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WPA - Works Project AdministrationAmerican Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940 River Town Life W9669 Text of Interview (Unedited) Federal Writers'
Project There were only two of us (dance callers) on the river in the nineties who could call the ?lancers? or changes. I did quite a bit of it?just about every Saturday night. Where were a number of different calls and I will have to do a lot of tall remembering. I used to call for what we called the ?whorehouse dance? in those days. It was a waltz?something like the shimmy nowadays. [When?] I was twelve years old I went to work in a logging camp greasing skids behind a bull team. I remember the fellows used to send me for foolish things if they could, but sometimes I was wise. Like when they sent me into town for a meat-augur. That was at about two o'clock in the afternoon, so I just took the rest of the day off and let them think I was hunting. But I bit all right when I was sent after a ?cross-haul??that's where two skidroads come together and cross each other. Then I went to work in a sawmill and sawed ties for the A & C road, from Goble to Astoria. I also worked an the grade driving mules for that outfit...and lice! I certainly got lousy in one of those road camps. But about those dance calls, there was one call went like this: 2 First couple lead to right, Birdie in the cage... Three hands 'round... Birdie hop out, crow hop in, Three hands 'round. You say that to the first couple while they go through the motions, then lead on to the next couple until all four couples had got through. Then there was another quadrille change that went like this: Honors to the right, Honors to the left, Swing left hand lady, And all promenade. This one was sung while the first was shouted or chanted. Every other dance was a quadrille in those days. The only dances we had were the quadrille, round dance, Schottische, and polka. In '98 it was the vogue to wear high collars of linen or celluloid. They say the Weeses came out here with only a celluloid collar among them, but they are certainly well fixed now, from money they made in the logging business. For music at the dances, there was generally a couple of violins. Sometimes there was an organ, if anybody in the neighborhood owned one and they could borrow it. They played the ordinary popular music of those days. I remember once another lad and myself went down to a hopyard dance at Olequa where a bunch of Indians had got together. Well, they asked us to call for them, but I wouldn't do it. This friend of mine stepped up and said, ?All right, I'll call you a dance,? and he started out: 3 ?Your bucks in the middle, Four squaws outside... The remainder of the rhyme is unprintable but was in terms clearly understood by the Indians. Boy, we lit out of there right now, with that whole band of Indians after us. They were plenty mad. I used to fish down the river near Pillar Rock, Washington, and I remember once they had an Indian funeral. In all that district they could only find one white man who could read enough to read something out of the Bible, and it wasn't me. I didn't learn anything until I taught it to myself after I was twenty-one. They had lots of camp meetings those days, too. After the preaching, there would be a dance, and this usually broke up in picked fights?no gang stuff, it was man to man. It was what passed for fun at that time. Form D Extra Comment Federal Writers' Project Name and address of informant Mr. Joseph Brough
Treves Hotel, Portland |