OCR Text |
Show 154 Game against East was the biggest game of the year; both we're undeafted and just the week before while the whole Great Lakes were covered with mud, East High had beaten Niles, Ohio in Erie Stadium in the rain while South had gone down and roughed up Massilon, Ohio, so everybody knew that South and East were playing for the championship of the world and not just Erie, PA; and even though South beat East 13-12 that fall of 1938 in the greatest football game to ever be played beneath the sky and everybody from South and East would be at the Homecoming Dance, including sports writers and college scouts, lauding and hanging on all the football players, Red knew that he would go to the dance alone and pick out some beautiful girl and dance her into adulation. So Red went to the Homecoming X Dance and walked into the aaaxxxxXxxxaaxaaX gymn immediately recognizing that the band was playing swing and walked over to the E side of the floor where it looked like all the un-dated girls from East High stood and started xxka asking them to dance and if they didn't want to dance that was okay with him he asked somebody else. Even Lank Ward came up to Red during the night and said, xgaaxaaxaxRaaxxxaaxxxxaxaa "Christ Red, you sure can dance," and Red said, "You're god-damn right I can," and Lank said "But your taste doesn't seem too discriminating," and Red said "They're girls, aint they? They got dresses on, don't they? I'm dancing, aint I?" or at least one of those, at least he thought one of them, besides, Red wasn't planning on getting married he was just dancing. And that's when Frances and Helen Pell came to the dance. axxBxxBxxaxaxxxxixxxixxxBaxaiikxBxgkiBax And that's when they saw Red with his old shoes and used suit and strawberry hair and cheeks like the lumpy end of a heart with shifty hips and £ax fast legs and shoulders like kax borrowed from a buffalo, arms willy nilly and akimbo, dancing, dancing, dancing, he wasn't even dancing with anybody, now getting as much awe at a distance attention as any of the football players. And it was Helen's FIRST DANCE. She had on her first pair of high heels that she'd been practicing dancing in since the moment she got her ankles stiff enough to walk in them and the dress that Frances wore last year to Homecomings and weddings and other events until it got too much for one ggfl toVbnilnue ts^wear, and nylons and make-up that she bought |