Back when I was 18 or 19, I was workin as a pump jockey at a Sohio gas station. That was back in the days before they made you pump your own gas. Most of my clientele whose gas I pumped, and smilingly greeted them by name as I washed their windshield, were Jewish housewives, since the station was smack in the middle of Roselawn, the Jewish section of Cincinnati.

Sometimes the local motorcycle gang would pull in and crowd around the pumps gassing up their hogs. Nobody else would dare come in to get gas while they were there. They were actually a nice bunch of guys, at least with me. They looked all bearded and tattooed, with greasy jeans and open denim vests, and their um… significant others on the back of their hogs. Those were some hardass women, and I was way more afraid of them than the guys. Then one day I fixed a guy’s throttle linkage with a paperclip, and after that I was gold. They called me by name and pumped their own gas and never cheated me. They would be there for half an hour, and I would stand around and shoot the shit with them. I came to look forward to their visits.

At the time, I was dating a Jewish girl from the hood, named Rachael. We had gone out to dinner a couple times, and I liked her. She had long thick dark hair, smiling eyes, and she laughed easily. She was the daughter of one of my Jewish housewives, and we had met over her windshield. Her father was Harry, the local junk man, with his fleet of four flatbed trucks that he parked on the back of the gas station lot at night. He had grimy clothes but was very loquacious, and we became friends. He had 5 daughters, each one more beautiful than the next. Three were in college, and two in high school, at a local private school. They were his pride and joy. When I started dating Rachael, he had a chat with me, and we were good. Harry worked hard and evidently made good money. His Mrs drove a Cadillac, which had an enormous windshield to clean, a huge engine whose oil I checked each time.

Rachael and I were “dutch dating” which was an early form of feminism, where we both paid our part of the check. Her decision. She had kissed me goodnight on the last date. A short chaste kiss on the lips, but in those days, that was part of the ritual. French kissing and full liplock was for further on. And it made me fall in love with her a little.

Rachael was also freckly. From her hairline down to her buttoned up collar on her white blouses. Elsewhere too, for all I knew. I loved her freckles. I had never known anyone as freckly as Rachael. I stared at them so much that she wasn’t even uncomfortable any more. It was like looking at the sky at night. Her freckles were everywhere, with, if you squinched up your eyes and tilted your head, constellations. Freckly constellations.

I decided to write Rachael a song. About her freckles. That would win her heart and maybe we could get on with french kissing and stuff. I had been playing the guitar for a couple years, and played and sang with friends sometimes. Simon and Garfunkel, Peter Paul and Mary (it always annoyed me that they put her name last, since without her golden voice, they would just be two chumps with guitars), Pete Seeger, John Prine. 

I got home from the station the next night, showered off the gas smell, and put on clean clothes, and took out my guitar. I had not written a song before. I thumped around on it for a while, and got in the mood,and started with a refrain.

Freckle, Freckle,

I wish I had a freckle.

Maybe someday

One will come my way,

And be my own true speckle.

Yes, trite and kind of dumb, but it was my first effort. I hashed out a couple verses about freckles, and threw the refrain in after every one, and voila! I was a songwriter! I practiced it a couple times and put down the guitar, and called Rachael. I invited her to dinner the next night, and said I had a funny surprise for her. She said ok.

I picked her up in my best shirt and jeans, and we went to Perkins Cake and Steak House for dinner. There weren’t many people there that night. We ate a good dinner, and she pestered me about my funny surprise. I wasn’t giving away anything. As we drank our after dinner coffee, I told her to hang on, and I ran out to my car and fetched my guitar. When I came back in, she clapped her hands and said, “Oh! The surprise is you are going to play me a song in Perkins Cake and Steak House! I can”t wait!

“I wrote this song for you, Rachael”, I said. And I started singing and strumming.

 Freckle, Freckle, I wish I had a freckle…

Arrow right in the heart. She laughed and laughed, and smiled and clapped her hands as I sang it. When I was done, she said, (I am not kidding) “Play it again, Sam!” So I did. Then I put my guitar down. The waitresses were all giggling in the corner. We talked, and finished our coffee, and I took her home.

Rachael called me the next night after work, and thanked me again for the song. I had given her my scratched out copy of the lyrics. She said she had read it several times, and it made her laugh each time. I was smiling on my end of the phone. Then she said, “I feel bad telling you this after you wrote me a song, but I have been getting serious with another guy I am dating now. But we can still be friends, and blah blah blah.”

POW! Right to the heart! I guess the song wasn’t all that great.  Maybe I ought to work on my songwriting abilities.

I never saw Rachael again. Saw her mom and dad as long as I worked for the gas station. I needed a better job so I got on with a company where my job was to bend exhaust pipes for cars all day on a hydraulic pipe bender. Paid better than the gas station.

Never sang the song again. She has the words so I don’t remember them. Except for the refrain.

Still, it made me smile to think of Rachael today and remember this story.

Love ya freckly Rachael. 

Life is full of great stuff like that.