***Put Your Mother’s Dancing Slippers On

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

 

In The Still Of The Night  came wafting through the halls from another ballroom as Sally Madigan began to sit down at her table after having danced to her favorite dance, and almost given her name naturally so, Mustang Sally.  Strange juxtaposition, strange times she thought to herself at this her first college Freshman Mixer. Just a bunch of years ago, a bunch of childhood 1950s years ago, she would do her own swoon, almost swelling to tears, just like her mother, sweet mother, Delores, when that deep bass voice of Vaughn Monroe came over WJDA, the local radio station in Clintondale that feature songs of the 1940s, the war-torn and separated 1940s, her mother’s time, and surely her father’s time too. And now it just sounded, well, old-fashioned, old hat, and old fogy. Hell, now the be-bop rock Elvis 1950s that she craved sounded that way too. But that is a story for another time, a time of first time boy-findings and finding out about being a girl.

Strange that just that song, and now what sounded like the strains of Sentimental Journey starting up were in in the air, heard more clearly now that the Lazy Crazy and the Rocking Ramrods were taking a break after finishing that last set with as sweat-poring, handkerchief wet rendition of Sally. Strange since only a couple of weeks ago as Sally packed up her belongings from her room so that her younger sister, Meg, could move up in the Madigan girls' room pecking order and move in to her room she had flashed back to that same 1940s time. She was packing her belongings, sorting out what she was taking to State University and what she was storing, such as her other valuables and mementos like Timmy the Bear that just could not be parted with, down in the cellar.

In the cellar she had come across her mother’s wrapped in seven layers of plastic dancing slippers, or what was labeled as such by her label-happy mother. And a few Brownie-camera taken photographs, faded brown now, of her younger days mother, escorted by various beaus, some in uniform others not. But no pictures of her mother with her father, none. And every picture had a note written in fountain pen, or what looked like fountain pen ink, thicker and more squiggly than Bics, that read something like this one- “to Delores Taylor, the rose of the Class of 1943 and the best slow dancer around. Love and kisses, Zack.”

Those cellar finds had gotten Sally thinking just then about what those references meant then as Caldonia came be-bopping through those halls and that distinctive Woody Herman flute reached for the high white note. Funny, she found herself toe-tapping to that sound, as were others around her, even though everybody agreed, agreed totally, that that was nothing but mothers and fathers music when she mentioned the name of the song. And Sally was thinking hard too about the fact that her mother never danced, never mentioned dancing, and never mentioned any of the facts behind all that WJDA music that had practically mesmerized her in the 1950s.

 

And if that was true of her mother then it was ten times more true about her father, Jim, who for the past several years had been a blur in her life, both because he did not understand how in the world he had produced five girls and no boys and, frankly, he did not understand the modern girl, the girl who came of age around 1960s unlike her mother’s 1930a upbringing. Girls who called up and made dates with guys instead of the other way around. Girls who paid their own way on a date and thought nothing of it. Stuff like that. The sex stuff was well beyond him and moreover was not a fit subject for discussion in the confines of the Madigan household. Sally chuckled as she thought it was for the best that he didn’t know, and that he didn’t inquire. Jesus, he would flip out. Truth to tell, Sally admitted that her father repeatedly emphasized that he loved them all dearly when pushed on the subject. Lately though he had taken to spending more time with his old-time war buddy cronies and some younger guys as Timmy’s Irish Pub over near the softball field in North Clintondale. All she knew about those times, those World War II times of her father’s youth that he and his buddies cut up torches about whenever any of them came over to play cards, was that Jim had a fist full of medals on a uniform that was also laid out in seven layers of plastic down in the cellar, labeled as such, and that was it.

Sally mentioned that fact to her escort, yes, escort, not boyfriend, okay, Johnny Rizzo, a fellow freshmen she had met her first day at State at orientation and whom she immediately liked. She had invited him to this mixer and he accepted. He noted that his own parents never talked about those war days, although they did not play the old-timey music so maybe they just wanted to forget. That opinion was shared, mostly, by the other three couples at the table, at least between the cooings being made by those couples. And as When My Man Comes Home started to get competition from Lazy Crazy warming up to the Kingmen’s Louey, Louey Sally was determined to fill in the lost war years. Just then Johnny asked her to dance, and as her feet were feeling too hot she slipped off her own dancing slippers before heading to the dance floor.

Note: Sally did find out, or partially found out, what happened back in those war days and to make a long story short, In The Still Of The Night was the “their” song for Delores and Zack, Zack Smith. Zack was killed, like too many boys, at Anzio (Italy) and Delores had married Jim Madigan, war hero and alive, on the “rebound.” Jim never said anything about it, that was Jim’s way, but he never danced with Delores either.