Dance, dance, dance... Rock around the Clock

In 1969 a movie was released called They Shoot Horses, Don't They? It starred Jane Fonda and Michael Sarrazin and the backdrop of the movie was a 1930's era dance marathon. This movie finally found its way into the James Park Theatre in St Margarets sometime about the winter of 1972. Now, since there was really nothing to do in St Margarets most of the time other than go to each of the 3 movies screened in the station theatre, most of us did that for fun. This movie led to some very interesting experiences.

Most radar stations had a place for teens to hang out that was safe and handy that we called Teen Town. St Margarets had a small building right next to the outdoor skating rink that housed Teen Town. Someone donated a stereo system and we furnished it with old furniture that we collected from the curb on garbage day. We did some fun stuff, and hired a DJ for special occasions. But none of us had a large enough allowance to really pay much for our dances and parties so we had to come up with fundraising ideas. I don't know whose brainstorm it was to have a dance marathon but that's what we decided to do. (Actually, we had two of them.) I wasn't involved with the first one; I wasn't one of the "in" crowd, wasn't going to have a partner and just knew I'd never get anyone to sponsor me. It was held in the gym in the Rec Centre and lasted 18 hours. The money raised was enough to pay for a beach party at Loggieville. (I'll tell you about THAT later...)

When the success of the first marathon was noted, my Ranger company decided to take a chance and have a rock-a-thon to raise money for new uniforms. We borrowed a bunch of rocking chairs, got permission to use the gym and got our usual Teen Town DJ to agree to play some music to help us stay awake while we rocked. It only lasted about 12 hours but we raised enough money to get our new uniforms. Because there were no boys there though, it was pretty boring!

Our second dance marathon was even better than the first. There were a whole bunch of couples this time. Sharon danced with Bernie McInnis who had just had a bunch of dental surgery and was miserable. We had some couples from Chatham too; there were probably 20 couples who started out. I spent the whole time sitting with the DJ, who was by then my boyfriend. (Nobody noticed when we wandered outside to have some private time... Stairway to Heaven and In A Gadda Da Vida, you know...) The couple who won, Wally Nykolyshyn and Bonnie Stockill, lasted 24 hours! Wow!! Somewhere around here I have a picture of that event. I'll have to dig it out and add it.

I really think that we had a lot of advantages as children dependents of military members. Doing something like this would have been very difficult in another type of community. I'm glad I had the chance to be involved.