Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat – Ron Gold

July 21, 2006

I REMEMBER YOU

By Ron Gold

outthinkresumes@aol.com

It was the tail end of the ‘40s.   A cruel world war

had ended a few years earlier.  Korea was just a reference

in our atlases.  The birth control pill had not yet been

developed.  Popular love song lyrics held deep personal

meaning.  Structured innocence was our teen-aged way of

love.  And I fell deeply in love with Audrey Goldberg in

Lake Peekskill, NY.

      This was my last barefoot summer.  In a few months I

would begin my freshman year at college.  And the following

summer, I’d be working in a Catskill Mountain resort to

help pay for my tuition and textbooks.

      Audrey was the single, most wonderful thing about Lake

Peekskill.  She loved music and flowers and was inarguably

beautiful.  Her hair was a hybrid of honeys.  Her smile

brightened my day and, when she looked up at me, I became

everything she and I wanted me to be.

I was 17 and Audrey was two years younger.  She

was, in her own terms, “jail bait”.  But, to me, my

beautiful innocent enchantress was my first real love.

      Audrey spent that summer with her parents, Mae and Joe

Goldberg, in a pleasant little home above the lake.  Joe

was a slightly built, handsome, graying postal worker with

a kitten-like grin that aroused his small calico moustache. 

Mae, a hunchback woman, appreciated Joe and considered

Audrey her personal gift from God.

I lived with my folks and kid brother in a house just

a few minutes walk from the Goldbergs.  My parents, like

the Goldbergs, thrived on gin rummy.  They dealt with each

other every evening.

            Lake Peekskill’s all-white teen-aged social life

centered around some assertive summer kids from New York

City.  Every boy who hung out by the village stores was a

self-proclaimed basketball star.

            While I loved basketball, I could not play the game

worth a damn.  I was a lousy shot and had the endurance of

a gnat.

            But I was big.  Over six feet tall.  More than two

hundred pounds.  And those speedy, feisty New York kids

could run rings around me.  So how do you hold your own

when it comes to sports bragging rights?

            You gotta be a football hero

To fall in love with a beautiful girl.

I won respect with a sweater.  I bought a black and

orange varsity cardigan and had the store sew on a big S

for Stamford High School.  The store also sewed a football

in the middle of the letter.

This scam couldn’t lose.  Because I was no longer in

high school in Connecticut, I could say just about anything

I wanted about my high school football talent.  Nobody

would ever see me play.  And the varsity sweater

suggested everything I wanted it to imply.

            My summer contemporaries never fully understood me.  I

was a hick, a small town New England kid whose talents were

talking football and singing.

            Audrey loved my voice.  She even equated me to the

great singer-actor Paul Robeson, a member of the College

Football Hall of Fame, who was scheduled to give an open

air concert in nearby Peekskll later that summer.

            As Audrey reminded me, he sang and he also played

football.

            But Audrey much preferred my sweet, young, amateurish

tenor to Robeson’s unequalled stentorian bass.

            Whenever Audrey was in a loving mood, she’d ask me to

sing. 

Once, when I came to call, Audrey’s mother asked me if

I knew an old-fashioned love song, Because.  It was her

favorite song.  A tenor sang it at her wedding.

            I began:

            Because you come to me with naught save love

            And hold my hand

            And lift mine eyes above

A wider world of hope and joy I see

Because you come to me.

Mae’s eyes started to tear.  Her ill-fitting house

coat throbbed against the lump on her back.  Audrey

comforted her.

Because you speak to me in accent sweet

I find the roses waking round my feet

And I am led through tears and joy to thee

Because you speak to me.

            Mae groped for the Kleenex.  Audrey winked at me.

            Because God made thee mine, I’ll cherish thee

`           Through light and darkness

            Through all time to be.

            And pray his love will make our love divine.

            Because God made thee mine.

            I hit the high note honestly.  And on pitch.  Mae

wept.

            As for the bass, Paul Robeson’s pending outdoor

concert was becoming an on-again/off-again event, picketed

by local patriotic groups who called him a “pinko”, a

Communist sympathizeer.

            The day of the Peekskill “concert” was a day of

passion for both singing football players.

            Robeson met his passion in Peekskill-without singing-

in an infamous brawl in which more than 100 people were

injured.

            I realized my passion far from the battle—quietly and

safely—alone with Audrey, among the wild flowers in the

pasture land above the lake.

            The sun was playing hide-and-seek with the clouds that

Sunday.  There wasn’t a hint of a breeze.  We stood

scanning the green panorama of grass and trees.  We were

alone in our own peaceful world and I fashioned a

wildflower tiara for Audrey.

            “Hold me,” she said.  I held her softly yet tightly,

both hands around her waist.  “Sing me something special.”

            “Especially for you,” I said, changing my grip into a

hand-in-hand, hand-on-waist dancing position.

            We had never danced before.  And Audrey nibbled my

neck.

            I gazed into her eyes, gently kissed her lids.  And

then her perfect nose.  And I crooned:

In this world of ordinary people – extraordinary

people – I’m glad there is you

In this world of overrated pleasures

And underrated treasures

I’m glad there is you.

I live to love.  I love to live with you beside me.

This road, so new, I’ll muddle through

With you to guide me.

In this world where many, many play at love

But hardly ever stay in love

I’m glad there is you.

More than ever, I’m glad there is you.

I finished and smiled.  She reached up and kissed me.

Then we kissed each other.  A lot.

            Overhead, the clouds trounced the sun and it began

drizzling.  As we walked home, I took off my bogus varsity

sweater and placed it, shawl-like, over her shoulders.  She

smiled and reached up to kiss me again.

            When I got home, I tried to hide my fresh purple

hickey but Dad chided me.  He called it “Audrey’s gift”.

He told me not to hide it.  “It is your badge of honor,”

he said.  “Never be ashamed of real love.”

            For three days I wore T-shirts and blushed proudly, to

the delight of Audrey and my parents.

            “Jail bait’s” parents weren’t so proud.

            But I loved Audrey.  And she loved me.

            The mere idea of you

            This longing here for you

            You’ll never know how slow the moments go

            ‘Til I’m near to you.

            I see your face in every flower

            Your eyes in skies above

            It’s just the thought of you—

            The very thought of you—

            My love.

            Time has a way of cooling warm intentions.  That

autumn, I started college, and the following summer, I went

to work in the Catskill Mountains.  I could only see my

summertime love on rare off-season weekends when both

families escaped back to Lake Peekskill.

            Audrey and I still made time to share long afternoon

walks and elongated kisses.  And she still wore my sweater.

But, in time, we strode our separate ways through life.

            I never made it as a professional singer; never tried.

            But Audrey made it big as a loving wife and mother.

            The last news of Audrey blindsided me.  She had died

--much too young—in her early fifties.

            I will always cherish our wild flower summer at the

lake.  I’ll also remember the historic Robeson non-concert

riot we spurned so we could share the warmth of our arms

and the sweet innocence of our kisses.

I will always remember wrapping her in my cardigan in

the rain.  And in my mind’s eye, I still see and treasure