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.