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.
They'd have box suppers at these dances, to raise money. A woman would make a really nice dinner — fried chicken was a big deal back then — fried chicken and maybe some pie or a good cake, and maybe some bread they made. They'd make the dinner, and put it in this decorated box. They'd decorate it all up and make it look really pretty and appealing, so that the men would want to bid on it. The men would start in bidding on these boxes. If one girl wanted a certain cowboy to get her box, she'd tip him off what it looked like so he'd know which one to bid on. Those boxes weren't cheap. I don't know how much they'd go for, but sometimes they'd spend a lot of money if two men were wanting the same box. They were suppers for two, and they'd go off and eat together — the cowboy and the girl, or maybe a husband and a wife. No wonder they got in fights! "Don't you dare buy my wife's box!"
Of course, Granny and Grandpa were into politics back then, so if any men running for office were down in Grant County, they'd see that they got invited to the dance. One time Bruce King was here campaigning, and oh, I was so embarrassed. I went over to visit with him, and guess where he'd sat — right where the dead rat was under the floor! Later, I go, "That was really embarrassing," and Jerry said, "Yeah, but he sure did fire up that cigar pretty soon!" Bruce King treated us as if we were as important as any big guy up in Santa Fe was. But I remember Jeff Bingaman came one time, and he walked up to the concession stand where I was working, and said, "You know, you're not charging near enough for these refreshments." I said, "Well, it really doesn't matter because it's all donated and we make pure profit off it."
Music lifts people's spirits. It just makes them happy, because everybody's having a good time usually. The Mormon pioneers, when they were coming across the plains, music was a very important part of their travel. They walked and worked all day, so at night, you think they'd be dog tired and wouldn't want to dance. But Brigham Young wanted 'em to have the music. They had brass bands, and they'd dance. They danced to the bands and they danced to the fiddle music, and it lifted their spirits and gave them strength to go on the next day on their hard journey.
Our kids were learning to dance, but the boys were scared. They were scared to go ask somebody to dance. So I told 'em I'd pay 'em a dime for every time they asked somebody to dance. Just to kind of bribe 'em a bit and get them used to it. One time, Taylor went to ask a girl to dance and she turned him down. She said, "No, I want to dance with J.L.!" And so that really made all my boys mad, and they just said, "None of us are going to dance with her."
Bless Granny's heart, she loved to dance so much she wanted those boys to know how to dance, because her husband had never learned. She always had those boys out in her garden, teaching them how to dance "Put Your Little Foot." I've got a picture of her dancing with one of our boys when they were little and she had them all snugged up to her and they were dancing. She taught them all how to dance. Most ranch children learned how to dance at an early age in those days.
The very first dance we had at White Signal with the 4-H Club was with Charlie and Rose Whetton, and they had a guy that they got to come with them, so they hauled a piano out to that first dance. Rose got sick, so they weren't able to come anymore, and we were looking for other people to play for the dances, and we got young Joe Delk to come. Forrest Delk had played at many, many dances here at White Signal. Forrest Delk was from over on the Mimbres, and he'd gone to school with Granny, and maybe Grandpa, though I think he was more in Granny's age group. And Forrest Delk had learned to play the fiddle from Ira Schelley, who Grandpa said was the best fiddler in the United States, so he had a very good teacher. Everybody loved Forrest's music.
When our older kids were just starting to play music, we had a colorful character, a man in our community, by the name of Charlie Russell. I knew his mother had played the fiddle, but he was just sitting in a chair all day long with palsy. He couldn't get up, he couldn't move around, he couldn't do anything. I thought maybe it would brighten his day a bit if we went up to play for him. So we did, and he did enjoy it. He enjoyed that music, and our kids got to be blessed by knowing Charlie Russell.
He had a lady staying with him taking care of him and her name was Gracie Willis. We went up there one Christmas and she'd decorated the tree all up for Charlie and had these old Christmas ornaments on it. She wanted to show appreciation to our children for coming to play for him, and she took those ornaments right off the tree, their tree. They didn't have any money, you know, they lived in very humble circumstances. She gave each of our kids an ornament off that tree, and those are very treasured ornaments to our children even yet. There we were, trying to go and help somebody else with our music, and we ended up coming away with a lot more than we brought.
Some of the people Grandpa Jonnie McDonald told me played at the White Signal Community Hall were Meredith Neal, Burt Denton, Ira Schelley, Lon Bradberry, Jim Brown, Jess Hill, Ernest Spencer, Al Barnett, and then they had the Four Wonders orchestra. Grandpa would joke about that — he'd say, "Yeah, they all wondered what the other one was doin'." But they actually were a really good band. R.E. Crooms, he played the saxophone, and then Forrest Delk, and Grandpa said Forrest Delk started his career at White Signal. That was his first paying job.
Granny told me that the band usually got half of the gate. When we had our dances with our 4-H Club we didn't make all that much, so the band didn't get too much. But I got Joe Delk to come out and play for a dance one time. Then we talked Joe McCauley into coming and playing for our dances. So they started coming on a regular basis. Joe played the fiddle, and Jimmy played the guitar, and Bub Graham played the mandolin. And the kids had a cousin, Greg Martin, who would come play the drums. Then once our kids learned enough songs to play for a whole dance, they started playing.
The song that Joe McCauley used to play that I thought was Jerry's and my song was "The Music Box." I loved to dance with Jerry to it. Jerry was an excellent dancer, but dancing a waltz with Jerry is just wonderful! Because he just was beautiful as he danced. It was even beautiful just to watch him dance. And then of course there were the waltzes — the "Tennessee Waltz" is a favorite of all people. Then there were schottisches. Everybody liked to do schottisches, polkas, waltzes, two steps, and put-your-little-foot.
One Christmas a lot of wonderful teenagers from Animas had come up for the dance. Our kids were playing for the dance that night, and I don't know why they did this, but they went up to practice at the Community Hall, and they left their instruments up there. They left everything wide open to the world. Anybody could have walked in and stolen their instruments. But they just came home to eat and go back, and we got a telephone call. Bo answered the telephone, and he told us, "Our instruments are burning up." Because the White Signal Community Hall had caught on fire, and by the time we got up there, it had burned to the ground.
We 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