Waynewood Saturday Nights: The 1950's
Sandy Beach folks performed real skits written by
my mother and Aunt Mary: Courtship Through The Ages,
The Shooting of Dan McGrew, A Day At U.N.O,
in which my mother and I, dyed burnt umber,
danced, she with a drum, I with a spear. My grandmother
bowed in as Madame Pundit, sari-draped,
and my grandfather and aunt played Russian wrestlers,
padded to look muscular. They squatted and chanted:
“Oh, the hammer and the sickle,
They are never, never fickle,
They are strong and sturdy
As a drushka, a drushka.
We grow mighty with our farming
Till our muscles are alarming
And they say they find us charming
Here in Rushka, in Rushka..
Housing plans we have a-plenty,
Commissars one-million twenty.
Richly housed – one room for only ten,
We live plushka in Rushka.
If the capitalist nations
Had our leaders and our rations,
They would join in celebrations
To stay out of our Rushka.”
After the skits, a four-piece band played until midnight
and everyone danced, little kids dribbling
popsicles and teenagers cheek to cheek.
There was Dr. Cottone and Libby, together in unmarried bliss,
swirling about the floor. He was everybody’s
eye doctor and we knew they could never
marry because he was Catholic. There was Roger,
who danced with every girl as if feeling her up,
said my mother, and Walter, who didn’t live there because
he was Jewish but invited us all to his Bar Mitzvah.
Susie and Dave, in love since thirteen, dance
with her forehead drooped to his
because she was too tall for their cheeks
to fit together.
Bunny hop and conga lines
snaked through the room and out into the dark.
A square dance figure had everyone
do-se-do-ing, and youngsters spun
to the Mexican Hat Dance.
Hours slid across the lake like smooth canoes.
The band packed up and departed, floor left
slippery with spilled orange pop and melted ice cream.
Next week, another group would perform their skits.
Everyone would dance again.
Parents picked up their drowsing children,
linked hands, and walked or drove
the narrow road
home.
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