***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…it was as simple as this. He had asked her, asked her quite politely although she could tell that he had liquor on his breathe, for a dance, a slow one, at the weekly USO dance held up in Portland (Maine, okay) about twenty miles from her Olde Saco home. And yes she, along with her best friend Lillian, took the rumble-tumble Greyhound bus up old ten thousand traffic light stop Route One to get there to save gas ration money and help the war effort. That weekly dance organized by those who were keeping the home fires burning in order to keep up the morale of the boys getting ready to go overseas, to go east to preparation places in order to take back Europe from the night-takers, to go west and island by island to take back the Pacific from the night-takers on that side of the world. But that night like every USO dance night such talk, such thoughts were set aside for those few hours before the ships and planes took off to their appointed destinations.

She, well, she was as patriotic as any other red-blooded American girl, young woman, and had volunteered to be one of the hostesses (and Lilian too).  And he, nothing but a country boy he from down in Appalachia, down in deep down coal slag country, Mister Peabody’s country bought and paid for by the sweat of generations of back country denizens who never left as others headed west to greener pastures. He up north for the first time, had spied her from his bashful corner, spied her all flowing black hair, sweets smiles, simply dressed for the occasion, no flash but an allure, something that struck his down to earth country ways and spoke of soul-mate (although he would have dismissed such term out of hand as too city-such words would be left to his sons to describe their love).

After fortifying himself with some store-bought liquor, he had asked for a dance and she had accepted. Something about him, about the way he held her on the dance floor, about how he despite having been a battled-tested participant in all the hard-shell Marine Pacific landings nevertheless softy held her hand for just a moment at the end of the dance, about their talk afterward about how he been sent to Portsmouth down in New Hampshire for temporary relief duty got her going, although she sensed that what was ahead for him, for them, would not be the pretty dreams of her younger girlish days, not the pretty dreams at all.

But that was later, the not pretty dreams part, that night, and for the rest of the nights before he took a plane west to take a ship to once again join in on that desperate island by island fight in the Pacific they flowered, there is no other way to express it, their burgeoning love heated up the night, they would, if he came back (and she was sure he would, he was more fatalistic) share whatever dreams came their way, together. Would share their small inexpensive dreams together …