Tim (Part 1)

The Lost Trailers
Album: Trailer Trash
Song: Favorite Friends
Copyright 1997 G. Stokes Nielson/ Two State Brothers Music(ASCAP)

We couldn't leave the woods 'til the bottle was done,
Then we'd all go fishing in the dusk bitten sun.
Not old enough to drive, but we knew if we could,
We'd have all the women in our neighborhood.

But we never thought that one of us would go away,
No, we never dreamed that we might cry on teenage graves.
The fairytale ends with the loss of our favorite friend.

Well, the funeral was nice, or that's what you're supposed to say,
We all sat together staring out into grey.
It was hard to believe that out of five faithful friends,
Four were left broken while one rode the wind.

And the nights out on the town fell few and far between,
Cause all we talked about was how great things used to be,
Our innocence ends with the loss of our favorite friend.

It seems like the best of us always fall to early grace,
And the road will keep rolling on, but angels are hard to replace,
I guess it was crazy luck, to have someone like that to lose,
But he couldn't stay long, God must have missed him, too.

Now Charlie is in college, and I hit the road,
And Al is building churches in New Mexico,
Steve is running from the law, but that's nothing new,
We all say we'll meet back home but we never do.

And the woods burned down long ago, the old neighborhood is gone,
And I can't get drunk no more, cause I hate drinking alone.
But I know in the end we'll get back to our favorite friends.
Cause life is much better when it is shared with our favorite friends.

I'm at work, listening to my ipod when this song came on. The first time I heard it I cried, it still evokes memories of Tim when I listen to it now, and brings tears to my eyes. I can talk about how much I love Tim another time; this is more about what happened to Tim.

At college I lived with Tim and Scott, Tim and I were friends with Russell and Ryan (who is a girl) and we spent a lot of our time together. Scott was my boyfriend at the time, but he wasn’t much fun, he spent a lot of time at home. We all graduated in the same class, and I met Tim’s parents for the first time that day.

The night before graduation, the snow was terrible, I guess that’s upstate New York for you, and Tim’s parents were on there way in on the train. They called him for a ride to the hotel, and I lent him my car, because I was the only one with four-wheel drive. The next day, the first thing they did was thank me for letting Tim borrow my car, they are from New Orleans, and they weren’t big on snow.

“We’ve heard so much about you! How are you doing?” and “Congratulations!” They are really lovely people. We talked a little bit after the graduation ceremony, but I didn’t really see them again. After the graduation I went home for the weekend because I was coming back to take another class the following week. Everyone else went home for three weeks because they were coming back to get their bachelors. Tim, Russell, and I talked about meeting back up after they started school again, but it never got to happen.

Just a few weeks after graduation, I was just waking up from a nap and checked my voicemail; I had been avoiding phone calls from my friend Ryan, for no reason in particular. To my best recollection the voicemail sound something like this…



“Hey Claudia, its Ryan; Tim and Russell got in a really bad car accident. Tim died and Russell’s in the hospital. Call me back.”



I remember thinking to myself, I know hadn’t been returning her calls, but that’s a pretty fucked up joke to play to get me to call you back. Regardless, I call her, she explains it.

Russell and Tim were on their way to the mall, in the middle of the day, sober and everything. They must have hit a pothole or something, because all of a sudden the car spun out of control. As the car was spinning it played Russian roulette with who might be the one to die, because cars were still coming, it was just a matter of which side got hit. Tim took the blow to the driver’s side of the car. He absorbed most of the impact, and died, saving Russell’s life. Russell slammed his head into the windshield and the passenger door window. The accident happened in Massachusetts, and a bunch of people were driving up there to see Russell in the hospital. I don’t remember if she explained it that well, or if those were just details I picked up over time.

I mumbled something to Ryan about how I would call her back. I slowly lowered my phone away from my head and it fell out of my hand onto the floor. I started walking to the stairs to find my mom. I started to breath heavy, and cry. Before I knew it, I collapsed in the middle of the staircase, hysterical. I was screaming and crying. My mom tried to console me but I could just stutter out something about Tim and Russell and car accidents.

No, we never dreamed that we might cry on teenage graves...