My Friend

Have you ever had one of those special people in your life who has helped you in immeasurable and intangible ways to grow up? I have, and his name is Dillard Kilby. He was from the small north Georgia community of Persimmon, just outside of Clayton near Lake Burton. When I was a teenager singing Handel's Messiah for the first time, I had to stand on a stack of hymn books so I wouldn't appear as small as I really was next to Dillard. When the books began to slide (which they did because I can't stand still while singing) Dillard would reach over and grab a handful of my shirt or choir robe and slowly pull me back to the upright position.

His family was in the original Foxfire books (Wellborns and Kilbys), famous for such arcane things as inventing the FIRST steerable car headlights for the winding mountain roads. Tucker takes the credit, but Grandpa Wellborn did it. He also enjoyed making banjos out of most anything, most notably pie tins and cigar boxes.

Dillard spent a lot of time mentoring me through my teens. Dad always said he got me from puberty to adultery! He'd take me into the mountains to meet his family and eat copious amounts of food with them and drink homemade moonshine with them from worm buckets and Mason jars. He let Charlie and me hunt squirrels on his land, and he spent an inordinate amount of time and energy pushing his daughter towards me. Lucky for her it didn't take.

He moved his wife to North Carolina and built a log cabin for the both of them. He built it. By hand. Dillard was that kind of fella. And knowing him, it was built well enough to last for a very long time.

Well, my best old friend Charlie e-mailed me today to let me know Dillard had died. I wept. Not for any suffering that may have come Dillard's way, but for the times I could have had with him but didn't. There'd always be next week. Well, next week has come and gone, and all I have left of him are some Christmas cards, pictures and memories of a true friend who had nothing but my best interest at heart.

That's why I called Charlie. I just couldn't let that happen to us, so we made plans for me to go see him and fish for a while the week after Easter. It's only week-after-next, but it feels like forever away. That's cause I really need to see my old friend. For both our sakes.