In high school John pitched for South Salem and worshiped the New York Yankees before heading off to college in Ashland, where our first encounter was on the Administration Building lawn when he quarterbacked a pickup football game and I tried to block for him on the line and somehow caught him in the eye with an elbow. As eye injuries go, it was pretty bad.
He went back to his room in Forest Hall and I later knocked on his door to apologize and Bob opened the door and I thought for a second that he was John and I said something, awkwardly confused, as Bob opened the door wider and I saw John lying on his bed face down nursing his injured eye. I said, "man I'm sorry," and he sort of grunted acknowledgement and I walked back to my room feeling bad that I'd hurt the guy.
Later, we became roommates in Forest when Bob moved into another room. John and Bob became my peer mentors in music, literature, politics and carousing, and there was, in my case, little time to study as I learned how to smoke pot for the first time and protest the Vietnam War.
John and Bob both laughed when I used "them" for "those" in conversation and once responded to a prof's question about why I was in his Psychology 101 class by answering in all sincerity that I wanted to know what "makes people tick." How was I supposed to know that I sounded like a hick to them?
John smoked cigarettes (a habit he would later quit when he took up long-distance running) on his bed in our college dorm room and read sociology and Vonnegut and crushed math problems that made my head spin because math wasn't my thing. He loved John Brodie and the 49ers and told Bob that Brodie was a better quarterback than Roman Gabriel, whom Bob preferred because Gabriel played for the Rams, Bob's team, and I made my case for Joe Namath and the Jets and we watched football on Sundays and drank beer all the time if we could get our hands on a case, and the truth is I couldn't stop laughing when I was around the twins because they were seriously funny guys whose sense of the absurd and general irreverence about everything made everyone around them laugh.
I had no discipline as a student and nearly flunked out by the end of third term and so I didn't return to Ashland for a second year, knowing I'd miss the brothers. But fortunately they went home to Salem for the summer and John always had an old runner that he'd drive down to Albany where I was living and pick me up to cruise up to Portland with them or up to Salem to hit the record stores and drive around for the hell of it. When Woodstock came out that summer we smoked so much pot that I was freaking out and in awe of the musicians and music on the big screen, and that was how I discovered John had learned Country Joe's "Fixin' to Die Rag" well enough to lead a sing along during a kegger at Emigrant Lake during my first and final spring session at Southern Oregon College. John had kicked it off and everybody at the party except me seemed to know the lyrics by heart and the singing was raucous and loud and echoed through the hills surrounding the lake and I thought, damn, I'm gonna miss this place, this school, "them" times.
But we watched Woodstock and had fun that entire summer, 1970. There's so much more I could write about. Perhaps I will in time, in the future.
I still write Bob on occasion and have published numerous of his photos at my blog, and I know John was a good photographer as well, and I learned a few years back that John and Bob had both taken up biking with a passion, and I knew they both liked heading into the hills to ride.
That's what John was doing when he died, riding hard, staying in shape, seeking thrills where he could find them on a trail atop a mountain. It was a great scheme, a beautiful thing to do, and I'm just goddamn sorry it ended like it did, with a crash on a trail that looks pretty innocent in photos, except for the dip in the middle that John had flown over many times before--that is before Monday, Feb 5, when it happened. Despite wearing a helmet, John died of a blunt force injury to his head.
John was a good man, a good businessman, a loving husband to his wife of many years, Lori. A great brother to his sister Colleen. He was Bob's best friend. He was my friend, and I feel terrible.
Rest in peace, John Edward Thomas, Jr. I loved you, man.
TS
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