"All Skate and Skate Slow...."

So I'm listening to this collection of golden-oldie country and western CDs that HJohn, my personal music librarian, brought home. Some of the just SCREAM "Steel Magnolias"--like Kitty Wells' "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" and Patsy's "Walkin' After Midnight". GREAT, great stuff. Then "The Battle of New Orleans" comes on and suddenly, there I am, in the 7th grade at Roller Rink South on Bluffton Road in Fort Wayne, skating around and around at one of the countless skating parties we used to go to when we were 'teens and pre-teens'. They were THEE social event of my junior high years. A carefully-selected outfit, my 'shag' hairstyle combed just right, and don't forget the blue eye shadow (yeech!). Skating around and around, hoping to catch the eye (or the hand) of that certain someone...and then this song would come on and everyone would skate, and march along with it, and 'shoot the duck', as it was called:

"In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans."

Well, here! Enjoy it for yourself: Battle of New Orleans

And when it was over, the stomping, the marching, the fun...the skater-guy-announcer would put on some easy listening (Ray Charles "Ramblin' Rose") to get us to calm down and remind us, in his 'tell us what she won, Johnny' voice that this was an "All-skate, and skate slow...."


:-)