1.2.20 Cowboys and Honky Tonks

#memoriesat60
Perhaps it is the birthday, perhaps the new year, but a tidal wave of memories has washed over me and I am just going to give in. Perhaps this will be my theme this year - giving in to the memories.
Cowboys and Honky Tonks
This song, Johnny Lee's "Looking for Love" just popped up on my shuffle of my 80+GB of music (yes, my brothers and I share a common obsession with a wide variety of music and we have shared our collections with each other):
Wherever we lived, we made an annual trip to my parents hometown of Cuero, Texas, where I learned to polka with other girls, while my grandmother and her friends played Bunco and, for some inexplicable reason, a German band played in the background at the hall, and I learned to two-step at the VFW Hall, with people of all ages. There was something so freeing and wonderful, given my independently feisty spirit, about letting a pair of knowledgeable arms twirl me around the dance floor. My parents moved back to Houston (or more precisely, Spring, TX) during my college freshman year and I spent the summer there. High school friend Lynn Martin came down from Ohio for a Texas experience, which, of course, included C&W dancing. First stop was a local bar. When we went out onto the dance floor and began to do our free-form styling, we were almost immediately whisked into the arms of some real cowboys, who expertly maneuvered us into the two-step. Our next stop was Gilley's, the huge honkey tonk in the oil production areas east of Houston (before the problematic Urban Cowboy created a buzz), with its equally huge dance floor. The cowboys who asked us to dance were respectful ... it appeared that it was more about dancing than a prelude to something else, or perhaps that was my 20+ year old confidence and naïveté, and I relished the larger space in which to be, temporarily, one with the series of men, as we circled the dance floor. As my husband would testify, it is not easy for me to give in to the lead. With my modern and contact improv and various cultural dance experiences, I tend to get into my own groove, in my own space, me and the music. But ... I do sometimes yearn for a good honky tonk and an experienced cowboy, or at least his dancing skills.