Winners of the Dance

As far as I can tell, Donald Dean Mitchell met Evelyn Ann Yates in the early 1950s in or near Fort Morgan, Colorado.  He was a Nebraska-born World War II vet (having served briefly in the territory of Alaska near the end of the war) with a GI-Bill sponsored degree from a barber college; he also did some rough-neck work with oil-well drilling.  She was a small-town girl who had never finished high school. While they didn't have much in common other than the depression-era poverty in which they had spent their childhoods, they did have one thing that brought them together.

Dancing.

They both loved to dance.  Don's musical influences included hillhilly gospel, western country and swing, and big-band music. Evelyn leaned more to contemporary popular music, balladeers, and the pre-cursors to rock and roll (just on the horizon), but she too had a taste for big bands and swing.  I don't know exactly how they first met, but I have to assume it was at a dance (or perhaps that was their first date).  The details may not be important.  The fact is, they danced into one another's light.

(Somebody) http://www.bandizmo.com/user/player.php?page=songs&member=2819&nr=32

Shortly before or after they were married, Don and Evelyn entered and won a local dance contest. The local newspaper (Fort Morgan, perhaps) took and published a photo of the winners. The foreground of the photo has a sign withe "Reserved for KOLR" next to a small cake. She's wearing a skirt with matching jacket, an enormous corsage, dangling earrings, and a short, dark, "bobbed" haircut.  He's wearing a light colored suit, a much smaller corsage, an art-deco-looking tie, and a distinctive short haircut with his distinctive jet-black hair.  A small sign over his shoulder promotes Coors beer (this was eastern Colorado, afterall). Through the window over her shoulder, cars from the 40s and 50s can be seen in a lot across the street. It's a moment in time, a moment when this young couple showed every indication of being on top of the world, of being winners. Winners of the dance.

I would join Don and Evelyn and an older brother a year or two later as their second child.

Fast forward to 1961 or 1962.  Two sisters have joined the family. Don is now a milk delivery man working for a Dairy in Longmont, Colorado.  Milk that contained all the fat and cream that God intended; no reduced or skim varieties at this time. Ice cream made in a real creamery, on mainstreet right next to the local movie theatre. On Saturdays, you could get in free to see the matinee with a lid from an ice cream container or an empty milk cartoon. Life doesn't get much better than that. Evelyn was what was then known as a "housewife," managing the household, her four children, and her husband who moonlighted as a barber.  When they could, they would hire a sitter and "go out," meaning they would go dancing somewhere nearby. When they couldn't go out, they would often crank up Evelyn's blonde-wood hi-fi set and turn the living room into a dance hall.  Benny Goodman. Lionel Hampton. Glenn Miller (orignally from Evelyn's hometown of Fort Morgan). Louis Armstrong. The jive, boogie-woogie beat was their favorite, and they practiced their jitterbug and Lindy Hop moves with the sofa and loveseat moved against the walls.  While four children aged 2 through 10 laughed, clapped, and cheered, the winners of the dance took the floor and tripped the light fandango.

My parents did the jitterbug when I was just a boy

They looked so young and beautiful, their movements gave me joy

The house would shake when Daddy did his turns and pirouettes

And Mama's swirling dress was something I could not forget

I heard they won a dancing contest just before they wed

Or maybe it was after; anyway, that's what they said

A photograph was taken of my parents when they won

He looked so tall, she looked so proud, their life had just begun

They danced each time they had the chance: fall, winter, spring and summer

They danced until they realized that they danced to different drummers

And even though their partners changed, that photo gave a glance

Of two young fools pretending to be winners of the dance

A shared love of dancing was not enough to keep them together forever. Don's moonlighting in a local barber shop at the end of his mail route deliveries left him too tired in the evenings to do much more than fall asleep on the family sofa. Evelyn began pursuing other interests: Girl Scout leadership, night school to finish high school, community college that would eventually lead to bachelors and masters degrees in education -- she started crafting a life for herself.

And while their home and children grew, the dancers grew apart

The jobs and bills and chores became their music and their art

The dance had lost its lustre, but they still danced when they could

They danced because they had to and the dancing did them good

With my older brother in the Army, in the middle of my senior year in high school, I came home one day to find that my mother and sisters had left. I was left to take care of a broken man while trying to finish school and make enough money to start college.

One day the dance was finished like a song without an end

There wouldn't be an encore, they would never dance again

Ah, but they were winners once upon a different time

He looked so tall, she looked so proud, those dancers in their prime

They danced each time they had the chance: fall, winter, spring and summer

They danced until they realized that they danced to different drummers

And even though their partners changed, that photo gave a glance

Of two young fools pretending to be winners of the dance

http://www.bandizmo.com/user/player.php?page=songs&member=2819&nr=2  ("Winners of the Dance")

I never learned to dance. I've even written a song called "Never Learned To Dance." Music for me was something to be played, not something to be danced.  To be clear, I can shuffle from one foot to the other for slow dances, and I've got my own style of dancing with babies (my daughters and now my grandson). Dancing skipped a generation; my daughters seem quite competent on the dance floor (must be because of their mother).

Shortly before I turned 40, my mother (Evelyn) died in a small plane crash while on her way to a dance in Wyoming.  When asked how she would prefer to die, she once said, "I'd like to go out dancing on the hurricane."  It didn't work out quite that way, but she was on her way to doing something she loved when her plane went down. I imagine she's found some interesting clouds on which to dance.  And, she still dances in my heart.

http://www.bandizmo.com/user/player.php?page=songs&member=2819&nr=16 ("Dance Inside My Heart")