While waiting for this evening's dance I spent some time browsing the Indiana Memory Collection. The collection is a digital archive of various pieces of Indiana ephemera and I go there from time to time trying to find images of dancehalls past. It satisfies the nostalgic side of my personality and stimulates the writer inside - I find a place that housed such joy but didn't last and I imagine myself there, wonder about the bands that haunted its rafters with their music, and generally get wistful for an age I never experienced. That's the way I'm built, I guess.
One of the things that fascinate me are the dancehalls that were associated with vacation spots. I'm not talking Miami Beach or Palm Springs, by vacation spots I mean tiny little destinations we'd consider little more than day trips and (at best) camping spots. A great number of these places actually had facilities dedicated to dancing or at least multi-purpose structures that featured regular dances. Difficult to imagine going for a little fishing and maybe a foxtrot or two, isn't it? It kind of flies in the face of our modern world where dancing is the event and one that has to be met with a distinct amount of pomp and circumstance. In the twenties and thirties and even through the forties, dancing was a regular part of life. People went dancing as a part of their evenings out. They ate at supper clubs that had dance floors and house bands. They didn't have special shoes to dance in they owned shoes that they could also wear dancing. It was a totally different world
My circuitous route has brought me to the point of tonight's little missive - Bass Lake, Indiana. It's a tiny puddle in northern Indiana's Starke County and, once upon a time, it was home to the Crystal Ball Room - a insignificant-looking building built near the water's edge where vacationers met to while away an evening during their summer vacation. I stumbled upon a picture postcard featuring the ballroom. The photographer took the image from the ballroom's parking lot, an odd subject - the cars parked outside a dancehall in north-central Indiana but I can only go from the description that the Memory Collection provides. The caption in the digital archive reads as follows.
"The Crystal Ballroom, built c. 1925 at the south end of Bass Lake, was a popular place through the 1960's. It featured big bands and dancing, roller skating and other events, such as prize fights. Young men bought tickets for 10¢ for the privilege of dancing with the ladies. The Crystal Hotel was next door."
That last pair of sentences is enticing - it makes you wonder if they bought the tickets, danced the dances, and then took the ladies next door to the hotel. I'm guessing not by design, at least. Still there's that hint of scandal in the air!
There are days you're not meant to succeed - and this was one of them. SR10 dances (pun intended) neatly near the south end of Bass Lake however SR29 - not so much. The caption associated with the business card states that Crystal Gardens was located near "…on then State Road 29 and 10…" which reflects the modern reality that somehow a whole state road has been lost to time. I've found SR29 in Indiana but not near enough Bass Lake to make the connection. So for the time being I'll have to be unsatisfied in my quest to find this bygone ballroom. I hope to stand on the spot where it was located and provide a picture for you here but whether that will or won't become a reality will have to be seen! Until then I'll imagine the last dance of the summer season - September with the first smell of fall leaves in the air and a sallow moon riding low in the sky. A couple steps out of the dancehall and as the doors shut the sound of the band playing a Basie tune becomes a shadow. They crunch across the gravel lot to where their car is parked, the trees casting dappled shadows in the moonlight as they walk arm-in-arm after a lovely night.
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