Life Sketches by Terry Berkson
Dawn Dance at Goodyear Lake
Every year, at the end of the summer, there used to be a dance held at The Pavilion on Goodyear Lake. It would start at midnight and end at dawn. The event amounted to one of the last hurrahs of the season, and I was lucky enough to have participated several times before the tradition ended and the building was torn down to eventually make way for a motel. My earliest memories of The Pavilion are when I was about 5 years old and my dad rented a rowboat there. At the time, I was impressed with the lake’s dam and the giant towers that supported the power lines with their huge ceramic insulators. I thought about being swept over the edge, but with my dad at the oars I knew we were safe. He was an experienced ferryman, only the vessel he manned was a New York City taxi.
It was a dozen years later that I returned to Goodyear Lake to attend the all-night dance. I had driven there with Richfield friends Orville Eckler and Jay Bernhardt. Jay had to play high-school football the next day and knew his mother would disapprove of him staying up all night, so he told her he was going to the movies and later sleeping at my house. Orville was at the wheel of his ‘57 Chevy.
