Penny Blubaugh

Meeting

George and Ivan met
seventeen years ago in

Miss Julie’s second grade class
at Pinewood School, one of those

disappeared one-room
schoolhouses – forty kids, eight

grades, and Miss Julie.
Ivan’s family had a

farm, George’s parents
owned Popo’s “So Fresh and So

Clean” car wash. “Only
one for seventy miles,”

Old Popo would boast.
Farmers would bring their trucks, their

Sunday church cars, their
tractors, even, if they were

passing through town, done
with plowing, covered with dust.

The business shouldn’t
have lasted, but somehow it

held on until George
was old enough to learn to

chamois the hoods and
windows, to buff the tires

and polish the rims.
By this time he and Ivan

were the oldest class
at Pinewood, getting ready

to take a bus each
morning to Carruthers High.

One hour and fifteen
minutes each way. “Got to leave

at 6:30 each
morning,” George groans. Ivan just

shrugs. “I’m up before
then, anyway. Cows to milk.”

“Carruthers High School.
Two hundred kids there, Ivan.”

“Don’t need to worry,”
says Ivan. “You’ve got me.”