A window on carefree days

For several days now, I've been studying an old snapshot that's brand new to me. The image is of four childhood friends and me with baseball gloves, a bat and ball.
We're all smiling broadly, arms over shoulders, bright sunshine on our faces. I can tell it's springtime by the short sleeves, bare legs, green and brown grass and a tree with no leaves.
It has to be 1967 or '68. We're posing in the yard between my house in Albemarle -- the parsonage for West Albemarle Baptist Church on Mill Street -- and the Stevens' house next door. I'm in the middle with Jeffery and Johnny Stevens on one side and Richard and Sidney James on the other.
I played often with all those kids. Sidney James taught me how to ride a bicycle and shoot a basketball. Jeffery Stevens taught me pretty much everything else.
Jeff and I were the same age and inseparable from about age 3. Raised by a single mom who worked long hours at the textile mill, he enjoyed a certain level of freedom most kids didn't.
When I sat down to lunch or dinner, Jeff was waiting outside more often than not, thoughtfully planning our next adventure. He made it his mission to expose me to a world beyond the otherwise sheltered existence of a preacher's kid.
Jeff showed me important things like how to smoke cigarettes, how to make a match burn twice and how to draw honey from a honeysuckle bloom.
At his suggestion, we pricked our fingers and became "blood brothers."
It's hard to believe that everyone in that photograph is somewhere near 50 now -- except for Jeff, who died when we were 10. That's still hard to believe, too.
The way Jeff died -- he choked to death recovering from minor surgery -- will never make sense. If he'd been killed falling out of a tree or crashing his bicycle or any number of other things kids do, it might have been easier to comprehend.
Looking back, it's as if Jeff somehow knew he didn't have a lot of time, so he packed in as many experiences and as much fun as he could.
If you look closely at that photograph, it's easy to spot Jeff's bold passion for life. He's the only one without shoes and socks, his skin is a shade more tanned and his knees are dirty.
The little out building we're standing behind is still there. My three daughters played around it last Sunday during the first church homecoming I've attended there in about 15 years.
A letter and a photograph
My family moved to Tennessee not long after that snapshot was made, and I brought along to the homecoming a letter Jeff wrote to me about a year before he died.
I gave the letter to one of his sisters on Sunday. Two days later I was exchanging e-mails with Johnny from my desk at the newspaper.
"Your brother and all the things we did around that patch of grass between the church and your old house are still with me," I wrote.
"Look what I found!" Johnny wrote back with the photograph attached.
It's just a fuzzy picture of some happy kids, but it took my breath away and made me cry. What a priceless window into the countless carefree days we shared back on Mill Street.
They didn't get much more work out of me that day.