Rock'n Roll in College

I learned ballroom dancing in the seventh grade. Sister Mary McCauley—a nun of the Sisters of Mercy order—hired someone to teach our class of 26. That same year we also learned how to square dance, which I greatly enjoyed. My problem with ballroom dancing was that I always wanted to take over the lead.

Given that and the bad case of acne I mentioned last week, I wasn’t popular at mixers when the ban played a waltz or foxtrot. I did have partners for the polka as I could throw myself into that dance with abandon, and the boys went along for the ride.

In college, I met a fellow freshman who’d had her own dance studio in high school. When I asked her to teach me to rock'n roll, she took on the challenge. With rock'n roll, I became a little more popular on the dancefloor. Of course, in the college I attended—a small library arts college for young women—we young women also danced together in the evening between study hall and lights out.

Our dorms were on the top floor of the ad building. A long hall—probably a couple of football fields long—extended down the center of the fourth floor, separating the various dorms. At night, we’d play music—loudly—and dance down that hall. Or, we’d push the beds and dressers in our dorms aside and have our own mixers. I slept in St. Lucy’s Dorm in which there were 48 beds—an enormous room. There we were, dressed in pajamas and robes just rockin’ and rollin’!

That continued throughout my freshman and sophomore years when we lived on the 4^th floor. In my junior and senior years, we lived in private rooms for two or three in the various college houses. Sometimes all of us in one house would rock ‘n roll in the basement, but mostly that got left behind as we became more serious about studying. I didn’t go to the twin-college mixers because I was, quite simply, a wallflower.

In June 1958, I graduated and entered the convent. There was no dancing there and no phonographs on which to play dance records. Nor could we listen to the radio or television. The only music we heard was that of the liturgy. Of course, there was the melody of our chanting of the Divine Office several times a day.

At Mass, we sang a number of prayers. For Sunday Mass, the choir would sing a specially arranged song. The one I most remember was “Ubi Caritas,” which came to everyone’s attention in the early 1960s after a Benedictine priest—Father Paul Benoit—composed his melody for this ancient Latin antiphon. (Since then, many composers have set the words to their own melodies.)

Those of you who have had the opportunity to read my convent memoir, Prayer Wasn’t Enough, know that I daily disobeyed the convent traditions and rules by singing songs from the 1920s, ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s while I did my obediences—especially sorting the laundry. I was never reprimanded for this even though I’m quite sure the novice mistress knew I sang. Benedictines have always sung, and I don’t think she minded that my song wasn’t chant.

This video from YouTube shows that rock'n roll is still popular today!

Did you get a chance to rock ‘n roll? What was your favorite song to dance to?

Peace.