by Edward Hall

Created on: February 16, 2010

I can still remember it clearly, I wasn’t looking for much except a cold beer and some forgetfulness.  In a distinct particular, I was not looking for love. It was a soldier’s bar in Korea. Koreans are inventive. They fashioned their bars to meet our taste; this one ran to Country Music and big hats.

Koreans also tried to build their bars to look, not like you were in Korea, but like you had just stepped out of your home in Texas or Long Island. This one had the standard dark wood, candles on the tables and a mirror behind the bar.

In the reflection of that mirror I was studying a transaction between two wanna-be Cowboys and the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I sipped my OB (Oriental Beer), watched the foolishness in the mirror from under my own battered Mexican Hat and had no idea I was just about to get thoroughly “Snake Bit”, as the old Cowboy’s put it.

The song was Rocky Top, Ray Clark’s version and the girl I was watching in the mirror was a clogger. For those not in the know clogging is a descendant of Scottish Highland Dancing performed in the Appalachians. She was out on the dance floor by herself and her two buddies were clapping for her. I stepped off the stool; I was born and raised in the shadow of Eagle’s Nest Mountain just outside the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Soon, she was not dancing alone.

Her name was Connie. She was from the state of Missouri and she had a laugh like bells, a twinkle of devilment in her eyes, long dark hair and a residual vibration of the hurt child about her. I was in love the moment we, laughingly, hugged each other after the dance.

That was twenty-seven years ago and I would like to tell you we lived happily ever after that moment but there were too many things in the way. She was eighteen and I was over thirty. I was in a down, read drinking, period in my life and happiness would get in the way of my self-destruction. I was married and, most important, had two young children at home that I had to raise.

So we served our separate tours in Korea together with me acting as her Uncle. I held her head when she cried, danced with her when she laughed, tried to run the bad boys off with less success than I would have liked and generally acted as Father Confessor and protector.

There was one incident, we were alone and I was walking her back to her barracks, when the situation became romantic, there was a kiss and an embrace but I broke it off.

When I got back stateside we corresponded until that got in the way of the bad marriage and, more importantly, the good kids. Remember, two kids to raise? Fourteen years later the last one was raised.

I left there mother and decided to live my own life. I met other women, I laughed and loved and drank too much but every time I heard Rocky Top or Don’t Fall In Love With a Dreamer I was right back there.

One day, twenty-seven years later, the phone rang. It was her. She’s asleep now in the bedroom. The child she has left to raise is asleep also. The cats are sleeping, the dog is outside and I am thinking about the long rocky roads that led us back to each other.

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