Senior Citizens Dance story

Senior Citizens’ Dances

Stir New Life in Erath County

By Jeff Clark

I thought I’d warn you.

There’s a movement afoot.

Senior citizens are meeting without supervision all over these parts, dancing with each other, carrying on outside the public eye until all hours of the night.

Sometimes as late as 9 p.m.

Senior citizen dances are being held in DeLeon, Stephenville, Early, Desdemona, Weatherford, Springtown, Cleburne, Granbury and many other places. If you’re picturing helpless rest home patients waiting out their final days, you’ve got it wrong.

            I’ve known Desdemona’s Shorty Fox for some time. He initiated my current wife and me into our first senior dance three years ago. He’s 87.

We meet Shorty at the Stephenville Senior Citizens Center, just off the square. You pay $5 to get in, double if you’ve brought a date.

            Sign in here. Y’all have fun.

            Before I even hit the dance hall, I’m pointedly informed that tonight’s band, James and Dorothy Glenn’s Cowboy Country Productions is great, I’ll like them a lot, but the dance floor is, well, they’re not real proud of this composition tile floor in Stephenville. “Y’all need to go to DeLeon Monday night. They’ve got a great floor there.”

The band’s warming up, seasoned pros in their starched white shirts, deep violet kerchiefs and black cowboy hats. Vintage country music fills the hall. James Glenn plays bass guitar, Mike Caperton drums, Teddy Driskill lead guitar, Ray Austin steel guitar, and Johnny Johnson vocals & rhythm guitar.

Couples ranging from 16 to well nigh 100 fill the dance floor under florescent lights and ceiling fans. If you’re 65, you’ll swim in the young end of this pond.

The seating along the walls is like in church. The people from the Cowboy Church, they’re against the far wall. The folks from DeLeon are back over here to my right. I’m not sure what camp I’m sitting in.

“How’ve y’all been?”

Dress ranges from garage sale to Dancing with the Stars. Most sport proud cowboy hats, polished boots, saucer-sized belt buckles and crisp-starched collars. Shorty takes my wife and heads out into the fray. I see Texas Swing, then Two Step. I hear gossiping and catching up about grandkids.

            Shorty and my wife return after a few tunes. He points down at the floor. “They need to remember who held this town together back in the Depression.”

            These folks take their dance floors seriously.

One man I pegged for mid-70s, turns out to be 99-year-old Raymond Carpenter. He’ll be 100 on May 21. They’re planning a big to-do that night. Carpenter’s lived in Erath County since 1912, once owning a hardware store on the square a block from here. Folks around his table nod as he banters, this man’s soft voice a tune they’ll never forget.

The band calls a Chair Dance. Couples dance round the floor in a circle. Once they pass this metal folding chair, they change partners. Suddenly the gum-smacking teenage knockout leaves her hunk-ish beau and finds herself dancing with a stately gentleman four times her age. The solidly-built thirty-something hoss wearing the white hat links arms with delighted frosted hair older ladies each time he completes the circle.

They are giggling school girls again.

One couple at least in their seventies holds onto each other for dear life – slowly rocking left to right like a pendulum, transfixed in their own little world. They’re seeing a loving lifetime lived together in the reflection of each other’s eyes.

A waltz begins. The whole floor moves in an up-two-three, down-two-three that would’ve made Hank Williams proud.

Sitting next to me as I scribble this down, a quiet couple holds hands, they only able to watch from the sidelines now. Their eyes sparkle bright as they dance long graceful circuits in their mind, still in this game together.

The band calls out to the crowd that it’s Jack’s birthday. “How are old ya, Jack?” the band asks.

“Thirty-nine and holding.”

Another dance whose name I miss begins…couples change partners after every few bars, progressive for a town like Stephenville. Some feet slide forward gracefully along this much-maligned floor, some lurch awkwardly left-stop-pause-then-right to their next station.

Men walk bravely over to lovely ladies pretending not to notice, hold out two hands and invite their next partner to dance.

I see no one turned down all night.

One man next to me dances three bars then sits back down, never moving more than twelve feet from his chair. He’s 93-year-old Raymond George. “I’m going to dance a bit. Be careful, when I come back I might accidentally sit on you.” A noble, happy gentleman, he later leaves for home pushing his wheeled walker.

I’m proud to know him.

            Shorty had a heart attack not too long ago. His doctor said that even if he could only dance a couple of songs, he needed to get out there and do it.

Shorty didn’t have to be told twice.

I see a sweet animated lady with early Alzheimer’s, brought here by her daughter. They dance together, holding each other’s two hands. The lady’s as happy as can be, clapping with delight, talking to friends between songs.

Smiling so bright.

            The band leader tells me later, “I like playing seniors dances better than the clubs I’ve played for 40 years. These seniors get up and start dancing the second you start playing. At clubs, people have to get drunk first. By the time they start dancing, you’ve already played your best stuff.” He’s a story teller who I enjoy. He adds, “It’s nice to not play behind chicken wire anymore.”

            Sweep, slow – quick, quick. Russ and Shirley Johnson tear up the floor with practiced poise. They’ve been at it for awhile. They’re having fun. It’s no harder than that. My wife and I get ready to leave, talk to a few, say three or four goodbyes, promise we’ll go to DeLeon.

            “Y’all be careful going home.”

            Monday night DeLeon’s City Hall is lit bright. The street is packed with shiny pickup trucks and four-door sedans. We’ve come to see the floor.

            It’s 7 p.m. straight up, the time this dance begins. Everybody’s already here but us.

There’s no time to waste.

I open the front door and hear the steel guitar fueled lyric, “When she does me right, she does you wrong” waft past.

I have to smile.

The buff wood planked floor is worn nice and smooth. The crowd here numbers 99 when we sign in.

The beloved floor is packed.

The Burnin’ Daylight band’s members Paul Dominguez (Drums), Jim Keeney (steel guitar & singer), Wallace Reid (rhythm guitar & singer) and Joe Daniel (bass guitar & singer) blaze through tune after tune.

Shorty steals my wife away for a dance. A high-dollar couple blows past twirling and scattering a wake behind them. The band breaks betweens songs, so all can catch their breath.

Though I can’t put numbers to it, there are married couples here, there are unmarried widow and widower friends here and folks that showed up by themselves. I hear one man ask a potential dance partner, “Are you hitched or just carrying on?”

John and Janet Lilley dance better than most. “We learned to dance in prison,” he tells me straight-faced. Turns out Janet was a psychiatrist employed by the prison. The prison offered a dance class and the Lilleys signed up (neither were inmates). The Lilleys dance somewhere three times a week and have for 17 years.

Prentice “Pinkie” and Billie Baker of Granbury danced this circuit for 12 good years. Pinkie passed away. He was Bob Wills’ cousin and a Texas Swing master. Tonight Billie’s here with Tommy. He’s Billie’s best friend’s boyfriend, but the friend can’t make it here on Monday nights.

Don Broome is ruggedly handsome (my wife’s impression) wearing a brown western shirt, blue jeans and majestic white hair. He dances in the big leagues and knows it. “Eat your heart out, partner,” erupting as he passes one of his buddies in a furious fit of Two Step. Broome learned to dance his high dollar moves at beer joints, been going his whole life. This man still rides a motorcycle, works the oil fields. His wife passed away five years ago.

His dance partner this night taught him all the fancy steps, he tells me half-serious. She’s a butt wiggler, he confides.

I ask several men if they recruit based on dancing ability or good looks. Shorty smiles eyeing one lovely across the dance floor. “That woman’s bound to be a good dancer.”

I ask if fights ever break out, among all this struggle to land the perfect partner. No one’s ever seen it that I talked to, though the no alcohol, no smoking, no profanity worldview of the place probably dampens that fire.

 Shorty remembers taking his late wife Almarie to a country dance at his uncle’s house, north of Olden in 1947. They were true loves, the two of them. They stopped going to dances when their kids were born and never started back. They agreed that when one of them passed on, the other wouldn’t sit home and be sad.

Shorty’s been boot scooting in DeLeon 20 years exactly.

Jack White started dancing again five years ago. His moves are more refined than most of his competition. White’s doctor advised that he needed to exercise 20,000 steps a day. Well, he told me, he’d have to be out walking his dog all day long to rack up that kind of mileage. White wore a pedometer to a dance. He traveled 19,000 steps that night. “Why stay at home, grieve and feel sorry for yourself?”

During the break everyone makes a beeline to tables laden with cakes and snacks. Folks pitch in. The third Monday each month they have a meal, bring their own dishes to share.

It’s getting late. We start shaking hands, making plans for next time. A stray double-three word lyric catches my ear.

“Storms never last, do they baby?”

They don’t indeed.

Least not in Erath County.