An Old Coot remembers the
Friday night dances at West Junior High.
It was Friday night,
September, 1954. I was a freshman at West Junior High School in Binghamton, NY,
having spent my elementary school years on the south side at Longfellow
Elementary (PS-13) on Pennsylvania Ave. I had a date for the dance, sort of.
With a west side girl, Margaret Kavanaugh. I was just shy of 12 years old,
breaking into the dating scene now that I was in a new school with new girls.
None of us would date a girl from PS-13; we grew up with them and they were
like sisters to us. So, there I was, waiting for Peggy at the gym door, dressed
in the uniform of the day – tan khakis, white bucks and a blue oxford cloth,
button-down collar shirt. I had an extra quarter in my pocket to pay the entry
fee for my “date.”
Those Friday night dances
were the cornerstone of our dating world. Hosted by Coach Holmes and his wife.
The lights were down low as 45 speed records emitted rock and roll songs
throughout the high-ceilinged gymnasium. Boys were clumped on one side of the
room, girls on the other. A few hip couples jitterbugged in the middle.
The clumps eventually broke
apart, as brave boys started venturing to the girl’s side of the room. Some
kids knew what they were doing on the dance floor, having learned the fox trot
and the box step from Mrs. Quillman at her School of Dance in the Monday
Afternoon Club. The rest of us stumbled awkwardly amid yelps from the girls
whose toes we stepped on. Fred Astaire we were not!
We didn’t have cell phones
or social media back then, yet communication ran rampant, secrets were revealed
in the adjacent boy’s and girl’s locker rooms – “Stu likes Betty” – “Steve and
Donna broke up.” Friends (envoys) were sent out with relationship probes,
“Johnny likes Brenda, Does Brenda like Johnny?” If the answer was yes, then
they were going steady. At least for the next hour or so. This was a pre-teen, boy-girl
relationship nursery school. Every so often Coach Holmes announced that the
next dance was a lady’s choice. That gesture was much more effective than sending
scouts from the locker room to find out if Nancy liked David.
Every month or so, the
record player was turned off while Ted Urda and his band took center stage and played
a few numbers. He wore black clothes and had long hair, the original Fonzie,
long before Henry Winkler showed up on Happy Days.
By the time we finished
ninth grade and entered high school, we were experienced dating machines. Oh
sure, still clumsy Martians, but working hard to understand how to deal with those
creatures from Venus. Every dance came to a close when “Good Night Sweetheart
Goodnight” was played. You didn’t want to be on the sidelines at that point.
After the dance, we ambled out of the building. There wasn’t a line of cars out
front to pick us up. It was the 50’s. Kids had more freedom and less parenting.
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