Ranch Report: The end of the innocence

When you lose two of your life-long friends, it's very strange

I cannot recall a time in my life that I didn’t know my brother, Miles, and our best friend, Andy. When you know someone since birth, you’ve packed in a lifetime of experiences and memories.

Here we are at brother Miles’ fourth birthday party out at the ranch in 1958. (That’s me with the Bunny Rabbit hand puppet, Aline (Andy’s sister) Miles, and Andy.

Even though Miles was born on the day after Christmas, my mom always threw him a party, and insisted that no one hand him a single gift saying, “Here’s your Christmas present AND your birthday present.” She always made our birthdays a BFD.

Miles, Andy and I were pretty much joined at the hip because our fathers were best friends for their entire lives, so naturally we became friends. And we lived an active life, in the outdoors.

On a deer hunting trip down in Burnet, Texas, 1982.

Miles and I were the only siblings in my family. No sisters, just us two boys. I like to say that we were like Frank and Jesse James, but without the criminal element. In addition to being related by blood, we were actually good friends. I think that bond had to do with us always making a two-day car trip from Mississippi out to Fort Stockton every Christmas and every summer. Then, once we arrived at the ranch, we were pretty much stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with no playmates except ourselves. If we got angry with each other, we had to get over it because there was no one else to play with.

And what a time we had.

We were just turned loose on the place, with no adult supervision, and the only admonition to “be back by sundown.” This was how it was before people invented so-called “free-range parenting.”

The minute we arrived at the ranch, we were horseback, even if it meant wearing shorts and tennis shoes.

We hunted and fished together all of our lives. If that wasn’t enough, we went skiing and scuba diving together, too!

Miles with his Datsun, heading over Monarch Pass on our way to Crested Butte, circa 1980.

Miles skiing at Crested Butte, 1982.

Miles scuba diving in the British Virgin Islands, circa 1977.

With two speckled trout off Horn Island in the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

I came to Baylor as a freshman in 1970, and he followed me there in 1972. We both had a great time in Waco, way back before Chip and Joanna “discovered” it. I lived in this house on 9th Street, then after I graduated, Miles moved in.

The rent was only $75 a month, split three ways because we always had two roommates to help out. Imagine paying only $25 a month for a place to live.

After college, we actually lived together for several years. I was already in Dallas (actually a little community just south of Oak Cliff called Glenn Heights) when he called up and asked if he could come out and look for a job. I said, “Sure” so he packed up and headed west.

We lived in this old farmhouse on Uhl Road in Glenn Heights for five years.

When he got there, he applied to be a substitute at D.A. Hulcy Middle School. He was there for just one day when the principal asked if he wanted a full-time position. He accepted and taught there for more than 20 years, earning DISD Teacher of the Year honors.

Then one day I got married, and he moved out

My first marriage only lasted about three years, so soon I was the one calling him up to ask if I could live with him.

I slept on his couch for a few months, then we got a place together down in Duncanville. We stayed there until I got married a second time, and this time it took, so once again I moved out.

Miles always had a sage remark to share on just about anything. His friends still quote them. Here are few of my favorites:

• “A hospital is no place for a sick person.”

• “God must not hate gay people because he keeps on making them.”

• “A mind is a terrible thing.”

• “A lock only keeps an honest man out.”

Our close friend Jim Quinn once said, “I never heard anyone say a bad thing about Miles,” and it was true. He took more after our mother, who always tried to be kind to everyone. That’s why it was a head scratcher that one of his favorite movies was Taxi Driver. For some reason he was fascinated by that film, particularly the character that Harvey Keitel portrayed.

For some reason Miles was totally fascinated by this movie.

He could quote dialogue from it verbatim, and was such a Harvey Keitel fan that he went to see him in The Bad Lieutenant. He took a friend of ours, Shawn Phares, with him, who became so disturbed by one scene that he had to leave the theater. Miles was unfazed. He tried to tell him that it was only a movie.

There were several things that Miles absolutely loved. One, he was a rabid Baylor football fan. This started when he was a student at BU and got to go to every home game in Waco. He watched whenever he could and had the good luck to be in the stadium at two of the greatest games in Baylor history: the 1974 comeback win over the University of Texas, the “miracle on the Brazos” and the 2014 comeback win over TCU from 21 points down in the 4th quarter.

I sat with him at the TCU game and remember turning to him when Baylor was behind by 21 points with just over six minutes left in the game and asked if he wanted to leave.

“No,” he replied, “If they come back, I want to be here to see it.”

At the end of the 34-31 Baylor win over TCU in 2014.

As you probably know, Baylor scored 24 points in those last six minutes and won in what was probably the greatest comeback in school history.

He also liked motorcycles.

He got a Kawasaki 750 right after moving to DFW.

On his Kawasaki, just before leaving on a solo trip to Colorado in 1977. He rode over Independence Pass on that trip!!!

Every year, he and some of his frat brothers from Baylor went on a one-week motorcycle trip together.

With frat bros Ralph and Mike before they took off.

His favorite “vice” was a good cigar. He smoked one or two every day. Usually a Macanudo. He even had his own account at Bishop Arts Cigars.

Miles enjoying a fine cigar at our deer camp near Burnet.

On April 10, 2020 he called me during dinner time.

“I just wanted to let you know that the reason you haven’t heard from me is because I’ve had COVID and I’ve been in bed with a high fever the past seven days, but the fever broke today and I’m on the mend.”

I told him I was glad to hear that, then hung up the phone.

The next night, around 8:30 pm, his son, Hunter, called me to say that Miles had died. He said that Miles lay down to take a nap after eating, and when they tried to wake him up, he was gone.

This was very early in the pandemic, so there was no vaccine. Worse yet, we couldn’t gather for a funeral, so in many ways it didn’t seem real.

I never saw a body in a casket, there was no service at the funeral home, all I got was a long-distance phone call.

On December 27, a day after his birthday, his wife Venessa and his two kids, Maya and Hunter, came out to the ranch to scatter his ashes. He had been cremated, per his wishes. Accompanying Maya was her new husband, Keegan. Miles wouldn’t get to attend her wedding. John Bell, one of his close teacher friends from his days at D.A. Hulcy Middle School came down from North Carolina.

After his ashes were scattered, we sat around a campfire at the ranch and reminisced on his life.

A final campfire.

Losing a younger brother is very weird because you knew him forever.

You cannot recall a time he was not around.

It leaves a huge hole. There are so many things you cannot talk about with anyone else, but that person you need to talk to is no longer around. They were the only reference you had for certain moments back from your entire life on earth.

Up on Seven Mile Mesa in 1981.

As I write this, my lovely blue-eyed bride, Diann, has lost her younger brother, Dale.

She’s going through the same thing.

It’s pretty rough, because as the oldest siblings, we always thought we would go first.

But we don’t get to choose when we will pass away.

I repeat something a man told me many years ago. “Every day is a gift.”

We need to remember that.