Earlier today I dictated a small essay having to do with Polk salad.  I identified that as an essay which had a nostalgic ring to it.  It involved my mother and her habit of gathering the Polk weed or vegetable in the early springtime.
I was raised largely as an only child.  All my siblings were so much older that they had married or left the house to pursue careers and I was left alone.  I have already told you about my mother’s religious views on such things as card playing and dancing, which will give you an idea of the grim nature of her religious views.  During my four-year high school career, I never attended dances.  The fact of the matter is that I knew nothing about dancing and that was that.
Sometime after leaving high school I had a job with the Schroth filling station or the Eddy Williams Sinclair station.  As the youngest member of the staff, my days off usually were on Mondays.  I worked in filling stations for so long that in time I advanced to Thursday being my day off.
In any event, at the age of 17 or 18 or thereabouts I concluded that it would be best for my social life if I learned ballroom dancing.
As it turned out, the yellow pages of the phone book and the newspaper carried ads for lessons that would make me a superior dancer in short order.  And so it was that on one of my days off from the filling station, I called an instructor of a dance studio to see if I could arrange lessons.  Now mind you, I went to take lessons in ballroom dancing with the hope of improving my social life.
When I arrived at the dance studio on Delmar Boulevard at the appointed hour, I presented myself and was greeted by a scantily clad woman.  I told her that I wanted to learn to dance.  She sort of snickered.  She called in a couple of her cohorts to watch the dancing lesson.  The fact of the matter is that I learned absolutely nothing about ballroom dancing.  The money that I had paid the instructress was a complete loss.
Shortly after my non-lesson in ballroom dancing took place, I came upon the knowledge that whore houses advertised themselves as dancing schools.  And so at long last, I now understood the snickering that took place when I presented myself on my day off for a dance lesson.
I do not know why I was so dumb.  In the first place, there was no source of music such as a phonograph or a radio.  The hostess simply showed me how I should move my feet, even though there was no music.  Secondly, I had three prospective dance instructors and they were all scantily clad.  On that occasion, I gathered that dance instructors wear very few clothes.  Later, when it was revealed to me that ballroom dancing was a front for whore house operations in greater St. Louis, I belatedly got the drift.
I suspect that the people who occupied the whore house on Delmar Boulevard must have laughed a great deal at my presenting myself and wanting to learn how to dance.  I thought that this was a dance studio in spite of the fact that there was no reason to believe that was the case.
The woman that I talked to finally agreed to show me some dance steps, which were forgotten almost immediately.  The fact is that I am not a good dancer.  The secondary fact is that the ad in the yellow pages was simply a cover for whore house operations.
So now, some 70 years later, I am still a lousy, lousy dancer.  But it was not for lack of trying.  I made an honest effort to ballroom dance, but the person to whom I spoke assumed that I was there for something else.  I suspect that she may have thought that I was a front for the cops who would attempt to put the whore house operation out of business.  But in the pre-war years in St. Louis, whore house operations, if they were respectable, were not a target of the police.  If they operated quietly with perhaps only a red light in the living room window, the cops would not bother them.
That is my story about why I am a lousy dancer.  Not long after this incident with the dance instructor/whore house, we were at war with the Japanese, the Germans, and the Italians.  I turned my attention in that direction.  So to mimic Newt Gingrich, who contends that his divorces were the result of his patriotic efforts in that he loved this country so much that he denied attention to his wives, I will contend that my lack of dancing skills was the result of my own patriotism.
I do not know how I was so colossally dumb that I did not figure out that the term “dance instructor” concealed a whore house operation.  But those are the facts.  I would like to think that I am a little bit smarter now than I was when I went looking for a dance instructor.  But when push comes to shove, I am not so sure that I am brighter today than I was back then.  I don’t dance much these days, so maybe the ladies in the whore house operation had me pegged properly.  Anyone who can’t see through the dance instructor as to conceal what they were doing needs some special attention.  But these are the facts and I guess that I am stuck with them for at least the last 75 or 80 years.
 
E.E.CARR
December 15, 2011
Essay 617
 
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All I could think about is how much I would like to read the Yelp reviews for that dance studio today. Especially if everyone was ‘in’ on it.
“The instructor’s steps were complicated, and she moved a little fast for me, but after enough repetition I really got over the hump and had a great time. Will come again. 5/5”
 
It’s also amazing that these prostitutes actually attempted to teach him to dance. Seriously, I bet hookers these days would have just kicked him out once they realized that Pop honestly just wanted to ballroom dance. I feel that would have been even funnier if Pop were gay, so that he could have been even more utterly uninterested in the dance instructors.  But perhaps these particular prostitutes who fronted as a dance academy got their fare share of gay dudes wandering in and being sorely disappointed.
For those who have seen the (underwhelming) movie Idiocracy, the female lead’s feaux -occupation as a an “artist” comes to mind.
 
Also, Judy, if you read this — I suspect that Pop may be lying about his claim that he is a bad dancer to this day. I think you should attempt to get a video of him dancing, perhaps to some of that trainwreck music mentioned earlier on the blog, or to the Welsh poetry he played on his birthday. If you get one, I’d be happy to put it on the blog.