It is good to see the return of ballroom dancing in shows like Dancing With The Stars. But the dancing they do on screen really doesn’t represent what most of us actually did in real life. But it is fun to think we could and to imagine that we just might have been able to dance like that when we were in our prime.

When I was in the 7th and 8th grades, I was fortunate enough to be able to take ballroom dancing in a small class of youth taught by an extremely good instructor. She had us doing the tango, rhumba, samba and waltz in no time – but we could never begin to compete with the pros on tv.

In school we learned a lot of folk dances which I really enjoyed but I never had much opportunity to use those steps outside of a school setting.

Back then, everyone seemed to want to dance. Of course, as a model, we had all of those movies made of the war in which the main characters seemed to dance as much as defend the country. When I joined the Navy I just knew I would spend much of my time singing and dancing.

The early dance instruction came in handy in high school. We had all of the usual dances in high school – proms, homecoming, DeMolay and Jobs Daughters dances at the Masonic Hall or at the Yacht or Country Club. We couldn’t get enough dancing and even held impromptu dances at night on vacant tennis courts with music from our car radios.

The movie Grease, that was supposed to represent the 50′s youth, came close, but like everything on the big screen, did not get it quite right. But it was close.

The best part of dancing in the early 1950′s for me was dancing to the live bands. Growing up in Klamath Falls I did not realize until later that our little town was the usual stop over for touring bands playing in San Francisco and Portland. During the War, we had a Naval Air Station, a Marine Hospital and an USO so I suppose stopping there to entertain was sort of a habit.

Many of the western bands, including the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Lefty Frizzell, Hank Thompson and many others played at the Klamath Falls Armory or in one of the surrounding farm and ranch communities like Malin, Oregon and Doris, California.

Then the Big Bands started their revival. That is when the dancing craze really hit! We had The Dorsey Brothers, Duke Ellington, Harry James, Sauter and Finegan and The Glenn Miller Orchestra – every big band that was trying to make a come back, stop and play in our town.

One summer when they were touring I was working for a contract hay hauler – bucking hay and driving truck when I was 16. We had a big band in on Wednesday, Saturday and the next week too. Getting up at 4 am to head to the hay fields I was pooped, buy it didn’t stop the dancing.

Duke Ellington was in town on his birthday one year and they brought out a huge cake that was shared with everyone. They also held a dance contest and I partnered up with one of the girls that took ballroom lessons with me. We didn’t win, but we did manage to be in the last few dancing.

When I was in the Navy and away from home for the first time, I mentioned dancing to the big bands and the guys were sort of skeptical. They had not been able to do that but I grew up thinking everyone did.

When I was in the 5th grade, there was a boy in our class named Claude. He was the biggest guy in school and a good ball player but mentally slow and from a really poor family. As I recall Claude equaled the the state high school shot put record when he was still in grade school. Anyway, Claude could really hit a baseball and everyone wanted him to play but he did not have a glove and had no way to get one.

Well, I decided that a few of us could chip in what we had and buy him a glove. I felt Jack would come up with the rest. The glove we settled on was about $20.00, several days pay at that time, and one of my friends and I went to Jack’s Place and told him our idea and asked if he would help us buy the glove.

He was not an easy touch and questioned us about why we needed the money and why he should help buy a ball glove for someone he didn’t even know. He wanted to make sure we put in all of the money we had so we were also contributing. In the end he agreed to make up the difference even though we could only come up with a of couple dollars ourselves.

Jack did not like to see anyone picked on or bullied. He never started an argument or fight but did not hesitate to jump in and try to stop one. One day when we were walking down the street in town we came upon two children. A girl about 8 or 9 years old was yelling at a smaller boy striking him and telling him to get home. Jack told her to stop that immediately.

She said the boy was her brother and that her mother had told her to find him and get him home. Jack told her that was no excuse to beat up on him, that he was much smaller than she was and she shouldn’t be doing that.

Funny how some of the things you learn in your youth stick with you. I don’t know why I remember these instances but they must have been important in making me who I am.

Jack was not a refined type of guy. He always wore a suit, tie and hat but he did not seem at all polished. Looking back, I think he was very introspective and uncomfortable around people because he was not sure of acceptance.

In the late 1930′s and through the second world war, he was a partner in the Pastime tavern, pool hall and gaming room in Klamath Falls. Oregon was “dry” during those years and you could not buy hard liquor by the drink. So Jack boot-legged liquor from Doris, California, just a few miles away. He then rented rooms in the Willard Hotel and ran poker games there supplying players with liquor.

This activity was known by the chief of police (Orville Hamilton), mayor and politicians up in the Oregon State capitol. Some were patrons and others were just happy to take payoffs to look the other way. Until Oregon repealed the ban on liquor by the shot sales, we had bottles of all kinds of booze in closets, under beds, in the attic and elsewhere.

Jack had been married before and as a good catholic could not get a divorce recognized by the church so was not in good standing after he married my mother. According to the church, he was living in sin. But the priests were always happy to accept his donations along with a little shot from his bottle supply.

I never did understand that.

After selling his partnership in the Pastime, Jack bought his own tavern, Jack’s Place, and ran card games there. It was right next to the armory and a good location for all of the activities held there. He never made a lot of money on the bar but he was an excellent card player.

All of the forgoing is really just to set the stage. You might think Jack tended to be hard to get along with but he wasn’t. He was honest and tried his best to treat everyone fair.

I was with him one day when he parked across from the Pastime and left me in the car for awhile. When he came out, he gave me some money and laughed about what he had just done. When he went in the Pastime, he saw several “house men” (people employed by the business) cleaning up on an unsuspecting player.

Jack asked the fellow how much he had lost. He then took a hand in the game and proceeded to teach the house men how to play. After he had won a little more than the man had lost, he gave him the money plus a little and told him he had been set up by the other players. He suggested he not play anymore unless he was sure who he was playing with.

He could have kept the winnings. He was entitled to them but he felt sorry for the player who he said had a family and really could not afford to lose the money.

- To be continued in part 2 -

Yesterday the nation celebrated Memorial Day. The day when we pay our respects to and remember the sacrifices of all of those men and women who have given their lives to keep America a free country.

Unfortunately, many of our citizens who were born after World War II have no appreciation of those sacrifices and choose to focus on the stumbles and mistakes of the United States instead of the successes. They seem to think that we live in one of the worst countries in the world. I’ve been in other countries and believe me, none compares with the United States.

A new memorial flag was flown yesterday here in Forest Grove. It is large, 30′ X 60′ atop a 120′ flag pole. It is beautiful but many people complained that it was vulgar and excessive. How can any show of patriotism be excessive?

Even as a younster I can remember getting choked up seeing the flags waving along the street where volunteers had placed them on the parade routes.

Souza’s Stars And Stripes Forever can still cloud my vision. Who can remain sitting when the National Anthem is played or sung?

We fly our small 3′ X 5′ American flag on the front of our home on holidays and also have two other flags that we don’t fly. They were flown over the nation’s capitol building and mean too much to me to put out in the weather.  Crazy, I know. A flag is meant for display, not for hiding in the closet!

This sort fo reminds me of my grandmother Zeiler. Mom and here sisters often sent her new linens at Christmas and other occasions. I noticed these in one of her dresser drawers one summer and asked why she never used them and she said they were too nice to use. I guess I can start to understand that a little now.

I served in the Navy in the 1950′s on the USS Holmes County (LST-836) which was home-based in San Diego. We made several trips to Japan, China and the Phillipines with many stops in between. Visiting foreign countries was a great experience but everyone was glad to get home again to the good old US of A. We returned one time from Japan to the Oakland shipyards for an overhaul and when we passed under the Golden Gate there wasn’t a dry eye on anyone on the weather decks.

Ask anyone who served in the military and I doubt if anyone would say the new Forest Grove flag is too big.

I know that patriotism is not totally dead and that there are many people who appreciate the sacrifices made by current as well as past service personnel. Several weeks ago I was in a store and a woman in her 40′s came up behind me and said “Thank you for serving”.

I had to stop and ask her what she had said because I wasn’t sure what she meant. She said she wanted to thank me for serving in the Navy. It was then that the light dawned. I was wearing my American Legion ball cap with a strap cover in back that said “U.S. Navy”.

Her show of honest “thanks” was wonderful to hear and made me realize that this is still the greatest country on earth even if some of our citizens feel we get carried away with the size of our flags.

So often we learn to strike out at or put down the ideas and people we come in contact with for no real reason at all. We just do it. There is a song from South Pacific that contains the lyrics “you’ve got to be taught to hate and fear”.

How true.

I was fortunate in that I had some early training that was just the opposite and helped my learn to accept other people and other situations as they are.  We do not need to change everyone into a clone of who we are or reject anyone who is not like us.

We all have our individual roles and places in life and are all unique. That is the way God made us. We need to learn more to accept and not condemn.  Help and not hinder or harm.

Jack taught me an early lesson in not harming that which did not harm you.

He was a sheppard in his early years and was herding sheep along the Oregon California border. One sunny afternoon he he laid down to take a nap and rest a bit.

When he awoke sometime later he found a rattle snake curled up with him also enjoying a sunny nap. Jack laid there for a long time not moving. Finally, the snake crawled off a ways and Jack got up and moved away to give the snake plenty of room to leave.

He always kept a weapon to protect the sheep from from coyotes and could easily have killed that snake but he didn’t. He let it crawl off unharmed.

When I asked why he did that, he said,”The snake could have bit me anytime when I was asleep and didn’t. If it didn’t hurt me, why should I hurt it?”

There is a lesson there for all of us.