Lyndon Boyer, January 20th 1965 – December 29th2015

I have been friends with Lyndon Boyer since 1970, when we entered kindergarten together at Graham South Elementary school, a school that has since been torn down and replaced by an open field.  We shared a childhood,  adolescences, the rowdy teen years and then it got even better into adulthood, the friendship morphing at each phase to adjust to the new norms that our lives presented.  When we graduated, he stayed and started working in the family business and I went off and joined the US Navy.  After getting to see the world I was sure that I would never be able to return to small town life where I grew up.  I saw Lyndon nearly every time I went back to Ohio, which in the early years was pretty often. 

On the last couple of trips I did not get to see him as I had lost track of him and I was only in town long enough for a funeral.  There is an irony in that somewhere but the pain of losing him is too fresh for me to see it just yet.  We all have those friends who no matter how long it has been since you have seen them, you are able to pick right up where you left off like no time had passed, even if it had been years since you have seen them.  I have a great many friends that I served with like that and in fact I had dinner with one on this trip to Ohio.  We served together in the Navy and I had not seen each other since 1988 but picked up right where we left off.  Lyndon was one of four people I grew up with that I had that sort of relationship, with his passing there are only 2 left.

I had just four true friends, four that I kept up with from childhood.  In Lyndon’s case I did not do such a good job of keeping up in recent years.  I have nothing but bullshit excuses as to why I had lost track of him.  The sting of that is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life. For those who know me know, I cannot be guilted as I fully own every decision I have ever made, right wrong or indifferent.  I also do not have one single regret over the entire course of my life, until now, until this.  

I will carry the regret of never meeting the woman, Michelle that brought Lyndon out of the angry years.  I am not sure if anyone else called them that, but that is what I called the years after his divorce.  I will be forever indebted to her for helping my friend find joy and happiness again.  I will forever be sad that I never got to meet her, never got to know her.  Looking at pictures and talking to folks at his funeral, I know she did that for him.  Man oh man this is making me cry again.  I am going to miss that Dude and I am going to miss never getting to know the love of his life.  I got to say a half a dozen words to Michelle at the funeral, what can one say in that situation other than I am sorry for your loss.

All this sounds so selfish as I type it but I sure do miss my friend, and the shock of his passing has not even begun to sink in yet.  How can I sum up a lifetime of friendship in a blog, it is impossible!  This is actually the 5^th one of these I have written, when I get to the end and read it back they just seem so inadequate.  It really does feel like a part of me, a part no one else knows about is gone, gone forever. All our shared experiences over our lifetime are now just my memories, little treasures that I now feel entrusted to keep alive, it feels like a mighty responsibility and I can only hope I am up to the task.

My friend was one of the most upstanding men I have ever known, for as long as I have known him.  He despised laziness and demanded excellence. My first experience with that was in first or second grade.  We were playing kickball or dodge ball or something with a ball and I was selected to be on the same team as him. I sucked at the playing of most sports, well really all sports.  Right from the beginning of the game I was not meeting his expectations with regards to my performance on the field of play.  As I very vividly recall the incident, he was like a six year old Hulk Hogan, viciously hoisting me up over his head in a fit of uncontrolled rage.  After a few twirls to scare me even further, he unceremoniously threw me down on the ground like a sack of potatos, after which he did a victory dance.   That dance included giving me a kick in the head with each trip around my near lifeless body. That is “exactly” what happened, as I remember it.  If you were to ask him I am sure he would say that he accidentally brushed my arm, I fell over like a little fragile little girl and when I landed, on a padded surface, my weak and brittle bones just broke.  I suspect the truth is somewhere on the middle. 

It was funny, when speaking with his Dad Max at the viewing about that incident I learned they were scared to death my parents were going to sue them over the incident, which really lends credence to my telling of the events when you think about it.  My folks did not sue, but I never knew any of that and I suspect neither did he.  I remember my Mom was pissed about it for a long time, I suspect his parents footed that medical bill.  I was “not to play with that ruffian” anymore.  Well, we see how that worked out, 45 some years later here I am talking about our friendship, sorry Mom.

Lyndon and I hung out a lot when we were little kids, our houses were 3.5 miles apart, country miles and we would ride our bikes back and forth.  Speaking of riding bikes, I remember he and his brother Lloyd had Chopper style bicycles when we were probably 6 or 7.  He showed me that if I cut off the forks of another bike, and then hammered them over the existing forks that I too could create a chopper style bike, which I of course did.  Looking back that was such a dumbassed thing to do, if that would have come loose and fallen apart while I was riding I would have ended up seriously injured or killed, that mattered little to a 6 or 7 year old – I was cool because I had a cool bike!

Lyndon was always a super mechanical dude, after bikes he turned to souping up lawn mowers and even installing wheelie bars on one, like it was a freaking dragster!  That thing would pop wheelies and ride along at 25 - 30 miles an hour.  That makes me smile and laugh, mainly because he showed me how to that to, so of course I did that as well, much to the chagrin of my Dad.  It was a simple process, change some pulleys to change the input ratio to the transmission and then change some gears on the chain drive to a more positive ratio, looking back it was just too damn funny!

After that it was onto cars, I remember helping him change his mustang from an automatic to a four speed.  We laid on the dirt in a field next to his house dropping the automatic.  I remember he bought another car just for the parts to get that to work. When we went to get it, it did not have a steering column.  He had “fashioned” one out of iron pipe and some metal rebar and yep, I got to steer that thing from somewhere north of Urbana to his house, probably like 15 miles, and he was of course hauling ass, Max, he was always beating up on your work vans!  Again a not so smart idea but again, I did not know any better at the time.

From there he went to the Dodge Dart he got from his Brother, now that car was actually a hot rod and FAST!  We went up to Ohio High Point together for auto mechanics training, he always did better than me but I always muddled through.  I actually think I learned more from him and our other friends than I did the teacher.  If we fast forward past high school into adulthood I was visiting once and he showed me a tool, a weird wrench of sorts that he made for working on bridges, which he did with the Carpenters union.  I remember him telling me how he came up with the idea and that very day he ran home, tore apart his daughters bikes to build the prototype.  He ended up getting a patent on this thing.  I remember being impressed, again, by his oneness with the all things in the mechanical world.

I was driving around when I was back for his funeral, looking at the places we lived, the places we went to school, the places we hung out, drank beer, and got into trouble, such a flood of memories, some good, some bad and some awesome.  One that stood out when I went by their old house on Heck road was the gigantic chainsaw scar I have on my left foot.  I received that, you guessed it, at Lyndon’s house chopping up some branches that came down out of tree that is not even there any longer.  I remember him and another friend, Chris Miller, freaking out as they called my Dad to find out what hospital to take me to, all while a ½ inch wide 4 inch long chuck of skin, meat and bone was missing from my foot, and it was pouring out the blood.  I remember seeing meat hanging on the chain, it freaked me out to!  A trip to Piqua hospital and a bunch of stitches later and a cast and we were all set.  Well I say, all set I still walk with a slight limp, not enough to notice but enough to wear out shoes in a funny way.

He influenced me in a great many ways over the years.  I was always tearing things apart when I was a kid but Lyndon helped me take that to a new level.  He was fearless when it came to tearing things apart and understanding the true mechanicalness of things.  I am not sure that is a real word but for those who knew him, you know what I am talking about.   With that understanding of the mechanicalness of things I created a couple of my hobbies and pursue a career in electronics.  As far as hobby’s go, most of you know I have the two old cars that I love to wrench on.  Bride used to ask me all the time, why don’t you just get a new car or ones you don’t have to work on.  I had to explain that was the point of having old cars, to spin wrenches on them.  The very point is to have something to tinker with that you like and enjoy tinkering with, the fact they are transportation is secondary to them being a hobby or in my case a trifecta as I also used them as therapy.

There is nothing I am afraid to tear apart, in part because I watched my friend create his own chopper bicycle, create his own racing lawn mower, one that had freaking wheelie bars, and create his own Mustang with a four speed instead of an automatic.  All those things were for no other reason than he wanted them, and he figured out a way to get them, and this was LONG before the ability “google it”!  As I think about my professional successes in the electronics and technology field, a lot of what I learned from and with Lyndon followed me into that profession.  I learned that fearlessness and outward confidence regardless whether I had ever done a particular thing before was extremely important.  Those traits are, in my humble opinion, some of the keys to success in any career.  When you wrap in the ingrained “do the right thing” “always tell the truth” and “share what ya know” you have a really good start.  A lot of that I learned from Lyndon, not in any sort of real teacher way but from the example he provided – those things were not just words to be used but mottos by which to live one’s life!   

In the electronics field you can’t actually see the mechanicalness but it is there, hidden in the electrons and pure freaking magic that make up electronic gadgetry that surrounds us, believe me it is there.  In the physical world there is certain elegance, beauty really in all things mechanical.  Believe it or not, there is the same hidden elegance in electronics. The ways I learned and understood electronics always came back to the mechanicalness of things.  For example, in my mind, electrons flow like water through plumbing.  With each component changing the way the water might flow.  A resister acting as a valve, controlling volume, a transistor acting as a pump and so on and so on.  That relationship back to the mechanicalness of things is why I feel comfortable saying I am a pretty damn good engineer.

Sorry for rambling a bit on this one, my mind is running in a million directions and I feel like I have to get all our shared experiences, my gratitude to and admiration for my friend written down so the memories don’t fade.  I appreciate your indulgence on this.  If you ever do anything for me, do this.  Call your friends, Facebook your friends, send them a letter, whatever it is and tell em ya love em!  I had not been in touch in recent years, something I will regret for lots of reasons for the rest of my days.  It is a reminder that we mustn’t lose track of folks who are important in our lives, no matter the bullshit excuse you may come up with in our heads!  Always tell people how important they are to you, regardless of miles, regardless of the issues or any other bullshit that you think is standing in the way!