My Neil Sedaka Story

when i was a young boy... my family.... grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts and great uncles... 2nd cousins... etc... all took vacation together... they would pick a hotel in the catskill mountains... aka the jewish alps .... and descend upon it for 2 weeks .... very much like the movie Dirty Dancing ... the second hotel in my memory banks was a small very nice hotel called "the Esther Manor" .... since the owners wife was named Esther hence the name of the hotel ... quelle surprise ... my family loved this hotel and we spent many years enjoying our 2 weeks out of the city in the clean, cool country air ... well...  we used to eat our dinner in the small children's dining room...while the parents and teenage children got to eat in the fancy large dining room... me and my cousin's were young children ranging from 3- 9 yrs old... in the lobby of the hotel... was a baby grand piano and to me it was like pandora's box- magical ... while we waited for our parents to finish we would go to the lobby and wait with grown up supervision... one night a young man sat the piano and started to play... i was always mesmerized at live performance... he was playing and singing... and to me he was unbelievable... but again i was about 5 years old... i was told by my mom that he was dating the owner's daughter... and he would be around quite often... and he was.... i loved to sit and hear him perform... i was told he eventually married the girl... and that was that ...... my family moved on to some place else ... we heard many years later that the Esther Manor was sold and torn down .... well... it was in the early 70's that a revival of some 50's-60's music came around... and i loved the song "breaking up is hard to do" ... one afternoon i was playing the guitar (something you didn't know about me) and singing in my bedroom ... my mom said "do you know who originally sang that song and wrote it?" ... i said "yeah... Neil Sedaka" ... he was a cousin of my classmate Robin Sedeca (that's the way her family spelled the name)... my mom said "do you remember the guy who used to play the pianio for you at the Esther Manor?" ... i told her i remembered a man and the situation ...but not the face... well... of course it was Neil Sedaka... the end!

as told by Mr. DF