“...grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.” — Shakespeare
That line is about friendship... the kind that doesn’t bend or break. Polonius gave that advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet. Don Shepley gave it to his boy once too. I took it to heart and wound up with a band of brothers from the southwest corner of Oak Park.
We raised pints to 21st birthdays and again at 30. We toasted weddings, baptized babies, buried fathers, and fielded slow-pitch doubleheaders with hangovers and hustle. One night in a tavern on Roosevelt Road, most of us still too young to drink legally, we picked a name for our team: The Wild Turkeys. It stuck and so have we.
Forty years later, we are still swinging. Some with grandkids, some with pensions, some with emptier nests than they planned. I might be the only one officially divorced, but today we are together again for the annual Wild Turkey Open, followed by a cookout.
The storms might roll in and with my golf game, I might be better off skipping to the 19th hole anyway, but I’ll be shoulder to shoulder with the Turkeys. The laughter, the stories, the old memories… they show up every time.
We don’t see each other often, but when we do, it’s gusto, knowledge, laughter, and a fondness that doesn’t fade.
I’ll find my astonishment today.
It just won’t be wearing a smile on the sun.
