Chapter 3

Once Was Lost, But Now I’m Found 

Apparently I had been up in the attic longer than I had thought because when I returned I found our bedroom lights were out and my wife was fast asleep. So I got ready for bed, put The Bench on my nightstand and climbed into bed and tried to slow all the thoughts racing through my mind so I could actually go to sleep myself. As memories of my Junior High days danced in my head I was finally able to drift off to a good night’s sleep.

With a wife, seventeen year old son, and a full-time job, hobbies, not to mention assorted homeowner responsibilities, life can get pretty crowded. So The Bench sat on my nightstand as days turned into weeks without me finding time to pick it up again. The red, white, and blue cover caught my eye from time to time and I would pick the book up and glance through a chapter or two, chuckle a few times, and then put it back down.

After a while the book seemed to work its way to the bottom of the pile of other books on my nightstand. As an adult Sunday school teacher I am constantly looking for books to read that we can use in our class. I must say I have a lot of help with this. People all the time are bringing me books or suggesting books that I should read. Actually I just think they are concerned about my spiritual well being. Anyway, The Bench found its way to the bottom of the pile and as they say, “Out of sight, out of mind.”

Even with The Bench at the bottom of the book pile and not in my day to day thoughts I still found myself thinking of years gone by and how our world has changed over those years.

Gone were the days of rotary phones, busy signals, vinyl records, 8-track players, computers the size of a house, 427 motors, 6 x 9 coaxial speakers, mini-skirts (bummer), Beatle boots, Beatle haircuts, the Beatles, cigarette ads, the Three Stooges, the Fonz, and the drive-in movies.

All these were replaced with cell phones, voicemail, IPods, computers the size of a phone, hybrid motors, clothes with built in speakers, mini-skirts (yippee), Bieber boots, Bieber haircut, Justin Bieber, stop smoking ads, the three Kardashian sisters, Charlie Sheen, and movies on demand. Holy crap, just typing this list makes my head spin for so many reasons.

And the world of communicating probably changed the most.

Everyone has a cell phone. And I mean everyone. The other day I was in Walgreens and I saw a four year old kid walking along talking on a cell phone. I wanted to yank it out of his hand and yell, “Give me that phone. You can barely speak a complete sentence. You don’t need a phone. Now go play in the street like I did when I was kid.” Give me a freekin break.

And if just calling someone on the phone wasn’t enough for folks to stay in touch now we have email, texting, instant messaging, twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc. You can barely fart without the whole world knowing about it. (Which I just did.)

But I must admit I love the ease of communications these days. As a “want-to-be” writer I must say I love the non-verbal ways of communicating with the world. Let me “type” instead of “speak” and I can go on all day. Oops, see what I mean. Now back to the story.

 I kept hearing friends talk about how great the invention of Facebook was. They kept giving me the old line, “It will change your life.” And I guess it in a way it has. It eventually led me to writing this book.

One weekend when my wife, oops, lovely wife was out of town I decided to check out all the fuss about Facebook and I set up an account much to my wife’s heckling when she came home. But with a possible Class Reunion coming up I thought it sounded like a good way to reconnect with old classmates.

But after getting started with Facebook I really didn’t do much with it. I would check my page from time to time, post a goofy picture of me from my high school days, and that was about it.

But then one day I got a message that said: “Bruce Hardy wants to be your friend on Facebook.” Bruce Hardy! Wow, now that is a name I hadn’t heard in a long long time. If you remember from one of the earlier chapters in this book Bruce Hardy was listed as one of the Benchies. And he was one of the long lost Benchies.

The Bench was written as the basketball season went along so shortly after the season ended we considered having the book typed up and printed. My poor Mom got the job of typing it which led to a lot of late nights setting with her at the Royal typewriter typing with me setting close by so I could help with any word clarification. Which there was plenty of since the book was written using an eighth grade boy’s vocabulary.

Mom would be typing along and then suddenly stop and ask, “Who is Coach Squorrell?” Which I had to explain that is what we called Coach Correll. Since we thought he as a “squirrel” for not playing us we just put Correll and squirrel together and came up with Squorrell. Hey, we were eighth graders!

So as Mom typed I would explain things like nose mittens, pit experts, and why we barked at some cheerleaders. Plus every now and then Mom would stop typing, sigh, and turned to me and read the line she was about to type and say, “You guys can’t say that!” So some lines got removed, changed or where censored by my Gestapo Mom. And the book was better because of it.

So Mom got the book typed up and then handed it over to my stepfather, Dale who was a Vo-tech teacher that happened to teach printing. This is where the book really came to life. We had the name of the book, The Bench but we really didn’t have a clue on what the cover should look like. Dale worked his magic on the book and came up with a great looking red, white, and blue front and back cover. It was 1972 but we would graduate in 1976 which we all know was the Bicentennial year of our great country so Dale masterly tied the patriotic red, white, and blue to our book. Maybe I am giving Dale too much credit, truth be known these were probably the three colors of ink he had opened. But either way, I think the book colors worked great. The front cover has the red, white, blue stripes across the top and The Bench in bold blue letters shown just above a wooden bench. Listed below the wooden bench is the phrase:

Featuring comments by the 1972 8th Grade Bench 

Warmers as written by Greg Storm and Jon Cunningham 

The back cover was all white with red and blue letters spelling out:

THE CLASS 

OF 

76 

HAS SPIRIT 

THAT MAKE THE 

WEBB CITY FIGHTING 

CARDINALS 

GO 

I wasn’t wild about the line “that make the Webb City fighting Cardinals go” but we decided to leave it in. I do remember we had some extra book covers printed up and we cut off the part that had, “The Class of 76 Has Spirit” and hung them around the school and in our lockers. Great job on the book covers Dale. I sure wish you were here to work on this book.

So we had the book in print which was pretty impressive for a bunch of screwball eight grade boys. We sold some around school and I think the going price was .50 which went to help cover the cost of printing the book. I don’t think we actually sold enough to cover the total cost to print it and I am sure none of the Benchies actually made any money on the deal. It would be my guess that most of the money we received ended up being used to play pinball at the local West End Pharmacy. It was a favorite hangout for the Benchies since it was located just down the street from the Junior High. We didn’t make any money selling the book but still it was fun seeing a copy of it around school from time to time.

The Bench was written, typed and printed all in a matter of a couple months. As the school year was coming to a close soon our attention and focus would be on summer activities. Spending time at the swimming pool and trying to revive our sports careers as the baseball season started. Yep, back in those days the baseball season was only in the summer not like it is today with practices and even games being played as soon as the snow melts.

But before the school year ended someone came up with the great idea of giving a copy to Coach Correll. Why in the world any of us thought this would be a good thing to do is beyond me. But great ideas were so few and far between that we really wouldn’t know one if it bit us in the butt.

As I mentioned earlier Coach Correll was an 8th grade science teacher and many of the Benchies had him as our teacher. I don’t know who came up with the idea to offer the coach a copy of the book but I definitely know who was picked to give it to him. Me.

As a group we weren’t very smart but every now and then we did manage to show a little common sense. We waited until the last day of class before the summer break started and we waited until the last few minutes of class time before showing Coach the book. I remember walking up to the front of class and standing next to Coach Correll as he stood there leaning on a podium.

I had the book in my hand and quite stupidly said, “Coach, we (trying to be all inclusive) wrote a book during the basketball season and we would like for you to have a copy.” I handed him the book and then added, “You might check out the last chapter.”

Holy smokes what was I thinking? Not the last chapter!

I must admit that even though The Bench is a corny little book written by corny little screwballs I have always been proud of what we accomplished in writing it. If for no other reason than we stuck with it until it was completed.

But what I am not proud of is the way we crucified Coach Correll with our words and comments. We were ruthless when it came to our feelings about him. I know we all thought we should have had more playing time and at the time we just couldn’t see that our lack of ability and dedication is why we weren’t getting to play. We just figured that Coach had his “favorites” and we knew we weren’t on that list so we cut him down and made fun of him every chance we got in the book. We showed no respect to him as a coach or as a person and when I think about it now it’s a wonder he didn’t kick us off the team several times during the year. Again, not something I am proud of now. And Coach, if you are reading this, I am sorry for my part.

But out of all the chapters in the book Chapter 10 was by far the worst in our trashing of the coach. And there I stood in front of him and the entire science class and I had just asked him to read it.

He didn’t say a word but simply took the book from me, glanced at the cover, thumbed through the pages of the book until he reached the last chapter. Chapter 10. As he started to read it, thankfully silently to himself I returned to my seat on the front row.

The chapter wasn’t that long and I don’t even think he actually read it all but still it seemed like an eternity with him still leaning on the podium, reading “our” book. (Still trying to drag everyone down with me.) Then as the class sat there silently waiting for his response, there was none. He just closed the book and tossed it back to me as I sat there at my desk.

It was then that I experienced my first awareness of the grace of God. The bell rang! And thankfully class was dismissed without any further incidence. I walked, probably closer to ran, out along with the other students with Coach’s copy of the book still in my hands.

I guess there is a part of me that hopes Coach Correll will be sorry he tossed the book back at me when The Bench gets made into a movie and we are all famous. Ok, maybe I am not as sorry about the way we treated him as I should be.

And that is how the school year ended. Our junior high days were behind us and our first adventures into high school just three months away. A lot of changes would be coming into our lives and the first change was one of the Benchies moving away.

During the summer break Bruce Hardy’s family decided to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Hardy’s had lived in Webb City for many years and Bruce went to grade school at Mark Twain Elementary along with fellow Benchies, Kent Williams, Norman West, and Jim Byrd. The rest of the Benchies, John Bailey, Bobby Lauck, Greg Storm, and I all attended Eugene Field Elementary. I guess the other grade school in town, Webster Elementary didn’t produce any Benchies. Just a couple of the starters. What losers.

But thanks to summer baseball and just the mere fact that Webb City only had 6,800 people in it we all had known Bruce for a quite a while and we hated to see him move away. Tulsa was only a hundred miles away but back in those days it might as well be a million miles.

With Bruce moving away we decided to give him a “going away” present before he left. I would have thought a gold painted jock strap would have been appropriate but instead we decided to give Bruce the original hand written copy of The Bench.

So, Bruce was awarded his gift and he and his family packed up and moved to Tulsa. And as far as I know was never heard from again. Until now.

And there I sat looking at my Facebook page on my computer and Bruce Hardy wants to be my “friend”. I about fell over. After all it was 1972 when I had last been around Bruce and now it was 2010. Thirty-eight years since I had last spoken to Bruce.

I was still fairly new at this whole Facebook thing so I really wasn’t sure how to accept his offer or what to do but finally I figured it out and we became “Friends”. Well, friends again.

Through Facebook and emails Bruce and I once again became acquainted with each other and we tried to get caught up on a few things since our days together in junior high. The amazing thing was after Bruce moved to Tulsa in 1972 I followed him there in 1984 shortly after I graduated from college. But I had no idea he was still there and he never knew that I had moved there. So we were both in Tulsa from 1984 to 1998, when I left to move to Oklahoma City but as far as we knew we never crossed paths.

I was shocked to be contacted by Bruce in the first place but I was almost equally shocked when Bruce told me he still had the original hand written copy of The Bench.

How many junior high kids keep anything given to them for thirty eight years? My first thought was, “Why” But it turns out if we were going to give the book to anyone Bruce was the one to give it to. It turns out Bruce is quite the collector. Mostly old movie memorabilia and anything, and I mean anything that has to do with Elvis. Young Elvis, old Elvis, fat Elvis. Anything. So with a passion to collect things Bruce managed to hang onto The Bench for all this time. But I still couldn’t believe it had been found.

I knew I couldn’t ask for the book back from Bruce but I did ask him if he would make me a copy of it and send it to me. Bruce graciously responded with, “I have owned the book for forty years; you can have it for the next forty.” And he said he would put it in a FED-X envelope and get it to me the follow week or so.

I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to see the original manuscript again. It wasn’t hand written by me, Greg had that honor but the part that made it so important to me is the fact that all the notes and corrections that were in my Mom’s handwriting. And believe me there were plenty of corrections.

The handwritten copy probably didn’t mean a whole lot to the other Benchies but to me it was priceless. Before Bruce mailed it to me he scanned it and make an electronic copy of it and emailed it to me so I got to see it before the actual copy arrived. But then a few days later it was delivered to my house.

It was so cool to hold it again in my hands. The front cover just had the words, “The Bench” written on it and then encircled with eight golden stars. I had forgotten about the stars and I chuckled when I saw them. Not sure how we came up with that idea but I guess we figured the stars gave it that “special” look that a book of this quality deserved. Now that I think about it we should have used ten stars.

So Bruce and I had been reunited and The Bench was now back in my hands. News like this couldn’t be kept to myself so the next step was to contact the Library of Congress so they could clear out an area so they could put The Bench on display for the world to see. Ok, maybe that would be the next step after I contacted the rest of the Benchies.

I have always had a passion for keeping in contact with old classmates so I had most of the Benchies contact information but not all. Jim Byrd and I had remained best friends since first meeting in the sixth grade and we had been each other’s Best Man in our weddings so I contacted him first about connecting with Bruce and the book. But shortly after that I had all the Benchies contact information and I then sent off an email to let them know about this historic event.

 Little did I know where that email would lead us to?