Yee-haw

My honey took me dancing last night at the Western Club, which is out on the highway in Navasota. It was our first time there, and Jody Nix was playing the best western swing I've heard since I was nineteen and saw Bob Wills and his band play at the local VFW ("Yee-haw, sing it, Leon"). Jody Nix's band covered a lot of those old Bob Wills songs, along with others made classic by Ray Price.

At the Western Club, the average person on the dance floor is 65 years old, doing the Texas two-step, moving in a circle around the dance floor as one big happy mass. There were easily two hundred people, paying $15 apiece, to drink longnecks and belly rub with their wives, or a widow woman, or divorcée, or a neighbor's wife. It was amazing to see so many folks out having  a rousing good time without even one of them getting knee-walking drunk.

These men and women came to dance, and dance they did--even during the band's breaks when the music was piped through the club's sound system. They two-stepped, waltzed, and jitterbugged the night away. My man and I, having been out of practice and easily winded, only made it to the dance floor five or six times, but we had almost as much fun people-watching.

Just in case you decide to stop at one of these dance halls that speckle Texas' landscape, you might want to know what the dress code is, so you don't stand out like a dude. The men wear cowboy hats, straw since it's summer,  and snap-button cowboy shirts they probably bought at the Tractor Supply Store (which has lots more than tractors for sale). They wear Levis or Wranglers held up by decorative belts and silver buckles as large as any champion cowboy ever won on the rodeo circuit. Their women folk are clad in jeans or skirts with white blouses or something with a Southwestern flair. Most wear no makeup, just the sun-kissed complexion from daily work in a garden, but their hair is newly coifed. Nearly everyone wears boots.

Ronnie told me to get a good look at everyone's face so I could recognize anyone who showed up at the First Baptist Church this morning. Heathens that we are, we didn't make it to First Baptist or any other church this morning; we overslept. We don't have cattle and chickens that we need to rise early to care for, so we stayed in bed. Our animals are family dogs, and they were more than happy to sleep in with us.