Life Sketches by Terry Berkson

From Darkness into a Room Full of Light

The painting was a night scene of herders out on the steppes sitting around a bright fire, apparently trading songs or stories. I used to sit in a chair and look into the picture for extended periods of time. Sometimes I’d long to be in that circle of light around the fire.

The winter of ‘59 was the longest season of my life. I had left Brooklyn and come up to Richfield Springs to live with my Uncle William and Aunt Ruta and attend high school in the village. Some mornings I’d be walking to class and the thermometer would be down to 20 below zero. Because it was by the ocean, Brooklyn never suffered such extreme and isolating temperatures. As a city kid, especially at night, I always found company and activity below the light of a street lamp or in a luncheonette or pizza parlor on the avenue.

Now I was under the responsibility of Uncle William, who was already in his early 70s and felt he had to keep a tight rein on me. I wasn’t allowed out on weeknights and if there was a dance or a party I had to be home by ten. In Brooklyn, under my father’s supervision, there were no curfews and no restrictions. In Richfield, on top of being confined, snowy weeks would go by without the sun shining. It didn’t take long for the ache of loneliness to get to me and sometimes I’d find ways to get out of the house to visit a friend, even if I had to climb out my second floor bedroom window.

There was a large oil painting hanging on the wall in my Aunt Ruta’s living room. She had brought it with her when she came to America from Poland in 1938. It must have been a valuable painting, because her father had been a judge and owned a comfortable home and she made a great fuss about its care when disembarking from the boat in Hoboken, New Jersey…So my father told me.

The painting was a night scene of herders out on the steppes sitting around a bright fire, apparently trading songs or stories. I used to sit in a chair and look into the picture for extended periods of time. Sometimes I’d long to be in that circle of light around the fire. You could see the cold and the lonely darkness lurking behind the profiles of tethered horses in the background. Often I felt that I was in that background with no fire to sit near. There wasn’t even a television in the faded house, and my uncle was always busy pounding away at his typewriter or on the piano. The music he played was serious and heavy and, unlike my father, he didn’t bother to perfect its execution. He approached playing music like he was reading a book: “Let’s see what Rachmaninoff has to say…”

After supper, Aunt Ruta would do the dishes and then sit at the kitchen table playing solitaire. I’d try to read a book, but always felt the urge to be outside doing something with other people, young people.

I don’t remember how I learned about it, but one night I found myself headed for the school where some kind of a show was going on. Maybe I had asked my uncle if I could go and he said, “No.” So, after a while I went up to my room, threw some shoes on the floor so it sounded like I was going to bed and climbed out the window.

At the school the lobby was already empty and the doors to the gym that doubled as a theater were already closed. I could hear music as I dug deep into my pockets for the price of admission. When I entered the auditorium I was hit by the bright light on the stage. Comedic music was drowned out by laughter as telephone lineman Bill West chased a screaming damsel into the wings. I found a seat high in the bleachers, noting all the warmth and energy that was in the packed house. The music changed to a slow romantic melody and a dashing Dave Gravelding escorted pretty brunette Barbara Strong out onto the stage, where they began to dance and sing to a beautiful tune like “Blue Moon.” The audience was enthralled. When the couple finished their number and faded away, the music picked up and Bill West was again in hot pursuit of the hysterical object of his desires as the audience rooted him on.

Then Buster Whipple came out with his mother, Janet, and his beautiful wife, Zaida, who was wearing a pink taffeta dress. They sang a haunting rendition of Porgy and Bess’s “Summertime.” Later, George Ehrmann played the horn to his mother Marguerite’s piano accompaniment. Peg Reynolds, Ed Kits, Evelyn and Ed Barron, and a host of other people whose names I didn’t know at the time danced or wailed like sweet coyotes in the night.

But, most memorable of all was a duet done by an earnest Ed Leslie and a buxom young lady I didn’t recognize. She was sitting on a high swing that was suspended from top center stage. They were singing a love song in the spirit of Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddie, a song with words like “When I’m calling you ou ou ou, ou ou ou.” Ed pushed the swing higher and higher as the girl’s voice rose in pitch and the swing soared toward the ceiling. The music grew louder. Then, all at once the young lady’s legs went straight up and she squealed as you could see her undies that sported a strikingly familiar sign plastered across the bottom: RUBY’S DEPARTMENT STORE! The crowd went wild with laughter, whistling and catcalls.

The sweetie on the swing turned out to be Bert Seeholzer, a guy who worked for Suburban Propane. For me, it was the high point of the show and I was totally immersed in the warm burlesque atmosphere. There were more musical numbers and funny skits, but soon the lights died and the show was over.

I remember heading home as the bitter wind whipped the snow around so that it looked like white tops were spinning down Main Street. I zipped up my Brooklyn leather jacket to hold on to the warmth I had taken in. What luck to have stumbled upon the show and the light that exuded from it. That atmosphere must have been there for all the weeks or months of rehearsal. I thought of the painting in my aunt Ruta’s living room. It was as though I had been wandering out on the steppes and was allowed to sit in on the herders’ fire.

Back at the house, my hands might have felt frozen as I gripped the metal leader line to shinny up to my bedroom window—but the warmth of that show has burned in my memory ever since.

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.”