Dating rituals and chat-up lines in our youth

Ah, the long summer evenings of August long ago. When the day’s work finished, how many hearts and minds turned towards music, dance, and just possibly romance?

Whether it was a bus trip down to the Majorca in Crosshaven or across to the Highland in Newmarket, a joyous journey to Redbarn outside Youghal, or an unsophisticated but delightful platform dance in Inchigeela, those were the places that memories were made. Which do you best?

We were reminded of this by seeing an old rusty barn building next to a greenway recently and being told by a farmer that it was there they used to hold dances way back in the day.

“Oh, in the evening you would see the lights of bicycles coming along the lane from miles away, and all the bikes stacked outside while their owners went in to enjoy themselves,” the farmer reminisced.

“The music from the band would float over the fields and you’d hear it from your back door. It was grand.

“And then afterwards, there would be the happy voices as people were going away. Maybe a girl or two who had come on foot would be offered a ‘crosser’ home by a young man. You wouldn’t know what might come of it!”

Down in Inchigeela, that summer of the late 1950s when Johnny Creedon was determined to turn the town into a popular holiday destination, they used to hold platform dances at a certain spot outside the village. Was it a wooden platform that could be assembled for the night and then packed up and stored until the next occasion? Or was it a permanent concrete affair?

The band would play on a makeshift platform, often the open side of a truck, and people came from far and near to enjoy themselves.

And then there were the now legendary dances at the crossroads in every part of the county. Somehow it always seemed to be fine on those evenings of long ago, didn’t it?

There were so many country get-togethers, ideal places for young people to meet and mingle (even if the parish priest regularly put in an appearance to ensure that the proprieties were observed).

It was the opportunity to meet people from another townland, another village, which was always exciting. And to hear the (fairly) latest tunes being belted out, and getting the chance to dance to them.

Stephen Twohig, who grew up in Kanturk, has mixed memories of those teenage days. The delight of the different dance halls (then changing slowly into discos), yes, but also the crippling shyness that made the whole evening a terrifying experience.

“The coloured lights are flashing like beacons around the hall. Every once in a while, some known face is illuminated by the whirling rays of light. People slowly filter in and gather in small clusters in the different corners. Lying Eyes, by the Eagles, is playing, and the DJ is shuffling for the next tune.

“On the floor are a few couples but most are hanging back, too nervous or just not in the mood yet. It’s the Edel Quinn Hall of a Friday night.

“These would be the first discos we would attend and we would progress to venues further afield. The Highland in Newmarket was quite the place.

“If you didn’t have transport, you would take the bus or stand over on O’Brien Street and try and hitch a ride. This worked well on your way there, but held only a slender window of opportunity for the trip home. It’s many the night we sauntered home in the dark of night by Allens Bridge and Rosacon.”

Nobody who was there could forget the legendary Crush in Newmarket, Stephen muses.

“It was a sight to behold. The ladies would all be lined along the upper wall in the hall, and the young men (some not so young), would file up and down in a close throng, eyeing the prospective possibilities. It was a madhouse, a ‘meat market’ you could say, and worse than any crowd filing out of a sporting event. But of course this was the ultimate sporting event.

“Every once in a while, a brave soul would make a go for it, shrug off all doubts, and nervousness, and stride over to interrupt a few ladies in conversation. Or more likely pull himself through the crowd like a drowning man trying to make shore.

“Depending on the individual or the lady herself, you might find yourself following her on to the dance floor for a set of three, or try and muster as much composure and manly indifference as possible if she denied the request.”

Stephen says he wonders what psychological inflictions and maiming occurred on these occasions that would take years to recover from, if ever.

“After your first success, you then had to carry on a conversation over the loud bass of the music, the din of the crowd, or the seeming disinterest of your partner,” he continues.

“All around you notice the success of some previous candidate and you wonder constantly if all your friends are watching.

“If you are lucky the band will play some real rocking tune by Dire Straits, Eric Clapton, Queen, or Joe Jackson. If you are unlucky enough to catch the start of a slow set of Bee Gees, Exile or The Commodores, you are pretty much finished. There will be a hesitant pregnant pause, she will thank you for dancing, and will leave you in the total collapse of your already diminished confidence.”

Well, Stephen says philosophically, at least you got to dance.

“You return to your friends, shrug it off as her fault, she had a few missing teeth anyway, no personality, she had two left feet, or just was not your type.

“There were well-known standard one-liners used on the dance floor. ‘Will you stay on?’, used after the set ended, trying to encourage a commitment beyond the required and appropriate time spent dancing with a stranger.

“‘Do you feel like an orange?’ was a courteous gesture, but all too often got the off-putting reply, ‘No, do I look like one?’·

“Either way, we were mystified and at odds with the mind and its workings of the opposite sex. When you thought they liked you, they would walk off anyway after seeming to have a good time. If you ignored them, they told you after that you acted a snob. You couldn’t win or figure them out in these early years. Come to think of it, you still can’t!”

On the other hand, if you were suave, played a good air guitar, could mouth the lyrics of the songs, or knew intimate details of some of the band, you were in with a chance, he reveals.

“Or, if you were the son of a big farmer, with the dad’s big car parked outside. A large Datsun or Toyota with a cassette deck would do nicely. On this I can only surmise, as I had neither. To the best of my memory, I never once met a stranger, or carried on any semblance of a conversation. I never hit the correct notes on the extraordinary solos of Bohemian Rhapsody or Sultans Of Swing, or ever had any success in luring the candidate for another set, never mind to the fumbling clutches of a big car. (The one I didn’t have outside.) No, the only windows I would fog up would be the windows of the bus home to Kanturk!”

The mating habits of some species take on some strange and idiosyncratic forms, to say the least, says Stephen, from the experienced platform of adulthood.

“Our own is no different. Maybe it is the frustration of misunderstanding the opposite sex, mixed with the flood of rampant and unused hormones, but somehow the male species not having success in courtship will tum on themselves. And so was the case at dances in Newmarket. Millstreet or Mallow.

“There was always some scuffle, or at times more serious territorial and gang-like face-offs. Many the head was split and stitch needed after a night at a dance. Oh, the romance! Or was it just the Alpha male staking out his territory? I don’t know.

“‘The band are good tonight, do you come here often?’ It is the Star Ballroom in Millstreet, another favourite. We are here of a Thursday night on the balcony overhead, looking down at the dancing crowd below.

“At the back is a bar and cafe where you can buy chips or burgers, and seating where you can just hang out with your respective crowd. The Memories are playing and they always fill the house. Their cover songs are perfect and they do each number justice. Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street is the real thing.

“From the balcony, you can watch your man gunned down in the first efforts of introduction, or your man left standing alone on the dance floor, mystified by the disappearance of his once smiling partner. This is a great spot for people-watching for sure.

“If it’s not The Highland in Newmarket, it is Millstreet, or the odd time Mallow. Mallow can be rough though, and you have to watch yourself, so us country lads stick to our country places and to the favourite haunts and fishing grounds.

“The bands also are known favourites. If you’re lucky, it is The Memories or Reform, if not it is Joe Dolan or Dickie Rock or some other past success. The posters will have been stuck on every shop window or billboard for weeks .

“On an August summer evening with the smell of newly-cut hay, glows of seaside tans, and the fading light of a near midnight sun, one can nearly feel again the closeness of skin and eternal romance. If only my father had bought the big farm and the big car!”

You have captured so many memories there, Stephen, that others will resonate to, ing their own experiences at dances when the world was young.

Were your first tentative steps at the Arcadia, where a young Rory Gallagher and his band (first the Fontana, then Impact) often played the warm-up shift before one of the big showbands? Or was it down by the sea in Crosshaven or Redbarn?

Perhaps your first introduction to actually making with the opposite sex was at a village dance hall, where that ever-present, ever-vigilant parish priest interrupted close numbers to separate couples too-closely entwined.

“I dances at Christians back in the early 1960s,” says Katie O’Brien. “We girls all stood at one side, that was the custom, and the boys at the other.

“There was this lad I met who was over from Wales for the rugby matches they used to have with CBC, and he was staying with my then boyfriend. He came into the hall, saw the division of boys and girls and frowned in puzzlement.

“Then he caught sight of me and came over. ‘Look, your boyfriend is over there,’ he pointed out (unnecessarily as it happened). ‘Will I go over and tell him you’re here?’

“‘No!’ I countered frantically. ‘You can’t do that. We have to wait until the music starts and then he will come and ask me.’

“Off goes the Welsh boy, shaking his head at the strange mating customs of the Cork people.

What are your memories of those long-ago dances? Did you meet your life partner there? Was there a special location that holds wonderful recollections? Tell us about it!

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