So after the Cheap Trick show last Tuesday… I met up with my old friend Jeff Baker. We knocked back our fair share of brews at the Ham’s on North Main Street in High point. We talked about our lives and reminisced about times that weren’t so complicated and riddled with responsibilities.
For those of you that don’t know Jeff Baker… He can be summed up in 2 words. “Crazy” and “friend”. We don’t hang out nearly as much as we used to. You know the deal, different lives and different paths. The guy jumps out of airplanes for some reason… That’s the “crazy” part of his personality which also includes doing weird ass sh*t and keeping a smile on your face with his wisecracks. The “friend” part… I know that if I ever need his help… He’ll come through.
Remember the time (an earlier blog posting) my friends and I decided to make a mark in our High School yearbook by getting into as many club pictures as we could?
Baker and I were the guys that cooked that one up along with Jon Sullivan. Separately… We were a little troublesome. As a duo or trio… We could be dangerous.
Here’s a story that came to us while we killed a few brain cells that night:
We were in Driver’s Education together back in 9th grade. The class was taught by a dwarf of a man by the name of Mr. Evans. He may have been shorter than the average 9th grader at Northwest Guilford Junior High School (now the middle school), but I was always sure that he could level a man twice his size. He was a gruff and solid little man that was built like a barrel from the waist up. And judging from the way his nose looked, he was probably very familiar with using his fists. We didn’t know his limits when it came to smartass ninth graders… But with my friend Jeff Baker, we were going to find out.
The day finally came. The day where we would see our first “highway death” films in Driver’s Ed. Are you familiar with those?
The films were a collection of real accident scenes with mangled bodies and sheet metal. Each bit of footage came with a voice telling you how the victims died… “You can never outrun a train”… “Speed kills”… and “Drag racing… Fast lane to hell.” It was all heavy handed and highly entertaining.
Please keep in mind that I’m a sick bastard.
Anyway… A classmate turned off the lights and Mr. Evans fired up the projector. The “slightly deranged” portion of our class was delighted to finally view what all our upper classmen bragged about as being the sickest crap they’ve ever seen.
Baker reached under his desk, pulled up his large gym bag, unzipped it, and ripped a hole in the plastic bag contained within. He had brought popcorn for our death-trip movie time. We started watching the film filled with dead and no-so dead folks that littered the “highways of death”. We were watching with wild-eyed enthusiasm and stuffing our mouths full of buttered popcorn. On the screen… Poor “Sharon”, the former Prom Queen, was nothing more than a smear of meat, blood, and bone after meeting the Philadelphia to New York express train while Baker and I were having a Jiffy-Pop turn-on.
Our enthusiasm mixed with Orville Redenbacher was making a classmate sick to her stomach… And Mr. Evans got wise to our munching and crunching near the back of the room. He came over to us, saw what was going on, and instructed us to visit the Vice Principal’s Office.
For some reason, no one was amused.
After a few more stories, Baker and I were told that they were closing up for the night. We vowed not to let so much time pass before we hang out again, but it’s hard not to when we both work like 6 days out of the week.
The next time you’re in downtown High Point for lunch or dinner… Drop by Jimmy’s Pizza and chat it up with Jeff “Bake” Baker.
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