Curse You, Roy Clark - Part I

She was the stuff of dreams, and I would know, because I'm the one who dreamed them. When she smiled, I lost my breath. When her emerald eyes looked my way, my quaking knees collapsed. When she laughed her gossamer giggle, angels bent to listen. We met when we were 12-years old, and I'd spend every day of the next six years trying to convince her that she liked me, too.

Lisa overcame me on the first day of seventh grade at Belview Elementary School. My family and I had just moved to Virginia from New Jersey, after having lived a little less than 40 miles outside the Apple for five years.

Arriving in the small Southwestern Virginia town during the 1971 World Series, we lived in the Holiday Inn for our first few weeks there, all the while looking for a more permanent home. Mom and dad finally found a suitable one, and we moved into the salmon-colored split level house that had been built in the mid-60's. It was a comfortable home with a quarter acre lawn, a couple of red maple trees scattered about the property, and a dog barking in the backyard. The best thing about it, though, was that it was in her neighborhood.

The first Saturday we spent in our new house dawned clear and crisp. The leaves on our maples had just about finished turning from their chlorophyll-laced green of summer to their chromatic scarlet hue of Autumn. You could see your breath that morning, but by noon it had warmed to a very comfortable 65 degrees.

"What do you want to do after this?"

I hadn't even heard Donnie's question, so I continued to sit cross-legged on the chilly, hardwood floor of my bedroom, rifling through my baseball cards. I wanted to find a good one to put in the spokes of the back tire of my bike.

"Hello?" Donnie knocked on my head with his fist. "You in there?"

"Oh, sorry. I didn't hear you, I guess," I said through a slight North Jersey accent that I'd unconsciously lose in just a few months. "What did you ask me?"

Donnie pursed his lips with agitation and repeated himself. "What do you want to do after this?" He was the best friend I had since we'd moved in and he was over most every day. He only lived a few doors down.

"I don't know," I said. It's a nice day out. What do you wanna do?"

He took a deep breath and exhaled impatiently. "How 'bout riding bikes?"

This was my favorite thing to do and Donnie knew it. I had an old, yellow and silver Huffy one-speed with a black banana seat and sissy bar in the back. It was so 70's that it should have been wearing bellbottoms.

"Yea, that'd be good," I replied. "Wanna go down around the big block?"

Donnie looked at me knowingly. Our neighborhood was in the shape of a figure-eight. The small block, which I lived on, was about a half mile around and the top of the eight. We lived up on top of the hill, our loop going progressively downhill until it reached the intersection with the big block. That loop was a full mile from start to finish. It also went downhill on both sides until you got to the bottom near Doug Cranford's house. Lisa lived on the left side of the lower half of the eight.

"I wonder where YOU want to go," Donnie said with a slight twinkle in his eye. He'd been the only one I'd confided in about my feelings for Lisa.

"Will you stop?" I demanded. "It's not like that. I just like to ride bikes."

Donnie laughed and grabbed a Richie Hebner card from the pile. "Yea, whatever. Come on, this one will do fine," he said, and launched himself out the door. I took the Merv Rettenmund from the top of the pile and chased after him.

Running out back to the clothesline, we took a couple of mom's wooden clothes pins and secured the cards to the back fork of our bikes and put them through the spokes. Donnie's bike was an old, beat up Schwinn that his cousin had given him. It was actually too big for him, but it got him where he wanted to go.

Racing down the hill toward Carol Robinson's house, we imagined ourselves riding motorcycles, the engines revving louder with every slap of the cards against the spokes. We were the epitome of cool.

I felt my heart beat more wildly with every stroke of the pedals. I stood up in the saddle and let the hill blow cool wind through my short, blond hair. At the bottom of the hill I took a quick right turn and headed up the hill toward Lisa's street. Taking that left, I again stood on the pedals and raced down the hill, momentarily taking my hands off the handlebars and gripping the middle bar with my knees until I felt the fear of disaster.

My mind raced. In a few short seconds I would pass in front of her house. Oh, how I hoped she would be in the front yard, playing with her sister or sitting in the porch swing that was hung from the eaves just outside her front door.

But today, there would be no such luck. Her dad's car wasn't even in the driveway. No one was home.

"Rats," I thought, hitting the brakes and coming to a screaming halt. I put both feet on the ground and turned back. Donnie was just coming around the corner to ride down the hill.

We rode around the block together for about another hour, passing by Lisa's house as often as I could without awakening Donnie's keen sense of suspicion. Just before going by I'd speed up so as to leave him behind, then, while keeping my gaze firmly on her front door, I'd slow almost to a crawl, excusing it as waiting for him to catch up. I just wanted to get a glimpse of her, or maybe even a wave. But it was not to be. I'd have to wait for school on Monday.

That night, as I sat watching Hee Haw on the color television mom and dad had bought when we moved in, I tried to devise a plan to get her to like me. What could I do? It almost seemed that she didn't know I existed.

"That's why I love her and that's why I do right," Roy Clark sang. "And if there's a reason God gave me a feeling, baby, it's you."

I hated country music, especially the twangy kind, so I got up off the couch to change the channel. Not even the sometimes funny, always corny comedy was worth this.

"She hates tangerines," he sang. "She loves the ring, volunteers me for everything. And the bank has never been right in her life."

My jaw dropped and a knowing smile pursed my lips. At that very instant, I knew what I had to do. Roy Clark had inspired me in a way he'd never know.



Coming soon - Part II