It was the summer of '74 that I met Jim Jones. My sister and his wife worked together and she invited my sister over for dinner. My sis didn't want to go alone, so she asked my brother, but he couldn't go, so she asked me as a last resort.
Anyways, we went over to their house for dinner. Afterwards, the girls went into one room, while Jim and I went into the other room and started talking. He asked if I had ever played EF before. I said sure, I had one of those games a few years before, but like everyone else, gave up on it. He brought out his teams and I was floored. He had painted them - Redskins and Broncos, he was a much better painter than I am so you can imagine how they looked - and then proceded to demonstrate a few plays. When he turned the board on, I was absolutely stunned that the players actually ran where they were supposed to go, instead of turning around in circles.
I was hooked.
A few days later we went to the store and I bought a 620 game and a 500 set, just for the extra players, threw the small board away. :o He then helped me paint my first real team, a set of 1969 Rams that took all of 2 whole days to do. I later started painting on my own and adding teams.
What started off as just a couple of guys getting together and playing grew into a great friendship. His wife, Aurora, was from the Phillapines and had a heavy accent. Sometimes I could'nt understand her very well, and vice versa. I'll never forget the time I was making jokes with the girl that lived next to them when Aurora started commenting, not understanding that I was only kidding around. I jokingly called her a 'killjoy'. She didn't knbow what that meant, but the next day Jim came over and said that Aurora was crying because I had called her an awful name and wanted to know what it was that I had said. I explained to him the circumstances and he laughed, realizing that Aurora had mistaken everything because of the "language barrier".
Another time I'll never forget was a night that we all went to a drive-in movie. On the way back, Aurora was talking to me. "Cheep. (My nickname is Chip, but she always pronounced it Cheep) You know what I don't like about American drivers?...Jim, get around this guy.... They are always driving in one lane and then the other....Jim, get back over, go around him.... They are never satisfied being in one lane they...Jim, I said get around this guy. Change lanes....They are always in one lane then the other and...JIM, get back ..GO, GO, GO!! ...What's so funny?" I was laughing my head off in the back seat because Aurora was telling Jim to drive exactly how she hated American drivers to drive.
At any rate, we were best friends for close to 20 years, but moving away to Michigan, combined with Aurora passing away, we haven't seen each other in a long time. I still talk to him once in awhile and have asked him to join the chat board, but he has a new life and wife in Mexico. I miss going over to their house for dinners and working on his car, going to the park and playing real football with other guys, going to the ocean together, movies and even moving their furniture around, which seems like is what we did every time I went over to their house.
I wouldn't have any of those memories if it wasn't for EF.
