THE BLUE SKIRT WALTZ

In the summer of 1936 Steve Miklo met Betty Jondle for the first time at a Thursday night dance in the Expo Dance Hall. She told me the story in the context of what her family did for entertainment; polka music.

Betty said that first night Steve asked her to dance and they were waltzing when one of the other dancers accidentally elbowed Steve in the head and he got a nosebleed.  He bled onto Betty’s new blue dress. So the Blue Skirt Waltz became their song.

The following Thursday, Steve was waiting to meet Betty at the dance hall door.  They were together from that point on.  Here is the story as Betty told it:

Bob: So, what did your parents do for entertainment?

Betty: Go to the Bohemian Hall.  As far back as I can remember my dad always took me out for one dance.  Those days, people didn’t hire baby-sitters; they took the kids with them.  Now, I remember…. Bohemian Hall, that was just a mile, and you turn, and another mile – half a mile down the road.

Bob: From your farmhouse?

Betty: Yeah.  Bohemian Hall, that was entertainment, and I guess I’m so much like my dad, how he loved that music.   They (her parents) had a phonograph.  You had to wind it up and then those 33 speed records – one at a time, the 33 speed.  He would put them on, and in the wintertime we kept warm in the kitchen, we hardly ever used the other room, but sometimes he would get the heater going in there, he would start the fire in there and he would take a chair, he’d wind up that phonograph, put those records on and he sat there in the evening, listening to that music.

Bob: So, was it polka music?

Betty: Polka music.  Definitely.  Nothing else but polka music

Bob: So, did your mom like to dance?

Betty: She danced, but there were times when she didn’t.  Oh, that Bohemian Hall (laughing), but later on, when I got to be a teenager and just before I met your father we went to the dances at the Laramar and the Expo (ballrooms in Fort Dodge). That was before there was any air conditioner so it was cooler at the Expo in the summertime and that’s where I met your father.

Bob: That was up where the swimming pool was?

Betty: Well, there’s a nursing home there.  Where that nursing home is, there was a dance hall.  I was just a kid but I looked older and I was sitting there with a bunch of girls on the dance floor and your father came up, never seen him before.

We danced.  And then somebody accidently hit him in the back of the head dancing and he got a nosebleed and I had on a brand new blue dress.  It had a double collar and it got blood on it.  My mother worked real hard to get the blood out; well she did get it out.

Those were Thursday night dances.  Then, the next Thursday night, he was in the entryway when we came in, he took me by the hand, I never wanted anybody else, I just wanted to dance with him, that was it. (end of quote)

Here is a picture of the Laramar, one of the three ballrooms in the Fort Dodge area, where Steve and Betty often danced.  Their 50th wedding anniversary dance was held here in 1987.

Click here to listen to the Blue Skirt Waltz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiRc5H4Fg4g