January 23, 2021

I need to tell about a night of MAGIC.  

There used to be BIG dances in La Veta - about every couple months there would be a dance at the Pub and Grub or the La Veta Inn.  Both had good dance floors.  AND always they were crowded.  This town Loved to dance - or at least some small piece of it did.  Live music - Babs and Brent or other local bands.  Easy to dance to music  Fun to dance to music.  No formality.  No requirements for perfection or partners.  Solo, women alone, couples.  Free and spontaneous,  joyful, playful, HAPPY times.

This night shines.  The dance floor of the La Veta Inn was packed.  The band was local, and good, playing all kinds of dance-ful music from the stage above.  So close you could feel each beat in the bones - and move with that.  Make the muscles hear.  Shoulder to shoulder.  Sweaty hands reaching up and out.  Touching, singing,  MOVING.  A fluid mass of happy people.  Men and women.  Women encouraging men  Get up.  Get up.  Come play here.  Hours went on.  And the steam rolled on.  I was completely juiced up with life energies and fun.  Looking good.  Feeling good.  So fully female.  So deliciously real.  I love to dance.  Sweaty and ready to breathe again, the band stopped for a moment and introduced the next number.  It would be a two step - a cowboy two-step.  Oh, like a slam to the heart.  A two-step.  I can’t do a two- step.  I don’t know how.  I don’t have a partner.  Disappointment climbing inside the dancing space of me.  And I began to move away from the stage, from the dance. As if by magic I see a cowboy hat moving in on me from the bar, just a few steps away now.  He steps up to me and says - “May I…”  I bumble… and mumble - just for a second “I can’t”.  He takes my hands.  Puts my hand on his shoulder and his arm around my waist.  “Don’t worry, I’ll show you”  The music starts - and Zeke and I begin our dance.  We might have been the only dancers on the floor or maybe it was crowded.  My cowboy and I were dancing a two-step.  I was dancing a two-step with a cowboy.  I have died and gone to heaven.  I am Cinderella at the ball.

Zeke is a cowboy here in La Veta - or was for years after.  He may not be here now.  He’s since married, and like me ,grown older.  Probably neither of us could do a two-step now.  But that night.  That magical night.  Zeke, a cowboy, became Prince Charming. I  Ci,derella.  The music, the dance - the synchronicity of my unknown wish and his appearance.  All pure magic.  All a gift of Joy delivered to me to en-joy.  Always I will be in love with Zeke who came from nowhere to deliver a dance to me.   A dream I didn’t even know I had came true - enough for a lifetime.  Refreshing the soul of me - even now.