On Jan. 24th, he’ll celebrate his 74th year of life, but there is one other celebration that will last this entire year for both him and for me.

In 2025, Mike Tedesco and Yours Truly have reached the 60th year of our friendship.

If you do the math, we began this journey six decades ago at Quibbletown Junior High School in Piscataway, New Jersey, when we were 14 years old, a year before cancer would take Mike’s mom from his life forever.

With adolescence raging through our veins, we patrolled the ninth-grade wing of the building like we were Kings of the World until the next year came and Piscataway High School opened its doors to welcome these two little puppies trying to find our way through a massive dog pound littered with German shepherds and Rottweilers.

It was 1967 and social unrest was rampant in this country, and our high school was an epicenter of a racially charged earthquake. Our school’s administration had an urgent meeting with an auditorium full of parents to ask for their help to stop the fights between students.

Mike lived on the outskirts of Plainfield, where he had heard gunshots and fire engine sirens during that year’s race riots. Add the tragedies that Mike and I experienced during our coming-of-age years through the assassinations of a president and his brother, and a civil rights crusader, along with the murder of our Spanish teacher by one of our school’s history teachers.

The turbulent late ’60s trended us into longer hair and to escaping the chaos by listening to the head-splitting music of Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Iron Butterfly, Grand Funk Railroad and the Allman Brothers Band.

Mike was the big physical guy in our circle of friends. A football player and a shot putter, he came onto our slow-pitch softball team, and with one swing of his bat he sent the ball into outer space, not to be seen again until it fell into the trees long over the outfielder’s head.

I admired him for being everything I was not. He talked in high volumes and walked with an obvious presence. I was a shy one, trying to run away from the shadow of my family dysfunction and the death of my father when I was 19. Mike was there for me then and we are there for each other now.

As within many long friendships, there are differences between us. He loves NASCAR racing and model trains. I enjoy baseball and ice hockey, but it was an act of uncalled-for stupidity that has tied the two of us together for these many years.

It happened with our first encounter with alcohol on one sultry summer night at a house party when we were high school seniors. Oblivious to drinking any liquid that came out of a glass vessel that was not milk or soda, we drank a bottle of Seagram’s Whiskey in about five gulps apiece. Mike and I laughed through every burning swallow as we shared “slap me fives” until our hands hurt.

Later that night, I found myself outside under the stars, standing over a swimming pool with my head submerged underwater until somebody came from behind and yanked me to the ground, keeping me from drowning. Somehow Mike found his way home and had to deal with the unrelenting wrath of his father. Yet, this tale is just one of many that we share with anyone who cares enough to listen, but we do leave out the part about the next day’s hangovers.

Youthful friendships often have difficulty surviving high school and college graduations, but ours stayed strong. We entered adult life going in different directions. I became a teacher. Mike was a manager at a chemical plant, but both of our American dreams turned into nightmares when it came to the subject of the female gender. Our hearts were broken more than once. Mike lost his fiancee to a guy in Tennessee where he had graduated from college, while I was wedded way too young and I lost at the game of marriage.

Years later when Mike came home from work on the night of his 16th wedding anniversary with flowers in his hands, his wife asked him for a divorce. The next morning, he was at my door with the full details and I offered him my comforting presence.

After I had flunked another female relationship test, I moved into the basement of his house for “just a few days” that lasted five months. It wasn’t until many years later that we both found love that we give now and we receive in return.

I can’t write a definition of friendship for everyone, but I can clearly explain the one that Mike and I have. We have enjoyed the good times, argued and shouted at each other during some bad times. I like telling stories about my younger years; Mike is nostalgic to a fault. He’s grown into a man with broad shoulders and a marshmallow heart, and what makes me most proud is to have him as the godfather of my son and to have his love and support for my daughter.

He lives in New Jersey so we only get together sometimes, but two weeks rarely pass without us talking on the phone. Having had some of the friends we had grown up with recently pass away, we remind each other of the privilege of every moment that life will still offer us.

The other night, we went out to dinner with our lady friends. I looked across the table when he was paddling midstream through another river of yesterdays and I realized that we have become poster brothers from different mothers, riding a time machine fueled by joy, sorrow, heartbreak and even exhilaration.

I would not be the man I am today without Mike’s unwavering friendship. For our 60th anniversary, we plan to see each other as much as we can. We’ll stay behind the wheel of our time machine and travel to wherever it will take us in the next 60 years.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com