I met Brad on the first day back to school after Christmas vacation.  It was in early January, 1954 and we were in kindergarten.  I entered Fremont Elementary School midyear when my parents moved back to Modesto from Menlo Park.  I don’t know what drew us together but it was an attraction that never ended.  One tall good-looking young boy and another slightly less so on two of the counts.  One an Italian Catholic and the other a Russian Jew.  From that January until we graduated high school we must have spent eight to ten hours a day together, often more.  Whether it was spending nights at each other’s houses, playing ball on Wellesley Way or Valerie Lane, helping Wa at the delicatessen, making up games in the “box”, walking to Aunt Elsie’s or Aunt May’s or exploring Modesto on bicycle or on foot each day began with a call, “What do you want to do today?”  “Is it a nothing-to-do day or do you have a brainy?”  One of us always had a brainy.  I can still remember his phone number:  LA 2-3316.

We had the same girlfriends throughout elementary school.  We were actually quite precocious.  At this time (1955) we lived on the same street.  That would be Wellesley Way.  Brad lived at 1125 Wellesley and I was four houses down on the opposite side of the street at 1108.  Well, as it happened, a very cute little first grader lived right next door to Brad.  Her name was Heather Van Parks.  We took turns walking her from Wellesley Way to our elementary school, John C. Fremont.  I was more enamored with her than Brad but, no matter our tastes, we began our tradition of sharing equally.  Her father lived in that house for a long time.  About ten years ago I saw Mr. Van Parks out in front of his house during one of my visits to Modesto.  I always made a point of driving down Wellesley Way when I visited Modesto.  He told me Heather still lived in Modesto and had three grown children.  I asked him to send her regards from her childhood beaus Paul Seideman and Brad Bassi.  In second grade our girlfriend was Susan Bienvenu, in third Linda Nason and in fourth, Linda McTerry.  We’d walk them home from school and try to impress them.  They all must have felt Brad and I belonged together because they always chose someone else as their boyfriend.  I still remember Brad and I walking Linda McTerry home after school.  When we reached her house Brad and I asked her to make a choice between us.  Now was the time.  She went into the house to think about it and we waited along her driveway.  She came out about five minutes later and said, “I choose Jimmy McCloud”.  He was in another class at our school.  We were stunned but seamlessly moved on to our next adventure and our next girlfriend.

Brad was an athlete like no other.  I was less adept but he always made me feel like

I was the best.  We always recalled the unassisted (counting Brad and me as one player) triple play we made in fifth grade.  I was playing second base and, with runners on second and third, I caught a line drive hit by Wally Prasher.  Steve Campos leaned off second base too far and I tagged the bag before he got back to it.   I then threw a strike to Brad who was playing catcher and he put the tag on Eddie DiFrancia who tried to test my arm and score after tagging from third base.  Brad had a little red catcher’s mitt with a pocket the exact size of a softball.  We each had similar footballs that we used in our yards and in the street.  His was called “brownie” and mine was called “bootie”.

For my seventh birthday I requested a theme party.  It was a “pirate party” in our backyard at 1108 Wellesley Way and all the guests, including Brad, dressed accordingly.  One of the gifts I received was a small (4 inches by 4 inches) treasure chest with a lock.  About a week after the party Brad and I put a number of coins and other small items into that chest and buried it in my backyard beneath some tall pine trees.  This would have been 1955.  Brad and I always wondered about that chest and what we had put in to it so many years earlier.  Well, as it happened, Brad and I took a trip to Modesto in about 2005 (the details of which will be recounted later in this narrative).  Friends of ours happen to live at 1008 Wellesley Way although they were not at home during the time of our stop in Modesto.  However, Brad and I went into that backyard and searched mightily for that small chest that we buried fifty years earlier.  Many of the pine trees were still there but our recollection of the exact spot we put the chest was quite vague.  We did not spend long in our search but sure felt it would have been fun to have unearthed the buried booty we had hidden so many years earlier.

We were so devoted to each other that while in second grade Brad changed a spelling test answer in order to miss the word that I had missed.  While in sixth grade we came in second in the Fremont school-wide talent show with a puppet extravaganza that the kids loved.  Apparently, the parents loved it a bit less and chose a ballerina as the first place winner after the student body had already selected our comedic presentation as the winner.  Our star was a puppet named Sparky.  Brad and I always remembered Sparky’s best line (culled from a joke book).  “I took an aptitude test last week.  I was advised to marry into money”.  I’m not sure we fully understood the joke nor did we ever follow Sparky’s advice.

We were not angels and often laughed at how in second grade we were caught making obscene gestures to each other across the classroom.  I won’t, and Brad and I never did, share the gesture with anyone else. Our teacher, Miss Sipes, kept us in at recess and spanked each of us mightily.  When Brad laughed at my being struck she started on him again. Then I laughed.  Back and forth the spankings went.  Only our pride was hurt but we always thought the Miss Sipes enjoyed it a great deal.  We never, ever, told our parents about this episode.

Brad’s physical size and strength often worked to my benefit.  When we were eight years old we were anxious to spy on the girl next door to me (Jeannie Crane, I know, a famous name to those old enough to know of her).  It was I who climbed on Brad’s shoulders to peek in her window as she dressed.  She spotted me, chased us down the street and started hitting Brad instead of me.  Brad got a raw deal in that debacle.  But I remember tearing into my sister with fists when she yelled at Brad for no reason (that I can remember) and told him to go home and never come back.  I was at Brad’s house when his sister, Michele (also known as Corky or Slor) was born.  That was in 1955.

Brad’s grandfather, Camper Stokes, whose given name I don’t know if I ever heard, had a cabin in the coastal mountains near Santa Cruz.  The nearby town was Boulder Creek.  I often did not see Brad for a week during the summer when he and some of his family spent time there.  I do remember my delight when, during the summers after fifth and sixth grade, I was included in these forays into the woods.  I remember Brad and I hiking around the area but always making it into town to get our fix of candy and sodas.

We invented our own language one summer.  It was called the “Lah” language and we made a dictionary of our vocabulary.  We did have numerous nouns and verbs but the language quickly devolved into mostly swear words.  Throughout our lives we maintained a fluency in the Lah language and occasionally spoke to each other in this arcane tongue.

We used to ride our bikes downtown to a magic store called “H.H. MacDonald’s” on Tenth Street.  It was across the street from the vacant Empire Theater and near the Greyhound Bus Station.  It was a gag store and maybe a pawn shop that was dark and musty with glass topped wooden counters that ran around the length of the store.  We spent hours developing our collections of fake throw-up and hand buzzers.  We especially liked the “peppermint” gum which was really fiery hot.  Down the block from H.H. MacDonald’s was the Carnation Bakery.  Same side of the street.  We occasionally made special trips there on our bikes, especially around the holidays, as they fashioned the best sugar cookies with frosting.  I retell the mundane story of the Carnation Bakery because we talked about that shop for almost sixty years.  We were adults but it warmed our hearts to recall these small stories.  It allowed us to retouch the most special time in our lives.  We couldn’t let them go.

We did a little shoplifting in those days.  Usually at the Long’s or Thrifty downtown on 11^th.  We would steal new baseballs by dropping them in Brad’s half eaten bag of popcorn and then I’d pour popcorn from my bag over the ball to conceal it.  When we got the contraband home we were always concerned about our parents seeing a new baseball (or other items) that they would know we could not have afforded.  We took the baseballs into the street and scuffed them up until they looked used.  In fact, their condition became no better than the many baseballs we already had in our collection.  We used the same ruse to steal little plastic figures of aliens (“moon men”).  They were about four inches tall and were in different poses carrying varying weapons.  We would place these around Brad’s or my room (on shelves, in corners) and knock them over from a distance with our rubber tipped, suction cupped dart guns.  In any event, we knew it was not right to steal and our crime spree was sporadic and lasted less than a year. 

Brad and I invented so many games over the years.  From bip ball to the Helmet Game using Wa’s WWII army helmet.  The Helmet Game was played in the “box” and staged by pulling the old divan away from the wall and storing all the balls we could find behind it as our ammunition.  We used golf balls, baseballs, softballs, a basketball and tennis balls, maybe even our dart guns.  We then set up targets around the room.  These included anything we could knock or tip over and they were set at various distances and heights from us.  We took turns throwing our ammo until we hit or knocked over each target.  The coup de grace was tipping over Wa’s army helmet so it landed right side up.  We were exhausted at game’s end.  We also played rubber darts, moon men, six variations of homerun derby and a game called “spectacs” (short for spectaculars).  In spectacs Brad would hurl the tennis ball so high and have it bounce off my house’s roof.  It would shoot back at various angles as it came off the wooden shingles.  We would dive to make catches.  I don’t know how my mother stood hearing that ball pound off the roof for hours on end.  But she did.  We had another game played in the front of my house.  Its name I cannot recall.  It might have been “double play” or “pop-up”.  Brad would stand in the middle of the street facing my side gate and I would be across the street on the neighbor’s lawn.  Seventy-five percent of the time or more Brad would hurl the tennis ball against the gate, field it as it returned to the street and spin to throw to me at first or we would turn a double play.  For the rest of his throws Brad would feign throwing at the gate and chuck the ball high into the air so one of us would have to make a fly ball out.  We kept score by innings and played this for hours.  We were in our own world, as teammates and brothers, and that is exactly how we wanted it to be.

Brad refused to believe he could be taller than my dad.  When Howard would ask Brad how tall he was Brad would always say “5’5’’ so as not to be taller than my 5’6’’ father.  This became a standing joke between them even when Brad reached 6’4”.

In 1957 my family moved from Wellesley Way around the corner to Valerie Lane.  Brad and I developed a short cut between our houses that served as our path of choice for about ten years. Likely, until we began driving.  We would walk from Brad’s down to my old house at 1108 Wellesley Way, cut through the back of that house, cross the alley, duck through a hole in a wooden fence and walk along a path that led through the backyard of Mr. Richard’s house on Mills.  When we reached the street we would find ourselves just 100 yards from my front door on Valerie Lane.  We always appreciated Mr. Richard’s allowing us to use this route for so many years.  However, we rarely saw him and were a bit afraid of him when we did.

We often consorted with other friends but always returned to each other and often

brought them into our fold.  We spent a hundred Saturday nights preparing for

the 11:00 P.M. Creature Features on TV.  It was on channel 2 and hosted by Bob Wilkens. Boy, did we love monster movies.  Brad even subscribed to several magazines about these low quality films.  We’d go to Larry’s Market on Roseburg in the afternoon and stock up on petty (candy).  We’d each get two sodas (Brad loved strawberry and cream soda, I preferred coke and root beer), Hostess fruit pies (Brad’s were cherry and berry, mine we lemon “lem” and pineapple “pine”) and plenty of penny candy.  He was the only one who could crack the freshness code on the label when it was coded to confuse consumers. He’d go through the rack of berry, lemon and cherry pies and gently squeeze them between his thumb and forefinger.  I can still hear him say “Not this one. Oh! This one is stale. This is it, the freshest one!”  We’d often finish the “stock” before the movie started and I occasionally fell asleep by 11:30.  Brad watched it all, often with my sister. But we loved “Bucket Of Blood” and “The House On Haunted Hill”.  Our all-time favorite movie of this genre was “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers” starring Kevin McCarthy.  Just last April I called Brad to tell him to watch “Invasion Of The Puppet People” on Turner Classic Movies.  We roared with laughter.  Of course our favorite actor was Vincent Price.  We always waited to see the “drinks on me” actor whom we knew, with his bloated bravado, was about to be the monster’s next victim.

During the summers, after the movie, we would stumble out back and sleep on my parent’s chaise lounges in our sleeping bags under the stars.  Often with my wire haired fox terrier, Buddy, at my feet.

Speaking of victims, when were about ten we set up a haunted house in my bedroom just before Halloween.  It was rigged up with chairs, blankets, blinking lights and sound.  We brought over the eight year old neighbor boy, Brian Zeiss, and put him through the ringer.  He ran home crying and we felt moderately guilty.  When we were about 12 years old we both wanted to be cool like Ricky Nelson.  However, neither of us wanted to play second fiddle.  Hence, the game was called “Rick and Rick”.  We’d sit in my mother’s 1960 Ford Falcon and converse, in a cool way, about girls, sports, etc.  We called each other Rick during that game.

Regarding Halloween, throughout the 1950s Brad and I spent most of these exciting eves together.  I generally cannot recall our choice of costumes although one year we both dressed as football players.  I clearly do remember pounding the pavement through the myriad of streets that comprised the “college district”.  The streets were packed with kids in those days and we knew most of them.  One highlight was the Ulrich house at the corner of Mills and Roseburg.  That family dispensed several nickels to each “trick or treater” instead of candy.  We made several stops at that house until they began to recognize us by our costumes.  We also spent numerous Fourth of July evenings together in the days when the neighborhood resounded with firecrackers, Roman candles and other incendiary devices.  One Fourth of July evening, after dark, Brad and I were playing with cherry bombs and firecrackers on the Haines lawn next to my house.  Brad lit a firecracker and reared back to throw it.  For some reason it exploded in his hand which created much anxiety.  Fortunately, Brad suffered no injuries.  That event, however, was never forgotten by either of us through all the years that followed.

His parents helped raise me and mine helped raise Brad.  Our favorite plea to my mom when we needed her approval for something we wanted to do was “It’s all planned, all set, all done.”  The words from my mom we did not want to hear were “Enough is enough, boys.”  We used these expressions between ourselves. We had hundreds of expressions, glances and experiences that served us over the sixty-one years of our friendship.  We knew what the other was thinking.  I don’t know if we ever had a fight.

Our shoplifting, as I previously wrote about, was short lived.   I can remember the experience that deterred us from a life of crime.  Before O’Brien’s, before Save Mart, the Ulrich shopping center on Roseburg consisted of the Valley Builders’ Lumber Yard and a small hardware store.  One day in, I think, 1960, we each stole a prepackaged little red lock and key.  I don’t know why we each took the exact same item and one for which we had no use but that was the way we did things in those days.  We started down the alley off Roseburg leading to my house and as the store began to leave our field of vision we noticed we were being followed.  We had just a minute or so to plan our course of action.  Brad always thanked me for my quick thinking this time as I said, “Let’s throw them over the fence into a backyard” which we did.  I also suggested that we give false names to whomever might demand such information.  Indeed, we were soon confronted by a store employee in the alley.  Brad responded to his questioning by saying his name was Brad Smith.  I was so nervous I then gave my real name.  We never faced any consequences nor were we searched for the goods but Brad never forgave me for hanging him out to dry.

Many times we would walk to Brad’s aunt’s house to spend a little time.  Aunt Elsie was his father’s sister.  She was quite large and drove a 1958 Chevrolet Impala that we liked a lot.  She lived on College Avenue on the west side of the street just north of Orangeburg.

What we secretly hoped for, and what often happened, is that Aunt Elsie would drive us to Smitty’s Coffee Shop on 9^th Street for a hamburger and milk shake.  I think Aunt Elsie was older than Brad’s father.  I do remember that she had a framed certificate honoring her penmanship in elementary school hanging in her garage.  It was dated May, 1921.

Brad’s other aunt, Aunt May (I think we shortened it from Mary), was his mother’s sister.  She had never been married and worked at a bank downtown.  She was a teller. It may have been Crocker Bank.  I do remember that Brad and I once went into the bank and gave Aunt May a holdup note.  I don’t remember if she laughed or not.

The Bassi’s had a dog in those days.  I now know it to have been a Cairn terrier.  It’s given name was Tinkerbelle.  As with most things in our lives at that time we morphed its name from Tinkerbelle, to Tink, Dink, Gooner, Sloon, Goon with other variations in between (we did that with Brad’s sisters as well ending up with Slor and Tarbs for Michelle and Barbara).  Brad and my recollection years later is that Gooner lived a long, long time and we never remember its demise.  We were always certain that we saw that dog around the neighborhood years after it could have possibly still been alive.

Brad read a fair amount when he was an adult.  However, as a kid reading was not on the top of his “to do” list unless it was the various monster magazines and comic books we liked.  Boy, did we read Sad Sack and Archie and Veronica comics.  In any event, Brad and I often recalled how he handled book reports throughout his school career.  In third grade Brad did buckle down and read the short book “The Tiger Wore Spikes” by John McCallum (1956). It was a biography of the noted baseball player, Ty Cobb.  It was a modest tome designed for very young readers.  Brad then wrote the obligatory three page book report for class.  As it turned out Brad wrote a report on that book every year thereafter until some point in high school when they stopped requiring this type of academic exercise.  As a follow up, for Brad’s 65^th  birthday, I located a copy of this book on Amazon and sent it to him as a gift.  He did not seem overwhelmed by my choice of gifts but thanked me graciously.  I thought he would have been stunned to see this book with the same olive green jacket as the original.  It all came together during my visit to see Brad last fall.  There on his bookshelf were two copies of  “The Tiger Wore Spikes”, the one I sent him and the original edition from his childhood.

Near my house, along Virginia Avenue, there was a long stretch of railroad tracks.  Trains used these tracks maybe once or twice a day, at low speeds, but with their mournful whistles blowing.  We could easily hear these trains from my house.  The tracks ran north-south and we wondered if they were the same tracks that went by the Del Rio Country Club about twelve miles north of Modesto.  After much planning, approval from our mothers (after an “all planned, all set, all done”) and a packed lunch we set out to find out where the tracks went.  We must have been ten or eleven years old.  It is amazing how much we did without supervision at such young ages.  We walked and walked and walked.  Past backyards, barking dogs, crossing streets we recognized until we crossed streets that we didn’t recognize.  Finally, we began to leave the city and crossed orchards, farmland, country roads and the like.  We talked, we laughed, we threw rocks and we ate our lunch.  After I don’t know how many hours we finally reached our destination: Del Rio Country Club.  We called my mother to pick us up as we had not factored in the return trip.

Brad and I always thought that his brother, Pike (aka Michael) was both smart and sophisticated.  I remember Brad and me hanging with Pike by the record player which was situated just steps down from the kitchen on Wellesley Way.  Pike proved his forward thinking and cutting edge mind when he pulled out the first Smothers Brothers LP record for us to listen to.  We certainly laughed at the jokes we understood.

Over Christmas break of our 7^th grade year Brad’s mother bought him a raincoat for the upcoming winter season.  It was one of those standard yellow slickers that were quite out of style at our school (and across the nation, I believe).  It was the kind that a kindergartner would be seen wearing.  Brad was reluctant to wear this coat to school or anywhere else in public.  His mother was adamant that he don the coat and tried to convince him with the line that “All the college kids are wearing them”.  We never believed this to be true but Brad did end up wearing the yellow raincoat several times before purposely losing it.  We used that line of his mother’s for years thereafter whenever we saw clothes that were dated.

Also during our seventh grade year Brad and I had the brilliant idea to take up smoking.

It seemed pretty cool and adult.  However, procuring cigarettes at our age was not the easiest task.  On our long walks and explorations around Modesto we did happen upon a solution to our problem.  At this time there was a drive-in restaurant in Modesto called Burge’s at Ninth and O Streets.  It was car hop service with some indoor seating and was quite popular with the teenage crowd.  In fact, it may have been the model for the drive-in from the movie “American Graffiti” although there was a similar drive-in on McHenry called Al’s.  Burgers, fries and shakes were obviously the plats de jour.  In any event, Burge’s was a round restaurant and very dark around the backside.  In the shadows of the rear of Burge’s was a cigarette machine that charged 35 cents a pack.  That would be a quarter and a dime to us.  We were somewhat fearful of being seen in the area but Brad was tall and we thought, in the proper attire, could pass for an eighteen year old, although he was only twelve.  With some planning Brad donned a dark long coat and we approached the back of Burge’s through the alley that ran down to Needham Avenue.  I would remain behind in the shadows as Brad strode with height and authority up to the machine, dropped in the coins and returned with a pack of Tareytons.  We would each smoke one walking home down College Avenue cupping the cigarettes in our palms whenever we spotted a passing car.  I don’t think we inhaled and we never became addicted to tobacco at this time.

In junior high we began our work careers.  We started a lawn business mowing, weeding, etc.

We must have had five or six regular accounts.  We charged five dollars for lawn mowing and edging.  I don’t recall how we priced our other yard work.  We used to laugh at the time we cleaned the entire front and back of a house that was for sale on Columbia Way.  When we returned to collect our pay we learned that the family had moved and stiffed us.   Our gardening business continued for some time until we were hired by a Mrs. Gaard to weed and clean out her backyard.  We were on opposite sides of the large yard and one of us threw a ripe tomato at the other.  This required return fire and the melee continued for some time as Mrs. Gaard was not at home at the moment.  We threw tomatoes until we were exhausted and collapsed in laughter.  Mrs. Gaard did not think it was quite so funny.  We were summarily fired once she returned and surveyed the lack of tomatoes on the plants and the stains on the walls and fence.  We were shocked when she handed each of us $2.00 either for the work we had completed or to embarrass us for our unprofessional behavior.  With tomato stained clothes we headed down the alley to spend our ill gotten gain on candy and sodas at Larry’s Market. 

Brad and I retired from this line of work and moved on to deliver newspapers.  It was a seven day a week, 5:00 A.M. schedule.  He’d come to my house and tap on my window to rouse me (if I overslept which was often).  We’d ride our bikes to the Donut Den on McHenry which was next to Hob Nob Pizza and play pinballs (the machine we played was called “21”) and eat just-out-of-the-oven donuts, then go fold and load the papers.  I was on the handle bars and Brad pedaled as I threw the papers.  Brad often did the heavy lifting due to his superior strength.   Brad and I recalled that we took the job after being befriended by a Mr. Clark in Graceada Park.  He offered us the route delivering the San Francisco Examiner for twenty dollars a month.  Now that was a lot of money to us at the time.  But we really never did the math. We remembered our disappointment when Mr. Clark came down Brad’s driveway to pay us.  He handed us each $6.00 and said the balance was eaten up in taxes and ancillary costs.  Six dollars for a month of 5:00 A.M. risings was discouraging.  But we had fun those days and never forgot our route through the dark and quiet Modesto streets.   We were together. However, Brad had a better work ethic as I lasted only a few months on the job.  My parents made me quit after I fell asleep in science class several times. He continued for some time. 

Although Brad’s mechanical skills were modest there was one area in which he excelled.  The television in his bedroom (the box) was an old Bendix brand with rabbit ears.  I think we got about three channels in those days.  Brad watched a lot of television.  He loved “McHale’s Navy”, “The Three Stooges” and a program called “It’s a Man’s Man’s World” which was on for one season (1962) about three college kids living on a houseboat.  These were not highbrow programs.  Brad and I would watch TV while perusing his latest issues of Mad magazine, Cracked or Monster World.  We were voracious readers of the worst material.  In any event, the Bendix TV was subject to frequent breakdowns and we were often unsure we would be able to watch the next important program.  The volume and channel tuning knobs were also missing from this television. However, over the years Brad became so adept at tinkering, adjusting and tuning this TV with just a screwdriver and a pair of pliers that we rarely missed our desired program.

Brad and I often walked or rode our bikes to his father’s delicatessen on 13^th Street in downtown Modesto.  It was called Garetto’s and Wa had a partner named Elmo Gerbo. I can still see the store with a variety of canned goods on the shelves, an ice chest with sliding top that contained sodas, popsicles and, most importantly, frozen candy bars.  The L shaped cold case featured the standard array of cheeses, raviolis (we called them ravs), salads and salamis.  The large, well-lit backroom had some picnic type tables and a backdoor led to the alley behind the store.  Across the alley were the offices of the local newspaper, The Modesto Bee.  Now Brad and my usual routine was a short visit and food run.  We’d make our own sandwiches and finish them off with a soda and a frozen Milky Way.  Brad preferred Snickers.  However, the summer after, I believe, our freshman year in high school we actually worked at Garetto’s over the lunch hour.  I think we were paid in food but we stocked some shelves, cleaned up and, more importantly, served lunch to the hordes of newsmen (many from the sports department) who poured across the alley from the Bee.  Wa and Elmo made sandwiches and heated pasta and we served.  I don’t remember money being exchanged, maybe the Bee ran up a tab.  As I think back, the backroom at Garetto’s could have been one of the busiest restaurants in town in those days. 

I want you to know that Brad’s favorite lunch has always been a salami sandwich with Swiss cheese and mustard on a hard roll.  It is probably mine as well because it so reminds me of Brad. As an aside, he only liked Gulden’s Mustard, which we mispronounced as kids as Gluden’s.  For sixty years we continued to call it Gluden’s.  It may sound immature, no, it was immature but whenever we mispronounced a word, or shortened it or said it in a funny tone of voice the word or phrase stuck that way forever.  These things get in one’s blood.  When I visited Brad last fall he took me across town to an Italian deli in Salt Lake City called Caputo’s and we sat with salami and Swiss sandwiches on a hard roll.  As was the case since childhood, his was spread with “Gluden’s” mustard and mine was dry.

Speaking of the Modesto Bee, due to Wa’s connections with the Bee sportswriters, Brad was front and center at one of the big speakers series at the SOS (Sportsmen Of Stanislaus).  Two big league baseball managers came to dispense their wisdom of the sport.  They could have been Charlie Dressen and Danny Murtaugh, I can’t quite remember.  I opened the Bee one afternoon and there, on the front page of the sports section, was a picture of Brad holding a baseball surrounded by the two managers.  He was probably twelve at the time.  Brad’s smile lit up the photograph. I have seen that picture several times since then so know it to still be in existence.  I was bursting with pride for my buddy and quite envious as well.

Brad was quite an athlete and a particularly good quarterback.  I like to think that I helped him develop his ability to put the football in the receiver’s hands. We spent many crisp fall days throwing and receiving the football on my front lawn on Valerie Lane.  The  lawn was not large so we minimized our play selection to three basic patterns.  Pattern A was a screen play.  I would run down the line and gently break into the midfield.  Pattern B was the bullet pass across the middle.  I did not love this call as the speed of Brad’s passes did cause me some chest pain.  But I made the catches.  The C Pattern was the most fun as it was the long bomb.  This took me across the driveway and usually resulted in a long touchdown unless the large Modesto ash tree near the driveway batted the ball down. We played this game for hours and I am sure the practice honed Brad’s skills and strengthened his arm.  For the record, I was Raymond Berry and Brad was Johnny Unitas.

High school brought us a new group of friends but Brad was always the leader.  His good looks, his sense of humor and his winning personality were like a magnet to us all.  He was the most popular kid in the school, at least from my point of view.  Our gang was the “in crowd”.  We loved the music, the sports, our friends, the girls and the hours and days spent in “the box” which was the name for Brad’s bedroom (a converted garage) listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. True story: I met a girl from our high school many, many years later and her first words to me were, “You guys were so cool in high school”.  Brad was the coolest.

Brad tried his hand at golf more than once.  I played a great deal in my early high school years most often with my buddy and fellow golf team member, Peter Koetting.  One day Brad rushed up to us and reported that he had shot a 39 on the front side at the Dryden Municipal Golf Course.  This did not sound very credible to Peter and me.  Queried about any witnesses Brad stammered and said he played with an older couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Edwards.  We teased him about this for years but he insisted it was true.  Years later I asked Brad to “swear on our friendship” which, as I will later explain, was the holy grail of truth telling.  He did and I believed he shot a 39 from then on. For the rest of our lives, however, whenever one of us related a story that strained credulity it had always been witnessed by “the Edwards”. 

Brad’s height, arm strength and the decision making skills he developed throwing the football to me in our yards and on our streets enabled him to make the Davis High School varsity football team as quarterback.  For reasons I cannot fathom he was the second or third string quarterback.  He spent most of his football career on the bench but his star did shine at a game and I was in the stands.  Davis was playing Edison High School from Stockton under the lights on the big stage at the Modesto Junior College.  I believe Brad had been told in advance that he would play a series or two under center.  I do not remember any scores or even which team won the game but I do remember THE play that lived on.  Brad took the snap from Davis’ vaunted center, Dave Henry, who then clogged the middle slowing up a ferocious pass rush.  Brad dropped back seven steps and then threw a forty-five yard strike to wide receiver Randy Cox who pulled in the throw at the goal line.  The crowd in the stands, such as it was, went wild as I led the cheers.  Virtually everyone from Davis recalls that famous play provided someone is there to remind them.  Brad and I never forgot it.

At Davis High School I was a member of the debate team and encouraged Brad to try his hand at rhetoric.  He came into his own after several false starts.  Brad began by trying Original Oratory.  This category at speech tournaments required him to write and deliver a half-hour treatise on his chosen topic.  Brad’s first effort was to write about the crime wave that was the focus of much of the nation’s attention during that time.  He produced a well-written piece but unfortunately inserted a sentence or two about a fictional criminal named John Hall who was found to have committed several “measly murders in the Cincinnati area”.  This unfortunate phrase was picked up on by some taunting classmates, most notably Donald DeCamp.  Brad was teased mercilessly and he finally threw the entire project into the dustbin. Brad next moved on to Original Interpretation in which he was required to edit and deliver a short piece of literature.  His selection of W.W. Jacob’s “The Monkey’s Paw” won some early accolades until his tone of voice and phrasing of the famous scream “The paw, the paw, the monkey’s paw!” took on a life of its own and again teasing bordering on derision won the day and the effort was shelved.  Finally, Brad turned to delivering the famous piece “No Time For Sergeants” (novel by Mac Hyman, play by Ira Levin).  This became his piece de resistance and over the next year or so he won several first place trophies at our Saturday speech tournaments up and down the central valley.  Ironically, over the years Brad heard more about the “measly murders” and “the paw, the paw, the monkey’s paw!” than he did about his success with “No Time For Sergeants”.  But that’s the way we were in those days, merciless in our teasing but with love in our hearts.

Neither Brad nor I was noted for our singing voices.  But over the years we developed a repertoire of songs that we loved to sing together.  I don’t know how these particular songs were selected but we fell back on them whenever we were together (together alone).  On some songs we harmonized throughout.  These included “Words Of Love” by the Beatles and “Volare” (probably the Bobby Rydell version).  Several songs required us to jointly sing the chorus and then have Brad step in as soloist to handle the verse.  The top songs in this category were the disparate “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie and Claude King’s great version of “Wolverton Mountain”.  When singing “Wolverton Mountain” Brad and I would roll with laughter when he broke into the solo in a basso voice: “The bears and the birds, oh, oh”. Occasionally, we would hear these on the radio and all hell would break loose as we strove to catch all the right notes and intonations.  Often, we would simply sing these songs on our own to rejoice in our memories of them, that time and our love for each other.

Brad could never be considered a bully or the heavy and I never remember him having a real fight with anyone.  But he did play the heavy on my behalf in February, 1966.  We were seniors in high school at the time and I had just begun dating a cute young sophomore (although young sophomore may be redundant it wasn’t at the time) a month or two earlier.  This girl and I were doing quite well as a couple.  Word came to me in February that another senior whom I did not really know and whose name I cannot remember was also interested in this young lady and planned to do me bodily harm unless I stepped aside.  Now my track record in dating was not particularly good and, hence, I had no plans to bow out although I was obviously quite alarmed given my lack of skills in the “sweet science” (aka fighting).  I confided this information and my concerns (or should I say fears) to my friend Brad and he said, “Si, let me see if I can help you out”.  As it turned out, and as I later learned, he enlisted the support of another dear friend, the sizeable Donald Decamp.  They apparently had a heated conversation with the aforementioned interloper, and my senior year romance continued unabated.  Although little was ever said about this in the many years that followed I was continually grateful to both Brad and Donald for their (unsolicited) assistance in this delicate matter. 

During our senior year of high school the Bassi family took in two foreign exchange students. One quiet, young Thai student lived in the main house.  His name was Payip and we spent little time with him.  He seemed a serious student at the Modesto Junior College.  The second student was the opposite.  His name was Kamal Bahnki.  He was about twenty-one or so and from Iran.  He was a wild and crazy guy who primarily hung out with his Iranian compatriots and any girls he could lure into his web.  We never saw him with a book or to have any connection with higher learning.  I believe he lived with Brad in the box but I’m not sure. 

He taught Brad all the Iranian language (Farsi) swear words.  For decades Brad remembered these and any Persians we met over the years would be regaled with Brad’s linguistic skills in Farsi.  I still know most of them.  We liked Kamal a lot but his best attribute was that he was over 21 and could buy beer at the small liquor store on Roseburg in the Ulrich shopping center.  It was called Felix’s Liquors but, of course, Brad turned the name into “Feels”.  From Wednesday night on Brad, Peter, Don and my job was to corral Kamal long enough to get him to buy a six pack or two of Coors beer for our weekend endeavors.   We occasionally hid this contraband in our school lockers at Davis High for Friday evening pickup.  Kamal did not exact a price for his efforts on our behalf but frequently seemed envious of our weekend festivities.  He may have even been occasionally included.  Over the years Brad and I always wondered what became of Kamal Bahnki but we could never see him as being part of the 1979 Iranian revolution.  He was too Americanized, and a raconteur to boot.

While Brad was at the Modesto Junior College he secured the job of manager of the Washington A’s little league team.  It was over the summers of 1967 and 1968. I was the number one coach for two summers. Brad could play baseball, teach baseball and work with kids so well.  Later, college years separated us but not much time passed before I visited him in Long Beach or SF State.  He came to Berkeley to hang out with me as well.

During the summer of 1967, when Brad and I were coaching the Washington A’s little league team, we often needed to get away from the pressure and to strategize about upcoming games.  We did this a few times by going camping together in the Sierras. We would drive up passed Bear Valley, find a spot off the road where we could pull in a few hundred feet and set up camp.  Neither Brad nor I were particularly skilled in the outdoor arts.  We did cook dinner and slept in sleeping bags under the stars.  We were always next to a roaring stream in which we bathed and swam.  One thing we had in common was a deep concern about encountering snakes.  In reality this never happened but one evening at dusk as we were walking back to our campsite Brad brushed his leg against an object, looked down to see a snakelike image and let out a blood curdling scream.  It turned out to be nothing but a small brown branch.  We laughed about this that night and for many years after.  I relate the story because incidents like this stayed with us and there were hundreds of them.  This was particularly true if there were a unique sound, word or expression attached to the experience. More times than I can remember over the years Brad would replicate the scream with exacting volume and intonation and we burst into the same laughter we had those many decades earlier.

In the late 1970s Brad, Peter and I with our wives or girl friends met in Las Vegas for the start of a big city gambling adventure followed by a camping trip in southern Utah.  Brad was quite the 21 player in those days as we would laughingly discuss him parlaying his chips into even larger winnings.  My recollection of the details is a tad weak but the six of us drove into southern Utah and camped near St. George and Cedar Breaks.  Our goal was the Cedar Breaks Shakespeare Festival and we had previously acquired tickets for the play King Lear.  Now we all know this is a difficult play particularly for those of us not well versed in Shakespearean literature.  Early in the first act Brad nudged Peter and me and said he needed to excuse himself for a cigarette break outside.  This was well before he gave up smoking.  Unfortunately, the outdoor “Globe Theater” did not allow re-admittance.  We did not see Brad for hours much to the chagrin of his wife, Judith. I found Brad first after the three hour play and his question was “Can you give me a brief synopsis of the play”?  I would have been pleased to do so but I had neither the time nor the understanding of the play to accommodate him. 

Brad enjoyed his food tastes.  One in particular was of note and much laughter.  In the 1970s and 1980s Brad and I often frequented Chinese restaurants for dinner, usually in Oakland but occasionally in Salt Lake City.  Whether we were dining together or with others Brad had one dish that transcended all others.  In Chinese restaurants, then and now, the standard  procedure was to order a number of dishes and share them around the table.  Brad liked many dishes but could not do without fried shrimp with a hot mustard dip.  As odd as it may seem this is what he ordered and this is pretty much what he ate at these restaurant outings.  Brad had a way of doing something a bit strange but bringing people around by describing his motives in a humorous way.  In this case it was an elaborate description of the effect of the hot mustard on his nostrils and throat.

In the 1970s, 80s and 90s Brad, Peter and I met in either Reno or Las Vegas every year or two for a three day gambling and juvenile behavior trip.  Brad’s favorite hotel was the Peppermill in Reno.  It was bright, glitzy and he always felt like he “won, and won big” there.  Brad always found ways to amuse us and draw us into his web.  The three of us were sitting at a 21 table at the Peppermint in, maybe, 1992.  Brad noticed a hair on the table and told us we must each touch the hair as the cards were being dealt. 

Now Brad often had what we called “urs” which was short for urges.  But this hair was magic.  The three of us parlayed our chips into an astounding amount of money by following Brad’s admonition.  Anyone who neglected to touch the hair lost the hand.  Now, I admit some alcohol was consumed during this stint at the table and our laughter was uncontrollable to the extent that the dealer finally brushed off the table but the “Tale of the Hair” lived on.  This is not to say that all of Brad’s “urs” were so effective.  In reality, most of Brad’s talismans were of limited practical benefit.  But the laughter and joy they engendered were priceless.

Through the decades we talked so often.  Often we’d talk four or five days in a row.  Sports, life, and often to reminisce.  No gap in our conversations lasted longer than a week or so.  Even the days that I did not speak with Brad were better because I knew he was there and the history we had together.  I also knew that we would soon speak and I would hear him say “Rame!  How is my best-est friend?”  I went to Salt Lake and he came to Oakland.  We’d usually have a week together around Thanksgiving when Brad flew out for the annual Mud Bowl game in Modesto.  He was a helluva quarterback. I was his favorite target.  He often reminded me of the forty yard strike for the winning touchdown that he threw to me in Golden Gate Park when he lived in Pacifica.  He said the regulars underestimated my skills due to my size. My view of our childhood and high school years was confirmed many years later.  I went to a number of class reunions that Brad did not attend. Whether it was the tenth, twentieth or thirtieth the comments from old classmates were unsolicited and the same.  At their first encounter with me the remark was, “Where is Brad?”

For the fiftieth anniversary of our friendship Brad flew out to Oakland and we drove to Modesto to visit our old haunts.  We had lunch at Brad’s favorite spot, Smokey’s on McHenry (yes, it was still there and as greasy as ever), and drove by our old friends’ houses, down streets filled with mems (as we called our memories).  We saw old trees we had climbed and yards we had mowed.  We retraced our old paper route. We walked down the alleys near our houses.  We knocked on 1125 Wellesley Way and the man who bought the house from Brad’s mother years ago answered the door.  He let us walk through the house and the “box”.  We marveled at the small things that took us back to 1958.  Of course, the house sure seemed much smaller than when we roamed it as kids, the streets narrower. We went to Fremont Elementary School where we met as kindergartners and introduced ourselves as sixth grade graduates of 1960.  The office staff looked at us like we were from Mars.  However, the principal gave us a tour (as if we needed one). Brad and I mostly reflected on the exact spots that important events had occurred: the triple play, a marbles game, the Miss Sipes’ spanking, our puppet show, our days on traffic patrol.  One final stop was the cemetery in Empire where both of our fathers are buried.  By some twist of fate our fathers, who were both born in1912, lie only about fifty yards apart.  It was raining that day as we paid tribute to these two fine men whom we loved so dearly and lost too soon.  We drove back to Oakland cherishing our friendship, and feeling that our childhoods had also ended too soon.

Brad passed away on May 27, 2015 in Salt Lake City.  His family, several of the old gang and I were able to be with him for a time during the last week of his life.  I held Brad’s hand several times toward the end and spoke to him in whispers.  I told him of my love for him and how much he affected my life.  Things he already knew. I asked him to continue to fight for life for himself and all of those who loved him.  His eyes were open at those moments and I believe I felt a slight squeeze of his hand.  But I don’t know. I would like to think that he heard me and the importance of each of us to the other was silently acknowledged.  It had always been acknowledged, silently and otherwise, for more than sixty years.

December of 2015 found me visiting friends in Modesto right down the block from Brad’s childhood home on Wellesley Way.  It was chilly and blustery when I walked down the street to Brad’s.  I stood across the street for some time.  My thoughts and visions took me back and I saw Brad and me playing football in the street, walking up the driveway to the “box”, Wa’s 1938 DeSoto and his mom’s white Ford Galaxy parked out front and we two discussing school, girls and friends by the gate.  I so wanted to turn back the clock fifty years. I was standing there for about fifteen minutes when a magical event took place.  Out of the front door of Brad’s house emerged two eight or nine year old boys.  Now they did not look exactly like we did at that age but they were playful friends immersed in the joys of their childhood.  They laughed, poked each other and were in their own world of joy.  It was then that I said good-bye again and turned into the cold wind of a waning afternoon.

Here is a photo of Brad and me taken in the fall of 2014.  It was our last one.  Old friends.

As I have indicated before, the amusement of these personal vignettes may not affect all readers.  In fact, I feel that I am mainly writing to Brad and fervently wish I had started these reminiscences years ago so we could have reviewed them together.  I know that he would have many recollections that I cannot summon up.  Not that we did not talk about all of these events, however minor and long ago, through the years.

I visited Brad in November, 2014 for three days.  I could see his struggles, as I had for some time, but he did not dwell on them, maybe some denial, maybe some resignation to the vagaries of life. Whether to deflect my questions about his health or because he believed it he would usually say “I’m doing fine”.  Occasionally, he would open up about his difficulty walking or related maladies and we would discuss options and ask unanswerable questions. Whenever I’d arrive or he came to me we always fit like a hand and glove.  Never an awkward moment.  Of course I spoke with Brad every November 30^th for 60 years and he called me every June 3^rd without fail.

I could add a thousand more stories each illustrating our adventures and our friendship. Most sound mundane but they filled our lives and built a story of friendship. Suffice it to say that whenever either of us doubted the details of the other’s story we asked a question: “On our friendship?”  That query ensured the truth was to be told and that request for total honesty was never violated.  I admired Brad for so many reasons but our friendship was a friendship of equals.  Figuratively, I would often carry Brad and, both figuratively and literally, he often carried me.  This love affair and lifelong friendship began that day we met in 1954.  It was sealed a few years later, we were seven or eight, when we each pricked our fingers with a pin and became “blood brothers”.

I do believe, and I think that Brad would agree, that our closeness and our joy in our childhood did not fully prepare us for our adult lives.  We both made our ways, had some modest successes and, perhaps, some epic failures.  But I also can now see what I was unable to see in the past.  That I am also quite unprepared to live without him.  I think of him every day and, truthfully, occasionally find myself gasping for breath as I realize that over sixty years have passed since I met Brad, that we can never have that time back and that I will never see him again.  I so want another day with him.  I so miss our youth together. It was bound to end but how could we have ever been prepared?  We never prepared ourselves. We never let our past slip away like most adults do. We never talked of one of us living in this world without the other. The end crept up on us. When you think you have another minute, another hour, another day the end takes you by surprise and by storm.  If the laughter and the moments of joy we shared could each count as a minute or a day then Brad and I would still have so much time lying ahead of us.  It is not so. It cannot be so.  But I cannot accept it.

As it is, I can’t imagine my life had I not met Brad those many years ago.  He enriched my life in so many, many ways.  He helped write the story of my life as I did his. I know he felt the same about me.  At Brad’s service three people, only one of whom had I met before, spoke of their experiences with Brad.  Two were coworkers and one a neighbor from years before.  All three, unsolicited and independently, looked directly at me and said that Brad had regaled them with stories of our childhood and friendship for years on end.  One said, “We would sit in our patrol car night after night and Brad would talk of your childhoods together and never ran out of Brad and Si adventures to tell about.”  I believed them and I understood.  I have done the same thing.

Brad was my friend, he was my brother and I love him so.  I have always been so grateful for the time we had together.  I continue to be.  But, I need to see him again.  This cannot be the end.