Memories of Charlton County - by Gibson and Mays Back to Table of Contents 38. SQUARE DANCING WITH ETHEL (Pp 77-78) My cousins and I were the first ones
in this section to learn to square dance and we were willing to teach it to anyone who wanted to learn. We looked forward to going to the dances all over the county and considered it the greatest fun there was. However, some of the older people of the county didn't approve of this. They thought it was scandalous behavior. These dances were special events for when I was young we didn't have many holidays. The Fourth of July and Christmas were the only holidays we
celebrated. There was no such thing as Halloween when I grew up, and we had never even heard of taking vacations. When I was just a young man one of my girlfriends was Ethel Williams who was a school teacher in the Bend, and she was the one who taught me to square dance. We would take the horse and buggy and go to the Boulougne dance hall for picnics and dances. When the young people of Folkston saw what good fun square dancing was, they wanted Ethel
and me to teach them. Julia Belle DeGraffenreid and her friends were some of the first people we taught in Folkston. They really enjoyed square dancing. Ethel was my girl until a new teacher came to work at the Sardis School. He thought he was a hotshot but he was just a little fellow, His name was Jim Thomas and he married Ethel. It never mattered to Ethel or the rest of us that the older generation didn't approve of square dancing. In fact it was not
long before some of the folks older than us were dancing, such as Joe Allen, Homer's daddy. One evening Ethel asked me to go to church with her and I did. She played the piano for the service and asked me to sit on the front row, and when we were through singing, she sat by me. Instead of a sermon the pastor opened a conference looking into the matter of the church's piano player being a person who danced. Several of the members objected to what they
thought was Ethel's outrageous behavior and they wanted to remove her name from the church roll. After the members had. finished with their objections the preacher asked Ethel if she had anything to say. She said "I sure do have something to say! Yea, I danced! In fact I danced with the chairman of the board of deacons of this church!" (It was Joe Allen!) That shocked some and made others laugh, and the church conference concerning Ethel's
so-called disgraceful conduct was called off. | 
