File: doucettejoe-oh-frolics.mp3
Speakers –
JD: Joe Doucette
KP – curator Ken Perlman
JD: Tell you how they worked. Supposin' that you had a piece of wood to cut and you were alone. Well they'd make what they called a bee. He'd ask a bunch of men or they'd offer themselves. They'd go and help him cut his wood. And that night then they'd have a dance at the house. Others called it a frolic. Sometimes it was the woman, spinning. Other times it was a birthday or an anniversary, something like that.
KP: What happened at the dances? What time of night would they begin?
JD: oh, they'd start in the evening, just about sundown, something like that. THey'd dance until about midnight. If somebody didn't come in and break it up (laughs). That happened once in a while. If the people put up with it. If they thought they could get away with it they'd begin..
KP: Would they have them in all seasons?
JD: Mostly in the Fall of the year. In the spring most of the people was at the shore, see.
KP: At the shore?
JD: Yeah. The poor class of people went to the shore, workin' in the factories and fishin'. And they boarded there. They stayed there. They slept there and had their meals there, see? so there was not that many people in the country, then see. In the Spring of the year there wasn't too many. In the summertime, coming into the Fall and into Wintertime, people was home; they didn't have that much to do. They'd while away the time.
KP: So in an average month, how many house parties would there be?
JD: There'd probably be a couple, one every second week. They wouldn't be too, too often. Sometimes, depending, sometimes there'd be one this road and probably be one a couple nights after that on another road, see? Or probably you wouldn't know anything about it. But if you did, probably you'd go there. People travelled around.
KP: As you got older, did you also play for dances farther away?
JD: Yeah, just around the neighborhood. Just where you could drive around with a horse, see. There was no cars them times.