THE CENTERVILLE DANCEHALL

Dancing is a wonderful training for girls;
it’s the first way you learn to guess what
a man is going to do before he does it.”

-- Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

Every Saturday night the small town of Centerville, South Dakota was invaded by hoards of high-energy teens in penny loafers, blue jeans, plaid shirts and cool casuals from miles around. They came to kick up their heels to garage bands thumping out rock-n-roll hits.

My parents, Ted and Nora Foy, met at a dancehall near Yankton, South Dakota in the 1940s, and from 1958 to 1970, they owned their special oasis, "The Broadway Ballroom." The massive, white-clapboard monstrosity took up half-a-city-block on the corner of Broadway and Lincoln.

It was an opera house built in the late 1800s. During the dance craze of the early 1900s, a pavilion had been added to create an expansive floor with high, pressed-tin ceilings, oak-planked floors waxed for dancing, knotty-pine booths and benches, with classic red-and-white Coca-Cola signs on walls that were pungent with stale, past Saturday nights.

My father, Ted, the flat-top, sparkplug Irishman, and my mother, Nora, the ever-so-simple Norwegian, enjoyed watching these Midwestern kids have fun on the stage they created to put a few extra bucks in their pockets. Nora, parked in the ticket booth, handled the money, and Ted booked the bands, played amateur advertiser, part-time bouncer and all-around manager.

Bill was our enforcer. A towering six-foot-plus farm boy had arms thick as the timbers to muscle intoxicated youths to the door. He used the out-of-line teen heads as battle-rams cupped under each arm to open the swinging doors to the streets.

I was the geeky kid who was either dancing or sweeping the floors, stocking the concession stand, running for change, putting antifreeze in the toilets, scouting for trouble before someone got hurt and watching my parents work with passion and joy.

It was a prosperous and innocent era. Throughout the small farming community, the car-filled streets, stores, restaurants, bars and bowling alley bustled with the weekly hullabaloo.

Since we catered to teens, beer and hard booze were not allowed in the hall. Rumors of bottles spread swiftly. The offenders were banned for the rest of the night, but welcomed back the next week in exchange for a promise and apology.

Soda was served in glass bottles, chips were plain or barbecued, popcorn and candy bars were the only fare at the make-shift concession stand.

The music was on track promptly at 8:00 PM and never lasted past midnight. Wood-shedding bands like Patch of Blue, Smoke Ring, The Famous Apostles, The Seven Sons, Natural Colors and their line-dancers along with other up-and-coming groups were booked to impress the locals with aspiring musical talents.

Cold winter nights meant frozen toilets, frosted windows dripping moisture inside, small crowds dancing with snow boots, lost overcoats in a coat room jammed in disarray, spin-outs on the road home.

On hot summer nights the place rocked with sweaty, boogie-down teens dripping in hormonal exasperation. One summer night in 1968, with the three-piece Bobby Alison and the Shattoes, the stars were aligned when record attendance shot up to nearly 700, and the Fire Marshall was nowhere to be found.

The townsfolk had a love/hate with the ballroom. They wanted Centerville to prosper, but didn't appreciate the raucous, outlaw imports of nearby towns.

Sometimes a group of cocky Sioux Falls kids would make the journey. The University of South Dakota in Vermillion, twenty miles south, brought in the older, educated crowd smelling of alcohol. Drag races were staged west of town on the old beach road. Town gang fights were scheduled on the outskirts.

Beer cans thrown in the alleys, urination in the bushes and fatal automobile accidents on the country roads kept vigilant lawmen nearby. The highway patrol came armed with tape measures to ticket those who jacked up their car's rear end beyond the legal limits.

Meanwhile, the Battle of the Bands, Go-Go Girls, Beatle Boots and goofy hats, radio ads on KELO and KISD, Tommy Bolin's high school band, drum solos, howling Vox, organs, Fender guitars, harmonic vocals, all brought Southeastern South Dakota teens twisting, jerking, swimming, ponying and jigger-bugging into Ted and Nora's Centerville Dancehall destination.

Great Balls of fire brought down this ancient jewel and tinder box June of 1970 on a sleepy Sunday morning. Sparing a potential disaster and ending an era of many great years of music on Centerville’s main street.

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-- Patrick J Foy