MASQUERADES...MUSIC...and MISCHIEF? There has been no shortage of previous posts that have discussed the fun times often found at the old Horseshoe Bay Community Hall. Sadly...it is with us no longer. Ive seen pictures of a young Gary Troll strutting his stuff on the dance floor on this site... and seen Linda Pages parents swinging and swilling the hard stuff with the best of them. Some of us have even gone so far as to salvage innocent childhood memories of Beaconlights... a Christian outreach on Saturday nights that included songs and scripture along with pop, cookies with perhaps a Laurel & Hardy film to complete with the story of Moses? Many of us kids would try to imitate the cricket clicker that would tell the projector to proceed with some bible story...only to frustrate the poor narrator as she tried to keep up with conflicting clicks. Although the hall hold memories that go back to my own Grandpa Pete playing accordian for a whole different generation that preceeded us...my memories are of the early and mid- 1970s. There was the time we rented the film Woodstock and filled an 8 foot dingy with ice & cold beer by the kitchen to keep dancing bodies replenished with fluids. We stretched a large, white sheet across one corner of the hall to project the film onto. We watched the show once...and then ran it again a second time ....in the later hours we ran it backwards...and watched a guitar leap out of the audience into Pete Townsends waiting arms...which he then began to play backwards in his signature windmill manner. There were many different costume balls. Sarge showed up once as the boob tube with two huge, nylon boobs hanging out of the cardboard box he wore as a TV. Hans Brandvold came once as White Trash wearing only a garbage bag with that title taped in white onto the black bag...and a banana peel for a hat! Another fella was a dirty old man flasher who would open his coat to reveal a monsterous papier-mache purple penis 18 inches long that would flop forward. People screamed in both disgust...and delight? Ray Clements once was the perfect Mad Scientist at one Halloween Dance looking something like a cross between Albert Einstein and Vincent Price. There were dance hall girls mingling with video-tape draped Chicken Men....escaped convicts twisted with colourful body painted ballerinas. The sky was the limit in terms of imagination. The clean ups the next day were a funky and disasterous mix of odd discoveries... endless stale beers...and a task that Hercules would surely shudder and shun at the prospect! And many times we had the Bruce Miller Band playing. The band always began with the urgent strains of Van Morrisons Wild Night calling you to the hall on Bruce Street ... all the girls walked by...dressed up for each other... Wild Times...and Wild Nights indeed! I remember one masquerade ball in the Summer of 1974 where I had to borrow a boat to get a few of us back to Bowen Island in the small hours of the morning. I was dressed like a marching band leader and had two dance hall girls with me...as well as a man dressed like a giant chicken in woven video tape. God forbid we ever capsized and folks would have to read of the absurd demise of such a silly foursome! We kept hushed as we tied the Sewells rental boat quietly behind the RCMP launch in Snug Cove in the almost dewy dawn. I knew this would help the lost boat be recovered quickly? We tip-toed up the wharf...snickering...perhaps staggering a bit...soon to be snoring in our sleepy summer beds. Zzzzzzz....perchance to dream...
Posted on: Sat, 17 May 2014 22:21:44 +0000