Remember when we used to walk down the Boardwalk
When we used to watch the sun melt into the sea
When we’d sit in the moonlight in front of your house on the sidewalk
Just you and me
Remember the way I’d climb a tree when I’d get mad
And how we’d laugh back at the world though the end was near
And when I had to go away, we were so sad
But whoever knew then we’d meet again here
I just wanna go ridin’ ridin’
I just wanna go ridin’ with you
I just wanna go ridin’ ridin’
Just wanna go ridin’ with you
We can go ridin’ for some hours through the valley
Well, I got us two tickets for the Egged 963 bus
Jerusalem to Jericho up to the Sea of Galilee
Just the two of us
The blue light in the bus at night is so romantic
But all too often I have to keep that romance to myself
So come with me, we’ll escape the city pace so frantic
And for once enjoy ourselves
I just wanna go ridin’ ridin’ ...
If you wanna say it’s gone, what’s been has been
And that love may never win
Then I say you’re wrong, it’s never too late
It’s been a six-year wait
To go ridin’
I just wanna go ridin’ ridin’ ...
Baby come on, let’s go ridin’ ridin’
Baby, won’t you come ridin’ with me
Baby come on, let’s go ridin’ ridin’
We can make it what it used to be
©2024 The Hesh Inc.
This one goes out to someone I once loved ... and who loved me. The one that got away, you might say.
We met when we were still in middle school, such as it was. She was one of my sister’s friends, and sometime when I was in eighth grade, she had set her sights on me and somehow let it be known that she liked me. In the spring of 1979, I reciprocated. I can't say we "dated" all the way back then. A certain degree of independence is required for dating, and we weren’t there yet. But the town knew we were a 'couple,' whatever that meant in our early teens. And it became evident early on that she liked me ... a lot. But that early episode came to an end in the summer, when she went off to Florida to spend the vacation with relatives while I moved with my family to Israel. We wrote letters to each other during the first year or so after I moved away, but soon the correspondence dropped off as we each went on with the next chapter in our lives.
I saw her in the summer of 1983, after I graduated high school, when I visited the States for the first time since moving away. On my first day back in town, a friend suggested we drop in on her. Only thing was, she had no way of knowing I was coming, and she was done up all religious as she was working on some youth-group programming with a local rabbi while I came in looking like a rock'n'roll hippie. She really did want to see me, she told me later ... just not like that, under those circumstances. Later on that summer, after I had spent some weeks traveling up and down the East Coast, I spent a Shabbat afternoon with her, sitting in her kitchen and polishing off the Entenmann's chocolate donuts. She was still very much in love with me. I could tell. But what could I do ... it was the end of the summer already and soon I'd be on my way back to Israel.
She showed up in Israel in 1986. One Saturday night in Jerusalem I was sitting in a donut shop downtown (again, with the donuts!) near where all the American students in the country for their gap-year programs would hang out. I looked out the open storefront and I saw her. By the time I collected my wits and stepped out after her, she had walked on, but I gave chase and caught up with her several blocks away at a bus stop. Her facial expression said all I needed to know.
Not long afterward I was hospitalized in the north of the country with appendicitis. When she somehow found out that I was in the hospital she dropped everything and traveled up from Jerusalem—a four-hour trip by bus—to be with me as I recovered. I had been dating others during those years and nobody dropped everything and crossed the whole country to come see me. But she did.
Soon I recovered and reported back for duty. I would travel between home and my base whenever I had a weekend pass, spending four to six hours each way on buses, often at night when the driver would shut off the main interior lights. It was during this time that I wrote her this song. I all but propositioned her in these lyrics. When she came to my house for a weekend, I showed them to her. When she read them, she accepted what I was offering.
But then ... nothing. I'll never know why I didn't choose to follow up on that. She even questioned me about that once and I sort of shrugged it off. She was there for the entire last half of my army service and I could have been seeing her the whole time. But no. Other things happened, parallel to this drama, and I got engaged and married to someone else. And once that happened, she felt free to pursue her own ambitions and get married herself, which she did not all that long after I did. After that, I didn't see her until a series of circumstances brought us back in touch, through mutual friends, in early 2012.
I tell you ... I didn't know how good I had it with her. Here was someone who would have dropped anything and everything she was doing to be with me. In fact, she did. That cannot be said for most other people in my life. If only I had been there when I had the chance instead of being everywhere else and thinking of other people, I might have ended up with her. She totally could have been mine, and I hers, had I only followed up and been in the moment during that time in 1986 when I wrote this song, and had my mind not been obsessed with someone somewhere else.
If there was only some way to do it, I'd tell her that I was a fool for not following up with her. But life went on as it did, with respective marriages and families. We're friends, now, on Facebook and sometimes elsewhere, and even though there isn’t any 'relationship'—there can't be—she still has a place in her heart for me, at least in terms of caring. And that's nice to know.