Thursday, March 28, 2019
RIP to my boyhood friend Tom, and my condolences to his family and loved ones. My heart goes out to you all for your great loss.Tom was the best horseman and cowhand in the Kuna High School class of ’61, hands down. Tom and I went to Happy Valley School as classmates, along with Mel Lowe, Danny Dye, Dick Davis, Leo Taylor, Bob Owens, Barbara Patchin, Carma Bacon, Beth Miller, Jan Eubanks and a few other happy hooligans.
His family lived practically next to the school – and near enough to my family farm that he was often able to ride his horse to my place and we’d take off into the sagebrush hills for target practice shooting at fleeing jackrabbits with .22s or slip off to the irrigation canal and go swimming. My mom always thought Tom had one of the brightest smiles she’d ever seen. With a little goading from the rest of us (just a little!), Tom used to use that winsome smile to convince our female elementary school teachers that we should listen to all those Yankees-Dodgers games in the World Series played during school hours each fall all through the 1950s. Instead of boning up on spelling and (yawn) science our classes always got to kick back and listen to Hall of Famers Vin Scully and Red Barber describe those games via radio. (So sad we didn’t have smartphones, don’t you think?)
Oh yeah, Tom was also a great digger. The school had quite a bit of vacant ground not used for anything and that Kesner smile was a factor in teachers letting us dig underground forts during breaks. So Tom and several other boys brought shovels to school and we’d dig competing forts, some of them 4 feet or deeper, cover them with boards and weeds and hunker in them – and in fall we’d use dry “Mullan reeds” for swords and do battle. Couple kids took a reed in the eye. We’d come in from recess filthy dirty and the teachers would say, “Boys, go to the bathroom and clean up first, then come sit down.” We did so … happily.
So thanks, Tom. You always looked tall and cool on horseback. I’ll always remember you as a great playmate, my always-smiling classmate and a good friend.
An old buddy, Bill Schey