When you get to be closer to 80 than to 70, when your career has involved multiple jobs and when you have resided in more than a dozen communities in your lifetime you have become acquainted with many different people.

Sadly, I have forgotten some of the people I have met over the decades, but there are some folks I can’t forget. Among them are the people who I claim to be friends — some for various times and circumstances — and others for a lifetime.

Fifty-five years ago I was working at a small-town radio station in Webster City when the boss hired a guy named Bill. He was my age and as co-workers, we hit it off right away.

Bill and Suzanne had married in April of that year and Cindy and I married in October. They had their first baby in October a year later. We had our first baby in December two years later.

We worked together for several years. Somewhere along the line, Bill left to take a job in Des Moines but, thankfully, the boss rehired him sometime later. Meanwhile, we had kept in touch.

Our work experience ended when I left the radio station. Bill continued working there for a short time before moving on to a radio job in Mason City. Meanwhile, I had taken a job selling radio advertising in Sioux City.

One afternoon, I was surprised when Bill walked into our sales office. His employer had purchased another radio station in Sioux City and had sent Bill to do some engineering work there.

We visited several times during that period. It was good to keep in touch with Bill.

Though we were aware of each other’s job status there was a silent period for a few years.

I had taken an advertising sales job at the Sioux City Journal and Bill was now the chief engineer for a group of radio stations in Des Moines.

At least twice a year I made sales calls in Des Moines and on a few of those occasions I called Bill and made arrangements to have lunch. It was good to catch up again.

By the ’90s I had moved to Creston to become publisher of the local daily newspaper and Bill had become an engineer for a large cellular telephone company. When Bill performed maintenance on a cell site near Creston he called and I drove out to the site where we visited amid the humming computers and switching devices in the equipment shed at the base of the cell tower.

When Cindy and I moved to Ankeny in 2000 we lived closer to Bill and Sue and we got together from time to time.

About 10 years ago Bill and I both retired and nowadays we see each other at least once a month at Microphonies — a group of former radio and television broadcasters who get together for lunch, story-telling and commiseration on how hard we worked, how much fun we had doing so and how little we were paid. Many of us began our careers in broadcasting but switched to other careers somewhere along the way.

On a recent Monday Bill and I took a trip back to Webster City where we had begun our careers more than a half century ago.

We visited the radio station where we worked. Very little is the same there as the building has been remodeled and the equipment we worked with was replaced long ago.

Then we drove around town to recall former homes and business locations and recalled people we knew back then.

We stopped for lunch at a local eatery where a departing guest asked me, “You’re a Huisman, aren’t you?” Yes, you can always tell a Huisman but you can’t tell them much.

Bill and I are both interested in aviation. We drove out to the local airport where Bill had accompanied me on my first flight lesson. It turned out that lesson was also my last flight lesson. However, Bill soon took his first flight lesson and continued until he had earned his private license, multi-engine rating and more.

Having revived a lot of memories and discussing a wide variety of subjects, we headed for home.

We are just two old men who have known each other for more than a half century and who have maintained a friendship for all that time. And that, my friends, is one of the blessings of our senior years.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2024 by Huisman Communications.