***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

 

…she was crazy to dance, could hardly wait from week to week for the Friday night USO dance to show off her stuff, her proper dance step stuff, to the soldiers and sailors who were being feted. Trouble was while she was crazy to dance, saw her better self through dancing she had, oh no, two left feet. And it was not like she hadn’t tried to correct the problem by going to Miss Sadie’s Saturday dance classes to get a handle on her problem. It wasn’t like she didn’t try to avoid those precious dance partner toes but to no avail. It got so that when she showed up on Friday nights guys would head the other way, not obviously but the other way. And so it went through the first year of the war, so it went until she found out that one did not have to dance the slow ones, do some mangled foxtrot or some hideous waltz but one could swing, one could do jitter-bug. And she did and all the guys, those sullen soldiers and sailors, noticed that it did not mean a thing because she now had that swing…