May 24, 2001

At the end of March, the Sentimental Journey big band played for the Hangar dance at Kerrville. The theme was music of the World War II era. For the program, the 18-piece orchestra dressed in Air Force summer uniforms to play on handsome instruments from the Glen Miller band. 1940-model cars set the stage in front of the hangar. At the corner of the building, two vintage airplanes, 60 years old, supported the scene.

Sprinkled about the floor, gray-bearded veterans wore their old uniforms, displaying rank and decorations. Wives costumed in high heels, hats and veils enhanced the atmosphere. Under the spell of music and lyrics written for a generation paced by short furloughs and long terms of overseas duty, each of the couples seemed cast for a movie or short story.

The theme, as I said, began as the "Music of the World War II Era." The dance, however, became "a dance of rekindled love." Couples the morning before unable to settle the issues on the side column of the morning paper locked in embraces as torrid as the aftermath of a high school hay ride. Wives pained by the ravages of stiffened joints tilted their chins upward to stare into retired officers' eyes in heats of passion long past season. In a reverie of short courtships and hasty wartime marriages, they glided across the floor wrapped in each other's arms as if a troop train was leaving Kerrville in the morning to meet the ship going overseas.

Another distinct group of dancers, the new age swing dancers, joined the crowd. It was a group old enough to be away from home on a Saturday night but too young to buy beer. In boundless energy, the smooth cheeks swung out and into deep dips, crossing and re-crossing the dance floor to a fierce beat other dancers failed to hear.

Swing dancers also wear an interpretation of the fashions of the 1940s. Boys wore two-tone black and white shoes and dark gray snap-brimmed hats. The most dramatic of the girls' costumes was an exact replica of the poster image of a 1940s nurse, including the pert white, red-crossed cap and navy blue cape draped over her shoulders.

I moved around to different tables. Conversations went like this: "Those songs take 60 years off my life." Or "See that guy, he flew 55 missions over Europe." Or "My husband took a year getting home after the war from the Philippines. Don't let him get started on General McArthur."

At one spot, a big table of youngsters from San Antonio mingled in expected poses of girls sitting on boys' laps to the unexpected of a girl reading a textbook. The difference in ages between the "vets" and the "swingers" must have been 50 years. Each age group sat apart, amazed, I'm sure, at the other group's energy.

Twice, maybe three times, ghosts of the past flashed by studying the kids' faces. One old song, I Can't Get Started With You, set off long-ago memories. A dream returned of a raven-haired beauty, dressed in a white evening gown perfumed by all the sweetness of a gardenia corsage, standing on the floor of a hotel ballroom, holding up her arms to a red-headed country boy so shy he danced stilted-legged as a sandhill crane. (Most of my early dancing was in the lottery style dance, "The Paul Jones." I was 23 years old before I had the nerve to ask a strange girl to dance.)

Stricken by Hoagie Carmicheal's Stardust, a girl's laugh brought back a shot of a long-ago college dance. The notes of this Stardust melody were at first thought to be impossible to play by musicians of the day. But on that fateful night even the soft cheeks became subdued by the trumpeter's deep plea for love as Mr. Carmicheal's ballad once again brought the dancers under an amorous spell.

About 11 o'clock, the heroes and smart alec kids became tiresome. Only war stories I had to tell were of shining about a hundred pair of horse soldiers' boots the time the calvary camped on Spring Creek, and when my Cub Scout pack gathered waste paper one winter for the cause. The politest of company isn't interested in shoeshine boy and rag picker's stories.

Too, the kids were taking up too much space showing off and spinning like whirling dervishes. The gushy stuff by the husbands and wives was also beginning to wear on my nerves. If they felt like clutching each other and giving off those adoring looks on the floor, they needed to save that mush for their 75th wedding anniversary photographs.

The next day I was wishing I could find an emergency room to treat the "charley horses" in my hind legs. The good part of recovery, however, was driving along tapping a dance song on the steering wheel, wondering whether a song will ever be written more romantic than a Stardust melody.

May 24, 2001