Slowly time oozed toward the dance dates, first the summer dances, then those of the fall and the winter, 1966. The CYO, Catholic Youth Organization, held its dance in the parish hall at St. Ambrose’s one night and I sat in the car again with Mother when we arrived to pick up Meredith and Charlaine. The parish hall loomed in the dark, one of three long and low brick buildings with interconnecting lawns, splattered with desert plants, beneath a sky strewn with stars, the far mountains on the horizon slightly darker than the sky, and the light clouds here and there bothering the stars. Against the dark blue sky the eerie presence of the cactus, low on the horizon.
A Hispanic priest in black robes with a coat on walked between buildings when the last song echoed in the hall, his inky robes floating him in the night, his unseen heels clicking the concrete. He smiled at the line of waiting parents in their cars. A door opened and a warm flood of light cast across a small square of grass briefly as he went in, probably to his home. The dance must be over when the chaperones were leaving.
“I hope Meredith and Charlaine understand that it’s time to come home at the end of this dog gone dance and that means no dilly dallying from them. I don’t want to be hanging around out here in the blasted cold and us in the car bundled up in coats even with the heater on medium, but this car’s heater can’t keep off the cold tonight. That’s a chilly wind blowing from the northwest. I’m an Indiana girl and I certainly do know chilly, and it’s not like I want to sit here waiting and waiting in the darn night for foolish teenagers to say goodbye to each other nine hundred different ways. Why do they wear such short skirts? Goodness me. Why, her coat is longer than her skimpy dress. The last dance. Did I hear them say that just now? Sounded like it, didn’t it? I certainly hope so. Are you listening at all? Don’t fall asleep, kid. They’ll be here any minute. That’s got to be the last darn dance just now. Are they clapping? No, dagnabbit, I still hear music. I wouldn’t call this music, though, not in my book. Now that Nat King Cole—he makes music. But the whole industry is controlled by the mob and I will not give my money to them so that they can corrupt this country. Mobsters are infesting the record and radio business. Stay awake, kid. I might need you to go after Meredith. Was that a groan I heard?”
Lights in the building of the church appeared when the doors were propped open and more nuns and priests came out with the kids, laughing with kids who were more attached to the authority figures, and teens everywhere headed for their cars, hugging and kissing. Dancing and hollering at each other about private jokes, promises to call, tentative dates, and smiles all around about the weekend. The cars tore away to the main drag, cutting through the traffic without signals. The jams of cars idled in the night, far away sirens roaring down the desert streets, past palm and grass center dividers and the pink brick apartments, small homes with gravel fan drives and central palms. The roar of the tailpipes let lose in the night. Turning the main street into a drag strip for a while. People hollered between cars about where they were headed—Johnny’s Fat Boy, Bob’s Big Boy or the Burger House. Piled in the open back of a pickup truck, singing and hugging and screaming. What we saw in the headlights were the crazy antics of teenagers, cut by the light, sliced into torsos and arms, thrown about and acting stagey, singing, stomping, and whooping it up. Dust motes in the headlights. Roaring cars starting up. No room to maneuver the cars. St. Ambrose dance aftermath, night air and melee and with teens running in the cold January darkness, moonlit sidewalks and strange shadows. Why were their legs like spiders creeping against the gym? Groups huddling in short woolen coats were forming smoking circles by the trash cans, hiding the smoke behind their backs and did you stay until the last song, which was so significant and wonderful? Was it slow or fast? Thick plaid skirts, rolled at the waist to be shorter, dickey turtleneck sweaters under V-neck sweaters, Letterman jackets on girls, and fuzzy car coats.
The funny way the swarm stood around in the dark. The cold of the car and the way the headlight lit up parts of the bodies, arms, legs, and heads.
“Boy, oh boy, are these teens going nuts. I’d like the police to be here to arrest a few of them. That’s what they need. If these kids had chores they’d be more tired out by ten o’clock at night and not be able to tear about town the way they are. Put em to work in the fields. Make em pick stuff. By cracky, is that truck legal to be making so darn much noise and shaking like Billie Be Darn? Here they are. Flopsy and Mopsy.”
“Hi,” said Meredith, coming in. She wore Shalimar perfume and it came in with her, faded but still sickly sweet.
“Hi,” said Charlaine, too. Charlaine had a large, square face and a chubby body. She wore short woolen coats in the winter and she kept her black hair trimmed so that it brushed her coat collar on either side of her thick, creased neck. Her enormous eyes and large, plastic features made her a bit like a Diego Rivera painting, come to life, with eyes that rolled in exasperation or humor and ridged teeth that shone in the car lights when she laughed. She had a better complexion than Meredith and her pharmacist father made certain she had nicer clothes than anyone else in the neighborhood.
In the back seat on the way home Meredith and Charlaine muffled their voices, so that Mother while driving through the racing cars and shouting teens couldn’t hear, but I who wasn’t distracted, could grab little bits of it and know what happened.
“… line dance and wasn’t there about a hundred couples in the line? We were swooshing under the arms at the end, man, that was bitchin when we went under, wow,” said Meredith. “That was so bitchin. I want to do it again. The next dance is next month?”
“Yeah. It is.”
“Boy oh boy, these kids,” said Mother, “they think they can drive, but I could tell them different. What do they think, cutting through lanes like that and the girls flopping around in the back of an open pickup? Are they asking to get run over? I tell you, there is a general lack of sense evident here. Boy, oh boy, if their parents only knew how crazy they are acting. What are you girls whispering about back there?”
“Oh nothing,” replied Charlaine
“Was that song for the line dance ‘Hang on Sloopy?’ That song is so bitchin. Do you remember what that song was?”
“Yeah, I think it was. That was the first line dance. So you like ‘Hang on Sloopy?’ Maybe I’ll buy it for you on your birthday. My dad has it at the pharmacy. But there were a bunch of line dances,” said Charlaine. “You missed one of them when you went to the bathroom and didn’t come back.”
“I was talking with Butch, afterwards in the hall. That’s why I didn’t come.” Meredith offered as a good excuse for missing one of the line dances. Everyone considered him very attractive. “I talked to him for a long time.”
“The big dick guy? He’s bitchin’, but he has a girlfriend, you know.”
“I don’t care. The conversation was super deep, anyway.”
“Whispering is impolite, girls. What are they whispering about, kid? You listen in and tell me. See that foolish kid hanging out of the car window? He’ll catch his death. Of pneumonia. I bet his mother wouldn’t approve of that. No siree Bob. What does he mean by acting like that, the silly goose? I know a cold wind when I feel one. This one is bringing a bad winter storm, let me tell you. You can’t fool an Indiana girl from the farm. About the weather.”
“And I talked with Herb, you know. And he’s growing a moustache,” whispered Charlaine with a wink.
“Oh yeah?” replied Meredith.
“And you know what that means,” Charlaine said lewdly. “Down below quarters.”
“Sure,” said Meredith.
“I can feel it in his pants. He wants me to. During the slow dance. He wears tight jeans all the time.”
Meredith laughed and I laughed, too. “What are you girls giggling about?” Mother asked.
I got the jokes now, getting where they were going, sure. I could get it. I could dig it, actually.
That’s where I was again and again, when things were still somewhat innocence for everyone, searchin
g the night for my sister and our next door neighbor with the confusion of music and young people and I just gazing out the window for her to come to the car from another CYO dance. The sounds of kids laughing and talking in the desert night, not too cold, but you need your coat, sure. Several horns honking. Hot rods racing by and older kids with cars heading out to the places they are going to goof around at, the diners and drive-in burger joints, out in the desert where they know to go. The falls at night. Tanque Verde Falls. Hide the car from the rangers. I wasn’t going to be there. I was only going to see it second-hand and hear about later from Meredith. A discussion late at night of the various things you should know about the slow-dance, dreadful though it loomed, where to put your hands if a male, if a female, what to do if you sneeze. The way he might touch your bra. How you should go about getting your girdle off in the back seat of a car.