Ed and the Cow

One of my earliest memories of an automobile accident involved a trip to Monroe, Louisiana.

Of course as usual my brother and I were in the backseat reading funny books. All of the sudden I hear the brakes squeel and the car goes into a spin.

Evidently someone's cow got loose and wandered out onto the highway.

As the car spins, the back tail light slaps the cow in the face and the cow staggers over to the side of the road and dies.

The back of the car has damage but it is easily drivable-just a crinkle in the fender.

No one is around and no one stops .

My parents continue their trip to Monroe, knowing that because of someone's carelessness in taking care of their animals, they now have a dead cow and my father and mother will have to make an insurance claim, pay a deductible and get the car repaired. My brother and I return to the excitement of the latest Superman comic book.

That is where Ed comes in. Ed and Burnell have been friends of my parents since as long as I can remember. When Dad was an accountant in the oil camps, Ed worked in the refinery. Dad later worked his way up the organization. Ed who knew everybody went into insurance and became quite a local success.

Now Ed is one of those people in life who through the force of his personality, his good humor and his integrity becomes "larger than life." Ed was a prankster.

He did thinks like bringing in fake dog poop and putting it on the new carpet of my parents new house. This was standard procedure for Ed.

One time when we were vacationing with Ed and his patient wife Burnell in the Rockies, Ed pulls over the car, pulls out paper cones, puts snow in the cones, pours grape syrup over the snow and begins it handing it out to his co-travellers. The kids loved Ed who often was just an overgrown kid himself.

At any rate some months after the cow incident, Ed calls my father at the office. Effecting a Norwegian or Swedish accent, he reams out my father for killing his only cow, telling him how he needed that cow to support his family, and how despicable it was for Dad to continue his journey without somehow locating the owner of the cow. He really had my Dad going -before he let on it was only a joke.

What did I learn from all of this. I learned about friendship. My parents have been blessed with one blessing that they have had in life that I have not been so fortunate to receive. That is the blessing of good and true friends that have endured over the decades. Another time I will write about their friendships.

The only difficulty with this blessing is that as we have all grown older, some of the members of this profound circle of friends have proceeded before the others to pass on to heaven.

There is an old church song entitled "Will the chain be broken?" I think the answer is "No." Right now some members of the chain are in heaven, some on earth. Gradually those of us who are on the earth will join the chain of friendship in heaven.

Through out history there have been famous examples of good friends. I believe that good friendship does not die-it only translates to something finer and better after death.

I am not sure why my parents were and are blessed by a group of such good friends-but I know that they are and I know that it is a special blessing of God. It is rare and unique.

HarleyDad