I don’t remember how Kirby and I became friends in 2nd grade in Miss Brook’s class. Kirby was a tall and lanky kid; I was short and quick. Somehow we discovered we loved playing outdoors together. In those days fear had not yet gripped the hearts of parents, so it was common for them to yell at their kids to get out of the house. Kirby and I did, again and again.
Sometimes we just went a few blocks from his house to the abandoned log pond and the irrigation ditches behind the park and tennis courts. We caught crawdads and snakes and waded the ditches. Once we built a “fort” out of a stack of railroad ties and defended it from other kids with our BB guns. However, we beat a hasty retreat when some of the Zaragoza boys started raining down boulders with their slings.
On many summer mornings, I would say to Mom, “Kirby and I are going to play together at the river.” The Walla Walla River ran through the east edge of town. In the spring we flipped logs to find the black salamanders with yellow spots. In the summer we tried to catch every snake we could find. On sweltering days, we would drag home for lunch and then comb the alleys for enough beer and pop bottles to get fifty cents for the swimming pool. A couple times, Kirby, with a treble hook and a quick wrist, caught some trout and sold them to the neighbor for pool money. Even in those days, Kirby could catch fish.
As we got older, Kirby and I sometimes climbed the hill above the pool park and dug for opal in the bank behind the reservoir. We rode our bikes down the dusty and rock-strewn road from the top of the hill—occasionally crashing. It was not uncommon for us to come home with bleeding knees, sun burnt necks, and torn jeans. Turns out we both still have a couple pieces of green “opal” we dug up.
I have often said the only thing I have ever really been good at is being a boy. I am grateful for my parents for their free-range approach to parenting. I am just as grateful to Kirby, a friend who made being a boy in Milton-Freewater everything it should be.
After the 5th grade my parents and I moved to Myrtle Point, on the other side of Oregon. The place was beautiful, full of creeks and woods and near some wild beaches, but I never stopped wishing I had a friend like Kirby to explore it all with me.
About ten years ago Kirby and I reconnected on social media. We tried to track how each other was doing in our old age. I explained that I had never stopped catching snakes or flipping logs to find salamanders. I thought perhaps I had over-romanticized my boyhood in Milton–Freewater; it turned out Kirby also thought those years of friendship and adventure were grand. Kirby and I never stopped loving nature and letting it fill us with wonder. It is a gift that Kirby did not know he was giving but one that has blessed me all my life.
Teckla and I moved to Kansas a year and a half ago and about five months ago moved into our new place. I messaged Kirby and asked for advice about planting irises around my house. He didn’t just send advice; he sent a whole box of bulbs. Kirby died last week. I was hoping to send him pictures of the irises when they bloom next summer. Instead, with each bloom I will whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for a good friend who helped give me an amazing boyhood.
