DECEMBER 13, 2024 – Throughout her life, my oldest sister has been the consummate over-achiever. One manifestation of this attribute—and closely associated with Christmas—is that from the late 1970s to circa 2020, she performed in close to two thousand performances of The Nutcracker Ballet produced by the Boston Ballet Company.
My second oldest sister, took dance lessons for a while and in the middle of our living room once performed an impressive demonstration, which our dad caught on his 8mm film movie camera. She too was an over-achiever, but I don’t she ever danced in the Nutcracker or professed an interest in becoming a ballerina. Everyone knew she was already well on her way to becoming a concert violinist extraordinaire. (After graduating from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, however, she wound up playing violin with the Philadelphia Ballet Company.)
My youngest sister, on the other hand, though interested in following our older sisters’ musical footsteps, harbored a burning desire to become a dance star. She was certain that her debut around Christmas 1962 would catapult her to instant worldwide fame. She was all of four years old at the time.
As a self-absorbed second-grader, I didn’t pay close attention to Jenny’s dance career, so the details that I recount here were garnered in the course of a phone call this afternoon. As is the case with so many stories from Jenny’s youth, this one had me howling.
Somehow Jenny had become enamored of tap-dancing. She thinks her inspiration was an appearance by Shirley Temple in some old movie at Olson’s theater in Anoka, which was the town’s center of community entertainment back in those days. In any event, Jenny talked Mother into signing her up for classes at the local dance studio run by a woman who Jenny described today as “probably about 40, but closer to 80 in my kid’s mind.”
“I never saw her smoking,” said Jenny, “but I was pretty sure she did.”
“Why did you think that?” I asked.
“You know, she just had the look—dyed red hair, long fingernails and bright lipstick. I just figured she was probably a smoker.”
Dance classes were held at the Masonic Temple, with its Greco-Roman façade and imposing columns and Ionic capitals, just behind the post office on Main Street. Jenny told me she loved the sound of the tap-dance shoes and learned in a hurry how to turn and tap her feet—in one direction. “For some reason,” she said, laughing, “tapping in the other direction was difficult for me, so I just muddled through.”
Other than her one-sided tap-taps, the most memorable aspect of the lessons was that Mother followed her usual blasé pattern of chauffeuring. “Do you think that Mother would walk her four-year-old kid into the building,” Jenny asked, “and stick around for the class? Of course not! She just let me out of the car and drove off to run her errands.” We both laughed over this comment. We remember well Mother’s habit of dropping us off with one babysitter or another and forgetting to pick us up. “At the end of class,” Jenny told me, “I’d always be the last one to be picked up. Every week I wondered if Mother had forgotten—again—that she had to pick me up.
“One time it was getting quite late, but still—no Mother. I decided I’d just walk home.” Home was more than a mile away, on the other side of the Rum River and across a very busy Ferry Street, which running along the Rum, separated downtown Anoka—and the Masonic Lodge—from our sleepier side of Anoka.
“So . . . I started off. I really had no idea where I was going, and after I’d been walking a few minutes, a police car pulled up. The two policemen inside asked me where I was going, and I said ‘home.’ They offered me a ride, and I must’ve known our address, because that’s where they took me.”
More weeks passed, and the dance instructor informed her charges that it was time to prepare for the big Christmas performance. “I got very excited,” said Jenny, “because I just knew that I would get picked for the starring role, even though I could tap-tap only to one side. But I was sure I was cut-out to be famous! This was going to be my big chance to make the big time.
“Except . . . I wasn’t chosen for the main role. I was told I’d just be one of the candy canes in the crowd scenes. What kind of operation is this, anyway? I thought. How could they make me a candy cane when I was obviously supposed to get the lead role! Wasn’t that the whole point of my being in the dance class?”
I laughed. “What did you do?”
“I told Mom I wanted to quit. I had no interest in being a candy cane.”
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
