My very best friends from the magical summer of 1973

Summer of 1973. It was that time of life where you know it won't ever be this good again. It will be good in other ways but never quite like this again. I had two best friends. Marilyn Romo (on the left) and Dee Dee Encinias (on the right). The three of us were always together. We never went anywhere without each other. I was the only one who had a car (1971 Mustang Mach 1) so I would hurry to get ready each night and then pick up Marilyn and Dee Dee. We would generally go out to eat and then go cruising.
That was back in the day when cruising was an art form. You would ride around with the windows rolled all the way down (in case someone hollered at you) and your radio...AM RADIO...would be tuned into KOMA 1520 - Oklahoma City and turned up full blast so you could sing along with your favorite song. Actually in Santa Rosa you had to listen to the local radio station (KSRX 1420) until the sun went down and they signed off before you could pick up KOMA. The records they played on the local station were always hopelessly out of date so we would wait impatiently for the sun to go down so we could hear the top 40. That was back when DJ were really stars. They had their own persona and gimmicks, they would actually announce the record and tell you who the artist was. And the best part - the dedications. Man o' man was that not the best?

We would ride around for several hours, laughing and talking. Flirting with the guys and bad mouthing our sworn enemies. Gossiping and giggling. This teenage mating ritual would culminate in couples piling into cars together for more cruising and then inevitably we'd all end up at the lake or on some dark road doing all the things our butch gym teacher had warned us to never ever do....

(Marilyn, Mark Walker and me at Tiffins Restaurant)

So where did these people go? That summer we all swore we'd be friends for life. But we were young and didn't have a clue about what it meant to grow older. Marilyn moved out of town by the end of that summer. She went on to college, moved to Florida and then settled in Houston. We still keep in touch and she can make me laugh just as hard as she did in high school but too many miles and years have passed between us. Still, she was quick to provide love and comfort when I lost my son and again when I had my heart attack. She will be one of my best friend to the end of time.

(Dee Dee, Albert Kluss and me at Dairy Queen Drive Inn)

Dee Dee and I remained constant companions for the remainder of the summer after Marilyn moved. Then Dee Dee went back to Denver and I faced my senior year alone. It was one of the hardest and loneliest times of my life. My first love had joined the army and my most intense love who came along unexpectedly during that summer agreed with me to end the relationship out of respect for the guy in the service. But everything in life is about transition and I survived and made new friends and had new experiences. Dee Dee returned to Santa Rosa about a year later and we lived together for several months after graduation. Then I moved to Santa Fe and never saw her again....how did that happen?

I still talk to Marilyn on the phone and hear from Mark Walker every now and then. But I never heard from Dee Dee or heard anything about her. I think of her though, I think of her often and fondly remember the three of us, talking and laughing and dreaming as we cruised through that endless summer...that came to an end...