JUKE BOX SATURDAY NIGHT

Jukeboxes provided the music to which I danced my teen nights away. Here's a  recollection of those torrid dance steps I still perform (in my dreams). 02/20/2016

                                               JUKEBOX SATURDAY NIGHT

I believe that people of my generation danced more frequently as teenagers than did our children and grandchildren. My dancing career began in earnest during 1942 while a sophomore attending A. J. Demarest high school. Its gym became a ballroom after every basketball game. Dances were held every Wednesday at the Our Lady of Grace grade school gymnasium in Hoboken and every Saturday night at St. Michael's high school gymnasium in Union City. There were similar venues in Jersey City. I could dance virtually every night of the week.

This is the school. At the far corner stands the church, identified as an historical building by the State of New Jersey. My dance emporium has vanished. 

The Demarest building remains, but a new school, Hoboken High, replaced it.

Jukeboxes provided the music at all these places. A typical recorded song spinning at 79 rpm lasted three minutes, short enough to allow good dancers to endure the bad ones. Everyone danced. There were no wallflowers. Over time, some couples gravitated toward each other. You hoped to dance the last one with your sweetheart, current or prospective. Afterwards, many of us would stop off at the local ice cream parlor or pizzeria joint. Homework?  Who had time for that?

The Lindy Hop, or Jitterbug, topped the dance charts in my crowd. No one danced the Fox Trot. In my circle, we danced the Montclair. It featured long, slow, smooth steps, and couples would hold each other cheek-to-cheek and other regions while gliding toward heaven. For very fast tempo songs, we would dance the Peabody, which also featured long gliding steps taken at a pace closer to running. Once having mastered it, this dance became my favorite.

My brother could dance every style, even the Fox Trot. He taught me to place the tip of my right hand middle finger on the girl’s spine, at the waist. By exerting a slight pressure in this spot, I could control my partner’s steps. It worked, most of the time.

My sister rivaled my brother when it came to dancing and regretted she did not pursue this as a career field. She taught me how to dance the Shag. Here are the steps: Hop twice on the left foot, twice on the right, then once on the left and once on the right. This constant jumping up and down continued at a very fast pace until the dance ended or your feet fell off. Happily, this dance craze faded before my time. I always preferred horizontal dance steps to vertical ones. I deem jumping up and down to be a sport, not a dance. Ergo, me no Polka.

During my brief tour of military duty, it surprised me to discover that girls in Texas, Illinois, Missouri and Virginia danced differently than the girls from New Jersey. They were not hip, in my opinion. They were provincial. It never occurred to me that I might be the one completely out of step.

My senior citizen’s dream is to learn the Fox Trot, the Waltz, and those Latin tempo dances which escaped my notice during my teen years. This should prepare me to dance the nights away on romantic cruise trips around the world with all those foreign girls from St. Louis and beyond.

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