"The Promise of Romance" by Arlene Mandell

 — connecting the dots to find forever love

A promise is still a promise even if made by one and kept by another.

Arlene Mandell is an artist living in Linville, North Carolina; enjoy her colorful portraits at Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk. A native New Yorker, she taught in Manhattan’s Head Start program, then joined a travel magazine in Miami, Florida, where she met Captain Dan. Their relocation to the Blue Ridge Mountains inspired a love of writing. Her memoirs “Eye of the Dolphin,” “Artist Borne,” “Gobsmacked in the Gulfstream,” “Renegade Daughter,” “It Started with a Typo,” “Shopping for the Homeless,” and “Thirteen Candles in the Dark” appear on “6-minute Stories” podcast.

Author’s Talk

“Goin’ up Cripple Creek, goin’ in a run,
Goin’ up Cripple Creek to have a little fun.

Roll my britches to my knees,
Gonna wade ole Cripple Creek when I please.

Cripple Creek’s wide and Cripple Creek’s deep,
I’ll wade ole Cripple Creek before I sleep.”

I first heard this Appalachian mountain tune deep in the denizens of New York City in the 1960s during my freshman year of college. Before then, I had never heard the sound of bluegrass. I was captivated; it was love at first “twang.”

The words and music went round and round in my brain. Through a life-changing encounter with a fellow student, I learned to pick and play guitar and banjo, and developed a passion for music that came down from the mountains.

Little did I know this would be a harbinger of my future. In 2017, after having spent many summer/fall seasons in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, my mate and I (born and raised, respectively, in Pittsburgh, and in Manhattan), permanently relocated from Miami, Florida—where we lived, worked, and met—to Linville, a small mountain town with two traffic lights.

This was quite a welcome change from the maniacal eight-lane highways of I-95 in South Florida. We never dreamed small-town life would become our choice. But, as we became involved with mountain life, mountain folk, and mountain music, we fell under a spell and chose to make our final home here. It was the right choice.

How curious! A catchy tune that threaded its way through my life, combined with the enchantment I found in a simple paper napkin, turned out to be my destiny. Sometimes I think a greater force was at play here.

Arlene Mandell (c. 1965) and her “amulet—imbued with the promise of romance”