Ken's Second Act

Taking a long drive to rekindle a friendship with a former roommate after 45 years

Many Americans are mobile, moving to new communities while advancing their careers. However, mobility isn’t always upward, and can come with a sense of rootlessness, of not being connected to a community.

I made frequent moves during a decades-long career as a community journalist, living and working in six states stretching from California to Florida.

When I was much younger, I was living in the present. That meant moving on: to a new job and community, making new friends and putting the often painful past behind me.

In 1979, six years since graduating from high school, I became a friend with a new roommate after starting my second newspaper job. Putting time in perspective, Jimmy Carter was president, and Chuck E’s in Love by Rickie Lee Jones, Let’s Go by The Cars, Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits and My Sharona by The Knack received heavy play on FM radio.

I connected with Omar Siller through a roommate service. Omar was living in the

Castle Green Apartments in downtown Pasadena with another architect. The apartment unit was upstairs, and we rode a manned elevator in a building where scenes from The Sting were filmed.

Omar and I didn’t hit it off at first. We came from different cultures. I grew up in Southern California and he was born in northern Mexico. I was poor, having been between jobs for several months, and was slow at first at paying my share of the rent. However, I also learned from Omar about frugality. We slept on foam mattress pads.

When I was new to the living arrangement, Omar, the other architect and I walked across the street to patronize the John Bull, a British pub that served wine and beer. I hung out there a lot, often drinking too much beer and saying things that, fortunately, did not lead to a fist landing on my nose.

We started to like each other. Omar was a great cook and was fastidious about cleanliness. One night he drove me in his pickup through Beverly Hills, and admired the opportunities of living and working in the Los Angeles basin. He liked to listen to the Rolling Stones’ LP Some Girls. We saw The Outlaw Josey Wales and In Praise of Older Women in a Pasadena cinema. He also liked to play pranks on me, such as secretly recording a conversation and playing it back.

However, circumstances cut short our relationship. We had to move out of the apartment and later lost our jobs. I landed a new job in two and a half months. Omar once called me at the new office, playing a prank by pretending to be calling from a police department. I fell for it at first. It was kind of an inside joke because I covered the police beat at my previous newspaper job and told him about being subjected to police harassment, apparently because I looked like a slacker. I was much thinner, had longer hair and a mustache, and didn’t shave daily.

Sadly, we lost touch after parting ways and moving on in our lives. Years later, I tried to find Omar, thanks to the internet.  I found an Omar Siller online, but he turned out to be a 20-year-old college student in Mexico who wrote emails to me in Spanish. I almost thought Omar was playing another prank on me.

Facebook helped the two of us reconnect more than three years ago when I was living and working in East Texas. He moved back to his former hometown of Tulare, south of Fresno, in 2000, to start a manufacturing company called KGS, short for Kitchen Garden Shop USA.

He graduated from Tulare Union High School in 1971, but he didn’t return because of strong ties to the community. His decision was strategic. He considered Tulare situated between two major markets: Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area.

We spoke on the phone and messaged each other. Finally retired and resettled in Arizona, I decided to visit Omar. I drove more than 500 miles on a route I hadn’t taken in 11 years, through vast stretches of the Mojave Desert, arriving on the third day. I called Omar when I couldn’t find the address on Center Street that he posted on his website. I had parked at a strip center, and he agreed to meet me in the parking lot. I didn’t know what to expect because I hadn’t seen him in 45 years. Minutes later, a white pickup pulled up with laundry piled in the flatbed and I approached the driver. I didn’t recognize the driver, but he responded when I called his name. His black hair had turned gray and, like me, he put on weight.

I followed Omar to a fast, casual restaurant for lunch. Omar, 71, talked about his business. KGS is based on e-commerce, and its primary clientele are architects, landscape architects and interior designers. He said he “designed, engineered and fabricated” half of his products that he promotes on a website that covers 109 pages.

Omar said he created an urban micro-farm that enables hens to produce eggs. The hens are ready for the dinner table in two years, and young hens, called pullets, take their place. He said it took a year to program, engineer and create a treadle-operated feeder that is designed to prevent rodent infestation and keep out wild birds, which can spread the deadly Newcastle virus to chickens. Micro-farms offer homeowners an alternative to industrial farms, with their hormones and chemicals.

Omar also talked about his personal life. He is divorced and father to a 16-year-old son who lives with his ex-wife in Bakersfield.

Omar didn’t recall the pranks he played. And I didn’t recall washing only one side of dirty dishes.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Omar told me. Not exactly. I’m older, fatter and (hopefully) smarter.

I spent at least two hours with Omar. I didn’t want to take up his whole day, and checked into my hotel room on Prosperity Avenue. He called me the next morning and invited me to join him for a breakfast burrito, but I had eaten breakfast at the hotel. He also invited me to do something I have not done yet: deep-sea fishing. He now subscribes to my newsletter.

It’s nice to feel welcomed by an old friend. That is not always the case. Over the years I’ve reached out to former classmates and co-workers with at best mixed results, and in some cases ignored. Let’s face it. Omar and I won’t be around in another 45 years. It’s important to cherish friendships while they last.