{"id":60299,"date":"2026-09-22T05:31:37","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T05:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=60299"},"modified":"2026-09-22T05:31:44","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T05:31:44","slug":"sixty-four-years-and-counting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=60299","title":{"rendered":"Sixty-four years … and counting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Word recently got to me that the man I’ve known longer than any human being on this Earth is moving a good bit closer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

He”ll settle soon in Phoenix, Ariz., which is a damn sight closer to my digs than Portland, Ore., where we first got acquainted in the seventh grade. Yep. That’s 64 years of uninterrupted friendship.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I want to hail this relationship in a brief tribute to the value of real friendships, not the fake friends one meets on our life journey, only to forget about them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

His name is Dennis. My parents moved us from Portland to the suburbs in the spring of 1962. My sisters and I thought our new house in the burbs was akin to Buckingham Palace. It was a modest split-level home that looked much like others on the street. Then the time came to enroll in our new school. It was in the middle of a school year, so I went from an elementary school to a junior high school.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dennis and I met in our home room class on that first day. We’ve been best friends ever since.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dennis and I have what one could call the real deal as friends. We’ve been through a lot together. We’ve had our ups and downs. The ups far outnumber the downs. We’ve always been there for each other. We went into the military the same year, 1968. I was inducted into the Army. D enlisted in the Coast Guard. I went to Vietnam to serve. So did he! Our paths came tantalizingly close to crossing in Da Nang. His ship docked there for a few hours, but he couldn’t get ashore long enough to look me up.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dennis is a fellow whose friendship I cherish more with each passing year. We’re both long in the tooth these days. We’ve been throught tragedy, grief and mourning. Yet we’ve managed to come out clean.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dennis provides me with the kind of friendship worthy of boasting about it. I believe I have done the same for him.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It’s the wee hours as I write this item. I’ll sign off by acknowledging what men our age should tell each other without flinching. I love this man.<\/p>\r\n\n

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Word recently got to me that the man I’ve known longer than any human being on this Earth is moving a good bit closer. He”ll settle soon in Phoenix, Ariz., which is a damn sight closer to my digs than Portland, Ore., where we first got acquainted in the seventh grade. Yep. That’s 64 years … Continue reading Sixty-four years … and counting<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1231,9480,5041,7103,5110],"class_list":["post-60299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-da-nang","tag-friendship","tag-us-army","tag-us-coast-guard","tag-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60301,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60299\/revisions\/60301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}