In fact, more often than not, he’d have remnants of what must’ve been a very good spaghetti sauce around his mouth anytime you saw him after dinner time. Speaking of food, George was also incredibly fond of spaghetti. George was excited to let me know what they planned to eat during the big game, and happily shouted over to me, “Hot dogs an’ pizza!” Anytime I see those items in the grocery store today, I smile as I hear George’s voice in my mind shouting, “Hot dogs an’ pizza!” I was walking around the corner when he and Mike were helping their mom bring groceries in from her white Ford Pinto wagon. George was-and forever remained-a die hard Redskins fan. The front porch reminds me of a moment in January 1982, just before the classic NFC Championship Game between the Washington Redskins and the Dallas Cowboys. To this day, I feel like I could still go in there, go up the stairs, and George would come to their door. Their building holds a lot of memories for me, obviously. But we could be where his spirit will always be strongly with us-the place, according to Mike, where he’d spent the most enjoyable years of his life: Steward Manor. We couldn’t be with George in his final hours he was in hospice care in Savannah after having fallen into a diabetic coma late last month. On Sunday, July 12, 2020-which would turn out to be the day before our friend George passed away-Rodney Pressley and I walked around the complex reminiscing. Literally every corner of this neighborhood holds them, and events from nearly 40 years ago come flooding back with crystal clarity. Taking a walk through Steward Manor Apartments today invariably brings back countless vivid memories of George. The large tree behind their building was also, as you’d imagine, the source of many of George’s best stick figures. If they were home, George or Mike would soon appear. But rather than climb all those stairs, we’d often just yell up at their top floor windows. George, Mike, and their mom lived at 106 Sharon Court, #302. During one of the non-eventful preliminary bouts, I glanced over at George. How much were those sticks a part of George’s life? My dad once took the three of us to an actual wrestling card at the Capital Centre. After whatever physical activity had finished, he’d collect his sticks and head off to the next activity. If a game of tackle football-or more frequently, a fist fight-happened to materialize, he’d carefully take the sticks out of his sock and set them aside for safekeeping. In summertime, when he was perennially in shorts and knee-high striped socks, George would carry the latest sticks he’d found by tucking them into his sock. Like seeing shapes in clouds, I immediately saw what he meant. “Don’t this kinda look like Andre the Giant givin’ somebody the big boot?” he asked. I was sitting on the bench behind 100 Sharon Court with him one afternoon when he showed me a particular stick he’d found. A huge fan of professional wrestling, (in the days long before the sports entertainment spectacle was mainstream) George was always on the lookout for sticks that he thought resembled certain wrestlers-and they became action figures for him. George wasn’t an aspiring young botanist, though-the sticks had a different purpose for him. Often, you could find him sitting on one of the many benches around Steward Manor, curiously examining a small stick or two that he’d discovered. He was entirely content to walk around outside by himself-just exploring the grounds, knowing that he’d inevitably bump into one of us sooner or later. George was the more introspective of the two, and perhaps the most introspective of anyone in our small, but closely-knit group of friends. George, almost two years younger, wasn’t as naturally gifted, but he loved to compete and never backed down from a challenge. Mike, the older of the brothers, was far and away the best all-around athlete I’ve ever known. When I was a kid at Steward Manor in the early 1980s, two of my best friends were Mike and George McNeal.
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