File: banksreg06-oh-schooldances_piesocials.mp3
Speakers
RB – Reg Banks
KP – curator Ken Perlman
RB: Years ago they'd have the old-fashioned school houses, befoerr they's have the big high schools and all this. Every settlement had a school house. And they would have dances in the schools for to raise money to pay the teacher and to heat the building . They used to have to hire a janitor and all this kind of thing. And they'd have dances there. They used to have what they called a pie social and dance. The ladies would make a pie or a cake, double-decker cake, and the guys… And they'd auctioneer them [the pies and cakes] off. They'd have thirty or forty of those here cakes and the ladies, they'd be winkin' at some of the men so they'd bid higher on their cake (laughs). Well anyhow, well the cake would be bought, and you'd sit beside the lady that baked it, and shared it with her. I was at that kind of work meself when I was a young feller.(laughs) Anyway, that was in the old-fashioned schools.
KP: And there were dances there as well?
RB: And there were dances in the old schools. There was Dundas, Poplar Point, Annadale, Little Pond, and they'd all have these school dances. They were great, they were really good.
KP: What was good about them?
RB: It kept the people together, it kept the neighborhood, all hands a - go. That's the one thing we've lost when the television came in. The people doesn't mingle as much now, neighbors one with the other, as they did in that time. They'd come from say, Poplar Point where I lived, they'd come out of Annandale for the dances in the school, or from Dundas the other way, and the place would be packed with people. And it was neighborly. That's one thing we lost.
