Vick's View

Big Shultz

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There are some people that you will meet in your lifetime who are completely unforgettable. For me, one of those people was Schultz.

His real name was Mike, and at only 17 years old, he was already 6 foot 4 and weighed about 325 lbs.

He wore thick glasses, had a few scraggly hairs on his chin, a mop of unruly blonde hair on his head, and a baby face. With his size he could certainly appear at times intimidating to someone, but that sweet baby face ruined it.

I felt rather sorry for him. He was one of the teenagers in our church, but he was an introvert and so he appeared to be rather lonely. My husband and I took an interest in this boy and gave him a lot of attention, something that was sadly lacking at home.

When he came over to our house, he always sat in the exact same spot on my cheap sofa. One day I decided to do some reading and went and sat down in the same spot where Mike typically sat, and I sank down almost to the floor with springs poking me in the behind. Big hulking Mike had ruined my couch.

Anyway, we took a liking to Mike and since he jokingly said all the time, “I know nothing!” when asked any question, we couldn’t help ourselves but nickname him Schultz after the large, goofy German soldier in Hogan’s Heroes. So the name Schultz stuck with him, and he is Schultz to this day.

We had the same exact birthday, so a large group of us got together on a Sunday night after church to celebrate at the local Shoney’s restaurant. We ate, laughed, and had a wonderful time… until the manager came over to us and told us we were being just too noisy and would have to leave. I had never been thrown out of a restaurant for laughing, so this was new to me. But we decided we’d had enough anyway and walked out into the parking lot.

Standing there and getting ready to say our goodbyes, we walked up to our car and next to it was a Volkswagen. The Volkswagen was parked rather crooked in the parking space and close to our passenger door. My husband looked at Schultz and jokingly said, “Why don’t you pick up that car and straighten it up.” Schultz grinned, walked over to the car, picked the Volkswagen up, and straightened it in the parking space.

I stood there shocked and awed.

So when it came time for us to move to North Carolina to go to seminary, we asked Schultz to help. He had gone to work at a moving company while in high school, so Schultz brought some of his moving equipment and came to help. As my skinny husband and I struggled to get our 1960 crappy refrigerator out of the kitchen, Schultz came in, rolled his eyes at us, and told us to get out of the way.

He wrapped a belt under the refrigerator and around it, backed up to it, bent down and picked it up. And by himself, he walked that refrigerator into the rented U-haul truck. He was absolutely amazing. I must confess, I was a little disgusted because I absolutely hated that refrigerator. You had to defrost the ice box and chisel the ice out of it at least once a month. It was an irritating disgusting job. So I was kind of hoping he would drop it even though we couldn’t possibly afford another one. But he didn’t.

When we left there, it was really hard to say goodbye, but it was the right thing to do at the time. We had been to North Carolina to check out the seminary in Wake Forest several months earlier. I had just about frozen to death in a bedroom at the visitor’s cottage that had no heat, I had hated the place at first sight, and I already missed my momma and daddy. I had never truly been away from them before. I didn’t want to go but I knew we had to.

So we sadly said goodbye to everyone, including Shultz.

Forty years later, we were invited back to that church to visit. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned around… there he was. Schultz. A little slimmer, a little less hair, different glasses, but the same baby face.

He had worked at the same moving company since he was a teenager, and all that lifting had ruined his back and knees. He was disabled, but there was that same grin and quick wit. We started talking and it was if I had never left.

When they say old friends are the best, they really are. You may not see each other for years and years, but when you do meet you pick up right where you left off.

I have never forgotten a song I learned as a little brownie in the Girl Scout organization. Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.

Ain’t it the truth.