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would be seven or eight years from now, when the first wave of women’s libbers started burning their
bras and demonstrating for full reproductive rights. Not to mention wearing tee-shirts that said
things like I AM NOT PROPERTY and A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A
BICYCLE.
The night’s DJ and master of ceremonies was Donald Bellingham, a sophomore. He arrived with a
totally ginchy record collection in not one but two Samsonite suitcases. With my permission (Sadie
just looked bewildered), he hooked up his Webcor phonograph and his dad’s preamp to the school’s
PA system. The gym was big enough to provide natural reverb, and after a few preliminary feedback
shrieks, he got a booming sound that was awesome. Although born in Jodie, Donald was a permanent
resident of Rockville, in the state of Daddy Cool. He wore pink-rimmed specs with thick lenses, beltin-the-back
slacks, and saddle shoes so grotesquely square they were authentically crazy, man. His face
was an exploding zit-factory below a Brylcreem-loaded Bobby Rydell duck’s ass. He looked like he
might get his first kiss from a real live girl around the age of forty-two, but he was fast and funny
with the mike, and his record collection (which he called “the stack-o-wax” and “Donny B.’s round
mound of sound”) was, as previously noted, the ginchiest.
“Let’s kick-start this party with a blast from the past, a rock n roll relic from the grooveyard of
cool, a golden gasser, a platter that matters, move your feet to the real gone beat of Danny . . . and the
JOOONIERS!”
“At the Hop” nuked the gym. The dance started as most of them do in the early sixties, just the
girls jitterbugging with the girls. Feet in penny loafers flew. Petticoats swirled. After awhile, though,
the floor started to fill up with boy-girl couples . . . for the fast dances, at least, more current stuff
like “Hit the Road Jack” and “Quarter to Three.”
Not many of the kids would have made the cut on Dancing with the Stars, but they were young and
enthusiastic and obviously having a ball. It made me happy to see them. Later, if Donny B. didn’t have
the good sense to lower the lights a bit, I’d do it myself. Sadie was nervous at first, ready for trouble,
but these kids had just come to have fun. There were no invading hordes from Henderson or any other
school. She saw that and began to loosen up a little.
After about forty minutes of nonstop music (and four red velvet cupcakes), I leaned toward Sadie
and said, “Time for Warden Amberson to do his first circuit of the building and make sure no one in
the exercise yard is engaging in inappropriate behavior.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I want you to keep an eye on the punch bowl. If any young man approaches it with a bottle of
anything, even cough syrup, I want you to threaten him with electrocution or castration, whichever
you think might be more effective.”
She leaned back against the wall and laughed until tears sparkled in the corners of her eyes. “Get
out of here, George, you’re awful.”
I went. I was glad I’d made her laugh, but even after three years, it was easy to forget how much
more effect sexually tinged jokes have in the Land of Ago.
I caught a couple making out in one of the more shadowy nooks on the east side of the gym—he
prospecting inside her sweater, she apparently trying to suck his lips off. When I tapped the young
prospector on the shoulder, they leaped apart. “Save it for The Bluffs after the dance,” I said. “For now,
go on back to the gym. Walk slow. Cool off. Get some punch.”
They went, she buttoning her sweater, he walking slightly bent over in that well-known male
adolescent gait known as the Blue-Balls Scuttle.
Two dozen red fireflies winked from behind the metal shop. I waved and a couple of the kids in the
smoking area waved back. I poked my head around the east corner of the woodshop and saw something
I didn’t like. Mike Coslaw, Jim LaDue, and Vince Knowles were huddled there, passing something