Good times and old friends…

About a year ago, I discovered that my good friend Paul lives just a few hours north of us in the town of Hollister, California. I say Paul is my good friend (and he is), but we lost touch with each other 50 years ago. Paul was my next door neighbor back in the wilds of New Jersey when we were kids. We hung out together until he graduated from high school in 1966 (I graduated 3 years later). Through Facebook and another good buddy Buddy (no, that’s not a word repeat typo…our mutual friend’s name really is Buddy), we reconnected. When I linked up with Buddy, I saw that Paul was one of Buddy’s Facebook friends. I sent a friend request to Paul, and we connected. Wow.

When I saw that Paul lived up in Hollister, I knew I had to get up there for a visit, and this weekend, we did. Susie and I pointed the Subaru north, we braved the weather and snow (at least for folks from So Cal it was cold – but it was nothing compared to what we grew up with in New Jersey), and a few hours later we were standing on Pauly’s front porch.

An iPhone photo...heading north in the Subie through the Grapevine

Yep, you read that right…I called my friend “Pauly.”

Maybe it’s an east coast thing. Maybe it’s unique to New Jersey. We always put a “y” on the end of everybody’s name. Bud was Buddy. Paul was Pauly. Sue knew I was excited about this trip because I had reverted to talking about Paul as “Pauly” on the ride up as I told stories about our past (and I have a lot of stories).

Will he call you “Joey?” Sue asked.

“I don’t know…” I answered. “We’ll see.”

So there we were, up in Hollister, ringing the doorbell. A few seconds later, there was a smiling Pauly opening the door.

“Joey!” he said. I looked at Sue and smiled.

Pauly and Joey, each with 60+ years of great stories...

We had a marvelous visit. I don’t think there was a single second when we weren’t telling stories of the old days in Deans and the paths our lives had taken since. Pauly took us to one of the best dinners of my life…a place right on the Pacific Ocean in Moss Landing in the middle of a commercial fishing district. Absolutely awesome seafood. A great breakfast the next morning. Incredible stories and memory jogs about things that happened 50 or 60 years ago. Stories about our Dads, our Moms, our kids, our relatives, our friends, our teachers, our cars, our motorcycles, our guns, our fishing and hunting adventures, and our past. The weekend was incredible. I couldn’t fall asleep that night. My mind was racing with everything we had discussed. I was remembering things I hadn’t thought about in half a century.

Pauly's SS 396 looked a lot like this...it was the fastest car in town

Over breakfast, I mentioned that I didn’t sleep much. I was energized thinking about things I saw in Pauly’s house, the stories, and all of the memories. Pauly showed me things my Dad had given to his Dad. Both of our fathers were world class trapshooters, hunters, fishermen, and yes, motorcycle riders. We talked about our cars (Pauly had a ’67 SS 396, easily the baddest car in town, I had a GTO, and Pauly’s cousin Richie had the ’65 GTO that started the car craze in our crowd). Pauly showed me a recent photo of Richie, and he looked exactly as I remembered him…slim, trim, and a full head of blond hair. The things I thought about that night seemed as if they had happened just a day or two ago instead of a half century in the past. At breakfast the next morning, Pauly said he experienced the same thing – he couldn’t sleep, either.

Paul lives in Hollister, a beautiful and historic town. The ride up was awesome, and I’ll bet many of you have already heard of Hollister. Hollister is the town that put the bad boy motorcycle rider image on the map. There was a motorcycle event there in 1946 that turned a bit rowdy. It was the same year Mustang started producing their first bike, the 1946 Mustang Colt, about 350 miles to the south.

A first-year-of-production 1946 Mustang Colt

1946 was the year of the Hollister motorcycle riot. Sort of. It wasn’t really much of a riot, but something that really wasn’t much of a riot wouldn’t sell magazines, so Life magazine amped it up a bit. Actually, they amped it up a lot. Life staged a photo and presented it as genuine (ah, the lamestream media at work). Hollywood created a movie called The Wild Ones, Marlon Brando’s image was launched, and Harley-Davidson spent the next 60 years simultaneously distancing themselves and profiting from the bad boy motorcycle rider image. And it all started in Hollister, my good buddy Pauly’s new home town.