Dance Halls in Texas
The sun is going down in the west. It is hot! It is summer time in South Texas. But it is Saturday night! The dance halls are calling. Every Saturday night, there is a dance somewhere. The year is 1948. I lived in Wilson County, 20 miles southwest of Floresville. Last week there was a dance at Three Oaks Hall. The week before there was one at Hobson. I never went to the Hobson dances. It was too far away for my brother and me to drive to in our battered, faded old gray Ford pickup truck. . But if there was a dance at Three Oaks or Hermann Sons Hall in Poth, I was going to go, no matter what. They were closer to our farm. I loved going to Hermann Sons Hall. Three Oaks was okay, but I was more familiar with the dances in Poth.
Country dances were popular in South Texas. When I was small, in the late 30’s and early 40’s, I remember going to dances at Kasper School. It was a country school with three rooms. The band would consist of a guitar player, a fiddle player and maybe a harmonica player. They cleared out the desks and put everything in one room, opened up the big folding doors between the two big class rooms and put up a portable stage, and every danced and danced, with cornmeal thrown on the floor to make the floor slick and easy to slide on. As small children we played outside and watched through the windows or went in and danced with each other. We stood outside on the porch and watched through the open windows as they dancers did the cotton-eyed joe, the waltz, two-step or polka. Before electricity came in the early forties, when the REA came through, they put up kerosene lanterns to light the place up. I loved the sound of the music and the beat of the men’s boots or heavy shoes on the wooden floors.
There have been dances over at Three Oaks since before I was born. My mother and father had their first date going to a New Years Eve dance at Three Oaks in 1931.
When I left home in 1950, I moved to San Antonio and spent quite a few Saturday nights at Fest Hall, at the Circle B, and later on at The Farmer’s Daughter. Just before I got married and even afterward, when my husband and I would go dancing with my aunts and uncle and friends, we went to Helotes to the John T. Floore’s big dance hall. The outside patio, with it large spacious concrete floor was wonderful on warm spring, summer and autumn nights. We went to see Charlie Walker, a local singer, and even got to hear a newcomer everyone was talking about. His name was Willie Nelson. A few times I had dates to the Silver Dollar Saloon in Bandera, where we danced the night away, then drove back to San Antonio to my apartment, at 2:00 in the morning.
After moving to North Texas near Ft. Worth, in 1968, we even went to a few dance halls with our grown kids, who loved the old time country western dances. Our favorite was Nine Acres Club out in Colleyville. I only went to Billy Bob’s in Ft. Worth one time. By then my dancing days were going pretty much over. But I still yearned for the good old days of going to country dances.
But this was 1948. I was 16. And I was going to the dance at Hermann Sons Hall in Poth. I hurried and helped to milk the cows. The sweat was rolling down my face and back. I had to take a bath. Well, taking a bath at our house meant filling up the big wash tub with water which was set up in the bedroom, and then scrunch myself down in it and bathe. Finally I felt clean and the breeze blew in through the window to cool me off. I
put on my white cotton peasant blouse and my big full pink printed skirt that I knew would swirl around when I spun around the dance floor. I had rolled my hair in pin curls earlier in the day and now I combed it out and my hair was soft and curly. I just hoped the humidity and heat wouldn’t make the curls droop too soon. We didn’t have hair spray back in those days, so you just had to depend on permanent waves to keep the curl. And I hadn’t had a permanent in a year. It was too expensive. But tonight my hair looked great!
I applied my bright red lipstick and slipped on my sandals and Junior and I took off in a cloud of dust for Poth. Gee, I wonder who will be there? To dance with, I meant. I knew that Crystal, Jennie Lee, Dorothy Ann and other friends would be there. But, I was thinking of the boys.
We drove up to the big dirt parking lot, already full with cars and pick-ups. As we walked in the door of the big white frame building sprawled out under the trees, I could hear the oom-pah-pah of the polka the band was playing. I smelled the strong smell of beer, coming from the bar area, and walked into the big hall. The dancers were swirling and dancing round and round the room, and I could see the walls lined with benches, people sitting there, watching the dancers. My brother took off to find his friends, and I began to walk around looking for Crystal or Jennie Lee. There was Jennie Lee dancing and laughing with Paul, her boyfriend and, oh my, there was Crystal, dancing with some boy. He was happily stepping on her feet, and she was trying to get out of the way, and acting like she was having a lot of fun. But, I knew better. I sat down on the bench and waited for the set to finish, and she saw me and walked over, smiling and thanking the tall gangly boy for the dance.
When she sat down, she smiled sweetly and said, “I just couldn’t hurt his feelings!”
I shook my head and smiled, knowing what she meant. We always seemed to be dancing with the wrong boys. The ones we wanted to dance with had other girlfriends.
Finally came the time we were waiting for, the “Paul Jones”. That was where the girls got in the center and the boys to the outside in a large circle and then the music started. We all walked around in the huge circle, in opposite directions, boys and girls, and then the whistle blew loudly, and the boy next to you grabbed you and started dancing. You never knew who you would get, but sometimes I was lucky. The boy was tall and handsome and a great dancer. I hated it when it was over, but we sat back down and waited for the music to start up with “Cotton Eyed Joe”. Now that was something we could all dance to, without a partner. That was so much fun. We danced and swayed and back stepped and front stepped for sometimes two sets, if the musicians were agreeable to doing it again. That was my favorite time.
The night wore on, and the heat in the hall was getting unbearable. Only big fans stirred the air, with the human bodies all hot and sweating, and dancing and moving. There was not much coolness in the place. The men and boys who kept going to get beer and go outside got rowdier and rowdier and every once in awhile I could hear yelling and hollering outside. Someone broke up a fight. But I very seldom went outside. I stayed inside, even during intermission. The only ones who went outside were the couples that went to their cars to “talk”. I knew better but I never had anyone to go sit in a car with.
Toward the end of the night, as I was sitting there, laughing and talking to Dorothy Ann, I could see one boy coming toward me, smiling. My heart jumped. Was he coming to ask me to dance? He didn’t say a word, he just reached out his hand to take mine and I stood up. The boy I had been wishing I could dance with all night was right there before me! We "two- stepped" around and around the dance floor, and when he put his cheek next to mine, I wanted to faint. Why couldn’t this go on all night long? All too soon the dance was over and he walked me back to the bench and smiled and walked off.
I left the dance that night, my head in the clouds. It was the best dance of my life. The clouds were beginning to build up some in the west. I could see the darkness on the horizon and a streak of lightening. A breeze was kicking up the dust in the parking lot. It was cooler as I stepped into the pickup, and my brother started it up and we drove out to the farm. We talked. I had seen him dancing one time, but he had mostly been hanging round with his friends. After all he was only 14 years old. He liked the girls, but just didn’t have the nerve yet to dance with them.
He asked ‘Did you have fun? Did you dance with anyone?”
I said, “Oh yes, I had lots of fun. And I danced a lot!’
He glanced over at me, as he shifted the gears in the pickup, and started past Schneider’s Café on the road to home, smiling, “Oh Yeah? Who did you dance with?”
“None of your business!” I said, smiling, tossing my hair, my curls drooping now down on my neck, most of them gone.
But I didn’t care. It was all worth it. It was the best ending to a good dance. I had danced with my secret crush. I may even go to Three Oaks next week. Tonight it is going to rain, and it maybe it will be cooler next week!
