Some Friendships Last a Lifetime

A story of true friendship and a lesson in gratitude

Bud is 90. He’s a sturdy, five-foot-five Korean War Veteran with a loud, hearty laugh who married Norma sixty-five years ago. After their kids were grown, they left California for a little red cabin by the Silver Butte River in Northwest Montana. Every spring Bud turned rich black compost made from kitchen scraps into long garden rows and produced an incredible amount of food when no one else in the area could even get peas to grow. Norma preserved that food in jars and freezers, along with elk and deer meat that sustained them every winter. Bud fixed everything - cleaned the stove pipe, mended the electric wires squirrels chewed, and fixed frozen or leaky pipes. Living thirty-five miles from the nearest small town, made self-sufficiency mandatory.

I was thirteen years old when I first met Bud and Norma. My parents pulled our Dodge Ram Charger down the dirt drive into their yard, sending five-foot-three, rosy-cheeked Norma running out of the house - her long, thick, black hair flying behind her like a wild woman. She squared my Mom under the cottonwood tree, bracing herself like backwoods folks do when strangers roll in, “Who are you?” My Mom smiled warmly, her doe eyes holding Norma’s gaze, “Do you know of any rentals in the area? We just moved here, but our cabin won’t be finished before winter. My husband and I are looking for a place to live. We have two kids and a dog.”

Our family of four uprooted and left Colorado that summer for a seven-acre homestead five miles up the road from Bud and Norma. My younger brother and I were sick of peeling logs with draw knives and sleeping crammed in a bunk in our sixteen-foot camp trailer while we built a log cabin by hand. We crossed our fingers that whatever place we wintered over in, would offer us our own rooms. Norma invited my mother into her cabin that day, picked up the phone, and called a neighbor. A week later, we moved into a beautiful three-bedroom log home on the river a quarter-mile from Bud and Norma.

On most Saturday nights, my folks played cards and drank wine with Bud and Norma. They were family to us. I grew up witnessing a flourishing friendship between the boisterous couple and my parents. When Bud would get enough wine in him, he’d let fly hunting stories and whispers of strange happenings up in the Vermillion - a deep, steep wilderness area at the top of Silver Butte Ridge. Norma taught my mother how to live on next-to-nothing, preserve food, make somethin’-outa-nothin’. Bud was fifty, Norma forty-eight - twenty years older than my parents - when we lived on Silver Butte Road.

Life happens, and we all ended up leaving Montana. I moved to Nashville a couple of years after graduating high school to follow a fierce passion for music. My brother followed me, married, and had two kids in Music City. My father decided he and Mom had to go after the plywood plant shut down and work dried up. Bud and Norma left before any of us, seeking warmer winters. They sold their cabin, bought a fifth-wheel camping trailer, and a nice truck to pull it. They camped in nearly all the major National Parks west of the Continental Divide, holing up in the winter with other Snowbirds down south, then migrating north with the geese and songbirds in the spring back to Montana. They spent summers living on the lake not far from the old homesteads.

Norma told my mother one day on the phone, “We’re selling the trailer and moving to Oregon. Bud needs to be closer to the VA Hospital.” He was seventy-something when they settled in a mobile home retirement park south of Eugene, Oregon. Bud promptly dug up half of the backyard lawn, rototilled the tough ground, brought in compost, and layered it 24 inches deep. He left Norma enough grass to set out a table and chairs and plant flowers on the border. Bud hung bird feeders, planted strawberries in pots, and laid down 167 pavers to make a nice walkway all around the house and into the backyard oasis.

Every July, they picked blueberries, a hundred pounds, and put ‘em up in the freezer along with Bud’s prized, show-quality broccoli and all the other vegetables his backyard garden produced. He puttered around the house, repairing things, cleaning what needed cleaning, and tending the flowers and vegetables. On Tuesday nights, they drove to the local casino and played Bingo. I don’t know if they ever won, but they hardly ever missed a game.

My parents ended up finally settling in a mountain valley a hundred miles south of Bud and Norma. Twice a month, they drove up, plopped a wine bottle down on Norma’s kitchen table, and played cards until the wee hours of the morning. Bud reported on all the projects around the place he was working on, and as the wine bottle emptied, he shifted to retelling old Montana stories. By then, he was eighty-something, visiting the doctors and nurses at the VA more frequently.

Norma took to the computer and started emailing my mother every morning. For years they’ve done this, and once when my Mom didn’t respond, Norma called me in a near-panic, worried something had happened. Last Tuesday, my mother was in tears after getting Norma’s email.

It’s spring in Oregon, and at this time every year, Bud and Norma pull the power washer out of the shed, take out knives and spades, and clean weeds, moss, and mold from the pavers around the house. Bud was yanking weeds and scraping bricks when he looked up at Norma breathless, “I can’t do this anymore.”

It was the first time he’d ever uttered those words.

My parents and I drove up and surprised them the next day. We found Bud on his knees, trying to wedge grass from between bricks, and Norma standing above him with a power hose. They called around town, but no one was available for hire to do the job. So, Bud told Norma they would just clean a few bricks a day, “If we don’t clean this path, one of us will slip and break our neck on this moss.”

We got them to relinquish the hose and scrapers and took to getting the job done. Four hours later, those pavers were clean and sparkling. Bud had tears in his eyes, and Norma was so grateful, she blushed and couldn’t speak. It might have been the only time she’s not had something to say. That day I learned what true gratitude looks like.

Bud is 90. He’s of the generation where you don’t ask others to do what you can do for yourself. But there comes a time when you shouldn’t have to ask.

Indigenous cultures throughout history tell of respecting and taking care of elders. In the words of my Dad, “It’s what we do.” But in America, it’s not what our culture does. In this country, our elders are pushed to the sidelines just when they need us most. But here’s the catch. At some point, we will all be elders (universe willing) - even Americans - and we will need each other in ways our younger selves cannot imagine.

Bud and Norma helped my family so many years ago. My family will be there for them now when they need us - exactly as it should be. It’s the kind of “Assisted Living” I wish for each and every one of us on the planet.

I’m lucky. This summer I’ll get to spend more time with Bud and Norma, and I just might learn some good gardening tips from the Pro. I will most certainly hear deep woods tales of Montana, and might even get Bud to tell again about the time Norma pan-fried pine cones in the camper and nearly blew the roof off.

Every moment will be a gift. Every story a gem. And I’m quite sure they are the ones who will assist me in understanding what is really important, while they teach me a few tricks of the trade called Life.

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