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.

The big dance floor was crowded, with a seven-piece band presiding. They didn’t play rock and roll, but the music was good and had a strong beat that was easy to dance to. I admired the smooth steps of the old timers. Many of the tunes were from the Big Band era. Some of them I knew—like “My Blue Heaven” and “It Had To Be You”—from my dad’s piano repertoire, which would take days to exhaust. The crowd was a mixture of young and old. There were lots of pretty girls in plaid skirts and it was great to be out on the floor with any one of them. After several dances I’d be sweating profusely and would go outside for a cool drink. Couples were sitting in cars watching the submarine races out on the lake.

During one break, something was going on toward the back of the parking lot. Walter Burdock, another guy from Richfield, was there with his ‘61, 401 horse-powered Ford. The car looked tame, with only a three-speed on the column. Not to attract attention, Walter had rolled down the rear window, which displayed the 15 NASCAR “win” stickers he had won at the drag strip at Fonda Raceway.

A local guy with a hopped up Studebaker suspected that Walter’s Ford was fast and wanted to race. He waved 50 bucks in the air as his Studebaker, which had a supercharger with a high-lift cam, sat there rocking. The car sounded like a monster. Walter had consumed too much high test and was in no condition to drive, but the guy kept taunting him and was so pugnaciously persistent that Walter crawled into the back seat of his Ford while telling Jim Donnelly, a farm boy from Schuyler Lake, to get behind the wheel and accept the challenge.

In no time, Walter was stretched out and snoring. By now Jay and Orville were on the scene and, with our pooled-money-bet in place, the cars pulled out onto Route 28. The Studebaker was jumping up and down as they moved up to the line. The Ford looked kind of sedate. Jim was concerned about hurting Walter’s car and said that he wouldn’t do any fancy speed shifting. “Primrose Lane” was resonating from the radio.

Someone dropped a handkerchief and both cars blasted off, burning rubber and smoking so that you could hardly see them. The Studebaker was screaming through its power shifts. I could hear Jim carefully going through the gears. It was close for a while, but then the Ford surged ahead in third gear and won the race as Walter slept through the whole thing. The guy who drove the Studebaker looked stunned as we split the 50 bucks five ways. Then Walter, who must have been chilled by the cool night air, rose to crank up the rear window—with the 15 “win” stickers on it. When the loser saw the stickers he cried foul and went to call his friends. We knew it was a good time to leave and quickly peeled out as the band played on.

I remember Orville driving home through the dark, cool, morning fog. We were all dog tired. None of us talked. It felt like we had been through something, kind of lived a lifetime in one night. Jay got about two hours of sleep before heading over to the school to shape up for the home game. Later, I couldn’t believe it when out on the field he made two incredible shoestring catches.

So, gone is the pavilion on the lake, and the dawn dances, and the ferryman that first took me there. Left are the memories and the words that serve as oars to retrace the trip.

Terry Berkson’s articles have appeared in “New York” magazine, “Automobile” magazine and many others. His memoir, “Corvette Odyssey,” has received many good reviews: “highly recommended with broad appeal,” says “Library Journal.”