(Last weekend, one of my best friends from growing up -- Alex Elyjiw -- was killed in an auto accident. I wrote up a little memory piece I'd like to publish here, in his memory.)
Oh yes... Boys growing up. Those pre-teen and adolescent days can be rough times, but it sure helps when you have best friends to spend them with. I had a lot of friends when I was growing up, but Alex was definitely one of the best.
Actually, I remember the entire Elyjiw family as a special part of my growing up. I always liked to come over to your house. Your parents were always fascinating, and I loved the art and craftwork you always had around your house—especially the Easter Eggs. It was a special place of respect for a heritage that you were fighting to maintain and protect.
I remember spending hours and hours together with Alex and George (and even Ken and Peter sometimes), building everything from hot air balloons to model airplanes and rockets. I remember lots of quick-setting “5 minute epoxy” and Popsicle stick patches. I wonder how many rockets we lost on top of the School 46 roof. My brother Ken reminded me of boomerangs (I never was really good with those) and firecrackers. We flew hot air balloons, heated over alcohol burners made out of tin cans... kites... bike races around the little parking lot at the school. We rode our bikes down the water culvert that ran along side of Browncroft Blvd into the Ellison Park valley. I remember playing with toy soldiers in the sandbox and woods next to Andy Smith's garage. ("Bombs Away!") Races down Doorchester. (What IS it about little boys and races?) I remember playing hide-and-seek after dark. Alex was creative, competitive, energetic, friendly, kind, and just a great friend to grow up with!
I think I remember the model airplanes the best. We would build control-line planes (the kind that you hold on to the wires and fly in circles) that were about the same size, and tie long streamers to the tails. Then, we would both start them up, standing at the center of the same circle, and fly them around together, with each one trying to clip the other's streamer with our propeller. It was some CRAZY flying, and we spent a lot of time laughing together as we tried to not get our lines too badly tangled! I think we had more than a few crashes, and we went through many tubes of quick 5-minute epoxy glue to fix them right there in the School 46 field, and then get them back up into the air.
I seem to remember one model plane that Alex (or George?) converted from a stick-and-tissue-paper design to a control line. I think he put too big a motor on it though. He started flying it, and before it had gone around the circle a half dozen times, the body (and gas motor) sheared off from the wing mounts and went spinning off into the air. We were rolling around on the ground and laughing for quite a while after that one.
I still have some of those model airplane parts down in my basement. I haven't touched them in years, but I don't quite have the heart to clean them out because they have so many great memories associated with them.
I remember the rockets too. We started out with kits from Estes, but quickly moved to designing our own rockets. I tried a couple of rocket sleds (strictly against the rules), and had at least one which turned out to be negatively stable. We had big ones and little ones (the “Mosquito”). We had big, important sounding count-downs, and then racing off on the bicycle to try to figure out where the wind had carried the rocket and its parachute, and wondering HOW we were going to get the fool thing out of the tree it had landed in. (Rake handles never seem to be long enough.)
I remember trying to do clay-mation movies with his 8mm camera. I know we spent hours, one frame at a time, slowly moving the clay figures and toy cars. I don't know if we ever saw the end results of that movie, but in a way I guess it didn't matter. It was the process that was important.
One thing I remember about Alex though was that, even though he was really competitive and played his hardest to be the best, in the end it didn't really matter who won or lost. We were just friends having fun together.
It's been a long time since I've seen Alex, and I have often wondered how you guys were doing. Though these are lousy circumstances under which to get back in touch, it's still nice to be able to look back and remember the really great times we had as kids, and to hear from you again. I'm glad to hear that, at least in the good ways, Alex didn't change a lot from back when I knew him.
