Barn Dance

As if my Saturday was not anachronistic enough, in the evening I stopped over at the Long Valley Fire Hall for a little barn dance, a 45-year Anniversary Party for one of the elementary teachers at school. From Indians to cowboys: I was, on a rare occasion, just about the only male in the house not wearing cowboy boots--and that includes a range from about four years old to 80-years-old. There was a supper, and then after supper a full band--complete with slide guitar and fiddle--were on stage with a repertoire of classic country. Here, it seemed to me, was a community you had to be born into: everyone, it seemed, had grown up in cowboy boots, riding the back of a rodeo bronco. And everyone was the next person's neighbor, even if that meant living many miles distant down the dirt road.

Tom, my counterpart in the middle school, was born and raised in Long Valley, and is one of the few volunteer fireman left to man the Fire Hall. It had seen better years, he said, but strung with Christmas lights and packed with ranchers from the nearest hundred miles, music ringing out into a cold and rainy October night, it seemed pretty damn decent--especially for a town that, according to Wikipedia, has a population of eight.