As for dancing, once a week, Friday nights, there was a dance at the “Academy.” Time was when Friday night's dance was an event, and the male contingent from the largest near-by city was wont to attend. But it cost twenty-four cents to journey by trolley from the largest near-by city to the Falls, fifty cents to attend the dance. Unemployment at the largest near-by city meant that any dancing indulged in by its citizens was at home, minus car fare. Also, the music for dancing at the Falls was not favorably commented upon. So sometimes there were six couples at the dance, once in a great while twenty. The youths present were home talent, short on thrills for the fair ones present.
Indeed, the problem of the Falls was the problem of every small town—where in the world could an up-and-doing girl turn for a beau? The only young men in the place were those married still younger and anchored there, or the possessors of too little gumption to get out. Those left hung over the rail at the end of the Main Street bridge and eyed every female passer-by. It was insult heaped on boredom, from the girls' point of view, that a Falls youth never so much as tipped his hat when spoken to. “Paralysis of the arms is here widespread,” Bess put it. “You oughta see 'em in winter,” Margaret giggled one Sunday while four of us were walking the streets for diversion. “If you want to know where the gallants of the Falls are in winter, look for a sunny spot. They collect in patches of sun, like some kind of bugs or animals.”
As for reading, “Do you like to read?”
“Crazy 'bout readin'.”
“What, for instance?”
“Oh, books, movie magazines. Don't ever remember the names of anything. Swell stories. Gee! I cried and cried over the last one....”
Or, “Do much reading?”
“Na, never git time to read.”
My old maids never so much as took the newspaper. They figured that if news was important enough they'd hear about it sooner or later, and meanwhile there was much to keep up with at the Falls.
“Can't hardly sleep nights, got so much on my mind,” the seventy-sixer would say.