Nobody saved the last dance for me

“I think it will work.” Pam Collins said it like she had two mechanical engineering degrees and a blackbelt in float building. She was squatted down beside the left rear tire of Joe Sasser’s daddy’s flat-bedded hay wagon. I wasn’t so sure. But I didn’t have a degree in nothing. And the only black belt I’d ever known was a worn-out old hand-me-down from Leon.

We were sophomores in high school.

Pam had a three-foot 2×4 in each hand and was trying to form a platform that would extend the bed of the truck out over the tire. It had to be strong enough to hold up the wooden frame, chicken wire, cardboard, and the boatload of colored napkins we were going to stuff into each individual opening in the wire. 

She moved the two boards around a mite, moved her head up and down, then right and left, squinted, and announced, “It will definitely work!”

I didn’t necessarily disagree, but I got to thinking about those hundreds of blue Landmark books they made us read in elementary school. They were all biographies… of Babe Ruth or Daniel Boone or George Washington Carver… Not a single one of them was ever about how to put together a Homecoming float!

I wasn’t even supposed to be here. Coach Smith started “getting our minds right” immediately after the final whistle blew on the past Friday night’s game against Camden, “Now men, next week is Homecoming. I’m telling you right now, it’s all a Communist trick to get your minds off the Martin Panthers. I don’t want to catch you around those floats. I don’t want you eyeballing girls all week thinking about how you’re going to ask them to the dance. This Homecoming thing is all for those people who graduated 15 years ago. You keep your mind on the Martin Panthers. I don’t like Coach Wright, I don’t like their blue and white colors. If I ran out of gas driving through Martin, I’d push my car home before I would spend a penny in that town… ”

Listen, if you think he was fired up about playing Martin, you ought to have been in that locker room and on the practice field the week we played the Huntingdon Mustangs!

It actually took three football players to work on our float. One to stuff red and gray napkins in the wire, one to stand by the side door of the American Legion Hall we were using, watching for a signal from the guy we had out front who was keeping an eye out for Coach Smith.

Maybe this Homecoming stuff WAS for those folks who graduated 15 years ago. But that didn’t cross anybody’s mind on this Monday night. We were living large and enjoying the moment. Immensely! 

And just maybe, we were making some memories that would draw us back in 15 years…

Buddy Wiggleton’s favorite part of Homecoming was the hair contest. Not many people got to see this sport played out. We’d station ourselves long before the parade started over in front of Imogene’s Beauty Shop. Now, this was back in the day of the big hair. LaRenda Bradfield would go into the place with her hair slicked to her face. So would Donna, Brenda, Jane, and Charlotte Melton.

Buddy swore that Imogene had a machine that would blow up each individual hair. We didn’t hardly recognize LaRenda as she came out wobbling because her hair now ballooned around her head. Donna’s hair outweighed her whole body. We were hoping for a gust of wind. I think it would have lifted them off the ground like a kite.

Nobody would dare leave until Charlotte reappeared. She set the big hair standard in the early ‘60s. Her mother couldn’t get her in the car! I’m telling you with my hand up, her hair was fluffed out like signal flags on an aircraft carrier.

Now, don’t anybody tell Coach Smith, but my all-time favorite Homecoming memory was not beating the Martin Panthers 19 to 6. It was watching Mrs. Melton turn onto Main Street, going about one mile an hour, with Charlotte strapped securely on top of that old Ford Falcon.

And if you think I’m speaking disparagingly of Charlotte, you have no idea how badly I wanted to ask her to the dance. But I couldn’t muster up the courage. I couldn’t ask Jane Hill; she would have laughed in my face!

Being a sophomore during Homecoming Week wasn’t all peaches and cream.

I really wanted to go with a senior girl who had been nice to me lately, but again, I’m just a lowly sophomore…. So, I didn’t take anyone to the dance. I wasn’t even going until David Paschall intervened. “Kes, we can go to the dance like a reptile.” I had no clue what he meant. And then he smiled, “You know, we can snake somebody’s date away from them.”

Yeah, sure, like there was a fat chance of that.

We worked all week on our float with its “Tame the Panthers” theme. Of course, the senior float took first place. And the juniors came in second. But, ole Pam Collins did us proud. Our float didn’t collapse and fall down during the parade. And we counted that as a small victory. 

I’m not sure I made it back to Homecoming 15 years after I graduated. But I can assure you with all my heart, the memories of being a part of something that special have lasted a lifetime… and then some!

Respectfully,

Kes