I didn’t know the old cowboy but I knew the young man. We were best friends from junior high to the day he left for Vietnam.
Reading all the accolades from people in the Sylmar and Shadow Hills horse community, Dean Baker was a loved man at the end of his life — a mentor, father and good friend to people half his age.
Somehow, someway, he had come full circle back to the kid and young man I knew. He had finally come home from Vietnam, but it was a long, hard journey.
After high school, we enrolled in classes we seldom went to at Glendale Junior College. We pledged a fraternity together. The year was 1963.
We were “Animal House” 15 years before the movie came out. No one ever made the dean’s list from our fraternity, and less than a handful of our brothers bothered to graduate. It was a two-year college, but most of us stayed three years for the parties.
One of the rites of passage into the fraternity was getting kidnapped and dropped off in a remote area with another pledge brother.
When my time came, I chose Dean as my kidnapped partner. He had an impeccable security system outside the room where he lived behind his parent’s house. A big, old, watch dog named Caesar with a nasty disposition.
The growl started low and grew in intensity as we were led blindfolded across the lawn. Finally, Caesar had done enough watching and was ready to pounce.
He jumped up, hit his head on the opening to the doghouse, and passed out. So much for our security.
On the walk home along Angeles Crest Highway early the next morning, we talked about our futures.
I wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to be a cowboy and ride horses into the sunset.
As we walked, Dean began to limp and cackle, mimicking character actor Walter Brennan as Stumpy in our favorite movie Rio Bravo. We laughed all the way home. We were young, and the future was ours. All we had to do was reach out and grab it.
Dean never got the chance. Vietnam snatched it away. We joined the Army National Guard…
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