I Can’t Get Started

The Gershwin classic ” I can’t get started” was finishing as I was clearing my last table. The Poland Springs Hotel bandleader was a bit of a musical snob and preferred the classic 1936 take on it by Bunny Berigan. He had held off playing it for me until the end.
It was the closing number of the night and the close of the final season at Poland Springs Hotel. In the morning, the last guests would depart, and over the next couple of days, the staff would disperse. Many of my friends were heading to winter jobs in the Carolina’s, Florida, and the Caribbean. I was heading on one final frolicking detour before enlisting.
Beginnings sometimes feel like endings. I’d never see Doris with the gorgeous red hair, and her boyfriend, Tom. Never listen to their stories of life in the big bands, listen to Tom play the trumpet, or listen to Doris sing Cole Porter. I’d never see Gerry, the barber, talk about cutting F.D.R’s hair, and all the other famous people, and what they’d say sitting in the chair.
They half expected that I’d join them, rather than enlist as a self-punishment for losing Betty Ann. And I was tempted. They were an entry into a whole different world than the Folkie existence I had lived these last years.
But beginnings , like endings, have consequence