D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
November
2008
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Voice of a Ranch Woman Eleventh in a Series |
Dancing When the Stars Come Out
Memories of dancehall days in ranch country.
By Linda McDonald, as told to Victoria Tester
This first-person reminiscence is excerpted from recordings of Linda Nielson McDonald at her home on the McDonald Ranch. Established in 1903, the McDonald Ranch is among the five oldest continuously working ranches in Grant County. Linda McDonald, born in Moab, Utah, in 1942, is the wife of Jerry McDonald, the son of Jonnie McDonald and Evelyn McCauley. These recordings are a collaboration between McDonald and author Victoria Tester, whose book Miracles of Sainted Earth (University of New Mexico Press) won the nationally recognized Willa Cather Literary Award. Their efforts mark the beginning of a project by the two women to record and publish a book of oral histories of ranch women in southern New Mexico.
The first time I ever came down to this area to visit Jerry in 1964, it was just a happenstance that they happened to be having a dance at White Signal. We went over to this dancehall that was just out in the middle of nowhere, and there were so many people there! There wasn't even standing room because there were just people everywhere. I'd danced with Jerry and I knew he was a good dancer. So we danced. That was the first thing I did besides meet his family, was go to that dance here at White Signal. Little did I know at that time that dancehall was going to play an important part in my life. I didn't even begin to understand how important.
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The Joe McCauley
Band makes music in White Signal in 1981. |
My own mom and dad had met at a dance. My mother was teaching at a one-room school at McPhee, Colo., and they were trying to earn money, as schools did back in that time period, so she and another teacher put on a dance to raise money. And my dad was in the band. I'm not sure what he was playing — I think it was a banjo. He was playing in the band and my mom was out there dancing. She'd dance around and she'd look at him — he told it this way, I don't know if my mom told it this way! — but anyway, he handed his instrument to someone and said, "Here, you'd better take care of this, because there's a pretty little gal out there that needs my attention!" He went out and danced with her and it wasn't too long after that they got married.
When I was born, they'd put me in the back of the dump truck in my baby carriage when they went in to the dances at Moab, Utah, and I got to look at the stars.
It's when those stars come out at night they have dances, and the men love to kick up their heels with the pretty ladies at the dances. Long ago, Grandma Mitchel and Jerry McDonald had met at a dance as well.
Later, after I married Jerry and the kids were growing up, I got involved in 4-H and I was looking for things that we could do in the White Signal community for service projects. Somebody said something about the dancehall, the Community Hall: "Oh, yeah, it's all falling down and the doors are off and the cattle are going in on that floor." I said, "Well, why couldn't we fix that Community Hall up?" It had a beautiful dance floor, a beautiful wooden floor.
Grandpa and Granny told us about that floor, and how the Community Hall got started. They talked about dances, and they told me the story about Grandpa Fate McCauley going around and getting the money to build a school. Since they couldn't get the money from single cowpunchers so easy if they said they were going to build a school, they told them they were going to build a dancehall. These cowpunchers were really excited to get a dancehall built, so they contributed. And it was used for dances, but they really used it for a school.
That first dancehall school was the Barn School, and it was built just down from Jerry's grandparents' house at White Signal, between there and the Prevosts' home. They tell stories about Grandma Nancy McCauley — she could play the piano really well — and they'd load that big old heavy piano from her house onto a wagon and take it down to that schoolhouse. Then they'd unload it again and have the dance. Probably the cowboys who were working there for them unloaded it, and Grandpa Fate McCauley. Then they'd have the dance and she'd play the piano. When it was over, they'd load that piano back up and take it back home.
Granny Evelyn McCauley McDonald's mother Nancy was very musically talented. She learned to play the piano back in Arkansas, and could play with written music, but she could play without, too. Evelyn also had that talent to play without music. When Evelyn was a young girl, she took piano lessons from Mrs. Gray in Silver City. She and another girl were taking lessons, and Mrs. Gray wasn't in the room at the time, so Evelyn started playing "Chopsticks" on the piano. Mrs. Gray came in and started pulling out her own hair: "You are desecrating my piano!" She wanted Evelyn to play all this classical stuff and instead she was playing "Chopsticks."
She never did play for a dance or anything, but Granny was a dancer and a half! She loved to dance. Grandpa never did learn to dance, so Granny would go to the dances and she'd dance with other guys and sometimes even the women would dance together. I never really saw this myself, but if there weren't enough women, girls for the cowboys to dance with, the cowboys would dance with each other. Nowadays that would be a scandal, but not back then.
Another thing I really liked about the dances is that the little children would come. The couples used to bring their babies. There wasn't such a thing as a babysitter. You had the whole families coming. The babies, they'd put 'em down in the corner to sleep. If it started getting colder, they'd go put another blanket on the baby, because they knew the baby must be cold 'cause they were cold.
They had dances at the Barn School, but even prior to that time they had dances at the house where Barry Ford lives now. They'd clear out all the furniture and dance in that little living room. People just wanted to dance wherever they could dance. The daddies would take the little children when they're just babes in arms, take 'em out there and dance with them. Then as they got bigger, the daddies and the moms would dance with them and teach 'em to dance when they're just little bitty kids. So the kids would never know when they didn't dance. That's the wonderful thing about these country dances. It isn't a teenage dance, and it's not just for the older people. It's for the whole family.
The White Signal Community Hall was built in 1931. Jerry's grandmother Nancy McCauley and his Uncle Taylor were real instrumental getting that building built, even though the whole community worked on it. Uncle Taylor was working for Bob Royal. He asked Bob Royal if he'd donate an acre of land for that Hall, and he did. The community all contributed and helped build that hall, which was the hall that I went to that first dance in, with the wonderful wood floor.
Grandpa and Granny told me about how you make those floors. You build a subfloor, and then you put the nice oak floor on top of that. When you're sitting there, if there's a lot of people dancing on that floor, that floor is kind of suspended, and it will start to go up and down because of the people dancing to the beat of the music. You can watch that floor go up and down. Wood floors are just wonderful, and better on people's feet, too. It's not hard on their legs to dance on a wooden floor.
They had a dance at the White Signal Community Hall when the men came back from World War II. To celebrate them coming back and being home. Those that came home. A lot of them didn't come back.
To get to those early dances, the cowboys would ride for miles. They'd come from Red Rock. They'd come from Cow Springs. They'd just ride for miles to come to these dances. Then they'd get there and they'd get to sometimes drinking a little bit and then they'd get maybe angry, you know, mad about who was going to dance with who. Then you'd have to have somebody kind of policing the dance, too. Uncle Bartley was usually the one because he was in law enforcement. If they got too rambunctious, he'd handcuff 'em to a pole someplace. There's lots of stories about those dances — some you want to tell and some you don't.
Granny used to talk about people coming in and staying. Her family had a little ol' house and nine kids, but when those people would come up to these dances, they'd just put a blanket down on the floor, and sleep on the floor. Everybody was always over at Nancy and Fate McCauley's house here at White Signal, sleeping over the night. Families would stay with different people in White Signal when they'd come in to the dances.