Dance, Dance, Dance

My mom cuts a rug...

Here’s an updated version of a 2019 essay about my mom and her love of dancing and how it got her in and out of trouble over the years. And if this pieces raises some unanswered questions in your mind, join the club.

And a-way we go…

I called this piece Dance, Dance, Dance because I dimly remembered there was a song by the same name, but had to resort to Google to find out who played it. Turns out, it was The Beach Boys and I have no idea why I didn’t remember that.

Now here’s a mental health test: if you start this Beach Boy video and don’t listen to the song all the way through, call 911 immediately. You have clearly lost the will to live or at least the will to have fun and should consider that a life-threatening emergency.

Despite the outfits and Mike Love’s dancing, that song still sounds great and that brings us to today’s subject:

Dancing.

Yesterday, even though it goes against my nature to let someone else get a word in edgewise, I let my 93 – soon to be 94 – year-old mother reminisce and found out she loved to dance and dancing played a big role in our Family History.

Here’s how.

Start At the Beginning

As you learned a couple posts ago, this is my maternal grandfather Cecil West and being every bit as much fun as this picture indicates, Cecil didn’t think much of my mom going out dancing, so my mom Nelda had to learn the Jitterbug by dancing with her high school friend, Eva Sue Thompson.

If that name sounds faintly familiar, here’s why:

That’s Eva Sue singing her smash hit Norman. She also had hits with Paper Tiger and Sad Movies Make Me Cry. The internet refers to her as “Sue Thompson” but my mom always calls her “Eva Sue” and my mom knows her a lot better than anyone in charge of the internet, so Eva Sue it is.

My mom’s first mention of dancing had to do with Eva Sue and learning dance steps together, so if she ever got away from Cecil the Morose Bronc Buster and had a chance to dance, she’d be ready.

In later years, my mom would become a Southern Baptist which reminds of a joke:

Question: Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up?

Answer: They don’t want anyone to think they’re dancing.

Apparently my mom didn’t care what people thought, if she had a chance to cut a rug, it would be cut.

Honesty Is Not Always the Best Policy

At some point my mom got away from Cecil and went to a dance with her cousin June West. Mom said they looked alike and since they both had the last name West, would pass themselves off as sisters. (No idea know why that’s better than being cousins and didn’t think to ask.)

Just as they walked in the door of dance hall, some “old guy” asked June to dance and June said she couldn’t, this dance was taken. My mom thought June had misunderstood the question and said: “No, it’s not; we just got here.”

Honesty is the best policy unless you’re trying to avoid dancing with some undesirable old geezer.

So a pissed-off June grabbed mom by the shoulders, steered her in front of the old guy, said, “There you go” and my mom was stuck with Dancing Methuselah all night long. When I asked my mom just how old the old guy was, she wasn’t positive, but said:

“He must’ve been thirty – but he could really dance.”

No good deed goes unpunished, but if you’re lucky you might learn a few nifty dance steps in the process.

A Man With A Plan

Move forward in time and my mom’s working as a civilian at the Sacramento Signal Depot (Wikipedia calls it the Sacramento Army Depot) and my future father is one of the officers in charge. The civilians considered the officers hot stuff.

The Hot Stuff Officers would drive around in staff cars and hang out together, but whenever they walked by, my dad would talk to my mom. When her coworkers asked how she knew him, my mom said:

“I don’t.”

Timeout For A Pretty Good Story

Apparently German POWs did some of the maintenance at the Depot and they had a big ‘P’ on their back of the coveralls so everyone knew who they were. So according to my mom there were German POWs in Sacramento, California during WWII.

One day my mom and some of her pals walked by a German POW up on a ladder, painting a building and singing along with a song on the radio. My mom doesn’t think his English was good enough to know what he was singing:

The song was Don’t Fence Me In.

Just in case you don’t remember that song, here’s Roy Rogers—The King of the Cowboys—singing it and you want to watch this because his horse Trigger is going to show more talent than about 67% of the people currently working in Hollywood:

There was a YouTube version of this song being sung by Clint Eastwood and I gotta think I made the right call because I’m guessing Trigger could do a better job carrying a tune than Clint.

Plus, Trigger can dance.

OK, Make That Two Pretty Good Stories

Apparently, some of mom’s female coworkers got in trouble for fooling around (if you know what I mean and I think that you do) with the German POWs so I asked how that was possible. They were prisoners of war; wasn’t access kinda limited?

She thought a beat, then grinned and said: “Recess?”

(I hope I’m half that quick when I’m 93. Hell, now that I think about it, I’ll settle for being 93.)

Back To The Man With A Plan

Next up, some civilian asked my mom to a dance at the “Top of the Town” in Sacramento and all the officers from the Depot showed up.

According to the ever-informative internet, “Top of the Town” was on 14th floor of the Elks Temple and had a 360-degree view of downtown Sacramento, which was probably a Big Deal in the late 1940s.

Anyway…

Even though my Future Dad stared at my Future Mom all night long (nothing creepy about that, so quit thinking it) he didn’t ask her to dance until they played the last song — Goodnight Sweetheart — and he had to cut in on her civilian date to do it.

Which strikes me as an excellent way to get your ass kicked, but apparently my dad had some balls because…

According to my mom, he tapped the civilian on the shoulder and said: “I’ll finish this dance” then told mom he’d need her name, telephone number and the office she worked in which makes him sound like James Bond and might be complete bullshit. (But my mom’s now 100 and gets to remember her life history the way she wants to remember it right up until I write her tell-all biography Nelda: Top of the Town Floozy.)

After getting that information, my Future Dad steered her over to her date and gave her back, but that was only temporary. Not long after that brief dance, my mom was transferred to my dad’s office and the rest is history, assuming you believe my mom’s stories which—let’s face it—is not a sure thing.

So it’s somewhat garbled and suspicious history, but that describes all history, so why should my mom be anymore accurate?

And here’s the lovely couple.

I’ve also heard a totally different story about how they met that includes drunken dancing on a table top—my mom, not my dad—but the above tale is my mom’s version and until future notice we’ll go with that.

Get Your Own Damn Date

After they were married and my dad became a policeman, my mom’s love of dancing got her in trouble.

My dad had a night shift and couldn’t take her to a local dance, so one of his fellow officers offered to take my mom, which my mom tells as one of her “cute” stories, but raises a shitload of questions:

• Did my dad know?

• How did the co-worker know my mom wanted to go to the dance, but my dad couldn’t take her?

• What kind of fucking-idiot goes out on the town with a fellow-police officer’s wife?

• Why would my mom say yes?

Ask my mom any question she doesn’t want to answer and all of a sudden she’s Professor Irwin Corey in high gear and if you don’t get that reference, take a gander:

And it gets even more bizarre:

The fellow officer brought his mother along which sounds really fucking weird even for an event that took place in the 1950s, but as far as my mom was concerned, a chance to dance was a chance to dance and shouldn’t be missed even if she had to dance with Howard Sprague and His Mother.

(OK, that joke was based on The Andy Griffith Show and if you never watched it, I feel for you, but watch the old ones in Black & White because after Don Knotts left the show, it sucked dicks. Also, I may have an essay based on the show so you need to do some binge-watching to get all the upcoming jokes. And right now I’m thinking I really need to start updating my references.)

So Mom and Howard and Howard’s Mother are headed for Sin City: AKA Roseville, California and the trio didn’t get far before they heard a siren and saw red lights; it was my dad pulling them over in his squad car.

He informed his coworker that in the future he could get his own damn date, my mom was taken.

(So it sounds like my dad didn’t know and my mom had some ‘splainin’ to do.)

After shooting his fellow officer and his fellow officer’s mother and burying them in a shallow grave, Dad took mom to the dance and stood there in his police uniform – he wouldn’t dance on duty – and glared at anyone who had the guts to dance with her. (And the only part I made up was the bit about shooting his fellow officer and his mother, but I’m guessing my dad wanted to do that, so it stays in because as mom has demonstrated over and over, a lie doesn’t count if it makes a story better.)

Sounds like a fun evening for everyone involved, don’t it?

Last Call

My dad died in 1960, but my mom’s love of dancing didn’t. A few years after his death, a date took my mom and a friend of hers to a dance where they were supposed to meet a guy named Jim who happened to be yet another military officer. Turned out Jim didn’t like mom’s friend, preferred mom instead and everybody switched horses in the middle of the stream.

(Jesus, what kind of funky chick-swapping circle was my mom mixed up in and since this was the early 1960s and Free Love wasn’t a thing yet, I’m actually kind of impressed.)

Now mom’s date was with her friend and mom was with Jim. When I asked my mom if her date was upset about that, she said he didn’t mind:

“He wasn’t getting anywhere with me anyway.”

Jim and my Playing-Hard-To-Get mom hit it off and he wanted to marry her, but before that could happen, Jim was sent overseas and while my mom is hazy on the details, it sounds like he was a military advisor in Vietnam. He would call the house and talk to my mom and their last conversation was cut short when my mom heard gunfire in the background and Jim said he had to go.

He never called again.

Later my sister was listening to the radio and heard his name when they listed the killed in action.

So what have we learned today?

1. My mom loved to dance and I’m pretty sure would still get up and boogie if given the right opportunity and strong medication.

2. Dance when you can because you never know when the right opportunity will be the last opportunity.

And we’ll finish this up with another Beach Boys song that describes my mom’s love life:

Next Up: Who knows? The Chiefs (my team) are on tonight and the 49ers (my brothers’ team) are on Sunday and I need to do laundry and buy my mom yet another cake and get ready to fly on Monday so hang in there and I’ll be back soon.

Or at least, sooner or later.