During the mid to late 60s, the trail rides for the Houston Livestock Show used to camp at an area somewhere around the Brenham area. I just can’t remember exactly where. Kenneth Mueller and I made the decision one evening to head out toward the trail ride and spend the evening at the camp while meeting and greeting our friends who rode the trail every year. It was a first for me, but Kenneth had been there before. The only difference was this time we were on our own. Of course, as with most teenagers, we didn’t pay attention and almost arrived in Somerville before we realized we were headed the wrong way.

Kenneth Mueller was my lifetime friend. Of course, I had a lot of friends but Kenneth was just enough older than me to provide me with a freedom my other friends had not yet achieved. A car! My high school days made me and Kenneth the best of buddies. I can still see him in the driver's seat of the car with a cigarette locked in his right hand while he grabbed the column shift of his Chevrolet and momentarily held it high in the air while in second gear.

As the moment came to shift downward to third, his cigarette would go from his right hand to his lips and then over to his left hand as he held his bent arm and elbow out the window with the two-forty AC running full blast.

All cars had various forms of air conditioning back then. You had a wide selection of units to install in your car. A lot of people had four-forty's, tw-sixty's, and an occasional two-eighty if your car would run that fast. Two windows down and 40 miles an hour was normally right for the local streets.

There were seven of the Mueller Boys here in Hufsmith and I am proud to say that I have specific, fun-filled memories of each one of them. Hunting, fishing, staying at their home watching the moon landing on their television, building man-powered and motorized contraptions and all other memories still fill my mind and heart with happiness.

Kenneth, however, has given me the most memories. My degree of friendship with each of the guys is not measured by “who likes whom” better, but was totally based on proximity of age. Let’s face it. When you are 15 years old and you have one friend who is 14 and still riding bicycles and the other who is 16 and driving cars, who ya' gonna pick? Well, of course, any sane-minded teenager is going to gravitate toward the guy who is driving and that is really how Kenneth and I fell together. All the Mueller Boys are like family to me, but it just so happens that Kenneth’s and my ages brought us together at that time and place in our lives.

Kenneth helped me land my first mechanic job at Pat’s Garage in Hufsmith. He also got me a job at Johnny Reeves’ shop on Kuykendahl. For three of four years of our lives we were buddies. We shared many, many memories with a lot of friends but then…well…life began to change. Places and events separated us and that one year age difference continued to cause our friendship to fade. That one year’s age difference became an issue that changed our directions in life.

Kenneth graduated from high school and I was now a senior in high school and Kenneth left for the service. That once strong bond of friendship we held for several years was now torn apart by time and distance. There was no e-mail, no Twitter, no Facebook and there was no way a guy would pay for a long distance call. Writing letters was hard because he was busy with his new life and I was busy with mine back here at home. Life had changed forever and we completely lost touch with each other. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just the way it was. Life changes all of us.

Shortly after my graduation I started a family and Kenneth started his.We got older and that once youthful exuberance of running around and having fun was replaced with families, church, jobs, bills and other issues that each of us has to deal with each and every day. I briefly saw Kenneth only two times in the past 40 years or so. The last time I saw him I spent a few short moments with him at his dad’s funeral. I left that place and told myself that I needed to try and re-connect with Kenneth even though he no longer lived in this area. But, as life goes, I never did.

Today I received a call from one of Kenneth’s brothers. Kenneth had passed away. He succumbed to cancer. We were not aware of Kenneth’s struggle with his health. Stunned and saddened, my mind raced back to earlier times in my life when kids were kids and fun created lifetime memories. Many of our former days together have flared back in my memory.

People, places and things are being relived over and over in my mind. But now I feel the pains and regrets in my heart that I had never completed what I said I was going to do and that was try to re-connect with Kenneth. I don’t know if our conversations together would have brought the same happiness we shared as kids to a couple of older guys.

I don’t know if we would have laughed and cut up at our antics as teenagers. I don’t know if we would have been able to re-kindle that friendship or not, but at least I could have tried. At least I could have thanked him for the memories, but now…now my time has passed.

To the friends and family of Kenneth Mueller.

Clifford

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