C. S. Lewis, who wrote “The Four Loves”—affection, eros, friendship and charity—described friendship as the least natural of the four loves, “the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary.”
“It has,” he continued, “least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turns you red and pale.” Friends are traveling companions. “We picture lovers face to face, but friends side by side; their eyes look ahead.”
On a Sunday after church, Len Cox talks happily—sometimes wistfully—about his life among a group of friends. “We were born within a year or two of each other, and our parents were all friends.” Weekends, it was not a question of whether they would be together, but at who’s house.
All but one went to the same school, and eventually all went to the University of Kentucky—Len, John Hobbs, Clay Brock, Jack Russell, Web Cowden and Bill Moore. The women they married went to the university and knew each other. “What’s unique,” Len said, “is that we stayed friends, and we still are.”
Len chuckles when he begins to tell about the fishing trips the young men used to make back in the ’70s. For a while they rented a house at Fontana Village in North Carolina, took their boats and had good times. “We would talk about our business and what we were doing. None of us had any great problems. It was just a great time to get away for a weekend.”
One year, they decided to backpack and fly-fish for trout. Everything went well and they decided to do it again. “This time we were carrying everything with us—tents, food—and assuming we would all catch fish and have no problem about eating. Johnny and Billy Moore were the two who could catch fish anytime. Russ would always put up a hammock and stay in the camp and read. He was our major cook.”
Len’s most memorable year came about 1980. Loaded with heavy packs, they hiked seven miles to their camp. Len was carrying “about 18 cans of soup. I’d mix them and we’d have them for appetizers,” or a meal if they didn’t catch fish.
“We were all happy to arrive at the camp and unpacking when all of a sudden I realized I had forgotten to pack my tent.” The others razzed him and told him he was unwelcome to stay in their tents.
Everyone who was carrying any edibles had to hoist their packs off the ground to foil visiting bears and other marauders. Each camper tied a rope to a rock, tossed it over a limb and pulled the pack up. When Len tried it, his pack was so heavy the limb broke; too much soup. On a second try with another limb, the pack came down and broke his camp stove.
The group had arrived late in the day and had no time to fish. Len borrowed ground cloths and made a lean-to for himself, then heated soup on someone else’s stove for the evening meal.
As the evening went on it began to rain, and everyone else retired to tents, Len to his lean-to. As luck would have it, the roof cloth had a hole and was no shelter. No one allowed him to share a tent. Len lived with the weather for awhile, then “dripping wet, I went to Jack’s tent and said, ‘You either let me in or I take your tent down.’ So I slept with Jack that night, and the next morning they all felt sorry for me and said, ‘You can come into my tent tonight,’ but I said, ‘Nope, I’m going to show you how I can sleep in my own lean-to.” And re-rigging it, he did.
“We stayed there two or three days, caught plenty of fish, even put a little trout in the soup—a little trout bisque. We just had a good old time.”
Now, 40 years later, “We don’t see each other every day, but we call, we talk, and our wives are close.” The couples raised children, had ups and downs, joys and sorrows. Web died in 1984 and Clay in 1996. Len’s wife, Lucia, died in 1985, and he and Clay’s widow, Leslie, are now married.
Len smiles and says, “Leslie told her children she was nervous about dating again after so many years, but her children said, ‘Mother, don’t worry, it’s only Len Cox.’”
We may think we have chosen our friends, Lewis wrote, but “In reality, a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, posting to different regiments, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart.
“But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances,” says Lewis. “A secret Master of the Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends, ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’…It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others.”