Steve's Ford LTD in Morning Stream

Lori looks me up over facebook. I’m easy to find, easy enough that every four or five years someone finds me, makes an initial contact. We usually look at each other’s photos and mutual friends and then nothing. There is no follow up, no follow through, no next step. The excitement quickly fades. We haven’t seen each other since high school, what could we possibly talk about now?

Early in facebook, one of us might have initiated a phone call and made plans to meet, or at least talked about making plans to meet. But everyone has been through that a few times now. No one makes arrangements for a phone call, no less a meeting. What? Are we living in 1990?
So Lori and Kate worked at Woolworths at the same time as me. They were high school students, like me. Different high schools. Their’s was gritty and urban. Mine was sleek and suburban.

Lori had all the news on the old gang. We texted each other over Facebook messenger, over several days. A slow moving conversation. Dick moved out west and became a pipefitter. He married Sharlene’s sister, and had a baby with her other sister. And all three lived together with the baby! I find him on facebook, but don’t connect. Ken is still in the Limestone City. He had gone to college. Sharlene and Joe had actually gotten married. Steve was long gone and lost to us all.

I remember driving Steve’s car through a huge puddle behind the mall over and over again until the engine finally got so wet it stalled out. It was a light green 1970s Ford LTD with the metal meat drawers from his refrigerator in the back seat footwells and a set of golf clubs in the trunk. The meat drawers were often full of melted ice and bottles of warm beer, their labels floating in the water.