, a Schwinn Orange Crate. It was the coolest bike of its day. I wanted a new bike too. We saved our money for months. Al bought his Orange Crate. I opted for a “10-speed” French racing bike.  We were cool.

Our BB-gun stage of life began with Daisy lever-action rifles. Later we graduated to more powerful Crossman air rifles.  I recall shooting at plenty of birds, but not hitting much. I was never more grateful for a missed shot than when I pointed my gun at Mrs. Stone’s parakeet, “Precious”. The bird was perched in her cage on the other side of the room when I took aim. I had no intention of pulling the trigger, but when the gun fired I nearly died on the spot. Thankfully the BB grazed a piece of metal which made up the cage and deflected enough to miss Mrs. Stone’s beloved pet.  The deflection saved two lives, the bird’s and mine.  Mrs Stone surely would have killed me.

Our junior year of high school, Al got a job cooking at Kentucky Fried Chicken. When the store needed additional help, he alerted me.  As teenagers, we sort-of ran the place. We often worked for weeks at a time without seeing the store manager. He preferred to spend his time at the local bowling alley. We had keys to the store and came and went as we pleased.  When cruising in our cars late at night, we would often drop into the store for a cold soda or a snack. I missed out on one such store visit. Al and two friends were confronted by a gun-wielding cop who suspected them of breaking in. All three were handcuffed and loaded into his police cruiser. Only when the store manager was alerted and drove to the police station were the boys released from custody.

Al and I both paid hard-earned cash for our first cars, mine a 1955 Ford Fairlane, Al’s an orange-ish/pink 1955 Chevrolet. They were old cars with plenty of miles, anything but sporty, but they were ours and we were proud of them.

On a cold December night, as four of us were driving around in Al’s Chevy, someone proposed toilet-papering a girl’s house. It seemed like a great idea, despite the fact she lived on the well-travelled main street of town. Part way through the job, with rolls of toilet paper in hand and streamers hanging from the trees, a police car pulled up. We didn’t wait to be confronted by the officer. The four of us streaked into the backyard and down the ally.  The officer pursued in his police cruiser, lights flashing, accelerating from one end of the ally as four frantic teenagers scrambled down the other.  In desperation we streaked into the darkness of a creek bed. We lay motionless, hiding behind brush and debri while the officer directed his spotlight in our direction. He saw no movement, no sign of life. Rather than venture into the potentially muddy darkness on foot, he slowly drove away.  Dirty and nearly frozen, we waited before venturing out of the creek and walking several blocks back to Al’s Chevy.  We were anxious to jump in his car and make our final escape, but from a distance we saw the cop, staking out Al’s car, patiently waiting for the owner to return. We detoured to my car and went home for the night.  In the end, we got away free. Al picked up his Chevy the next day.

The summer before our senior year, our job-overlap continued at Sears Roebuck, where we both worked as stock boys. On our breaks, we would often put a dime into the pop machine in the break room.  The glass bottles were so cold, when we popped the top, tiny ice crystals formed in the bubbly liquid. The most memorable coworker at Sears was Ed, who drove the delivery truck. Al and I competed to accompany Ed on customer deliveries. Ed had a colorful and entertaining repertoire of words. A nit-picky busybody of an old lady who worked in the catalogue department was labeled a “bald-headed bastard” to her face.  While enroute to deliver a refrigerator, a thunderstorm struck.  Ed peered out the windshield and marveled, “…raining like a horse pissing on a flat rock.”  Al and I got a kick out of Ed’s colorful metaphors.

Our senior year of high school we remained friends, but but began to drift apart.  Graduation came and we went our separate ways.  I left for college. Al joined the Navy. My pompous 18-year old self viewed his path a bit inferior to my own.  I became an engineer, a successful one by most standards.  Al got the last laugh. Post Navy, he got in on the ground floor of Intel, moved up the corporate ladder, managed a huge semiconductor fab, made a lot of money and retired in his early 40’s.  I tip my hat to my old friend, who’s hard work and determination paid big dividends.

As years passed, phone calls happened but not often. I last spoke to him around 2002-ish.  We shared stock-trading experiences from the “dot com” bubble. He told me about his wife Diane and how marriage had turned him into the father of two beautiful young ladies. And he told me about Huntington’s.  When we hung up, it never occurred to me it would be the last time we spoke.

Al is gone and I’m left to wonder about the last years of his life. Learning of Al’s death rekindled a boat load of memories. Together we shared many good times, a lot of growing up, considerable adolescent fun and miscues. Together we learned the value of hard work and play. To my old friend Al Stone, I bid adieu.