The History of Getting to 83: The Old Time Country Barn Dance

By Manny

There is nothing like an old time country barn dance.   Have you ever been to one?   Prairie fiddlers, everybody dancing!

When you live on land, your neighbors are important but you don’t see them every day… sometimes not for a month.   And we didn’t have TV.

We would have a dance for anything.   If there was a new family moving in we threw a dance, benefit dances if there were hardship, or wedding.

The women would work so hard bringing food, chocolates.  I was a single guy, so I was lucky and got a pass on cooking.

Now, most of those country dances involved liquor, and after that there was always a fight.  Who ever walked out without blood on their face was the winner.   

Many times there was no really good music, just squeaks on the violin and the guys rattling the bones!!    The best ones were when Gene De Louie came to town with his band.  Now any out of town band was great instead of the local piano hammers and folks playing the saw.  Gene would come on a long weekend and it was a big thing, everyone would show up.   You could hardly dance it was so packed.

For the adults it is the social life and for those kids, they would stay all night, sleeping in the corner.

It was the community coming together.   This is something that brought us together as a community.   I bet everyone can benefit from activities where many generations come together and celebrate.