The Final Ball

Its autumn and nostalgia has settled over the land - well, at least over me. Something about the smell of burning leaves and the approach of Thanksgiving sets me to thinking about the past. Not necessarily my past - that's both checkered and pretty pathetic - I'm talking about the past in an esoteric sense and all together Norman Rockwell sense. Anyway, when I get in that mood I peruse the web for history's spindrift: old photos of dancing, old ads with dancers, and everything dance related that sets me back in the middle of an era before I was born. The item that washed up on the digital shoreline today is this - a dance card from the 1940 'Final Ball'.

Something about that title strikes me. 1940, in one year the US would enter Word War II. The Nazis and their allies already held sway over much of Europe and the steady drumbeat of falling shells could be heard behind every aspect of American life. Many people had to know that it was only a matter of time before America entered the war, though few probably could have guessed at the carnage that would propel us into the conflict. Still, on the eve of war, life went on with all its frivolities. From New York to Las Angeles balls were held, music played, and young lovers danced the night away. In some circles it was proper etiquette to have a dance card, a printed list of the tunes that would be played through the evening which the ladies could use to reserve dances for gentlemen. It was the 'polite' thing to do and the origin of the phrase 'save the last dance for me'.

So, the Final Ball was held one night in '40 and on that night a lady donned her tea-length skirt, her cape-back coat, and her best hat before grabbing her clutch and heading out the door. Somehow, in the course of the evening the little dance card got forgotten, left lying on the nightstand or somewhere. She came home and put the dance card away and it got forgotten in all the joy and pain of the coming years surviving to this day as a token of an evening's expectations. An unspoken promise waiting for its moment without knowing that moment has long passed.

Maybe it's my age or my not being single but, unlike many things that I lament passing, the dance card seems like a thing whose time has come and gone. Now all of my dances are saved for someone. Maybe, when I was awkward and single, it would have been nice to be able to reserve three minutes to dance with a girl I liked. Maybe that would have been three minutes of bliss before the end of the Final Ball. Maybe, back in 1940, some dough-faced fellow reserved the second waltz of the night with our mystery girl. Maybe he toured around the floor, smelling her perfume and imagining that this dance could be the beginning of something, the kindling of a great fire that would burn through the decades until time made it mellow to embers. Maybe he carried that feeling home, buttoned up inside his coat. When the world fell apart, maybe he secretly carried it out of the landing craft and onto Sword or Utah beach where the cold water of the Atlantic and the misfortunes of time and place snuffed out the ember. Maybe eternity is a waltz, forever holding the one you love, forever living in that moment when your eyes meet and your heart skips - heaven is a thousand first dates, all of them better than you ever could have hoped. Heaven is walking home after the Final Ball with the smell of her perfume clinging to your coat, the harvest moon lighting your way, and the cool evening breeze stirring the rustling autumn leaves.