Black Sheep
05-04-2003, 10:59 AM
FRANK SINATRA wrote only one song, "This Love of Mine". And although it may not been his best seller, for me it will always be a nostalgic reminder of a love story I was privileged to learn about in a personal way.
In December 1942 I was working in the Middletown Air Depot outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as a Defense worker in the hydraulics department, since I was still one year to young to join the service without my parents consent, which I was unable to get.
It was the custom those days for local residents to rent out bedrooms for the out of town workers like myself. I share a bedroom with another New Yorker, John Lenzi, a very amiable guy who was my size and whose only fault was to wear my only white shirt on a Saturday night without my permission.
One afternoon as I was taking my noon nap before going on the 3 o'clock swing shift, music drifted up from the bedroom below which one of the Landlady's daughters occupied. Frank Sinatra's "This Love of Mine" was being replayed a couple of times, and then "This Love of Mine" went on and on, a few more repeats. And I found myself laying awake listening "though life is empty since you've been gone". I thought about all the mothers and sisters and sweathearts who missed their boys away at war. And Frank kept on singng with that youthful throaty quality that made lovers out of friends. I sometimes sat at the same dinner table on my days off with Mary, the girl whose bedroom was below mine, listening to the same song over and over; Mary was quiet, and never seemed to smile. She was always pensive like, "you're always on my mind, though out of sight". And here Mary was listening to Frank's refrain, "It's lonesome through the day and or the nights". And I wondered why she kept on replacing the neeedle at the beginning each time after it rubbed with an irrre at the end. And I listened to the lyrics, "I cried my heart out, it's bound to break" and then I felt that lover's emotion run through me when love ends as I listened to the ending, "since nothing matters, now that you're gone...what's to become of this, this love of mine?"
The next day I told my roommate, John Lenzi about Mary replaying the same Sinatra song all afternoon. He made a confession. "I think I know why she was playing that song all day." I smiled, "OK Mr. psychologist, tell me why?"
John went over to a large dresser against the wall, "I was looking through these drawers the other day." "John I don't keep that white shirt there anymore. I got it hid where you'll never find it." John waved at me with a serious expression. "I came across a letter from the U.S. Navy War Department addressed to Mary. Yesterday was December 7. Her husband was killed at Pearl Harbor the first days of the war. That's why she played that record all day, "This Love of Mine".
Black Sheep
In December 1942 I was working in the Middletown Air Depot outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania as a Defense worker in the hydraulics department, since I was still one year to young to join the service without my parents consent, which I was unable to get.
It was the custom those days for local residents to rent out bedrooms for the out of town workers like myself. I share a bedroom with another New Yorker, John Lenzi, a very amiable guy who was my size and whose only fault was to wear my only white shirt on a Saturday night without my permission.
One afternoon as I was taking my noon nap before going on the 3 o'clock swing shift, music drifted up from the bedroom below which one of the Landlady's daughters occupied. Frank Sinatra's "This Love of Mine" was being replayed a couple of times, and then "This Love of Mine" went on and on, a few more repeats. And I found myself laying awake listening "though life is empty since you've been gone". I thought about all the mothers and sisters and sweathearts who missed their boys away at war. And Frank kept on singng with that youthful throaty quality that made lovers out of friends. I sometimes sat at the same dinner table on my days off with Mary, the girl whose bedroom was below mine, listening to the same song over and over; Mary was quiet, and never seemed to smile. She was always pensive like, "you're always on my mind, though out of sight". And here Mary was listening to Frank's refrain, "It's lonesome through the day and or the nights". And I wondered why she kept on replacing the neeedle at the beginning each time after it rubbed with an irrre at the end. And I listened to the lyrics, "I cried my heart out, it's bound to break" and then I felt that lover's emotion run through me when love ends as I listened to the ending, "since nothing matters, now that you're gone...what's to become of this, this love of mine?"
The next day I told my roommate, John Lenzi about Mary replaying the same Sinatra song all afternoon. He made a confession. "I think I know why she was playing that song all day." I smiled, "OK Mr. psychologist, tell me why?"
John went over to a large dresser against the wall, "I was looking through these drawers the other day." "John I don't keep that white shirt there anymore. I got it hid where you'll never find it." John waved at me with a serious expression. "I came across a letter from the U.S. Navy War Department addressed to Mary. Yesterday was December 7. Her husband was killed at Pearl Harbor the first days of the war. That's why she played that record all day, "This Love of Mine".
Black Sheep