Scanned by Dick Chenault
Edited by Dick Chenault
A DESCRIPTION OF THE DANCES THAT CHARACTERIZED FRONTIER LIFE.
My Aunt Lou had a red petticoat. She washed it and hung it on a bush to dry. One of those steers decided that he was going to eat that petticoat, and she decided he wasn't. She grabbed it and ran. The only thing that kept him out of the house was his horns; they wouldn't go through the door. She was going to a dance at the schoolhouse. In those days, they danced till daylight, and then came home and had breakfast before going to work in the fields. Sometimes they would go to dances over on Bear Creek, at the Bear Creek School. Over there they stay all night. They don't even try to go home. They go early and they get some sleep before going home, because it's such a long way over there. All horseback.
The girls all carry their dancing dresses in a package and change after they get there. Folks bed their kids down at the dances, and there's always jokers around who switch the babies in the bed. And people have trouble finding their own kids. It's so far between places, lots of times, and you go in a spring wagon or a sleigh or something like that and you just about have to stay, just cannot make it there and visit and get back home the same day.
One Christmas when I was pretty small, my dad put straw and hot rocks at the bottom of the sleigh and covered us all up and took us to town for Christmas. We turned the calf in with the cow and put a lot of feed out for the chickens and stock and we went down to Aunt Frannie's and stayed all day Christmas. We were gone for two nights on that trip. And that was wonderful.
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Dances