Square Dancing

My folks went to square dances when I was a child. They are for four couples, or eight dancers in total, arranged in a square, with one couple on each side, facing the middle of the square. After you learned how to do an “allemande left,” “do si do,” “promenade,” “right and left grand,” and a lot more calls, the caller could mix them up however he wanted. Dancers had to listen and be quick to react.

Mom made her square dance dress from a crinkled cotton, with silver rickrack and a decorative tape with silver and gold threads. I wish I had a photo of her wearing it. But Dad was a WWII pilot, with hundreds of hours in noisy cockpits. They eventually gave it up because he couldn’t hear the tricky calls to be able to keep up with the rest of their square.

A few square dance lessons were part of Ruth Sellers’ music curriculum when we were in grade school at Dexter.

About the time I was a freshman in high school, late 1950s, small towns held square dances for teens. I made my own dress, pink gingham with decorative tape of pink and silver. Sis Gloria’s (at left) was like it only in blue gingham. We wore plenty of stiff petticoats under the skirts and it looks like we both wore moccasins to dance in.

Sis Gloria, Johnny Jones doing an allemande right with me.Some of the dances were held in Winterset, some in Menlo, and I remember one at the rural school near the Penn Center church where voting was held.

One of the most fun things we’ve watched are the Farmall Promenade Square Dancing Tractors when they were at the Iowa State Fair one year. The drivers were actual farmers from the tiny town of Nemaha, Iowa.