January 16, 1997

Around they glided in a grand opening of a grand march. December 21, 1996, 111 years of the Cowboy's Christmas Ball at Anson, Texas. High-topped boots, black and hand-stitched, with frock coats draped over the shoulders of ruffle-fronted shirts; red satin dresses, ankle length, sweeping across the dance floor of the Pioneer Hall to twirl to a Texas waltz. Listen now, please, to Michael Martin Murphy lead his band in "The Red River Valley."

Fifty years ago, two displaced farm boys from the Cumberland Ranges of Tennessee played on a harmonica and yodeled away on a lonely Saturday night of leaving the same valley in front of the bunkhouse at the old ranch.

How long can you go without losing such songs as "The Streets of Laredo" and "When The Work Is All Done Next Fall"? One answer is to go to the Cowboy Ball for a revival; but keep in mind, tickets have to be ordered a year in advance. Another answer might be to buy one of Mr. Murphy's tapes. But buying a tape isn't going to be the same as sitting up in the bleachers, watching daddies teaching their 10 year-old daughters to two-step, or seeing the same girls dragging a little brother out on the floor to practice. The tickets are issued in July. Rules are stated on the ticket: "No Split Skirts and No Hats on the Dance Floor." This means: Wear a dress and leave your hat in the car, as the whole hall is off-limits for toppers.

Refreshments are coffee and barbecue sandwiches served on homemade bread. No alcoholic beverages are allowed in the hall. Were there any drinkers, they must have had good control and strong breath mints. Stovepipe boots, the fashion of the northland cowboy, help keep the ankle and knee joints from buckling. But unless American distillers are using new recipes, boottops aren't going to stabilize cases of serious indisposition from over-indulging in liquid refreshments. I tried to evaluate the glint from the wives' eyes to determine whether purity was of the spirit, or from an iron hand. However, it is hard to evaluate leadership ability and degrees of domestic retaliation without insight into the full picture.

Two or three times, I had narrow escapes from a fierce kick to a fiddler's tune; and a close call or so from the backswing of a bootheel to a Cotton-Eyed Joe. The only clue I can think of why the standards of deportment ran so high is that the lady in charge of selling tickets through the Anson 

Chamber of Commerce is named Nettie. One time at Mertzon, the board hired a teacher named "Miss Nettie" to teach the sixth grade. She completely redirected a bunch of outlawed country boys' lives. Could be this "Nettie" had the same powers.

Mr. Murphy appeared five times more than the other name band musicians I've heard at dances. He had a couple engaged to be married lead off one dance. So smooth and natural the next reel was for the couples engaged to be married the coming year. When time came for the ranchers and cowboys to dance, we looked the least colorful of the whole crowd.

The hombres I'd pegged to be on standby to run "the Sixes," or perhaps wranglers to ride the Matador rough string, retired to the sidelines. I was sure no help. The boots I wear at the ranch are a disgrace to go to the post office in, much less to a cowboy ball. After the shirt makers in Taiwan began to cut western shirts with big shoulders and scrimp on the waist and tail, I had to stop wearing them to effect a modest midriff. I own a few pairs of jeans, but the legs are too short to stuff in the top of a pair of dancing slippers even though they slip down pretty far below my waistline.

The only western flavor I found was a belt buckle with my Grandfather Noelke's trail brand stamped in gold plate. The buckle lacks about four inches sticking out enough to catch a downside view. Laundries deliberately starch dress shirts so they bulge in front. Seems like the more a shirt is laundered, the more tapered it becomes.

All the next week, those old bunkhouse songs kept coming back. The two stand-in cowboys from the Tennessee mountains made a harmonica ke-wah, ke-wah out such a mournful tune. All they had for boots were brogan shoes, but that's been a long time ago ...