What’s Your Valentine Song?

By

Gerry Niskern

When I was a little girl back in West Virginia my sister and I used to lie in bed at night and listen to WWVA. That was the radio station that played hillbilly music and featured the champion yodelers. I tried my best to imitate them.

Later, when we moved to Arizona and lived a block from the State Capitol building, I used to sneak up the winding stairs of the rotunda to the third level. There, with the help of its wonderful echo, I continued practicing my yodeling until I was chased out. That always happened pretty quickly.

Later on, in Junior Hi, my boyfriend (and future husband) had the only portable record player that he brought to all the neighborhood dances, along with his collection of the latest records. We could have danced all night to Perry Como crooning a song called, “Till the End of Time”.

Of course, a lot of the girls in High School were swooning to any song Sinatra sang. For some reason, I passed on Frankie and leaned towards who I really loved the most, an Irish Singer, Dennis Day. I still love anything Irish, especially “Danny Boy” and “I’ll take you Home Again, Kathleen”. I took a lot of kidding for that.

But as a newlyweds, we discovered Elvis, and of course, our favorite song, “Love Me Tender.” We saw him once in Las Vegas and he had the world’s sweetest voice.

Later on,   when our kids were in high school and the phone rang I could always hear them explaining quickly, “Oh, no. I wasn’t listening to THAT! That’s my mom’s record”. Anything coming from their bedrooms was either The Rolling Stones or The Grateful Dead. You see, by then, I had become hooked on Country Western and loved hearing Roy Clark singing “Come Live with me” or Marty Robbins with “Come Back to Me”.  Of course, I loved anything by John Denver; especially “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” My kids were thoroughly embarrassed by them all.

But the funny thing was, I really enjoyed some of their Beatle songs too; especially “Yesterday” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. And I loved Janis Joplin singing “Bobby McGee” and still have it in my CD player in the car.

Somewhere, over time, my sweetheart turned his attention to classical music and we attended a lot of symphony concerts, especially featuring violists.

There were many singers and songs over the years that my Valentine and I both loved. We had a running debate over who had the best voice, Elvis (my choice) or Dean Martin (his choice). And it would be hard to choose one, but we totally agreed on Roger Whitaker singing “The Farewell Song”, day or night.

“An Arizona Valentine”

By

Gerry Niskern

This Valentine’s Day, February 14, is Arizona’s Inauguration Day.

Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you hadn’t ended up in Arizona? I do. I’ll always be thankful that my parents brought my sister and me here in the summer of `42.

I would have grown up in a limited little coal mining town back East with black soot on everything. I remember going to Grandma’s wearing a Sunday school dress and being admonished, “Don’t touch anything, and don’t lean either!”

My ten-year-old horizon was expanded as we drove across the U. S. in dad’s l940 Plymouth. He always picked up soldiers and sailors hitch-hiking to get home on leave during the war. Riding in the back seat with my sister and me hanging on their every word, they told their stories of the war and also of the home states they were trying to get back to for a quick visit. We were getting a liberal education.

Driving down from Globe, Miami and Superior on route 60, we were all a little shaken up. Was Phoenix going to be like these dusty little towns? Instead, Phoenix was bright and clean.  My dad said “it was like someone washed your eyeballs!” Best of all, there was grass and palm trees everywhere.

My education was just beginning. Every kid in school was from somewhere else as people poured into the valley for war work and airmen from nearby bases filled the streets.  My best friend was from California and another was from Mexico. The lady down the street was from England and the next door neighbor was from Nova Scotia. A Pima Indian family lived across the street. The dad worked for the railroad and the mother had graduated from an Eastern college. Their son was in the Arizona Bushmasters fighting in the Pacific. We were fascinated by their stories.

My parents embraced Arizona. My dad carpooled to save gas ration stamps to take us to every remote part of our beautiful new state.  We traveled north to the Canyon, Painted Desert and South to Nogales, and everywhere in between.

We were there for the first day of trout fishing on Oak Creek in the spring and back again for the apple harvest in the fall. My dad hiked every trail of South Mountains.

I enjoyed diving into the cool water of University pool, carrying home armloads of books from the Carnegie Library on W. Washington and canoeing with my sister on Encanto Lagoon.

My memories of this sweetheart state are endless and there is a story in every one