A Snow Valley Summer Love Story

"Snow Valley" the sign at the entrance said as we pulled off the highway. It was early spring, a perfect day after a long winter and Morg and I were out riding. This seemed to be a new road and we drove down it for no other reason than to see what Snow Valley was.

For the moment it was toppled trees and noise from a huge bulldozer working on the bottom of a lake bed. The thaw had hit New York State and everything was mud and slush, but it was evident that this was a special place nestled up close against the base of one of the beautiful Hudson Valley mountains.

A man stood in the mud in front of the bulldozer directing the operator. I couldn't make out what he looked like too much. He was wearing a heavy black and red checked lumberman's shirt , had his pants tucked into what seemed to be very big boots, and he carried an axe over his shoulder. Very masculine.

"Look at that poor son-of-a-b****," Morg said. Morg was an IBM engineer, and dressed in Brooks Brother suits and expensive shirts with button down collars. Physical labor just wasn't his style, nor the clothes that went with it. I was crazy about him, but suspect it was mostly because he took me to the best restaurants and all the hit shows in New York City. We dined and danced at wonderful places I wanted to see, Tavern on the Green, the Rainbow Room, The Embers, the Blue Angel, more, and we loved going to the little supper clubs to see the chic people performing, Peggy Lee, Dorothy Dandridge, Errol Garner, and many others, unfortunately all gone now.

For some reason I suddenly resented his calling this obviously hard working man a son-of-a-b****. I saw him for the first time as shallow. It wasn't too long after this that I sent him on his way and found myself with this lovely spring weather and no one to share it with. I sat around gloomy for a while and then began dating others. No one really seemed interesting. I was bored and beginning to wonder if I had done the right thing.

I was still living with Mom and Dad and they decided to move from the small town I had grown up in to a house about five miles away, a few hundred feet from the entrance to Snow Valley. We were only in this new house a month or so and suddenly it was summer. A friend and I were going swimming one Saturday and at the last minute she couldn't make it. A friend of my mother's who lived nearby said, "Why don't you go down to Snow Valley? It's supposed to be real nice."

I figured it was certainly near enough, I may as well, but when I actually started down that same hill that I had last gone down with Morg months before, I got very nervous. I was embarrassed to be single and drifting around all alone on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with nothing to do.,

When I got to the bottom of the hill and saw the park before me, I felt even more foolish going in alone. Everything was perfect, green and lush, with the lake sparkling in the sunlight, people on the beach and soft music floating across the water.

Driving slowly I tried to figure out a way to leave without drawing attention to myself, but as I came closer to a small building which was obviously a refreshment stand this gorgeous man started toward the car. Bathing suit, sunglasses, big shoulders, tall, blond, tan, unbelievable. He came to the car window, looked straight into my eyes and said "Hi", just as I imagined Paul Newman would. He was the same man I saw that spring directing the bulldozer.

I mumbled, "Hello" but I couldn't look him in the eye. He was so big, so masculine, so bare!

"Planning to do some swimming today?" he asked.

With one foot on the brake and the other on the gas and both hands clenching the wheel, I tried to think of a way to disappear, but failed.

"Uh, what does it cost to swim?" I finally came up. surprising myself. I was always too shy to ask the cost of anything.

So when he said, "One dollar" and I exclaimed, "Just to swim?" that was still just a stall. Honest. I didn't really mean it was too much.

He ignored me and asked, "Are you married?"

"No."

"Engaged?

"No."

"Well," he asked, "why don't you stay for the afternoon as my guest and maybe you will like it well enough to come back some time."

I did.

Between giving orders to the help, collecting money as people drove in, and keeping an eye on the swimmers along with the regular life guards, he found time to sit by me on the beach.

He said his name was Jack and when I found the courage I asked him "Are you married?"

"No."

"You're not!?"

"Why are you so surprised."

"Everybody's married." At least that had been my experience.

"Yes, I guess they are, aren't they?"

And there we were, the two of us...not married.

He asked me out that night and we went to a local summer stock theater nearby. We arrived close to show time and stopped at the top of the aisle to look over the house and decide where we wanted to sit. We stood there for long moments.

When I went to work at IBM on Monday morning a co-worker told me she had been at the theater Saturday night and the friend she was with said to her, "Look at that gorgeous couple that just walked in." She turned she said, "And it was you." What a wonderful beginning to a new romance.

After Jack and I met I had just one other date. It was with someone I thought of as Obnoxious Al and had been planned for a week or so, so I thought I should go However I hurried down to see Jack and go for a swim before Al was to pick me up. When he got to my house my hair was still wet.

"What happened to your hair?" he asked.

"I've been swimming," I answered.

Al was annoyed. "Swimming? Why would you go swimming when you knew we were going out?"

"Someone I met this weekend asked me to go for a swim with him and I did," I told him.

"You mean you went with some guy?" he said, hardly believing I wasn't sitting waiting for him. Nastily he added, "cheap date".

Feeling equally nasty I said, "As a matter of fact it didn't cost him anything. He owns the lake."

Our evening started there and went steadily downhill. Al was unpleasant and I was smug and loved every minute of it. I never had much liked him.

Three months later Jack and I eloped and got married in Niagara Falls. We had a magical busy fifty-two years together.

While still young we sold Snow Valley and moved to Florida. We had a wonderful son and daughter. We worked together, held each other through the loss of parents, bought, lived in and sold twenty-five or more homes. We loved every one we ever bought, furnished each with love and were always happy and excited to sell and move on to the next one.

Together we managed his final couple of years as he slowly found his way through Alzheimers. People told me about their relatives with the disease who got extremely difficult. Jack never did. He kept his sweet good nature and often thanked me for taking care of him. When he no longer understood exactly who I was or why I was living in his house we still laughed together at all the years he had spent trying to collect that dollar from me.