Despite my loathing for the city of San Angelo, I miss it often. I miss it for all of the people I knew, because they are what got me through that delicate time in my life. I had great friends; friends I was closer to within three months than friends with which I had grown up. Some of them seemed more like family than friends, and one of those members of my extended family was Julio.

I remember picking him up at the airport. Setting a wonderful example for the rest of the city, the sewer lines had cracked at the airport; the whole area reeked of rotten human feces. It was bad, ‘singe the hair in your nostrils’ bad. But I greeted him, got his luggage loaded into my car, and set off to the base to welcome him to his new life. Julio was Puerto Rican and a native speaker of the Spanish language. His English left something to be desired, and everyone had frequent trouble understanding him through his thick accent. Don’t get me wrong, I had mounds of respect and admiration for his ability to speak in two languages. The more he worked with us, the better his English was; despite his remaining accent, it’s easy to say he’s now a fluent speaker.

We hit it off almost immediately, having shared a common interest in import automobiles. My car alone was enough of an icebreaker and in the months to come there was little dead air when in shared company. He was married when he showed up, so he didn’t have to live in the dorms, but once they found out he was separated from his wife, they considered making him move in. Before they had time, he relinquished his on-base housing and moved in with me. We shared a 3-bedroom apartment with my previous roommate, Jerry, who had met a girl and spent frequently less time with us. Having worked and lived together, Julio and I spent most of out time in each other’s presence. Yet, we somehow managed to never argue, less the occasional tussle over beer preference, or some other insignificant difference in taste (as far as the large scheme of things goes, anyway).

Julio was a very easygoing guy; it was a nice contrast, since I’m constantly pinging off the walls. Sometimes we would just sit on the balcony and smoke a cigarette, or enjoy a beer. Sometimes we would just ride. We rode around back roads, through expensive neighborhoods, and into old areas of town. Sometimes we would pick our favorite old house, or talk about what we would do if we had one of the mansions, but a lot of the time we just rode in silence, taking in the scenery. Those we’re the rides I cherished the most; the ones that were near transcendental, meditative. Jerry moved in with his girlfriend and Julio and I eventually started renting a house on the outskirt of one of the neighborhoods we frequented. Sooner or later I started spending time at other people’s houses, and Julio met a girl who moved in with him. I moved into a house with a friend who returned from the Middle East, and Julio’s and my interaction dwindled to mostly in-office interaction. Though the rides stopped, they were, and will continue to be, forever cherished.

To you, Julio, I tip my hat. Thank you for being a brother.