A little over thirty years ago, the day before graduation, Rick gave me two dishes. Both are heavy with the heavy duty feel of diner dishes. One is oval with a green floral and ribbon border, perfect for a butter dish. The other one is the size of a bread plate or a small salad plate, white with a single, crisp black line bordering its slightly scalloped edge.
He gave me the dishes because he was lightening his load, as he described it. He would be moving back to Largo following graduation, literally as in the next morning. For the time being, being a short time he hoped, he would be living with his parents, and so there were lots of things he no longer needed, including a dish or two.
Several weeks earlier Rick and I had collaborated on an alternative awards ceremony following the college’s official one. The one we pulled together, under the auspices of the Friends for the Unification of Common Knowledge, was held at a big elegantly aged Victorian home off San Marco Avenue and was a fine party and a very entertaining mock awards ceremony. At the urging of some who enjoyed the party, Rick organized a graduation event at the same house with the same Purple Jesus Fruit Punch.
It was at the party that Rick explained that both of the dishes had come from a great aunt, his mother’s older sister. We stood on the upstairs back porch of the house and for a few minutes he drifted away from the party and graduation and told me her story in a brief and sincere way.
She had grown up in Polk County on an orange orchard but moved off the farm when she married. Her husband and she opened a small store and gas station at the crossroads between Bartow and Ft. Meade, the only stretch of road for hundreds of miles where two US Highways, US-17 and US-92, travel the same route. The store, and later the diner, at Homeland, what pole had started calling the crossroads, did well.
Rick’s aunt never had children. He wasn’t sure how long they had been married when his uncle was traveling in south Florida on business and at Belle Glade got caught in the 1932 hurricane and disappeared. Never found him. Found his car, but not him. His aunt never remarried, but held onto the store-diner-service station until into the mid 1960’s when she sold out to a chain of convenience stores.
That’s when she moved from Homeland to a condo in St. Petersburg, not far from where Rick grew up. When he went away to college, she gave him some things to help him out, including a lamp he said he’d keep all his life. Those two dishes came from among those items.
The morning of graduation I drove out to the beach before dawn to see the sunrise, then took my time getting back to get dressed for the 10:00am ceremony. The graduation was held in the sanctuary of the Memorial Church, under its 150 foot high dome. I stood with Rick across the street as we weighed the moment, knowing it was a threshold of some thing.
After the ceremony, Rick left. We stayed in touch and saw each other when one of our routes passed near the other’s home. The last time I saw him was at a college reunion. Neither of us had ever been to one and we though it might be fun, figuring we'd at least have each other to talk with. It wasn’t fun and we did enjoy the time together.
And then time stepped in and we lost touch completely.
Two years ago while at a conference in St. Petersburg, I met an official from Largo. I mentioned that I had an old college buddy from Largo, but that he and I had been out of touch for a while. In conversation I learned that this man was a very close friend of Rick’s, was with him the day he died of cancer, and thoroughly enjoyed talking about the friendship.
Today is the college’s graduation ceremony. This morning I used butter from the oval dish to butter the hot pancakes laid out on the small white dish.