Miners and Golden Hearts

The first girl I ever told I loved came to me from Cherokee Beach, a lakeside recreational area near my home of Bessemer, Alabama. Her name was Jean, and we were so shy with each other at the beach that we didn’t hold hands or say more than a few words as we watched our friends Robert and Lisa touch each other all over. Jean’s family lived over twenty miles from mine, and we were barely fifteen. During the next two weeks we talked for hours nightly over the telephone lines, and it was on that third night that I took my chance:

“I love you.”

And:

“I love you too.”

That’s all we said for the rest of that night and into the following day. But by the tenth night, she was wavering. And then came her fatal question:

“What do you think of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon?”

“Oh, it’s ok.”