Tailwind
Top down, and jacket collars up against the cool night air, John and I, on a hundred evenings, rode side-by-side in his unwashed CJ7 as we breezed across the Oklahoma Turnpike. Crackling through the speakers over the crashing wind, were the jangling guitars of 80's bands with short names: U2, R.E.M, INXS. Seldom with any plans, we whiled away untold hours talking, laughing, always bending the conversation toward the things we would do someday, when we got out of school.
We ate third-rate food in greasy restaurants at 2AM. Followed red dirt roads to their logical conclusion in dusty small towns. Shoved tents into the tailgate, and pitched them at parks near and farther. We were thrown out of one by a grumbling, mustachioed ranger, for starting a campfire in an unapproved zone. Woke up in others to pour coffee with shaking hands in frosty gloves.
From that Oklahoma town, John and his Jeep traveled to Illinois one summer, where we worked at my family's business together. Our best-laid plans got his Jeep buried in the mud on occasion. We towed it from the ruts with a tractor, once pulling a chain hook completely through the steel bumper. Part of the original paint on that bumper was still undamaged after we got the CJ to dry ground - a detail remedied with the sledgehammer we used to get the hook out. Our plans were always solid. Execution, though, could've often used a bit more thought.
We followed dirt roads that summer, too. To quiet towns with different names. Always talking, always laughing, always bending the conversation to what we would do - soon - when work carried far beyond the summer. We baled hay that year, and stacked even more seed. We hauled corn and fed cattle and stretched barbed wire. In his early introduction to electric fences, John was shocked multiple times in succession, when he wouldn't let go of the wire. I only witnessed the first few jolts. The tears from laughing blurred the rest.
I told the longer version of that story to a crowd in Minnesota a few years later, at the wedding of John and his beautiful wife, Sarah. I was married, too, by then. We soon found ourselves in different cities, both within a few hours of the Smoky Mountains. The four of us would meet at Elkmont campground, near Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, every weekend we could manage. Our wives would talk and read and hike. John and I bought cheap fly rods from a local discount store, and learned to set Caddis dry flies quietly onto the misty eddies of Deep Creek, pulling an occasional Rainbow trout out of the cold, clear water.
And still we talked of our plans for the future. Our words were more focused now. We were both working, both had families beginning. No more could we afford the luxury of entertaining random, scattered plans, but we could continue to dream. Hugely creative, John's dreams always leaned toward travel, or filmmaking, or writing, or missionary work or most anything else he thought would change the world for the better.
And if you knew John like I did, you wouldn't be surprised to learn he followed those dreams. All of them. He began, and still produces The Thorn, a traveling multimedia production, seen by hundreds of thousands of people, depicting the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. It's a spectacle in any sense of the word: Film crews, sweeping automated lights, stunning music, hundreds of actors, including performers from Cirque D' Soleil. He's traveled to many foreign countries on missions trips, and written several books. The last I heard, he started a new company through which he explores and develops films by up-and-coming filmmakers.
But despite John's creative genius, despite his refreshing view of the world as a place of hope and opportunity, and the energy he generates for the good of so many, the thing I valued most in him then, is the same that continues to inspire me now: He believed in me. It bothered him if he thought some of my actions or plans or goals weren't audacious enough. That they were less than I was capable of, and he would say so. A friend, to John, was a responsibility. Someone for whom you pulled weight. That you used your strength not to hold back, but to push forward.
John's place is secure as a person for whom I would travel any distance, spend every dime, pull every string to help in any way I could. We haven't seen each other for years, and we talk only rarely. We live a thousand miles apart now, and his life is busy, as is mine. We both know one of us could press a few buttons on the phone, ask the other for anything, and it would be done.
The people with whom I now invest my time know our clocks won't tick forever, and that the quality of our minutes is profoundly important, so when we're together, we don't waste them. We hold the same standard of what friendship means. It's something we probably all learned from other friendships, long ago. I'll hold the same standard for friends I make in the future, and I want them to hold me to it, as well.
What courage I have, I will confess loudly and to anyone, is not because of my own intelligence or strength-of-will. Those who know me best would tell you I fall woefully short on both counts.
It is because my friends believe in me.
And I believe in them. That's the standard. There are no ideas too harebrained, no thoughts too ungrounded, no hour of the evening too late that we would miss the chance to hear the other's perspective. To encourage each other in our hopes, or share in the other's hardships. There is not room for underhandedness or envy. My friends can't keep me from failing - often pathetically - at times. Nobody can. But they can laugh with me at how small the discouragements really are, which loom so large when I'm alone. It bothers each of us if one thinks the actions or plans or goals of the other aren't audacious enough. That they are less than we are capable of. And we would say so.
Because that's what friends do.