Saturday, March 26, 2016

Nostalgia at night

My story in the upcoming anthology "Decision Points" was inspired, at least in its beginning, by a scene in a column I published in my newspaper by a contributor, Ralph K. Banks.

The imagery stuck with me, and eventually prodded the initial setting for the story. Here is the pertinent passage:

"There actually was no dance hall building located on this road at all. Instead, what some of us called the dance hall was merely a straight flat stretch of the road that seemed wider and smoother than the rest of the road with the all around terrain mostly consisting of flat prairieland and by that time of year, harvested cotton fields.

"The cars would be parked along the sides of the roadway with one or two with good receiving radios having volumes turned up with the windows rolled down, enabling couples to dance to the radio music on the roadway pavement.

"As usual there was little traffic on this road, with the headlights of the few cars that did come our way being visible in plenty of time for the couples to clear the roadway for those cars to pass.

"And, so it went on this cool November night with the radios playing our favorite music tunes of the time and the few couples enjoying dancing on the old county road under a star-filled sky and full autumn moon.

"From the Sulphur Springs and Paris radio stations we enjoyed hearing and dancing to such tunes as Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog”, Fats Domino’s “On Blueberry Hill”; the Platters’ “My Prayer”, “Its Twilight Time” and “Only You”, and perhaps the one that was most prophetic as our curfews got close, “It’s Almost Tomorrow”."

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