STARKSBORO,
VT (2003-08-26)
(Host) As trees here and there begin to signal the end of this summer in
Vermont, VPR commentators are recalling "Summer Times" of the past
and reflecting on how those experiences continue to resonate today. Here's
commentator Frank Bryan with that staple of
(
But there were other sounds too, joyous sounds of country people at love and
play.
Among Vermonters of my generation dance halls are legendary in the annals of
memory. Robinson's Barn in Passumsic, Circle C in Macandues, Fry's Barn in
Danville, Jacques Barn in Huntington, Dreamland in Tunbridge, the Grange Hall
in East Barnard, the Pavilion on Harvey's Lake.
Not to be romanticized as citadels of the "chosen people of God" -
And certainly on balance these dance halls fall on the side of good.
When we square-danced, men locked hands with men, women with women;
grandparents danced with grand children, fathers with daughters, mothers with
sons. Sweat intermingled, pretensions died.
There dancing was a communion of music with the human spirit - not a grotesque
approximation of the sex act. It was an affirmation of society's desperate
longing that all of us indeed can live together in joy and in peace. And when
we waltzed the rhythms were pristine - the strength of cadence - the sway of
melody and the hope and the passion of the words.
"Let me call you sweetheart,
I'm in love with you.
Let me hear you whisper,
That you love me too."
My favorite dance halls were near the water - ones like Coles's Pond Casino in
Walden. On a dirt road north of Walden Four Corners soft summer melodies of
long ago were carried by fiddle, piano and guitar across the still water and
into the deep timber of our most precious memories.
I returned there this summer as a preparation (I told myself) for this
commentary. Cole's pond casino is gone now, only a boulder or two from its
foundation were left in the moon light
on summer's swaying grasses. But there in the
Her name was Susan and for an instant we were together again as once we were
and would never be again. But the music was clear and the lyrics whispered the
truth of a bygone summer.
"Let me call you sweetheart.
I'm in love with you.
Let me hear you whisper
That you love me too."
This is Frank Bryan from Starksboro.
Frank Bryan is a writer and teaches political science at the University of
Vermont.