I had heard of Mike before I had met him.

Before I had even started school, I recall being told about the adventure he had by climbing one of the grist mill towers in Martinsburg.

"Did you hear about Mike Lingenfelter?" Eager young faces spread the news. "He and his brother climbed those mill towers the other day. They got up there and the police came and caught them!"

I just stood in dirty t-shirt and shorts and pondered the thought of climbing the towers. Unexpectedly, I felt a desire to climb them, but was too frightened to do it on my own.

Maybe on a dare or for whatever unsatiable curiosity in his chest, he and his brother Jerry had climbed up the towers. As a child, those towers were taller than mountains and, in fact, were the highest structures in Martinsburg.

It wasn't that he was becoming a legend in his own time, but rather that he was already a legend in the town and was only five.

Then I met him. It was in the fall of some beautiful year. Morrison's Cove was full of smells and colors and the movement of children involved in sports. On the imaginary field of a flag-football game, I finally saw Mike on the other team. They were the bad-boys with a coach nick-named Boozer. That pretty much said it all.

He was so small. Sure he was still a child, but I mean he was all short and stocky-not as big as the others he was playing against. But that was the thing about Mike. He was short, but somehow you felt dwarfed by him.

We lost that game.

Mike was a year older than I and he ran with a different crowd. Most times I heard of his doings second child-hand.

"Did you hear?"

"What?" I said in eager anticipation of some big news.

"Mike Lingenfelter is going to school in Altoona for a year. His parents are holding him back a year. He's so small that they had to put him away for a year to let his body catch up."

"Wow" I thought. It seemed so serious an activity for a twelve year old. So Lingenfelter would be gone for a whole YEAR. I was happy because now for a change I might have a chance with some of the young ladies in my class, namely Kim Snavely (who's locker he was ALWAYS hanging around). Also, thought, I was glad for another reason; when Mike came back, he'd be in my class and maybe in a way I thought we could have fun together.

The story takes a sudden change and before Mike and I could become friends, I hear kids saying, "Hey, have you heard about the Lingenfelters?"

"What now?" I said back, a little more mature in my response.

"They're moving Connecticut!"

Standing in the hallway, I can't remember feeling that the Cove was somehow loosing a star and damned Connecticut was getting him. But youth is like that and I got over it.

Years go by and there is a line of boys standing in line to get Junior High Football physicals. We were all a-buzz with chat and jokes.

"You know where they grab you when you get a physical don't you?" some with older brothers who played football were saying.

"Where?" I asked all naive.

"The balls" came the answer matter-of-factly.

"But why?" I asked them back as though they or anyone knew. I felt sick in my stomach (not half as sick as when the doctor would press his cold fingers against me).

All of a sudden there was Mike in line. Everyone was like, "Hey there's Lingenfelter!"

The son of a gun was back, had a perm, and I knew that year I would have few girlfriends. Alot of the guys also got perms.

By the time tenth grade rolled around I had decided that I was a runner, rather than a dumb football jock. I ran around with a few prankster fool-smart asses who were destined to get their own asses kicked. Of course Lingenfelter was hanging with the jocks. Afternoons in the high school hallways, awaiting practice, the tension between the runners and the jocks would mount to the point of confrontation.

Mike had made really good friends with an old friend of mine, Darin Burket. They were constantly together. During one of these afternoons before practice, the tension HAD reached confrontation. The shouting had begun.

"What a bunch of pansies those runners are" said a football oaf. Darin and Mike were there, laughing.

"If Burket had his nose any further up Lingenfelter's ASS, Mike would have to keep his mouth open all the time so Burket could breathe!"

Eee Hee Hee we runners were laughing at that one, but the football players did not think it funny.

"That's it!" Burket yelled "You guys are dead!"

"Anytime" my friend Tinker retorted.

We runners walked around the corner to get into out flimsy practice gear. All I remember hearing from the football jocks was Lingenfelter yell, "I want Baker!"

So our friendship did not really get off to a good start. About that time Mike's brother Lynn had started going out with my sister Halley.

"A Lingenfelter seeing my sister. Geez" I just shook my head.

But the thing was, Lynn was funny. When he came over I would hang out too long with he and Halley cracking jokes until they both gave me that look of like, "Hey big brother, get a life. We wanna neck."

One day during the summer before my Junior year, Lynn came over and, to my surprise, Mike was with him. See, we had a pool and all and what with those hot Pennsylvania summers, surely Mike was hot to the point of, "Damn I am SO hot that I will even go over to Baker's to swim even if Doug is there."

So there he was and, like boys (or dogs), we tested each other out. Frankly I was kind of a fraid he was jess gonna haul of and kick my ass. But that didn't happen. Rather we started doing things of goofdom and slinging jokes back and forth at each other. It was kind of a perfect day. We stayed out until the sun was on the verge of setting and Mike and Lynn had to go home for dinner.

That summer we got into the Lingenfelter's canoe and along with Steve Burket drifted and paddled the 30 mile length of Raystown Lake. Just the three of us, Mike and I paddling, Steve in between us, making wise-cracks. The beauty of paddling a boat in the middle of night, a full moon above so bright to the point of it all being a dark-silvered daylight. Those few days under the hot sun and stopping off a lakeside cliffs where Mike performed diving acrobatics. Me, I just jumped off from 60 feet above and nearly hitting a rock thereby snuffing it all.

Now we reach a point in the story where Mike and I were together as unlikely best friends and if I were to recount all of our crazy episodes together, then surely we would have a huge volume the size of War and Peace, only it would be titled Geek and Fool.

We started spending time at each other's houses. I remember the Lingenfelter household as one of the crazier one's I had ever been in. All this activity and love flowing all around you in the form of many children. Innocent activity, like playing board games all the while Mike's dad, Gerome, would be speaking this crazy language that everyone but me could understand. The whole family would be goofing and talking and I would have no idea what they were saying. Then Gerome let me in on the trick.

"See Doug, what you do is spell the word you want to say, but rather than spelling Mike and saying M-I-K-E, you insert the letter U between the consonants and use the vowels in their long form. So M-I-K-E becomes MuM-i-KuK-e."

So there it was. I knew the secret language of the Lingenfelters and in a way, I guess, was finally accepted into their vast clan.

In August of that summer, I started playing football. Since I had actually been arrested the previous spring from spending to much evil time with those runners, mom and dad thought it best that I get away from them. So there I was, nearly forgetting how to play football (and awkwardly displaying it much of the time at practice). But it wasn't the football that was important, it was the FUN that was important. Mike and I were serious enough when out on the field, but when on the sidelines or on the walks to and from Bean Hill, we goofed.

Mike had discovered women before I did, but the end of that summer was one of experiment for the both of us. We would drive out with some cheerleaders into the woods. In my Jeep then we had realized what fun and hilarity these young women possessed. They were just as curious as we were and how easily our clothes came off.

When you want to stay out late as a child or are up to activity that would be frowned upon by your parents, just say you are going over to your friends house and THEN do what you actually planned to. That gives you at least a few hours of time to explored. Only, hope your parents don't call your friends. If they do, you take the heat. Some things are worth the risk.

My family had three wheelers and often Mike and I would jump on these things and go flying like on wild steel horses across the fields. We road far and once found ourselves at the foot of a mountain in Henrietta. It was under a power line and for sure there was a trail leading up to the top.

"Let's do it, Doug."

I was a little hesitant, but knew that it had to be done.

"Mike if we start going up we'll have to go the whole way. There is NO way to turn around and come back down. The three wheeler would just go rolling down the mountain with one of us on it."

"So?" he said.

I shook my head and threw some dirt behind me as I lead the climb. Now it seemed to be going okay until we got to the top. Then the trail leaned to such a degree that you nearly had to put your face into the dirt on the left side of the bike to maintain any balance. Around a last turn and I was at the top. Just in time to see Mike having a little trouble. The trouble quickly tripled in severity as Mike lost control of the three wheeler. He actually got off it and it started rolling down the mountain. Now you gotta understand, that I only thought at that moment of my father. All I could see as that three wheeler took one, two rolls down that Henriettan Mountain was my father's face huge in mine saying, "What were you thinking!"

It was that vision that prompted me to yell out, "Mike! You GOTTA stop it!"

Then he moved and if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I would have never believed it possible. He took two long steps and had caught up with the accelerating-at-the-hand-of-gravity three wheeler. His short, stocked body then grabbed whatever was closest, a handle bar, a wheel, whatever and he stopped that three wheeler from rolling any further.

"Get down here!" he yelled and I lunged from my three wheeler and was at his side. He had saved it. Sure it was a little damaged, but a least it wasn't a chewed and discarded piece of metal at the foot of some hallow below. Nothing a sledge couldn't bend back into place.

We then made it to the top of the mountain and sat there in silence, forgetting about the three wheelers as we looked out of the beauty of Morrison's Cove. We had never before seen it as a thing of wonder-filled beauty - all green and fertile. And it was ours.

Not to say that we were always fools, just most of the time. When young fools pass through a period of darkness they become wise men. And into that, we unknowingly and regretfully walked.

It came at the crescendo of an evening of utter freedom and exploration. Bruce Moore and I had gotten the okay from our parents to spend the night at Mike's. Well, obviously we weren't about to do that. Rather we met up with a few cheerleaders and spent the night at one of the girls' house. Her parents were away. Who knows where, they just weren't THERE. For most of the evening we just fell in love with whoever was there and we young men found ourselves with whatever young lady fancied us in that hour.

Suffice to say that we were out until late and when we finally did get back to Mike's house (after dropping Bruce off at his home) we found his Mom up and waiting for us. Thanks to Mike's quick thinking he came up with the perfect answer.

"Mom, Doug and I had just been out spotting deer."

It was just too bad that we unknowingly had lipstick all over our faces. We should have just realized that parents had gone through this when they were young and knew the tricks already. She smiled and Mike and I crashed into sleep.

Next day was one that held great possibility. It was a holiday, Veterans Day, and to be sure there was no school. It was in that mood that we kids found ourselves alone in the house while the parents, luckily had to be at work. We goofed and ran around the house. Rick and Mike chased me about the house with an unloaded shotgun. Of course it was unloaded, but I was nervous cause you never know. All this would echo in my mind later as some bitter-twisted irony.

Then there was a guy suddenly at the door saying someone had been shot. I was momentarily confused because I had NOT been shot. The shotgun was not loaded and anyway how could he have known.

The guy repeated, "Someone has been shot up on the hill and your brother Lynn is involved."

Mike and I got in the Jeep and flew up the dirt road that lead to a house on a hill. Before us we could see a figure staggering about in the road. It was those few moments before we could tell who it was. Mike and I knew without speaking that whoever that was in the road, it was the other who was shot.

Lynn's friend Shawn Kelly was in the road, falling and stumbling, yelling, "I'm sorry...oh my god....oh my god!..." He was delirious in some state of shock. They had innocently gone out hunting for it was a holiday for them to do whatever they desired.

Mike and I rand down over the hill a piece and under the powerline which connected eventually to the one on Henrietta Mountain, was Lynn. The moment was above any of us, so young and unprepared for such gravity. We only ever wanted mirth and now Lynn lay before us, white and somehow peaceful-distant. Whatever it was, it was wrong. Lynn shouldn't be this way. We didn't know if he was alive.

"We have to get him into the Jeep" Mike said.

Picking him up under the shoulders, Mike and I were doing what came natural; to get him to a hospital. To help. To people in white outfits who worked miracles. Get him off this cursed Covian hill which had made him white and lifeless.

Soon Lynn began to make a sound, a sorrowful injured wheezing sound that made Mike and I instinctively lower him to the ground. He was alive, but if we kept moving him like this, what horribleness may happen?

Someone had called an ambulance. Most likely the neighbor who came to the door. Then just as Mike and I knew not what to do, there were people on the hill who took the unwelcome situation from our shoulders. There was nothing more we could do.

I laid upon my bed that first night. Curled up in a ball, I tried to force out that unwelcome pain which had now inhabited my chest. The doctors had actually given Lynn's likelihood for survival a percentage. It is not important what the percentage was. I guess it had hit myself and Mike and all who knew Lynn that the fun is someday gonna end.

Lynn survived. After that fall, we had in our hearts a sense of humbled victory.

It was Mike who first introduced me to God, or even the possibility of God. Before I was always forced to go to church and it all was pretty much an unpleasant experience. I was still arguing the dark point-of-no-view that there was no GOD. To me it was cool to be an evolutionary atheist. Oh the arguments Mike and I had. To my surprise, Mike was extremely well read in his arguments for god. He had figures and facts down. And unless I could come up with some proof, then my arguments were weak.

Mike stopped me one day in the hall.

"Here's a book Doug that puts our beliefs into one theory."

"What do you mean?" I said irritable-skeptic.

"It's called Scientific Creationism. Basically it says that God has used the evolution of creatures as HIS tool. He is all powerful, you know. Why can't he use evolution as well?"

"Yeah but Mike, Darwin proved that creatures evolve on their own. They don't need any hand of God."

Mike looked at me and in a knowing smile said, "On his deathbed Darwin said that all his theories were wrong. That there is indeed God."

I sat the book on a shelf in my room at home. There it would sit as I wildly ran about life until the shadow would catch up with me.

Each fall, after football and Thanksgiving we lost Mike to wrestling. He became this sucked-out, flesh-over-bone man that went to class spitting water into a cup. It was then that we saw a spark in him which was more that just wanting to win. His aura was all about him and we wanted to spend time with him, but that would have to wait until the spring after States was over.

About then I had started going out with the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. Dori. It was really unfortunate for me in alot of ways. First, I was sorts of henpecked. She immediately attached the marionette strings to my arms, head, and feet and I danced all about her until she was through with me. Then she would let the controls drop from her hand and I became the rejected bag of bones that I was.

Thank god for Mike. It was he who taught me to look at it all as some comedy (which it was). How much he had to endure with me in regards to Dori. I'd get all moody and walk down the hall. Dori at my side and that was all I wanted.

He once untucked my shirt while I was walking with her. I turned around with steam shooting from my nostrils and could do nothing but, like a pansy, slap/hit him along side the head!

"Hey! What's that for?" he laughed at my actions.

"What the hell are you untucking my shirt for, Dick?"

Oh my. How he could have just walked away and left me to my bitter and final end. He didn't. I guess he saw something good in me that was worth the effort. We were best friends afterall.

It was in March of our Senior year that we had our first contact with alcohol together. In some unbelievable set of circumstances, my parents had gone away for the weekend or night, whatever. Pretty much we just started breaking out the rum and wine. Putting a surely mixture into our bellies and then going outside and running circles in the yard under the stars like drunk dogs. Oh my it was glorious.

We hadn't started to drink though. Track was still in season and Mike was pole-vaulting to the point of having the school record and eventually went to states! Imagine that short guy up and over like some bird over the bar! Me, I was chasing several school records and got them, having completed a whole season of track and not getting kicked-off. Dori had even showed up at a couple of meets to watch me run. Oh the glory!

A month or so later, we graduated from Central High School. Class of 1985. Our hair was blonde from pool bleach and we were sweating profusely in our black polyester gowns as the June sun beat down. Throwing our caps in the air, we headed towards days of glory or despair.

We had reached the point where our roads were going to diverge into new and crazy unknowns. He was going off to travel europe on a ministry youth trip. I wrote him and he sent me letter from Scotland and cool places like that echoed in my imagination. As fate would have it, my family was going to England at the end of that summer. Somehow we arranged it that we would meet in London. All I had was an address and one night free of family to find him. So I set out on the London Underground (a boob from a land far away called The Cove' chugging along under the streets of London - fantastic!). I walked the streets with a piece of paper in my hand until I arrived there and just said, "I'm here to see Mike Lingenfelter." I expected them to say, "Who?" So imagine my shock when a pretty girl said, "Sure. Wait here a second. I'll go get him."

There was Mike and I in London and the scene was so unusual that it didn't even seem real. I met some of his new friends and we walked outside and sat on a curb and talked about it ALL. Then we hugged goodbye and my short visit was over. I wished I had known before I stayed out until 1am with Mike that the Underground and Cabbies stop running at midnight. It was along walk back.

Mike came back to The Cove and before we went different directions to college and all, we decided to head to the beach. Gregg Bush, Mike, and I jumped into Bush's VW Rabbit and headed off to Ocean City. They drove through the night while I slept soundly on our sleeping bags. At some point we go there and I just kept sleeping. We all woke to the sound of rain and some guy banging on our car window. Bush had, dumbly, pulled off into someone's property to sleep. This guys wasn't too happy and soon we were driving around trying to find a place to stay - cheap - and maybe find some beer.

Suddenly the rain stopped and we came to a cheap hotel across from a beer distributor. We got a room and drove across the street to get the beer. All of us underage and no fake I.D. we prepared for rejection, but turned to elation when Mike comes walking out of there with a big case of cold ones and a smile. There was no time to waste. Back to the room and we started drinking (still hadn't even scene the ocean). Three of us were chewing into the case pretty good. We ran out to get some hamburgers and then came back to do more drinking. It shortly got out of hand Bush was in the closet for whatever reason asleep. Mike and I kept drinking and making a huge pyramid of the empties. We sat out on the porch in the two chairs and watched traffic go by. Gregg was still in the closet. There was wetness all around. We were too drunk to know why.

Next day we were so hungover that it took all our energy to make the two mile trip to the beach. Though I was pretty bad, I was the only one who wasn't vomiting. I think we slept the whole time there, got miserably sunburnt and tried to walk back to the car. I had been improving, as did Gregg. A block away from the car, Gregg and I thought Mike was just behind us, but turning around, he was gone.

"What the hell?" I mused.

Then came Mike out of an alley and looked as though he had just gotten off a rocking ship caught in a storm. He was green and had spittle coming forth from his mouth.

"I just puked in that alley" was all he could say to us.

We all went back pulled the shades to block out the sun and slept. In a few hours time we woke up again, intent on finding the next case of beer.