C - Crew

As people progress into adulthood, many of them have a time they look back on as being the 'good old days'. For me, it was those first few years after high school. I was no longer a child, but I wasn't really an adult yet. No real responsibilities and a lot of free time, but I have to also give some of the credit to the group of friends I had at the time. We called ourselves "The Crew".

The core members of this group were my brothers and myself, Bob McCormick, Chris Witges, Bill Laur, his brother John, and their cousin Eric Breeze. There were a few others who were temporarily part of the group over the years, but this was the main crew. There was about a three year period when it seemed we spent every waking moment together.

Most of that time was spent in Bill and John's garage. It had a wood-burning stove so we could even stay out there in the winter. We sat out there and talked about life, talked about girls, talked about cars and went through a lot of beer and cigarettes. When we felt like getting a little louder without actually going out to do something, we would go camping. Eric's parents owned a few acres out in the middle of nowhere. It was all forest, but there was a dirt road that could get us back there to a small clearing with a pond. It was a rutted-up, all-dirt road that required a four-wheel drive truck to get back there if there had been any rain in the last week.

None of us were 21 yet, so we would find someone to buy a few cases of beer for us and we would go out there to sit around the fire, drink all the beer and make a lot of noise. No one was close enough to hear us and the road to get there wasn't even on any maps. It was a place where we didn't really worry about police interference of our underage activities.

We would fish, shoot our guns, tell our stories and have the time of our lives. It was awesome.

One of our favorite activities out there was to dare John to do something crazy. If it was winter time, we would ask him to walk across the frozen pond when we knew it wasn't frozen enough to hold his weight. We would dare him to climb a skinny tree and try to get it to lean out over the pond so he could jump in. John was usually willing, but when he wasn't we would pool our money until there was enough to convince him. Once, he climbed to the top of a tall tree (about 30 feet up) and his brother pulled a chainsaw out of his truck and cut the tree down.

When one of us got a girlfriend, there was always the inevitable moment when she would be introduced to the group. Some of them fit right in. Others really didn't like our group dynamic. The ones that didn't fit in never lasted very long. We spent a lot of time together. If they didn't like their boyfriend's friends then they'd probably tire of him quickly anyway.

On Sundays, we would invite people to play football with us in the open yard beside the local grade school. Over the summer, this game grew from the small game of a dozen people to almost 40 playing every week. One of the draws to this game was how much we prided ourselves in its violence. This was full-contact tackle football and pads were not allowed in order to level the playing field for everyone. People wearing pads tended to hurt the people who didn't.

Banning pads was to prevent unnecessary injuries, but that didn't mean safety was a big concern to us. One of the out-of-bounds lines was a chain link fence. If you touched the fence, you were out of the playing area. However, that also meant that it was almost on the playing field. People got knocked into that fence all the time. On one end of the field, the road was the end zone. Tackles near the line on that end of the field often resulted in lost skin.

Being  stupid testosterone-driven teenagers meant we bragged about the injuries. And this brought in more teenagers who wanted to come and show how tough they were as well. There were injuries every week. Sprained ankles, huge bruises, concussions, and tears were a weekly occurrence. Occasionally, someone even broke a bone.

Eventually, we had to stop this weekend tradition. The police showed up to stop our game. After the third person that day had shown up at the emergency room (broken collarbone, broken finger, dislocated shoulder) explaining that they had been injured in a football game, the hospital called the police to investigate. That was the last game we played.

As tends to happen with life, we all grew up. Despite still living so close to each other, we began to start out adult lives. We all got married, started careers and had families. The Crew fell apart. We each ran into each other occasionally, but the group was no more.

No more drunken nights in the garage.
MISSING: Eric Breeze

Since the above photo was taken, we have become a police officer, trauma nurse, business owners, a military contractor, language teacher, arc welder, and a farmer.

In 2015, I was chatting with Eric on Facebook and it was suggested that we should all get together again. That night I put together a group Facebook message and we started hammering out the details. A few months later we all met for the Fourth of July weekend. This reunion included several of the extra people who had come and gone over the years. Only two of the core group were missing.

We had so much fun getting back together to rehash our glory days, we have done it every year since. They even scheduled the weekend last year to coincide with my visit back to the States. A great night.

I know that today I would never survive the nights we used to have. And things could never be like they were again, but I miss those guys. Those were some great years that we can never really go back to.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.