A little something from the Gila Writers Group last week.

I used to dance, long ago, once I overcame the fear of ridicule or looking foolish to those who actually knew the footwork and possibly other associated motions that certain Sixties dances required. By the Seventies, free-styling was the dominant form on the floor. With just the right number of tokes, who cared what anyone else thought anyway.

Actually, I think I got it all down pretty well by then–syncing my moves to the music of the day, or night to be more precise. There really were no prescribed moves anymore. Then came disco, that short-lived excursion into far more moves than ordinary rock and roll ever had. Kind of like a return to decades past. Many mocked the music but plenty did the steps. Not me. No time for learning that in the midst of law school–even if I’d wanted to. I suppose the freestyle and disco coexisted for a time, with disco fading first. But by then, age and marriage made clubs and the party scene a thing of the past.

Now I’m living just outside Silver City. A small town in New Mexico. I’ve seen bumper stickers that say

Old hippies never die, they just move to Silver City

There’s some truth to that. You can verify it with a trip to the Blues Festival that happens every Memorial Day Weekend. It’s FREE! Occasional name groups or individual singers show up. More often it’s people you’ve never heard of–but that doesn’t mean they’re not smokin’. Many folks just sit in their canvas event chairs, with or without umbrellas. But many others surround the stage set up on the pagoda in the middle of the town’s park. With music blasting, they make their own unique contribution to the dance vocabulary. No two individuals or couples move alike. From their apparel, it’s obvious some are reliving the good old days of wherever hippies and wannabes frolicked.

More than a little overweight and without the aid of still prohibited recreational drugs, I’ve eschewed the dancing myself. Now that I’m nearly svelte, next year has to be the time to revisit those days myself. Who knows, by then New Mexico may join the legalization movement that’s already taken hold in Colorado.