December 11,2010
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An Extra from the Past
Most of these “Extras” I will try and keep short and they will provide a break from my regular LILAGCS Memory Blogs. I will be writing things that come to my mind as I sit here and reminisce.
My High School years were very much fun even though sometimes they got challenging. I thought I would just list some of the things I think of as I sit here. They won’t have any significant place in the history, but they were definitely things I remember as a part of my high school years.
How to be Popular
I recall early in my high school life when I went to my mother and asked her what I could do to be “popular”. She told me I could either play the piano or dance. I could do neither one but one evening after a basketball game I went to a “sock-hop” (that was a dance on the gymnasium floor where we had to remove our shoes so as not to ruin the gym floor. They would play the latest music (beginning of Rock and Roll) and everyone that knew how to dance would get out on the floor and dance.
The girls would line up on one side of the gym and the boys on the other side so they were parallel and facing each other. Many couples where already dancing to the music being played and I noticed a couple of my male classmates were out dancing also. One of my friends from my class, Paul Laughin came over and stood beside me in between one of the dances and was trying to encourage me to go ask a girl to dance. I told him I didn’t know how to dance. Well that was the beginning of my dancing days. Paul taught me some of the basic steps in the two-step and fox-trot dances and told me to just “fake” the rest.
That was the start on my dancing that would lead me to really liking to rock and roll dancing. I told Paul, not too long ago that he was the one that got me started dancing that earned me the reputation of a good fast dancer. I really never had a specific dance step or pattern, I just danced to the beat of the music.
We would Practice Dancing
I ended up dancing with lots of my female classmates as well as others. One particular classmate that I spent a lot of time dancing with was Mary K ( Her mom was our English teacher) We discovered that we could use the excuse that we were studying our English to practice dancing in her converted garage recreation room. We would study for a while then spend the rest of the time just practicing our dancing routines to 45 records . Over time we won quite a few dance contests in high school at various dances like the Saddle Club dances at the local saddle club that we held every so often.
The Frosting on the Cake
One particular interesting event was when some of us went up to the “Roof Garden” ballroom at Arnolds Park, On Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa. They had a dance contest and we ended up in the finals against another couple that could really dance well, especially the fella. He appeared to be Asian (maybe Hawaiian) We had 3 “dance-offs” before they finally won.
The next February I was watching the Lawrence Welk television program and Mr. Welk introduced the National Rock and Roll Champions would perform. To my utter surprise, the male partner was the same fella that we had danced against in the dance contest at the Roof Garden the past fall.
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