I was on the phone the other day with a friend who just returned from the 50th reunion of our Portville (New York) High School class. He was sucking on a beer while sitting on a picnic bench not far from were as a young boy of 10 I used to swing out on a rope and drop into a deep water hole in the Allegheny River.

The night before Gordon and another classmate canoed the Allegheny toward the Steam Valley Bridge (a picture of our son Michael standing on that bridge with the island in the background where I swung out on a rope is on sportspaper.org). They turned around before reaching it, but the effort and the thought of him sitting on the picnic bench next to the Allegheny began a blur of pictures racing through my mind covering the last 50 years of my life.

It’s difficult to believe it’s been 50 years since I walked the halls of high school. I graduated from Ferndale High School in Whatcom County, but I have always kept very close to classmates from Portville, including Gordon, who is full of life, mischievousness and a joy to be around.

He tells of another classmate who over the years purchased old oil wells around our old stomping ground and claims to hold the largest reserve of natural gas in the state of New York.

Years ago my oldest brother and I talked about doing the same thing, but our guts were not as big as our idea and all it turned out to be was talk. With the high price of oil these days, apparently other people now have the same idea and Gordon says new oil wells are being drilled in the foothills of the Alleghenies.

The first oil wells in Cattaraugus County, N.Y., were I lived, were drilled in 1887. Richburg, N.Y., where my oldest brother lives, was intended to be the home of oil millionaires back at the turn of the century. Now there a fewer than 500 people there, although it is still a beautiful and very peaceful place.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s when the oil wells were still pumping, you could hear their echoes throughout the valley along the Allegheny. It was a very comforting noise and many warm summer nights their sounds put me to sleep.

Those times – post World War II and pre-Korean War – were idyllic. I can still see myself racing barefoot across meadows in the shadow of “Old Baldie,” a foothill maybe 1,000 feet high that was bald on top. I had no cares in the world as I ran, trying to create a breeze in my face on a sunny and very humid day.

On the eve of becoming a teenager and entering a new phase in life, my mother died and a year later my dad remarried and we moved west to Ferndale. My world went from idyllic to terrible turmoil in the span of 15 months.

The Ferndale years – 1954-58 and 1960-65 – were a mixture of sadness and tremendous adjustment. I went from a top student and top athlete in New York to an also-ran, buried in my own mixed-up thoughts. I felt like I was ripped from a peaceful Norman Rockwell painting and splattered into the middle of a Salvador Dali canvas.

I developed close friends at Ferndale. Most were from Olean, N.Y., Cattaraugus County’s largest city and just six miles from Portville. They, like me, came to Ferndale because their fathers were transferred out to start up the new Mobil refinery on Cherry Point.

Almost all of them are dead – Ray, Frank, Joe – or missing (Pete). Adolph still is around, but he lives in California and we seldom see each other. When we do, we pick up just like we had never been apart.

It was Adolph who likely saved me. We would spend hours at night sitting in his car listening to music and talking about our lives. It was a safety valve for me. Without it I likely would have died a long time ago. As it was, I had some close calls. Not that I thought they were close. Not then, anyway.

I used to sit alone on the banks of the raging Nooksack River during spring run-off and think about jumping in, just to see if I could do it and survive. But for some reason – and it may have been spiritual – I never could bring myself to cross that line. I would walk up to it, but something held me back.

My driver’s skills, I thought, were excellent. But looking back I wonder now why as a young teenager I loved to exceed 100 mph on gravel country roads. My friend Bill one time threatened to jump out at those speeds, and never rode with me again.

The third phase of my life was college. That got me started back to saner times. I loved college for the world it opened up for me. High school was a mess, but college helped me put the pieces of myself back together again.

Phase four of my life was trial and error, trying to find myself in the work place. I loved my time in Oklahoma, helping to run a business and mixing with the Oklahoma Cowboys with big money. Clay Bennett is the modern incarnation of the people I saw back in the oil heyday in Tulsa. Those good ol’ boys knew what they wanted and had the money to get it. Bennett, as the City of Seattle found out, is no different. He wears the same boots.

Like Moses, I think I wandered off, lost into the desert for many years. I didn’t know it at the time, but getting married, raising kids, trying to develop stability in the work force as a sportswriter took away from the spiritual side that has always hugged me even when I didn’t hug back.

Most people would call a few of the things that have happened to me strange. But I feel somebody is looking out for me, and when necessary guides me, even if the middle part of my life I wandered a bit.

I admire people who can juggle all the little things in life that go with being married with kids and still tap into the deep recesses of their soul to maintain spiritual perspective. It’s tough to do that, almost as tough as me going from Rockwell to Dali.

I’m still struggling with life’s little jabs in the rib cage, helping Mary raise two young kids. I don’t know if we are doing it better this time than we did with our three grown kids, but I have a better perspective on the spiritual side than I did years ago.

Life hasn’t always been good. In fact, I sometimes think Hell is the life we live on Earth and our real life is waiting for us on the other side. My friends – Ray, Frank, Joe – are probably waiting over there for me to see how I did on this side.

What I can tell them is I settled down after a rocky middle of my life. I am not the best human being to walk this Earth, but at least I’m trying now to move up a few places in line and by the time I meet them again maybe I will gain a few more spots.

Gordon finally had to hang up on me. A wind whipped up along the Allegheny and rain started coming down as the clock stuck midnight in the Southern Tier of New York. He took his beer and raced inside.

Gordon has found balance in his life. It’s called golf. He found the sport late in life and told me before hanging up that he recently shot a 96 on a tough course full of bunkers and water.

I gave up golf a long time ago. I like the sport, but it didn’t like me. I carded a 99 on the old course at Gold Mountain, breaking a 100 for the first time, and decided that was a good number to stop on.

Now the magic number is 50. That’s the number of years since I last walked out of the halls at Ferndale High School. The Ferndale reunion in Bellingham is in September and I won’t be there. I’m not the same second-tier guy I became when I arrived in town in 1954, and I don’t think I could handle being jolted back to that self by the people who knew me that way.

So I’ll stay here, wish them well, and move on down the road. But this time I won’t be going in excess of 100 mph.

Have a great month.

You are loved.