Week #29: Dancing At The Greasy Spoon

I was in an old-timey restaurant up towards Jacksboro the other afternoon. It's one of those little greasy-spoon places that still has the electronic push-button juke boxes at each table, the kind that advertises "Stereo Speakers!" I was there a couple of years ago, too, and I think I've probably posted pictures of the things here. Eh -- I can't find them, so maybe not.

Tabletop Juke Box -- All The Class You Need In Your Life

At any rate, the Beneficiary is fascinated with them because they remind her of the place she was a waitress over 40 years ago (where I met her, actually.) The waitresses all listened to random music played according the taste of whichever customer had quarters that night. No pre-canned corporate crap, no programmed music list, no elevator music, none of that -- just singles playing back to back in no particular order, no particular style. It made the time go by faster.

So, she plugged a couple of quarters in and fired the thing up -- it's one of those systems that, whatever it is you're listening to, everyone else is also listening to, both from the "big" jukebox up front and through their own little jukebox at THEIR table. Of course they can turn it down or off, but most people just ignore it as it burbles along in the background of their home-style chicken fried steak 'n' taters.

Talk about "old-timey" -- for no apparent reason except that she likes it, she punched up "S7," which was the Andrews Sisters' "Boogy-Woogy Bugle Boy."

OK, look, I'm old, but I ain't THAT old. That's World War II stuff. But it's a bouncy little song, and it made her happy. If anyone else didn't want to hear it, they could mute it or just fuck off and get over it, whichever. I'm past the point in my life where I give a crap what anyone else thinks of me or mine.

I was surprised to see a lot of people around the restaurant bobbing their heads in time to the music, most of them apparently not even noticing they were doing it. Old guys, kids, teens -- very strange. I may have underestimated the "hooks" built into the Andrews Sisters' music.

Down at the table by the windows, there was a little girl about four or five years old. She and her two (obviously) sisters (about 8 and 12) were with a beefy redneck (I presume "dad") who was evidentially taking them out for a late lunch. She was drawing on her placemat with crayons, and bobbing along with the music, literally bouncing in her seat. When the song got to a harmonic bridge, she looked up and smiled, and then stood up next to the table and started dancing. 

Barefoot, wearing a cotton summer dress covered in turquoise and orange flowers, she had bright-blonde hair sun-blasted nearly platinum trapped in a long, braided tail, and she was tanned to within an inch of her life, the very image of a tough little country girl (common enough in these parts) having the summer of her life and dancing, as they say, like no one was watching.

It made everyone in the place smile.

Dad glanced over at her and told her to sit down and behave herself, and her sunny smile turned into a thundercloud. Clearly, this was not a little girl who liked to be told "no." He reached across the seat and grabbed her arm and pulled her back into her place, pointing at the placemat, trying to get her back to her crayons. He was obviously embarrassed by her little display.

She was having none of it, and he began talking to her, low and threatening. You know, like you talk to a kid who's about to cause you a problem in public.

So, I slid across my seat to stand up to go over there and tell the dickhead to leave her the fuck alone, she wasn't hurting anything, but the Beneficiary grabbed my arm and made me sit down. Which was the right thing to do. There was nothing going on there that had anything to do with me -- he wasn't hurting the girl or anything like that. She wasn't even afraid of him. He'd ruined her spontaneous joy, and she was just sulking about it.

It still hacked me off. I'm getting weird in my old age.

I don't know what this story has to do with anything. Just a thing that happened, 5 minutes out of my week.

But, anyhow, here's the Andrews Sisters from the 1941 Bud Abbott and Lou Costello film, "Buck Privates." Turns out it's the #6 song on the RIAA list of the top songs of the century, just behind "American Pie" and just ahead of the "West Side Story" album. 

And if you feel like getting up and dancing wherever you are, just go for it. If anyone gets in your face about it, tell 'em you got a friend who's going to come over to the table and kick the shit out of them if they don't piss off and mind their own damned business.