The Night the Stars Fell

I won't say we were backward, or country bumpkins, but Cleveland, Ohio, was only thirty minutes from Lorain and somehow felt generations away.

I had just met Ardie, a senior at West Tech High School.

"We are the West Tech girls, We wear our hair in curls, We wear our sweaters tight, The boys say that's all right..."

She recited it with the easy confidence of someone who had grown up knowing exactly where she belonged. I hadn’t.

It was a double date with her best friend Rosie, and an older college student from Western Reserve named Al, driving a two-toned Oldsmobile that looked like it had already seen a few stories of its own.

We went to see Sabrina Fair at the Lakewood Little Theater. They liked it well enough, but I was completely awestruck. Lorain had nothing like it — the Palace Theatre offered only the usual movie fare, still years from its later refurbished glory. Sitting there in the dark, I felt as if someone had quietly opened a door I hadn’t known existed.

Afterward we stopped at a small bar. Ardie, Rosie, and I sipped Cokes while Al drank real beer, the kind that made him seem even older than he was.

It was a Thursday night, the place nearly empty. Al carried his beer to an upright piano on a vacant stage, lit only by the neon wash of the jukebox. We followed, not quite knowing why.

He sat down and began to play and sing "Stars Fell on Alabama."

"A little something I played at Sigma Chi," he said.

And somehow, listening in that half-lit room, I knew it. There was something else out there besides Lorain, Ohio, and for the first time I could almost imagine stepping toward it.