"Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver but the other, gold."

Those words must have been written about my friends Jean & Jane.

We've been together through thick and thin since kindergarten.

The twins lived across what our mothers believed to be a treacherous street, Greenfield Ave., which divides Brookfield and New Berlin. Jean and Jane lived on the "greaser side" in New Berlin, which was filled with hoodlums and juvenile delinquents, according to the people who lived in upper middle-class Brookfield.

Living on the fringe of this Milwaukee suburb, I had my feet in both worlds.

Jean & Jane had all the hot guys living on their street, the ones with leather jackets, greased back hair and cigarettes rolled up in their sleeves. These young studs hung out at night at Golden Chicken, guzzled Pabst Blue Ribbon and wrote "NB and Grease Rules" in red paint on the 124th Street overhead railroad track bridge. It's still there.

The three of us were kept as good as girls can be, at least until junior high when flower power reached the suburbs and threatened our mothers' aproned Betty Crocker worlds.

OK, fine Jean, you two were the good girls and I was was the one who always had the box "practices self-control" checked on my report card as lacking.

No matter how well executed and devious our plans were to cross Greenfield Ave. without fail, someone's mother would be looking out a window, call our mothers, and then all hell would break loose.

In the early 60s all mothers were looking out windows all the time. That's why there was less crime and deviance in general.

Picking tales to tell from 44 years of friendship could certainly reveal stories that would make your hair stand on end. Dare I tell you about Jane and the Calamine lotion or Jean and the Vietnam Vet? "Come on, Jean, just be with him!"

Nah, I still somewhat value my life.

Suffice to say we can still look at each other and laugh our guts out without emitting any sound, still sing every word of "The Mikado" (the ninth grade musical), and recite vivid details of the day Jane fell off the monkey bars, had a concussion and saw wiener dogs everywhere. Our personal histories are so mind-melded I can describe their fourth grade wardrobes, they know all the hideous presents I got in 1972, when my family decided to make gifts (have you ever seen a dress crocheted by a beginner?) and all three of us know what wooden beam our names are written on in the basement of our childhood homes.

Last year Jean gave me a 16-page letter I wrote to her (in tiny penmanship to include all details) in June 1973, when we were both 16 and she was on vacation with her parents. It would be a shocking tell-all to anyone but us, because, of course, we lived it.

Here's an excerpt from a summer party scene:

"Then all the greasers came out and started arguing with the freaks, trying to start a fight. Lee Hester (Joan's boyfriend) was doing most of it, saying they look like girls and all that. A greaser grabbed Baltimore and started pummeling him. 'Hey, come on now,' Baltimore yelled and to his friends: 'are you just gonna just stand there and watch?'

"Jim, a greaser who just lost his older brother in a car accident (They say he was playing chicken), went nuts, was screaming and crying and trying to pull everyone's hair out. He was so drunk he thought he heard people talking about his dead brother's own hair.

"Bear kept screaming 'what's the big deal about hair! People are people! ' Three guys had to sit on him to calm him down. Someone got the dog ripped and it was laying down in the middle of all this barking with its eyes closed. Jean, it was the wildest night I ever had!"

These days Jane is a nurse at Froetdert and still lives in New Berlin, sans any hot greasers. Jean works at a law office in Milwaukee.

Often in the summer we still meet at Lee's Boy Blue on Greenfield Ave., one of the only landmarks left from the old neighborhood. We visit Nick Gazzana's grave, Jane's crush since grade school. He died of a drug overdose way too young, never knowing how much he was loved by the three of us.

Afterwards we tour our childhoods, house by house, remembering who once lived there.

"If time were not a moving thing and I could make it stay...."

To the "Gordball" twins:

"Get funky."

Need I say more?