Mid-Century Modern Dance
There's a dance at the flea market, Where the partners never meet. Your partner did her steps when she bought the things she liked. Then she died.
That turned dark, didn’t it? But there’s no getting around the fact that, had she not bought that Mid-Century stuff when it was brand new, and kept it clean and safe for all those years, you wouldn’t be able to do your part of the dance sixty years later, which is:
You see her things, you like her things, You buy her things, and take them home. A dance that lasts a lifetime, From mid-century until now.
There’s always R&B and classic rock blaring at the flea market. But if you listen to the things she left behind you can hear other music, suitable for dancing. I hear it. It’s a waltz. Maybe this song will help you hear it:
The Mid-Century Modern Waltz
Green glass, and figurines,
And souvenirs from oases
That appeared when the interstate was new.
Bamboo, and Bakelite phones,
And treasures bought on family trips
Go up for sale when old women pass away.
At estate sales and garage sales,
At flea marts and antique malls,
You find her life reduced
To the things she kept at hand.
There are different degrees of “at hand.” If nearest is dearest, then the things she kept beside her chair would be priceless: tweezers; candy; coupons; the last printed TV Guide from before it went online; a small framed photograph. The value of these items vanished as do hummingbirds, surely as her soul fled her body. It is clutter. None of it—except the picture frame—makes it to the sale.
If you are doing the dance—shopping for Mid-Century items—and if you hear the music, then maybe you are ready to know more about your dance partner. Try this: hold the things that made it to the sale, look at them from every angle, then close your eyes and let them speak to you.
I beheld, and held in my hands, a single wood carving of Don Quixote astride Rocinante. It told me nothing, or else it spoke too faintly for me to hear. But then as I made my rounds I beheld, and held, several pen-and-ink prints of Don Quixote, and stone sculptures of Don Quixote, and yet more wood carvings of Don Quixote, some alone and some accompanied by loyal Sancho Panza on his donkey. Their combined voices told me a tale of a home decor arms race that spanned two decades starting in the mid-1950s.
It started when someone went to Mexico on vacation and brought back the proto-Don Quixote-themed decoration, its potential yield and full effect as yet undetermined. Tongues wagged up and down the block.
“Did you see what she bought and hung on her wall?”
“That slouchy man on a horse?”
“It’s so ugly…isn’t it?”
“Yes, in a cute sort of way.”
“You think it’s cute?”
“Maybe.”
The group know-it-all: “He’s from a book, you know. A famous book. By Miguel D. Sir-vawn-tays.”
“Is that French?”
“Spanish.”
“Really? Have you read it?”
“Well, no.”
“I thought she got it in Mexico.”
“They’re Spanish there, aren’t they? Sort of. Some of them.”
“I want one. Not the exact same one she has, though. That would be copycatting.”
“Well…I don’t know.”
Oh, she knew. They all knew. The race was on. Whether ugly or cute, Don Quixote in your home marked you as cultured even if you never read—or even heard of—the book, and she would be damned if she would be out-cultured by that woman up the street.
Buyers at Loveman’s and Pizitz and Parisian questioned not why every other phone call from a widening circle, with its epicenter just over the mountain from Birmingham, demanded Don Quixote. They knew only that they had better send someone to Mexico to get it at the source, and in bulk, and in many materials and styles. Bring out all your Don Quixote, rapidamente, por favor! South of the border, fingers flew with renewed vigor, wielding paints, clay, wood, knives, stone, chisels. Trees were felled to fire the kilns ‘round the clock. Critical mass was reached and a chain reaction followed. Quixote proliferated in America, until mutual assured bewilderment was on display in every home.
Your dance partner bought dozens of Norman Rockwell plates. Hold one, close your eyes, and see: she covered the kitchen and dining room and hallway walls with those plates, like armor against—what? Against what did Norman Rockwell shield her and her loved ones? It is easier, perhaps, to think about what the plates portrayed, and assume that they protected against its opposite. They portrayed a fever dream of the American ideal, with every adult an angel and every child a cherub. Rockwell didn’t impose that fever on the country—he channelled it, every bit as much as Michelangelo channelled Christianity onto cathedral ceilings for an audience that was primed to believe every bit of it.
Your dance partner was a disciple of that dream. She could have framed magazine covers and kept old calendars, but those things yellow and she wanted the dream to last and so: Rockwell plates galore, prominently displayed, proclaiming We Are An American Fever Dream Family. Don’t Mess With Our Dream, Buster.
Oh. Kitty had claws. Two dozen plates, minimum. The fort was well defended.
You don’t know whether her husband ever smiled as hugely as the husbands in the plates, or if she was herself as sweet and patient as a Rockwell mom, or if their kids were delightful little cherubic scamps. Content yourself with knowing her vision. Don’t you clean up and dress up and try to look like your best possible self when you go to a dance? Well, so did she, and she didn’t even know there would be a dance. She was just living her life.
Shelf and wall decorations were just a warmup. Let’s get right to your dance partner’s heart. Look at her vinyl record albums.
You can honestly say you know something about a woman if she owned more than one album by Engelbert Humperdinck, and look--oh my: your partner had six of them. Her feelings for Engelbert were not a teeny-bopper crush. Do the calendar math. She had to be thirty, with several children, by the time he came on the scene. I can’t say with certainty that she truly loved him, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that this mid-century woman was turned on by that outrageous English caricature of manliness. You know how when some people dance, their hips don’t move? Well, if your partner owned that much Engelbert then you need to work on your own steps, because her hips are moving.
Did her husband knew about her feelings for Engelbert? Or did she hide her feelings and those albums behind the certified sexless Mitch Miller records? I like to think that her husband did know, and that he warmed himself by the fire lit by the Englishman. Husband and wife might have even listened to those records together, and who knows—a slow dance might have broken out right there in the den. A dance with moving hips.
There’s more to life than boyfriends. Her record collection contained a whole family. Perry Como, sedate in his tasteful sweater, was the perfect uncle. Doris Day in her impossibly blonde, shiny heyday. A pal. A sister. Need a non-threatening guy friend or a favorite cousin? There’s nearly a dozen albums showing the many moods of Jim Nabors (actually just three moods—worshipful, in love, and of course in a Christmas mood).
Your mid-century dance partners left you no clues other than their possessions. Those things sit at stores, waiting patiently for someone to recognize their true value and take them home. But since I dare to imagine stories from the simple existence of things, I like to imagine one more scene, prompted by the fact that she held onto these particular things until the end.
In her last few years, left with only the symbolic possessions, my dance partner sits home alone for night after night. But she is not always completely alone. Often, she will cue up the record player and invite Engelbert, Perry, Doris, and Jim over for yet another command performance. Their smiles and their passion never waver and they always dutifully oblige when summoned. As they sing, with the grooves in her mind playing in concert with the grooves on the vinyl, she taps her toe, and on good nights and for certain songs she even manages a dance step. Hugging herself in the circle of light from her table lamp, silently observed by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, guarded by the heavenly creatures in the Rockwell plates, smiled upon by the beloved faces in the small framed photograph beside her chair, she performs her last part of the Mid-Century Modern Dance.
This essay first appeared in the AWC Awarded Writers’ Collection 2023.