These are my friends.

Mike...and Mike.
These two guys are probably the best friends I have or have ever had.
When I first met them, back in late 1993, I had just been unceremoniously kicked out of a band that we all believed showed much promise. It was probably within a week after that when the two Mikes asked me if I was interested in jamming with them and drummer Randy Hayes. If it sounded good we might put a band together.
It DID sound good. Very good, and we DID put a band together. A band that made me completely forget everything about the one I had just left. We wrote all of our own songs and eventually began to call ourselves Johnny Bravo.
When we weren't composing and jamming we spent most of the time (too much time) at Mike & Mike's house getting stoned. The house was a very popular spot where lots of M&M's friends, many among the Oklahoma Baptist University's student body, would come to hang out and share sacks of pot.
The prevailing mood of that time was summed up in one word, which was used on so many occasions that it became a catch-word and eventually turned into the name of our band (after we retired the Johnny Bravo thing)...the word was FESTIVE and the band from then on was known as Jimbo & the Festives.
But I didn't want to post about the history of our musical pursuits or the "festive" times we had.
One of the Mikes, who later picked up the nicknames of Baldi and Warty, moved to the Dallas area a couple of years ago. That was a huge dissapointment to me, because he was very much the quiet type who didn't get too close to anyone. And yet I do believe that we had a closer friendship than he had with most people (even though as time moved on we didn't see much of each other). He's the guy on the right in the first of the pictures above.
When he moved it was hard to deal with. But I took some comfort in knowing that the other Mike was still close enough to hang with. He is a very personable guy, and unlike Warty, he cultivates many friendships. These days avery one of those friends knows him as Red. Even his old friends have caved in and started calling him Red. He has just "become" Red. And he's also on his way to becoming a legend in these parts. He has that kind of neo-beatnik, bohemian, Bukowski-Dylan hybrid type of personality. He is the guy on the right in the second picture above).
Now an era is coming to an end, a time of high spirits, higher hopes, dreams that may not have come true but turned out to be pale substitutes in contrast with what we were already living in our waking moments...the old days with the band and the later days as friends bonded by respect and mutual regard...they're all passing into a different time that builds them up and sculps them into solid memory, the recollection of which brings smiles and a somewhat melancholy acceptance that "those were the good old days".
All this musing is occasioned by a call I recieved by Red last night, and then news that he is thinking about moving to Little Rock. He says "thinking" but I know he will. He spends a good chunk of his days over that way and if I know Red he's ready for a change.
He does travel a lot and I'm hoping that he'll come this way often, that I'll see him ever so often. Hoping it won't be like it is with Warty, who is a total homebody and NEVER gets out of the house (hence, he never comes up to Oklahoma and I never see him). Red has forged too many bonds of friendship in this area (I told you he was a legend) for him not to come back on a regular basis. That's how I hope it turns out to be.
Anyway, this is for Mike and Mike.
You'll both be as close to me in the days to come, in my heart and in my soul, as you ever were in my presence back in the "good old days", of which you both had a huge part in making "good".