"Friends"
I don't have many friends. Maybe two or three. Dave Hladik, née Mannford, is one of them. I think. Dave and I met at the first ever Tulsa Ducks Unlimited banquet in, I think, about 1967. It was held at the Tulsa Sportsmen Club out at their location in Catoosa and was hosted by the late Bob Parkhurst. It cost five dollars to get in, which included some kind of a barbecue dinner and a one-year membership in the organization, if you can imagine all of that for five bucks. By the time I got there that evening there were only two seats left, and at almost the same time Dave sat down in one and I sat down in the other. Fate rides a strange horse, and sometimes no horse at all. We had things in common. Dave, that year a move-in from his native Wichita, Kansas was an elementary P.E. teacher in North Tulsa, and I taught high school English in Sand Springs. He had a wife named Linda, and I had a wife named Pam, both of whom had married below their sta