Casa Loma, Haloween 2009

Four days until Halloween and our departure for St. Louis, MO and the Casa Loma Ballroom. It's been a year since our last trip and I'm anxious to hit St. Louis' hallowed hardwood again. The thought brings me back to imagining all the dancers who've preceded me and all the nights they spent at the Casa Loma. My mind jumps back to 1927 when the ballroom first opened. The first band playing the Loma was The Bobby Greer Orchestra directed by Ernie Harzy with vocalist Miss Lee Hale. I did a brief Google and it appears the years have nearly erased all evidence of the Greer Orchestra. I'll try to look more, but there's something appealing about the mystery remaining. Maybe the Greer Orchestra was just one of a thousand bands playing one of a thousand venues back in '27. The market was riding high, thoughts of another world war were far away, and on a Saturday in September the musicians warmed up and set the place in motion. Love was found, lost, remembered, forgotten, and dreamed of that evening – and eighty two years later not a soul survives to tell the tale. Nobody can tell you if the dance floor still had the stickiness of fresh wax on sueded shoe souls. Nobody can tell you if the bathrooms smelled like fresh paint. Nobody can even say if the band was on key. All those memories and moments, the ephemera that make up life, have vanished into the ether.

I'll try to remember the past when I get out on the Loma's storied floor. I'll try to be just reverent enough – to appreciate, in spite of all the little irritations that often come with any dance, just how special it is to be able to share a dance floor with over eight decades of history. I'll try to show good courtesy to the ghosts of dancers past and to love the place as they might have when they were young and hopeful. I think the best way to honor all those people who've danced before me would be to do as they did: put on my shoes, take my best girl's hand, and dance until fatigue and time compel us to depart into the chill of an October night.

Here's to you, Greer Orchestra. Time may have forgotten the tune and tempo but the beat goes on in a hundred thousand hearts.