For "Boo"

Following my dad's example, I began keeping a journal several years ago. While I am not quite as diligent as he, I always make sure to write down important goings-on in my life and the lives of my friends.

I was looking back a few days ago, and came across an entry on this date 4 years ago. No - there was no national disaster or terrorist attack. It was actually quite a beautiful day as I can recall. However, that night I received some very sad news. One of my best friends growing up had passed away.

Shannon Bowen (AKA - Boo) was one of the kids I grew up with once my family moved to Attalla, Alabama. Before moving there, my brother Chad and I were basically the only kids around (and so he just drug me along with him as an accomplice to whatever he was doing at the time). Once we moved, in August of 1983, there were almost a dozen kids within a one block radius. It was great. I really learned alot and went through most childhood rites of passage with these guys. For those keeping count, here's the roster: Shannon "Boo" Bowen, Jon Works, Terry-Michael Elrod, Cory Elrod, Chad and myself, Casey Pearce, Jamey Pearce, Dusty Pearce (all from the same big and wonderfully mischevious family), Johnny Christopher, and the lesser prevalent Shane Works and Steve Bowen.

You can only imagine the trouble we got into. I learned to play sports, ride a bike, wage full-scale war (divided up into two teams and limited to two block boundaries), explore the woods (we had the trails and the ominous deep trails), camp out, and wreak all kinds of havoc to oncoming cars with these guys. They really were my best friends.

What follows is my journal entry for August 10th, 2003. For this entry to make sense, you should know that Shannon was in a bad car accident several years earlier, which had paralyzed him from the waist down. As bad as it was, he really made the best of the situation - buying a truck he could still drive, playing basketball in wheelchair leagues, etc.:

"Right now I'm kind of shell-shocked. Mom called about 2 hours ago to tell me that Shannon Bowen died today. He went in for surgery b/c of a rod in his back. There were complications...he didn't make it.

This is probably the first person who was really close to me that has passed. Cory Elrod called mom to tell her. He said something that is very true - "At least Shannon is out of that wheelchair. I'll bet he is running all over heaven." Seeing someone as active and full of life as he was resigned to a wheelchair was so sad - very much like seeing animals in a zoo (caged). He was like another older brother to me.

I can remember moving to Attalla like it was yesterday. Jon, Boo, Casey, Terry-Michael, Jamey, Cory, Dusty, and Johnny. Learning to ride bikes, play football, baseball, basketball, pitch-up-smear, war, establishing rival clubs and engaging in week-long feuds (spying on one another for top secrets), bike races in the trails, camping out on trampolines - man how I wish I had a picture of all the guys.

Boo was a great guy who was a friend to everyone. He always called me worm (a nickname i picked up in church youth group). even after I was well over 20 years old and taller than him. He would be 30 years old by now. Man it was so much fun back then. The only thing you had to worry about was not coming outside enough. If a few afternoons went by w/o your presence, you would be called a homeboy (or in my brother Chad's case - T.V. Guide...due to his always saying he couldn't come out b/c of this show or that).

Now Boo's gone; Jon Works - married twice with 2 kids; Terry-Michael - married twice I think; Casey Pearce - married with one kid; Jamey - still at home I think; Cory, Dusty, Johnny - all married with children...all living within an hour of good old Attalla. Cory is in youth ministry, Dusty followed his dad into the railroad business, and Johnny-Roc...I believe he's still managing a yard-maintenence business to finance his "indiana-jones'esque" adventuresome lifestyle.

Father - be with all of them. Let them each know that I love them and cherish my years with them. I keep thinking about the movie Stand By Me. The dynamic of that movie really captures what my years growing up on Greene Street were like. However, there is a tinge of sadness b/c you know it can't stay that way forever. I always think about a few of the last lines of the movie:

As the years went by we saw less and less of each other until we were just faces in the hall. That happens: Friends come in and out of your life like busboys in a restaraunt.

I never had any friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was a kid - does anyone?

Definitely not me! Here's to one of the best times in my life. Lord - take care of Boo and tell him I'll take him in a game of one on one when I get there. "

I hope you will forgive the indulgence of this post. But isn't that what blogging is all about? JB