The King of Square Dancing
Work in Progress
By Betsy Brink
My grandfather was known as the King of Square Dancing in New England. Like all kings, he had his flaws. But he was a wonderful square dance caller - as well as founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of The New England Square Dance Caller, a magazine for (well, who else?) square dancers. NESDC's headquarters were in the barn behind my grandparents' house, the house my father grew up in, four doors down from the house I grew up in. As far back as I can remember, the barn had been converted office space. The first floor was one big room, with a giant worktable in the middle, two cubicles (before they were called that) in corners of the room, and a long counter with three drawing boards. My grandfather's office occupied nearly the whole second floor. The minute I saw it, I knew I wanted an office someday, too. When he was out of town, I sat in his chair and just looked around the room. Everyone at The Caller except me smoked like chimneys, so the 1950s print wallpaper had a permanent yellow stain. I can conjure up the smell of stale cigarette smoke and fresh paper even today.
First Jobs
I started out cleaning The Caller offices when I was in junior high school. I wielded a mean Fantastic bottle, spraying everything in sight, wiping up the yellowish-brown nicotine-filled liquid that flowed off every surface. Then in high school, my grandfather invited me to work after school as the magazine's news editor. That meant I'd get to work in one of the downstairs cubicles. In the other cubicle was Sandy, the advertising editor. A couple of years ahead of me at NorwellHigh School, Sandy was tall and willowy, with long flowing blonde hair. Peering out from behind thick glasses perched on a headful of curly brown hair I tried in vain to flatten, I thought Sandy was beautiful. Smart and efficient, too. I slotted Sandy into the same desirable category as Marlo Thomas (think That Girl) and Mary Tyler Moore, whose theme song promised me "you're gonna make it after all."
I opened all the mail addressed to the news editor. Inside were hand-penned reports of square dance clubs like the Topham Twirlers, the Hayloft Steppers, and the Dedham Do-sidoers. The annual Halloween dance, covered dish suppers, who'd retired to Florida, what new dance the club had mastered - all the news that's fit to print, as they say at The New York Times. Well, not quite fit to print yet - that was my job. I typed the reports into an IBM Selectric Composer, a typewriter that turned out print-ready pages. To change the font, I simply snapped in a new "golf ball element" with raised letters all over it. Such power. As I typed, I edited the news into something I liked to believe was far more readable than when it arrived. I fell in love with the pruning job of an editor - cutting, honing, sharpening the prose. It was heady stuff. On days when we didn't have school, I could work all day, like a real professional. The hours flew by.
Office Life
All around me swirled office life. Sandy and Grandpa standing around the big project table, figuring out where to place the ads Sandy designed - cutting words and clip art with an Exacto knife and gluing them on the page. Grampa running upstairs to take big-world calls from the thought leaders in square dancing. Howard Metcalf stopping by once a month, offering Sandy and me linty mints from out of his tweed jacket pocket. I think he kept The Caller's books, but I was never really sure. He and Grampa would head off to talk business over lunch at Sargent's Restaurant. I'd head inside to have grilled cheese and tomato soup with my grandmother and Smoky the cat.
I loved when the smell of fresh ink and paper in the barn signaled the arrival of the printed magazines from Rumford Litho. I never tired of seeing my news items in a real magazine. That's when other family members would join the fray. Grandma ran the Addressograph machine, into which little ink-encrusted cards with each subscriber's address were tossed, so the noisy machine could stamp the address on the back of every Caller Grandma fed it, spitting the cards out the other end. Grandpa tried out his corniest lines on Grandma all day, to which she'd just shake her head and smile. My father and uncle would come at the end of the day to gather up the mailbags full of Callers to take up to the post office in the center of town.
Circuitous Route
It was in this little community - part work, part home, with an occasional peek into the big world beyond the barn - that I began to think like someone who would work in communications and marketing one day. Words and font styles and design worked their magic in me. About a year out of high school I asked my grandfather if I could return to The Caller. The big world seemed a little scary. He said no, I could not return. I was mad and a little hurt at the time, but he knew enough to give me the first of several nudges I'd need to fly the nest. It was a circuitous route to the job that feels like my vocation today, but I'm sure the somewhat late-blooming seed was planted in the modest castle of the King of Square Dancing.
Betsy Brink is Assistant Director of MBA Communications and Marketing at Harvard Business School. She is a member of United Church of Christ in Norwell, MA, where she facilitates the adult Christian education ministry team and teaches regularly a course entitled “Short Fiction on Faith.” Betsy is also a member of the Communications Mission community for Faith at Work. She lives in Duxbury, MA, with her husband John.