I’ve been woke up almost every morning for 30 years by the same intimate friend.  For me, that was a hundred wrinkles and a thousand gray hairs ago!  However…she still looks great!  Well, besides waking me up, she also sings me to sleep ‘most every night.  Almost always I’m asleep before she’s willing to quit whatever lullaby she’s chosen that will lull me towards sweet dreams.  Who is it that has outlasted so many other relationships in my life?

First, here’s how we met and got her to go home with me while I was still a teenager.  It was thirty years ago this month (August 1976) that I came to Spokane to get some things to live on my own at college.  It would soon be my first quarter of attending EWSC (Now EWU) in Cheney, WA.  It was the first quarter towards a degree I will probably never get.  I was looking forward to finally being weaned from my parents.  At every turn my heart and mind was open to new experiences.

I drove from store to store, collecting what a 17 year old thinks they will need at college at the emancipated and mature age of 18.  Mostly I was spending the day away from the farm down in Hartline, skipping out of work.  I finally went in one store and went to the electronics department and…there she was!

She caught my eye.  I walked right up, yet trying to be casual, to see what would happen next.  If I would have known that fate would keep us together for three decades, I probably would have overthought what I should do next and the whole situation would have never went any further than a few glances from a shy farm kid in a big city store.

The less then dramatic news is that the one who has stuck with me all these years, turned out to be my good ol’ clock radio that I found in that long closed store, thirty years ago.  I think I paid almost eighty bucks for that electronic Siren, but what a bargain that’s turned out to be for such a great friend!  If she’s still tickin’ when I quit tickin’, please bury her with me!  As the tears of happiness roll down my cheek, I say goodbye until next week and look forward to our next 30 years together.  Jim

Here’s my old dining hall meal ticket from Eastern Washington State College, from September of ’76…