What Was A Barn Dance?

 

Ever been to a real barn dance? Likely not..... at least not like the ones our ancestors enjoyed. 

In an old magazine, quoting a 1909 newspaper, I found this description of just what was a real honest-to-goodness barn dance:

"The barn dance is a country cousin to the schottische, and the music must be furnished in convulsive jerks. The man shoots out with his heavy fluke, grabs the girl around the waist and she places her lily white paw on his shoulder near his wishbone. The man then kicks out with his right pedal and his partner with the left. They jump many times like they are dodging snakes, then resume the first position. They then hop, three times on one foot and then on the other, like a fellow that has stumped his toe, and the first position is taken again. The dance commences with a bounce, and the dancers never cease bouncing until the music stops of the fiddle string breaks. At the conclusion of the south house the performers get a broom and sweep up the buttons that have been shaken off during the spasms."

Wouldn't we love to watch the 1938 movie "Old Barn Dance?" A horse trader named Gene Autry (Gene Autry) arrives in Grainville with his horses and outfit prepared to put on a barn dance to attract potential horse buyers to an auction. The horse trading business has been affected lately by the increased use of tractors to replace horses for farm work. Radio station owner Sally Dawson (Joan Valerie) approaches Gene and offers him a contract to sing on a program sponsored by Thornton Farming Equipment, the area's leading manufacturer of tractors. Unconvinced that tractors could ever replace horses, Gene refuses her offer, but is still attracted to her and invites her to his barn dance that night.

Why Me?

 

This darling photo is not me but surely could be. I think I was born with gills behind my ears because I do love to be around water, especially the ocean. 

Why am I spotlighting me today? Because I'm really on a crusade to get all of us over-60 folks to write down your memories. One way to think about this is to image what do you want your great- great grandchildren to know about you??? 

I've kept notebooks and a simple journal for 40 years. With one spiral notebook, when my kids were teenagers, I wrote exactly what we did, went and ate every single day that year. Now maybe that drivel won't pique their beaks but my memories of Big Events surely will.

I tell them WHY I say I was born the Year of the Black Penny. I say WHY I lived in Japan as a five year old. I relate being the wife of a Navy nuclear submariner for eight years. I can tell them my memories of that 1963 day when Kennedy was shot. I can tell them I was with my mother-in-law watching the first men walk on the moon in 1969. I can tell them how my three teens plus one lived in an ash-surrounded cocoon in 1980 during Mt.St.Helens. I certainly will tell them how my sister-in-law called from Kansas City at 5:00am on that fateful 9-11 day (before we were up) to scream "turn on the TV, we're at war!" 

See how simple writing YOUR stories, YOUR memories can be? Hope I've tweaked your beak a bit. Tomorrow I turn 83; how old will you be tomorrow? Isn't it time you sharing your life's memories???

Mother Joseph

Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, born Esther Pariseau in 1823 in Quebec, entered the convent of the newly founded Sisters of Charity in Montreal at age twenty. In 1856, she led a group of members from her congregation to the Pacific Northwest to establish schools and healthcare to the settlers flocking to that new and remote part of the country. During the 46 years from the time she arrived in Vancouver, Washington, until she passed away in 1901 she had been instrumental in establishing 29 health care institutions, schools and orphanages in the Pacific Northwest. Though most of the original structures no longer exist, most of the institutions which she founded are still in existence, continuing the work that she envisioned more than a century ago. 

Her influence and her presence was noted in 16 places in Washington, four places in Montana, two places in Oregon, one place in Idaho and two buildings in British Columbia. She was known as a stickler for detail. For example, during the construction of Scared Heart Hospital in Spokane, Mother Joseph, then 63 years old, lived with another sister "in a rough shack next to the construction site so she could oversee the work," even climbing ladders to inspect rafters and bouncing on planks to test their support. 

She was known for successfully raising $2000 to $5000 when she went fund-raising to the mining camps whereas in the ordinary small town she could collect perhaps $18 to $20. She surely was a mover and a shaker. 

Did you know there is a statue of Mother Joseph in the Washington, D.C. capitol?