The Good Ol' Days

Occasionally circumstances in our lives will stymie our inescapable need to think about the future and what it might bring. Sometimes making plans, marking calendars and even refining hope may hold little attraction and therefore these thoughts are put aside.

Quite often when we experience this crimp in our muse we will replace forward thinking with a trip down memory lane, our revamped thoughts carrying us back to The Good Ol’ Days.  Because of recent circumstances I have found myself walking down this memory lane more often than I am accustomed to. Whether this is avoidance or nostalgia does not matter; that is a question for the counselor’s couch, a place I will not tread. 

And sometimes our journey back to The Good Ol’ Days is enhanced by a real life confluence of the past and the present. For me that happened today when I was able to spend time with and old friend in a place that was once my stomping ground. Brian Prince has been a friend for more than forty years (it is hard for me to even admit that forty years have actually passed), and has always had impeccable timing when inserting himself back into my life. Our small reunion took place at Jim’s Coffee Shop, on the corner of Hildebrand San Pedro, where it has stood for more than four decades. The coffee shop has changed in appearance, its menu has been updated and the atmosphere leans more towards that of a meeting place than the old neighborhood diner it once was. 

So many hours were spent inside this coffee shop back in the Good Ol’ Days. My memories of the 70’s would not be complete without the visions of the red oxhide booths, the perpetually sticky table tops, the watered-down tea and waitresses with names like Pepper and Corky.  Jim’s Coffee Shop did not have a gourmet menu and quite often used a microwave instead of a grill; fresh was a word of relativity and not an expectation and the sanitation was often only in competition with a frat-house…but it was our place.

Inside those booths friendships were formed, relationships launched, off-colored jokes told and laughed at, broken hearts formed and then healed. It was a place where we could be judgmental or be judged. It was our place. We didn’t know that memories were being forged, or maybe we did, but we were too busy being teenagers to consider such sentiments.

So who is “we”? Seven young men from Thomas Edison High School formed this pack, which one day would be christened The Magnificent Seven. (Some may argue that in fact there were nine, but that argument should only take place with all seven present, perhaps sitting around a table in Jim’s). The thing that amazes me is that after forty years these seven not so young men are still good friends.

We have all lived our separate lives, sometimes miles apart. Some married high school sweethearts…some divorced the same. We have become parents and then grandparents. We have gained weight and lost hair (some laying claim to both). And we have remained friends. 

I struggle to remember what brought this group together; I just know that one day we were all there, crammed into a booth at Jim’s Coffee Shop, drinking tea (free-refills) and solving the problems of the world, or at least talking about girls. We had something special…we have something special. I don’t know what it is that has allowed this bond to remain strong after so many years. Brian once suggested that I write a story, a memoir, about the Magnificent Seven. I considered it and even started to, but there was no Stand By Me moment in our lives that could explain this everlasting bond. 

If I could tell you what the something special is, I would. I would package and patent it then share it with the world because everyone needs friends like these. 

After forty years I know I can still call any of them and say “Meet me at Jim’s” and they will be there. They will be there to listen to my woes and tell me to keep the faith. They will be there to talk about saving the world... or girls. They will be there because they have my back, because they know I have theirs. They will be there because there is something special about this gang, this Magnificent Seven.

Brian, thanks for the pie, see you in the future!