2/20/2024 0 Comments Sock hops near meAt first we did the steps solo in order to memorize them exactly, and I welcomed that with great relief. The music was that of my parent’s generation, and I cannot recall exactly what it was, but the beat fit perfectly to the steps Mrs. My other hand would be on her back, and I would be scared to death, trying not to be too clumsy and shuffle into her feet or step on her toes, or say something dumb, and so it was with rapt attention and sweaty palms and pounding heart that I imitated the first steps of the foxtrot. I knew that I would soon have the hand of one of the girls in my hand. They too looked straight ahead at the instructor as she started to tell us about the program. There were familiar faces in my group, thank heavens, and people whose names I had learned. Would I get validated with my response, would she feel validated with what I said back to her? Would she go away thinking I was cool? Would she want to talk the next time we saw each other, or would she go try the same game with another guy? God, it was rough, this acceptance thing.Īnd so it was with just a few more heart beats per minute that I first saw the labyrinthine interior of Montillo’s Dance Studio, where separate rooms were provided for the different age groups after all, a high school student would not want to be seen in the same room as a seventh grader. There was more shyness about what was said, but there was more of an interest in saying it. Their young bodies were noticeably different from just a year before, and the looks they would give me and the content of their conversations had become different, and things were serious in a totally different vein. My interest in the girls was beginning to go beyond choosing many of them to be on my side in a volleyball game because they were so well coordinated compared to so many of us still fairly clumsy boys. So it was with wide-eyed skepticism and trepidation that I consented to my Mother’s overly enthusiastic news that we would all be learning how to dance. Playing football was a big help in getting me integrated, but there were many groups, and I was still the outsider to many of them because they all shared a past with one another, or so it seemed. There were more boys on the two seventh grade football teams at Bonham than there were students in all six grades of the little elementary school I had just left, so my eyes were wide everywhere I went, and I was alert to remember the names of so many people. I was a new guy in town with little or no history to connect me to so many students. Ironically, a significant number of other mothers had the same idea, because the classes were full and numerous to accommodate the demand. I have no idea how or why my mother found out about it, but suddenly all four of her kids were enrolled, and we were far from alone. It was located somewhere in the eleven hundred block of Texas Avenue. In the ‘50s there was a dancing school in Odessa called Montillo’s School of Dance. That sweetness and doo-wop back at the beginning. Learning from those first, awkward, shuffling steps, How I would hold the other through the nightĪnd across the years, holding on for love and dear life,įor solace and kindness, learning the dance as we go, To counter turn within the waltz, not knowing How I would shimmer and writhe, jig like a puppetĭoing the shimmy-shimmy-kokobop, or glide from turn Those other songs I would someday enter, not knowing On their faces I didn’t understand, not knowing then Not with disapproval or scorn, looked on with their eyesĭreaming, as if looking from a thousand miles away, as ifįrom over the mountain and across the sea, a look Just shuffled there, embracing, as the ManglesĪnd Penguins crooned, and the mothers looked on To the song, until you almost stopped moving, If you held their daughters as you swayed to the music,Įyes squeezed shut, holding each other, and holding on The rug rolled back in the living room, didn’t mind With your cheek–and it was ok, it was allowed,Įven the mothers standing around at the birthday party, Hug up with someone and hold them against your body,įeel their heart against yours, touch their cheek No croons, no doo-wop or slow ones where you could There’s so little sweetness in the music I hear now, Some of my junior-high memories remind me of the following poem. That year saw the advent of our introduction to the Sock-hop in the gyms of those schools throughout our years. The regular Bowie students attended classes in the morning, and the Bonham students attended in the afternoon until Bonham was finished about a month later. So my new classmates and I attended Bowie Junior High, which was on the west side of town. On the first day of school of my seventh grade year, Bonham Junior High School was not quite finished.
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