The Lone Bone Has Left The Building

Don,  I guess I totally don’t remember that his middle name was Don.  Not surprising, as I wasn’t the most observant youngster, even with people I called friends.

Anyhoo, he’s dead:  Tony Edly.  That's him as I knew him in eighth grade.  And he'll always look like that in my head.

I guess Facebook is good for something.  I get to hear that kind of stuff.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she told me.  Yet another good classmate that I lost touch with in the passage of time. 

I can look back on my yearbooks, and see all the faces.  Some of them I remember well, and fondly.  Some of them I could live without certainly.  A few of them still make me wish I was a kid again, sitting next to them, causing trouble. 

Tony was one of those.

I remember a routine he did in class one day.  I can’t remember for the life of me why he did it. I think it might have been some kind of class assignment handed out by the wonderful ‘hippie’ substitute teacher we had for most of one school year, was it seventh?  eighth grade?  I don’t know. 

Just a sec.  I know where two of my St. Thomas Yearbooks are.  Lemme check.

Yes, the substitute that I remember, was Miss Schoder, pronounced as “Skoder” with a long ‘O’ sound.  She was fun as I remember.

And the thing Tony did in front of the class, was some sort of a western cowboy quick draw routine.  I seem to remember him and Steve Stelzer up there doing it for some reason.  One of them was a robot cowboy, that you’d put a quarter into, and he’d challenge you to a quick draw routine…..it’s coming back to me, sort of.

“First you take your gun, then you take your hat, then you count to three, and then you draw!” 

That was said in a robot cowboy type voice, of course.  One person would pantomime taking the things, and putting them on, then walk all bowlegged away and do the count of three and draw.  And I think the joke was, that one or two different people did the routine with the robot, and then the last person goes, and the robot repeats his speech, but then draws on the count of “one”, and wins. 

It’s kind of foggy.  But as I remember it was hilarious at that age. 

Somewhere along the line, and I can’t remember if it was tied to that skit he did, Tony started calling himself, “Tone The Lone Bone”.  Really really funny stuff.  I hope he wasn’t known as that the rest of his life though, it might be an unfortunate nickname for an adult.

I lived about a block away from him in grade school.  We did stuff pretty often for a time.  Although I don’t remember when that time started, or tapered off.  But it was always good fun.  Rode bikes, had a couple sleepovers, I think. 

He lived with his family, in his grandmother’s house.  His mother was there, as were his two older siblings.  They were all very nice as I remember. 

I had some strong opinions about his grandmother there for awhile, but as I can’t confirm any of it.  I’ll not mention specifics. 

I’ll just say that Tony was a pretty awesome kid, despite things being less than ideal sometimes. 

Just a few minutes ago, I Googled him, and found his Facebook page.  Not too many specifics to non-friends such as me.  I’d friend him, but I don’t think there’d be a response. 

Looks as if he might have been into tech.  Computers maybe.  I hope it went well for him. 

I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend for him.  I’m sorry I lost track of him.  Along with all the rest of my classmates.  We were a really great class, even the stinkers among us were a hoot.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to make close touch with everyone again.  I just can’t lie like that, not even to myself. 

But especially tonight, I’m thinking of them all.  And Tony Edly, the boy who was “Tone the Lone Bone”, once upon a time, and made us all laugh so much:  He’s right there with us still.

Cheers Tony, I got a quarter, wanna draw?

Tony Edly 1970-2012

There is no way I'll ever put Don between those two names.......