Robert Harley Evans – My Best Friend

It was October 1961, my parents and I had just moved back to Long Beach after living three years in Orange County, California. I would be entering the 6th grade at Longfellow Elementary School. The school year had already started.

To make things worse, I was assigned to Mrs. McKelvey’s class, but they were off on a week long outdoor camp in the Southern California mountains. So I had to spend a week in Miss Richie’s class. She was a very stern and extremely strict older teacher with jet black hair that should have been gray. I thought she might have been a witch in a past life.

My second week at school I would meet Mrs. McKelvey and my classmates for the first time. While walking from the playground to my classroom in the morning I walked past a really tough looking kid. He had dark curly hair and wore a black leather motorcycle jacket. I remember thinking to myself, “Stay away from that guy.”

Mrs. McKelvey was a complete opposite of Miss Richie. She was young, friendly, and immediately made me feel welcome in my new classroom. First impression, I thought she was great, that is until the first recess period came.

“Jon. Stay behind a minute would you?” asked my teacher. “I want you to meet Bob.”

I couldn’t believe it. She was trying to get me killed. She was introducing me to that same tough looking, leather jacket wearing hoodlum, Bob Evans.

We went off to recess together and immediately became friends. Both of us loved baseball. Our birthdays were close. His May 31st. Mine June 18th. When I later met Bob’s mother, Mrs. Marguerite Evans, she told me we were both Geminis. At the time I didn’t know what that meant.

We elevated ourselves to best friends that 6th grade school year and on into summer where we played on the same baseball team. We were both nervous before starting junior high school at the adjacent Hughes Junior High (now a middle school). We had heard stories of the hazing of new students. When school started we stuck together, but never saw anyone hazed. It had all been a story to frighten us.

Bob and I somehow didn’t have any classes together at Hughes. For electives, he took music (he loved Beethoven, Bach – the classics) and I took art. He took Spanish, I took French.

In gym class, what we called P.E., Bob was usually one of the first ones picked for any sport. He was a natural athlete. He was a fast runner, could catch and pass a football with ease, and was a great hitter and fielder in baseball. The only thing he hated, as did I, was gymnastics. One of our P.E. teachers, Mr. Claus, had been a gymnast. He thought we all should too. But we wanted to play team sports more.

Bob had come across a baseball board game called APBA (I had to Google to find out it stands for American Professional Baseball Association). We just knew it as APBA (pronounced App Bah). It was a board game (four different boards), with a red and a white die, and sets of player cards for each team in the Major League. Each year a new set of player cards could be purchased. We took years to play one year! Bob had the 1961 season. Together we’d play some nights after school at his house and on the weekends and all during summer. We divided up the teams equally in both the American and National Leagues. His favorite team was the Dodgers and mine, maybe because Yogi Berra was my favorite player, was the Yankees.

APBA was a game of statistics. We didn’t just play the game, we recorded everything with scorecards and kept running stats on all the players. Batting averages, earned run averages, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs, stolen bases. We kept up with every team in both leagues.

Bob was smart, energetic, and he had a temper. The first APBA game I ever played was an “exhibition game” between his beloved Dodgers and my Yankees. He was winning all through the game 4 to 1. It came down to the bottom of the ninth. I had the bases full and two out. Bob had Sandy Koufax pitching. Don’t ask me how I ever got three men on base with this ace pitcher. I brought in a pinch hitter. Reserve catcher Johnny Blanchard. I put the dice in the tumbler, shook them up, and dumped them onto the playing board. The player cards have a series of numbers that you match up with the roll of the dice. I rolled a 6 and a 6 for a 66. On Blanchard’s card next to 66 read the number 1. A 1 is a home run. Johnny Blanchard hit a gram slam ending the game at 5-4 for the Yankees. Bob was furious! He swore. He stomped around the room. I’d never heard him or seen him like that before. But after a while he calmed down and said, “At least it was just an exhibition game.”

What strengthened our friendship was a move. My parents bought a house on Claiborne Drive about a block and a half from the Evans’ home. We were neighbors now. That way also, both of us would be attending Jordan High School following our summer break.

The neighborhood was a fantastic place to grow up in. Across the street from Bob lived Mark Webster. His backyard was the unofficial basketball court, Wiffle Ball diamond (gave up using hard balls after Bob drilled one through a house window), and during the summer Olympics we set up a high jump bar to “compete”. Even when Mark Webster wasn’t home, we’d use his backyard.

During our basketball games Bob would be Jerry West, I’d be Frank Selvy (later I switched to Happy Hairston) and others would be Elgin Baylor or one other of the L.A. Lakers.

Johnnie Franks, who was a year younger and went to a Catholic school, was a constant companion of ours. Plus, he had a swimming pool at his house. Next door to the Websters were the Lemons. Jerry and Jeff Lemon sometimes played. Their father was Bob Lemon, Hall of Fame pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, and later manager of the New York Yankees.

One day Bob smashed a ball out of the Webster’s yard, over the Lemon’s yard, and into the backyard of an older couple. We were afraid of the old man. Always seemed like he scowled at us if we were out on the street playing. We thought  about jumping his fence, but instead all of us joined together and rang his doorbell. The man; whom I remember as old, wearing glasses, balding, and walking slowly, let us inside. Bob went out back and retrieved the ball.

Before we left the man said, “You boys love baseball. Let me show you something.” He opened up a glass case and pulled out a baseball. “Do you know what this is?” he asked with a knowing smile on his face.

The four of us gathered around the ball and he let each of us hold it briefly. It was signed by each member of the 1927 New York Yankees. In my hand I looked and slowly rotated the ball until I came to the two names which jumped out. Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. This was the year the Babe hit 60 home runs. When we left that house, that old man we’d always been leery of, waved goodbye and told us to stop by anytime. And when ever he saw us he’d always give up a big smile and wave.

A short walk from our neighborhood was Bixby Knolls Park. A wonderful experience about growing up in Southern California as a kid was the weather. Year round we could play baseball, tag football, basketball, whatever. And often when we were at the park we’d get a pickup game with kids we didn’t know. And I don’t remember one instance where we were the losers.

During this time in high school, besides Bob, Johnnie, and I, often playing were Jim Martin, Dee Eomurian, and Randy Howard. One afternoon with another friend of ours, Tom McCormick, we headed over to the park. Some older kids came over and wanted to start a fight for no apparent reason. We weren’t use to that. But Tom was. Tom, who was good size, immediately jumped into the face of their leader and challenged him.

“You bet we’ll fight you,” Tom said while we all looked on thinking “Oh crap thoughts”.

“But you have more guys than us.” Tom continued. “Come back to the park tonight at nine o’clock and we’ll be ready to fight you. Unless you’re afraid.”

“We’ll be back!” yelled the leader. Then they left.

Tom turned and smiled at all of us who were standing looking sick to our stomachs.

“I don’t know about you guys, ” said Tom, “but I sure won’t be here tonight.”

That was the moment went I learned about the “art of talking your way out of a bad situation”.

Bob was always the best of us at sports. We would play one on two basketball games. It would be him against two of us. He kept winning for a long time. Then the day came when Dee and I beat him. Oh was he mad. But he got over it. Later, as I got better, our games became one on one and once he got used to losing more often, his temper cooled.

In his freshman year at Jordan High Bob went out for the junior varsity basketball team as a guard. Bob was fast, quick, and had a good jump shot and was good as driving into the basket. One day during practice Coach Cook, the varsity coach, came out to watch. He started yelling at Bob. With a two handed pass of the basketball, the coach hit Bob right in the face with the ball. Bob picked up the ball and fired it hard back at the coach. That was the end of Bob’s basketball career.

That spring Bob tried out and got onto the baseball team in which he lettered. The coach was Paul Pettit who was the first $100,000 “bonus baby” to sign in the Major Leagues. He started as a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates but his arm went bad. He tried to make it an an outfielder and hitter in the minors, but now he was a high school teacher and baseball coach.

One day Coach Pettit thought everyone was just screwing around at practice. He walked up to the plate with a baseball bat and told our best pitcher, Jeff Fitzpatrick, to throw the ball. Jeff turned to his players on the field and just smiled.

The left handed hitter swung at Jeff’s first pitch and send a line drive over the right field fence.

“Throw another, “Pettit said.

Now Fitzpatrick bore down and threw his second pitch. This ball became another line drive that was still climbing as it flew over the right field fence.

Coach Pettit dropped the bat onto home plate. As he walked away he said loudly, “Now quit messing around and get serious.”

Jordan High was not just sports to Bob. He was intelligent and a good student. The class he suffered most through however was Spanish. He said the thing that saved him from being the worst student was Marty Lopez. His teacher told Marty that his Spanish was so bad she would call him Marty Smith the rest of the semester.

In our freshman year at Jordan, Bob and I shared a locker. Next to our locker was one that belonged to two girls, Barbara Nelson (who I had a slight crush on) and Frances Maples. Bob thought it would be clever to put some of our books in their locker (he had secretly watched and learned their combination) and theirs in ours. He did this at the end of the day.

In our first three years in high school Bob and I took the city bus to get to and from school. That next morning I stopped at Bob’s house on the way to the bus stop.

“Bob’s not feeling good this morning,” said Mrs. Evans at the front door. “And he has a fever.”

I walked off with a horrible feeling. I hoped the bus would get me to school before the girls arrived at their locker. I walked down the hall and there was Barb and Frances holding my books next to their open locker just glaring at me. I opened mine and handed them their books with never a word between us.

After school I went straight to Bob’s and I was mad. When I calmed down he told me he’d poured water up his nose and held the thermometer up near his desk light. I told him he owed me big time.

We had fraternities and sororities in high school. Bob pledged and got into Kappa Sigma Chi, or Kappa for short. He paid me back by sponsoring my membership into Kappa. Fraternities held weekly meetings, often had a get together with a sorority, or  a football game with another fraternity. Neither Bob or I attended any alcoholic parties.

The one and only time Bob tried alcohol as a minor was when his parents were off on a trip to Europe. He called Dee, Randy, and I to come to his house. The housekeeper, who had been staying there, had gone home for the night. Bob said his parents wouldn’t get home until late tomorrow. He had this planned. He would do it all at home. No driving. And he would be the only drinker.

Bob tried everything in his parents’ liquor cabinet. At first he replaced anything he drank by adding water back into the bottles. Soon he was past that point. He had gin, vodka, bourbon, tequila. Then he had the drink that did him in. Creme de Menthe.

He’d say, “Jon I like you. Dee I like you. Randy I hate you.” And then he would start laughing and take another swig. He repeated that a few times until he made an altered and staggering beeline for the toilet. Everything came out. He was sick.

We all helped clean him up and got him in his bed. All would have been fine for Bob, he could have slept it off, but he made a slight error. His parents weren’t coming home the next day, they came home that night just as the three of us were trying to convince him to go to sleep.

At first the Evans’ were concerned with Bob being sick. But you couldn’t hide the smell. The three of us said goodnight and abandoned Bob to his fate. Except for school, we didn’t get to see Bob for about two weeks. Grounded!

Bob later went on a vacation with his parents to Europe. Maybe they didn’t want to leave him home alone? But it was one vacation he really enjoyed. The thing that seemed to impress him the most was the Berlin Wall. When you think of all the beautiful sights in Europe, Bob talked most about the Wall. Maybe because we were living in the Cold War. He did bring me back a miniature Eiffel Tower.

Bob’s senior year and we didn’t have to take the bus anymore to and from school. His parents bought him a brand new, 1967, medium blue metallic, Pontiac Firebird. It was the V8 engine, 326 cu. in. engine, and automatic. This was the first year of the Firebird so it was a real “head turner” when he drove through Long Beach.

To be able to drive we had to take a driver’s training course through the school. Bob and I actually both did real well. However, we thought we might die before we got our licenses.

The instructor had us drive to the top of Signal Hill, the highest point around Long Beach. Linda Callahan, a really cute and popular girl, was assigned to our car with us. The instructor had Linda take over behind the wheel and told her to drive down the steep Signal Hill road. Bob and I were in the back seat. Linda started driving down, saw the steepness, closed her eyes, screamed, and lifted her hands off the steering wheel. The instructor reached over and grabbed the wheel.

The type of baseball we played in the summer was hardball. For several years the team we played on was the DON JONES HOMEFINDERS. During and after college was over we played fast pitch softball. Before each game Bob would psych himself up by playing the same 45 record over and over. Sometimes it was Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”, sometimes it was a Sonny and Cher song.

While Bob lived with his parents, he had a German shepherd named Wolfie, as well as several cats. The one cat I remember best was named Grover.

Grover was a black and white feline who really could care less about people unless he was hungry. You could try and stroke his fur a couple times before he would walk away acting put out. His one love however was tormenting Wolfie.

Grover would sit in front of the kitchen window and stare at the dog. Wolfie would go wild wanting to get to him. If the back door was open, Grover would sit behind the screen and get Wolfie riled up. Grover knew he was safe.

One day Bob told me that Grover had been missing for three days. They figured he’d been killed somehow.

On about the fifth day of his disappearance, Wolfie started barking and running between the back door and the side gate. Mr. Evans tried to quiet him down. Wolfie would bark at him and run back to the gate. When Bob’s dad finally followed Wolfie to the gate, there was Grover lying on the ground.

Somehow the cat had pulled himself up over the fence. One of his rear legs was broken and he looked really torn up; possibly hit by a car.

They rushed Grover to the vet and he was treated and recovered. Incredibly, once he came home, he became the most affectionate cat I ever saw. Now he sought out your lap, purred, and loved to be petted and rubbed. But there was something even more incredible.

Grover and Wolfie were now best friends. At night Grover would be let outside so he and Wolfie could sleep together in the doghouse. Other times during the day you’d see the two of them sound asleep together in the sun on the grass. Now they had become like brothers.

After high school, Bob and I both went to Long Beach City College. I took my one and only introduction to philosophy class and Bob took as many as he could get.

College was not only important for the learning. It was keeping out of Vietnam! As one teacher called it, “Bring up your rice paper paddy forms for me to sign.”

It was the height of the Vietnam War. You had to successfully take and pass so many credits each semester in order to get a 2-S “Student Deferment”.  All that changed with the Draft Lottery held on December 1, 1969.

The lottery was used to determine which men, born between 1944 and 1950, would be called to report for induction into the military. The highest lottery number called that might be inducted was 195. All men assigned that number or lower would be classified as 1-A.

The days of the year (including February 29th) were represented by the numbers 1 through 366 and written on slips of paper. These slips were placed in plastic capsules, mixed in a shoe box, and placed in a deep glass container. Capsules were drawn one at a time.

The first number drawn was 258. This correlated to September 28th, so that birth date was assigned lottery number 1.

Bob, Dee, Randy, and I decided to meet at my parents’ home and watch the lottery drawing live on TV. Dee had just walked in and sat down on our couch when the announcer called out, “Lottery Number 5. October 18.”

Dee was stunned. That was his birthday. The next day he went down and signed up for the National Guard.

(In a shocking revelation, at least for me, I found out forty years later that Dee was not at my parent’s that afternoon.  He was actually in Santa Barabara at the university, found out about his lottery number, and signed on with the National Guard a couple of weeks later.  So be careful about memory.  I still think it makes a better story with all of us together at the same time)

Meanwhile, Bob and I just sat on the edge of our seats and waited. We waited. And waited. Finally, the 313th number was drawn. May 31st. Bob’s birthday. The 341st number was June 18th, my birthday. Randy Howard’s was right in the middle where he might or might not be called up. He never was.

Vietnam still seemed like a faraway world. Then we got word that Gary Lahna had been killed in action. He was our classmate at Jordan High and a Kappa fraternity brother. Now the war was brought home to us.

I’ve told kids who live in small towns that we used to say the same thing they do in a city as large as Long Beach. Come the weekend it was always, “What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you?”

Most often, at night, in Jim Hughes’ backyard, we’d play volleyball. Dee was off at U.C. Santa Barbara, so usually it was Bob, Randy, Jim Hughes and his younger sister, Jim Frick, and myself. Had some great games.

Other times we’d go to dances. Bob suggested a dance at the Mormon Church a block away from my house (do not ask me why we went there). We went and laughed as they served grape juice. The band I’ll never forget. It was a six-member band that included a brother on keyboards and his sister being the drummer. A year later we watched this same couple perform on the Ed Sullivan Show.  It was Richard and Karen Carpenter with Karen singing “We’ve Only Just Begun”.

Bob had a band. At least I call it his band because he was the original organizer. The “final” version of the band was named The Rhythm Sett. Bob played the organ (keyboards). Jim Martin was the drummer. Randy Howard played bass guitar. Mike Boyd was the lead guitarist. And Dee Eomurian was the lead singer and tambourine player. I have to admit that I was impressed when they played The Doors’ song “Light My Fire” and Bob played the entire long version flawlessly.

After graduating from college at California University at Long Beach, Bob and I went our separate ways. I spent my summers as a wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service on backpacking patrols. While I was working on my master’s degree at the University of Idaho, Bob was working on his law degree at USC. We’d occasionally get together whenever I came home to visit my parents.

I remember that when Bob was teaching philosophy at Cypress Junior College, he was doing what he loved. He told me he mainly got his law degree because his parents wanted him to be a lawyer just like his dad. His joy however was philosophy. I will hand it to Bob. He passed the California Bar Exam on his first attempt.

I visited with Bob twice at his home in San Dimas. We’d both been cancer survivors. I got struck first when I had a cancerous melanoma on my back. A microscopic speck of cancer had been found in my central lymph node. Then a couple years later I found out that Bob had a bout with the “C” word. But then he too seemed to get better.

And then in the fall of 2009, I retired after 32 years working for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in wilderness and as a ranger; or a total of 40 years when adding my time as a wilderness ranger for the Forest Service. It was October and my wife Pam and I went out to the U.S. Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton to visit one of our sons and his family. I learned that Bob’s cancer had come back, and he didn’t have much more time. I needed to go see him.

Bob and I enjoyed our last visit. We shared many of these stories. We laughed together and we cried together. Both of us were really glad, so long ago, that Mrs. McKelvey knew we might have a great friendship together.

When it was time to leave, Bob walked me to his front door. We held onto each other for a long hug.

I said to him, “Bob, I love you. I won’t say goodbye to you. You are my best friend.”

About two weeks later Bob passed away.