D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
November
2008
Ranchwoman: Dancehall Days
Page: 3We had some wood stoves there — Jerry built one, and Gerry Billings built one, to heat up the hall — and I think up in the chimney someplace it caught on fire. It didn't take long for that hall to burn down. Within 30 minutes the whole thing was burned to the ground. It was a tragedy, and it wasn't long after that the Billings house burned down, too.
But the community rallied about the hall, and we had a lot of people donating. The county manager said Silver City would help White Signal earn money to rebuild that Hall. So they had Good Neighbor Day, a big day in the park for the White Signal Community Hall. Everybody did their own little part with that, and we had a big bake sale and tons of other things. We earned several thousand dollars. Susie Salars, Uncle Taylor's daughter, put on a big enchilada dinner, and we all worked at that, and everybody helped earn money to rebuild that hall. That was in 1984 or '85. When they rebuilt it, they built it a lot bigger and they put bathrooms in it. No more outhouse.
The only disappointing thing was they put a cement floor in. They didn't put in a wood floor.
Our kids' instruments had burned up, but we got great support from people in this area. We had people from clear over on the Mimbres and Lordsburg donate money to our kids to get new musical instruments. I am still grateful for that.
Grandma Nancy McCauley's mother-in-law lived with her and Fate, and that was Grandma Morton. And I don't know why did she it, but Grandma Nancy McCauley had a big pile of music Granny told me about, and Grandma Morton burned it all up. I think it was maybe, "You're spending too much time playing that piano and you need to be doing such and such, or such and such, whatever...," and she burned up Nancy's music.
But on Nancy's side of the family were the Brewers, and they thought the devil was in the fiddle. The mother would sneak the fiddle and play it, but when she saw her dad coming, she'd put it up, because she knew he said that the devil was in the fiddle.
That whole family had that musical talent. We have so much fun with that fiddle music now, but they said, no, the devil's in the fiddle. We never thought the devil was in the fiddle — we had a really good time with fiddle music! And we still do. My little granddaughters play the fiddle for me when I go to visit them.
Granny Evelyn said that when they were at dances, you danced very proper. You didn't dance close, and I guess one time, somebody said she was dancing the wrong way and she really got it from her dad when she got home. Because dancing was a respectable thing to do and people danced for fun. It wasn't bad in any way. Back then they were quite proper about things like that. They just went to have a good time.
This is the last installment of "Voice of a Ranchwoman," at least for now. Linda McDonald and Victoria Tester add, "We want to thank Desert Exposure, and to let readers know that we do hope to return, in time, with more stories from the southern New Mexico ranch community." You can read the entire series online at www.desertexposure.com/ranchwoman