Surrounded by friends new and old, writer moves forward into an ever-changing future

I was helping Lenore, a writer friend, patch crumbling Sheetrock in a staircase of her old condominium on Wyoming Street when another friend, Lauren, came dancing up those two flights to attend a writers’ meeting. Because Lenore just then was hoping to sell her place for $100,000, I told her the house next door to me in Shawnee was outrageously advertised as “waterfront property” and selling way, overpriced, for $275,000.

“Waterfront property my foot,” I growled. “Like it’s on the surfing beach in Malibu? That house just sits beside a little pond.”

“Hey,” Lauren said, “is that A-frame next door to you up for sale?”

It was, I told her. The following day my wife, Lenore, and I were drinking tea on the porch when we glanced across and saw Lauren over there scrutinizing the A-frame alongside a young woman. Young? Well, Elise looked to be in her 30s, with Lauren a few years older — handsome people, younger by a margin than my wife and me. After a while I yelled across asking them to come for a drink. They did.

We talked as the afternoon dimmed around us toward dusk. Then my Lenore (gone from the world now for these eight years) told them we happened to have a pot of spaghetti and meatballs on the stove. Could they use a bite?

“What do you think, Lauren?” said Elise with a grin. “Then we won’t need to go to the homeless shelter.”

My wife Lenore, my friend Lenore? It happens. At different times I have owned two dogs named Charley, the second named in honor of the first, but neither named for the writer of this column. So my wife and I lived among (and I still inhabit) a place flush with friends who make neat things happen.

That’s partly because Lauren and Elise bought the A-Frame next door, drawing in their own wide circle of friends. Just three years later they married in the most spectacular ceremony known to humankind. They stood near a fallen 200-year-old burr oak in woods adjoining our place. What a party!

What a life we’ve enjoyed here since, with those two and a whole cornucopia of friends. We have Debbie, a born organizer who specializes in gathering colleagues by the score. She and her husband, Howard, convinced an owner to volunteer a rare flat patch of their house lot and then called forth a croquet group that over 20 years became competitive.

A new guy, Bob, joined us with his wife, Eileen. So as a croquet expert myself, I challenged him: “Today I’m gonna kick your butt.”

That day I did, but just that once. Alas, never again, though I suspected he was going easy on me. Twenty years later the friendly lot owners moved away and we lost our playground. So Debbie founded what we now call the Thursday Walking Group. The title brings to mind that song Nancy Sinatra recorded about boots that “walk all over you”

But it does not describe our walking group. Far from it.

Hardly a month ago on a two-mile hike around Lake Lenexa, and at the age of 90, I walked myself almost into collapse. My pal, Joe, a fine musician and symphony chorus member just 75 years old, trotted the trail’s final quarter mile to his parked car and drove back to retrieve me.

His best (and very close) friend, Sarah, jokingly calls Joe “my affiliate.” I have a widowed lady friend, Pat, who prefers for herself a warmer title, like “housemate” after May 1. This is where friendship can take you, closer and closer, even in advanced age.

Just imagine all our group out on a walk next Thursday, hopefully in decent weather, the people already named here plus Ann, Steele, Kathleen, Christy, Amy and sometimes more.

I must not forget John Wood, like me a long-ago Kansas City Star reporter. In 1974, he founded the writers group I mentioned earlier. Before then, few among the 100 or so journalists in the city room knew that he (like a dozen other Star writers) was a closeted gay man. By our first meeting that year John was happily “out” — living in the open. He gave me and other friends in that group a chance, for the first time in our lives, not just to be decent, inclusive Christians, but to profit from his wisdom.

Though our croquet playground vanished, we cling tenaciously to the memory. Three or four times a year we celebrate “croquet birthdays” — cakes and candles for people we’ve been with so many years. As new friends push forward with us into an ever-changing future, may that span of good times never end.

Contact the columnist at hammerc12@gmail.com.

This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 5:00 AM.