Chasing Tradition: Square Dancing in the Catskills

Transcription by Jerome Kazlauskas

[00:00:00] Helen Chase: We started doing the square dances at Thanksgiving because it was the time of my parents' wedding anniversary. In our family, Thanksgiving was always more important than Christmas.

[00:00:16] Brett Barry: In early November, an invitation appeared in my inbox from a friend and dedicated "Kaatscast" supporter, Helen Chase, for a square dance in a family barn on Ticeteneyck Mountain in Ashokan. I asked if I could bring a microphone and our up-for-anything production intern, Olivia Sippel, and we were both warmly welcomed the day after Thanksgiving to the Chase Family Home and Barn, now the Sparer Home and Barn, but the tradition continues. Friends and family have been dancing here for decades with Earl Pardini, fiddler and caller, orchestrating the night. With a roaring fire in the fireplace and desserts on the sideboard, this barn had all the warmth and joviality of Mr. Fezziwig's place as conceived by Charles Dickens in the 19th century. Before Olivia and I joined in the dancing, I asked Helen Chase who'd sent that invitation for a little background.

[00:01:16] Helen Chase: Our family lived in this house for about 50-some years, and now the Sparer family has been living here for about nine years.

[00:01:27] Brett Barry: And when did this tradition begin with square dancing in this building, and has it always been this time of year?

[00:01:36] Helen Chase: We started doing the square dances at Thanksgiving because it was the time of my parents'  wedding anniversary, so we would have Thanksgiving on the Thursday, and then we would always have a square dance on the Friday after Thanksgiving. We started off in the early years with records that had calling on the recording, and if it didn't have the calling on the recording, Dad would do the calling. Then, we met Karen and Earl Pardini, very wonderful musician Earl and his group, and we had a lot of musicians that got together, and Earl put them together, and we started having live calling and live bands, and we've done this now we tried to figure out how many years Earl has been doing this with us and his band. I think it was 46 or 47 years.

[00:02:40] Brett Barry: When the other family moved in, did they inherit this event?

[00:02:44] Helen Chase: Yes, but we...

[00:02:46] Brett Barry: Willingly?

[00:02:46] Helen Chase: Willingly, very willingly, because they had been attending the square dances for quite a while.

[00:02:52] Brett Barry: Michael Sparer confirmed that their family was totally on board, taking the reins of this half-century tradition.

[00:03:00] Michael Sparer: I'm Michael Sparer, and with my wife, we own this house and host the square dances.

[00:03:06] Brett Barry: You bought the house [the barn], and was it kind of a given that you'd be... also inheriting the square dance?

[00:03:12] Michael Sparer: For us, it was a gift, not a given. For years, we've been coming to this house, you know, to attend the square dance, and we loved doing that, and it was an amazing tradition, and so for us, it was just kind of an honor to be able to continue the tradition. You know, I always feel like we kind of do it with Helen and the Chase family, but yeah, we're happy to host and keep it going.

[00:03:33] Brett Barry: Seems like a good kickoff for the holiday season?

[00:03:35] Michael Sparer: Yeah, it's an amazing kickoff for the holiday season and just a great tradition. It's a great tradition.

[00:03:42] Brett Barry: I checked in with a younger Chase whose memories of this tradition are lifelong, literally.

[00:03:49] Emmie Chase: My name is Emmie Chase. I am the granddaughter of Catherine and Sherret Chase, who formerly owned this house, and I've been doing this dance for 21 years now.

[00:04:00] Brett Barry: And you are 21.

[00:04:01] Emmie Chase: I am 21, exactly, yes!

[00:04:03] Brett Barry: So what are your earliest memories of this experience?

[00:04:06] Emmie Chase: I was wearing the biggest, fluffiest dress that I had, and I would wear my patent leather shoes, and I would dance around between everyone's legs and getting tripped on, but my dad would carry me on his shoulders, and we would dance around and do the square dance, so I basically have all of the moves memorized, and I'm a little bossy with people who don't know it as well.

[00:04:29] Brett Barry: Do you share this with friends at school? Do they think like, "What?"

[00:04:33] Emmie Chase: I would tell my friends in elementary school, and I grew up in suburban New Jersey, and they had no idea what a square dance was or even if it was a real thing, and it took a lot of years for my peers to appreciate square dancing, yes.

[00:04:49] Brett Barry: Some Catskills kids had a leg up in this regard back when my own kids were students at Phoenicia Elementary School, which sadly closed its doors this past year. None other than Earl Pardini would show up each year to lead a schoolwide square dance, and on this particular evening, I'd come to find out that it was another grade school that introduced Earl Pardini to square dancing about 75 years ago.

[00:05:17] Earl Pardini: Well, my name is Earl Pardini. You might be very surprised to hear this, but I grew up in the Bronx. I went to public school 68, and we learned how to do "Darling Nellie Gray" in the second grade, and it's all history from then.

[00:05:37] [Nellie Gray recording]: A-sitting and a-singing by the little cottage door, where lived my darling Nellie Gray.

[00:05:51] Earl Pardini: I moved up to Big Indian in 1962, and at that time I wasn't playing fiddle. I didn't start playing the fiddle until about 1970, I think. I played accordion, and actually, day after tomorrow is the anniversary of my first accordion lesson, which was in 1950. Ha ha ha ha ha! I got a kick out of it myself when I think about it.

[00:06:15] Brett Barry: Accordion was a big deal back then.

[00:06:17] Earl Pardini: Yeah, it was. We had an accordion orchestra in grade school. There were about 10 of us or 11 of us. It was really very popular, and then I kind of put it in the closet, and I didn't play it again for a long, long time, but I didn't forget anything, and I still love playing it now, and actually I play more than I ever did.

[00:06:36] Brett Barry: How'd you learn how to call?

[00:06:37] Earl Pardini: Fakin' it. Ha ha ha! You know, going to square dances, hearing other people call, and then, you know, I just had nerve enough to try it one day.

[00:06:49] [Earl Pardini calling]: And the ladies turn it out and the gents back in, and the gents turn it out and the ladies in. Now take 'em home, girls. Take 'em back to your home place and swing.

[00:07:09] Earl Pardini: We did a lot of dances around the time of the bicentennial. It's great! I think it'd be really popular. Actually, I think that summer of the bicentennial, I played dances at least two or three nights a week through the whole summer, and by the time the summer was over, I really didn't want to look at my fiddle. You know, it kind of burned me out. Since then, you know, here and there, you know, it's gotten popular again now. Lately, we've had more interest in the last two years than we had it quite a while. Dane Scudder is more of a traditionalist than I am. I kind of wing it in a lot of ways. You know, I add things to the dance that aren't normally there. Dane knows a lot of the tradition we got from Hilton Kelly, who was a prominent square dance caller and fiddler from over around Fleischmanns.

[00:08:03] Brett Barry: Dane Scudder just happened to be an arm's length away from me, so of course we spoke with him and learned about Hilton Kelly, who passed down all those Catskill square dance traditions.

[00:08:14] Dane Scudder: Dane Scudder from... originally from Fleischmanns, New York, in Delaware County, had a dairy farm in Halcott Center, so it was a fifth-generation dairy farm, and we grew up with Hilton Kelly, who provided all the square dance music years ago, and I've learned his calls and his music, and we have another band called "The Tremperskill Boys" in Delaware County that we do a lot of square dancing with all Hilton's calls, so that's traditional Delaware County square dance music.

[00:08:47] Brett Barry: And the calls are a signature of a person or a type of square dancing?

[00:08:51] Dane Scudder: It's a type of square dancing. It was very popular after World War II. Earl, for example, used to call square dances almost every night of the week, and so did Hilton. It was very popular in the '40s and '50s and '60s and slowly waned down, but it's cultural. It's not just New York State. Their square dancing is all over the, you know, the United States really, but this is Catskill Mountain. This is what I play. It's Catskill Mountain fiddling and square dancing.

[00:09:22] Brett Barry: On the other side of the barn, Olivia spoke with folklorist Ginny Scheer, whose organization is doing its part to foster traditional Catskills square dancing.

[00:09:33] Ginny Scheer: I run a group called "Catskills Folk Connection," and one of our main programs is sponsoring square dances, eastern traditional square dances. Dane Scudder, who's here tonight playing the banjo, plays the fiddle, and he said, "You know, when I was getting ready to go to college, the only live music I really remember hearing was Hilt Kelly and the Sidekicks." I said, "Oh! Good, you're a tradition bearer." When this was a total farming area, and you know, like 90% of the people farmed, when the farmer took the milk to the creamery, she might say to the people she met at the creamery who were also dropping off their milk, "We're going to have a fiddler at our farm this Saturday. Come on over after you finish milking," and so people would get there. The first ones that got there would move the furniture out on the porch or even on the lawn, and they'd put the fiddler between the two front rooms and dance until midnight. The kids all came, and well, I don't know if it's true in your family, but if you were having a big Thanksgiving dinner, for example, and it was cold and people arrived with lots of coats, you'd have them go upstairs and put them on the beds in the bedroom. Well, that's where the kids would go, and they'd snuggle down, and they'd sleep until they either smelled dinner or they figured out because the fiddle stopped that it was time there would be a cold kind of cold supper at midnight, and people who lived far away would get going, and others would stay and dance some more, and everybody went home and milked the cows again, but that's how deep the tradition was here. You know, it came from the quadrilles that arrived in the 19th century—kind of put the cotillion out of business, though there are some elements of the cotillion in our square dances. Some areas were hit by the quadrille and didn't switch to it—like New England stayed with the line dances, but the Catskills were all about squares, and it's a very deep tradition.

[00:11:31] Brett Barry: And so I asked Dane Scudder, "Do you think this tradition will continue?"

[00:11:37] Dane Scudder: Yeah, I think so. I think so. Our other band—the Tremperskill Boys—were trying to enlist younger people to play with us, and we haven't had much luck yet, but we have young people, you know, dancing. They're very good tonight, and we just need some of those people to take an interest in music, and it's the kind of thing you almost need to have somebody in your family that plays it or a friend in the community that can be a mentor because ordinarily you wouldn't be exposed to this, but it's a lot of fun.

[00:12:09] Brett Barry: Helen Chase's sister Alice would agree. She comes up every year from Maryland to reunite with the family and to carry on the tradition.

[00:12:19] Alice Chase Robeson: I'm Alice Chase Robeson. My husband and I live in Maryland. I'm the youngest of the five children of Sherry and Kenny Chase. My parents bought this house in '72, and Thanksgiving, we've always had a square dance after Thanksgiving, but until Earl became part of our lives, Earl Pardini, we used records.

[00:12:49] Brett Barry: When you square dance now, what kind of memories does that bring back?

[00:12:54] Alice Chase Robeson: I have a son who's 46 and a daughter who's 39, and just like the children who are here right now, I had them on my shoulders, and they just held me tight, and I would go through all the do-si-do and swing your partner and whatever the call was, and they just had a hoot.

[00:13:13] Brett Barry: This is a private affair, but if someone were to befriend you, Helen...

[00:13:26] Helen Chase: Yes, and that happens. I might meet somebody yesterday and invite them to the square dance today.

[00:13:34] Brett Barry: So if you want to be here next year, get a hold of Helen Chase. Be friendly to her.

[00:13:38] [Earl Pardini calling]: ...with the left hand. Now find your own true love, and the ladies turn out and the gents turn in.

[00:13:53] Ginny Scheer: We were just talking about the incredible sliding scale between transplants, weekenders, you know, seasonal folks, folks who just come for a B&B on the weekend, and real tourists who just drive through, right? Square dancing is a good way for people to meet each other and to smooth the interactions between incomers, which is what I call them, or long-time residents, and if they can get along on the dance floor, it's probably a good thing.

[00:14:29] Brett Barry: And with that, Olivia and I joined hands for a "Weave the Ring" dance to "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" led by none other than Earl Pardini. I wondered aloud if this experience was atypical for a production internship, and Olivia responded that every one of her Catskills experiences has been more or less atypical. Thanks to Olivia for joining me on quite a few adventures this past year, and we'll hear more from her in 2025 when she reports from the trail with Girl Gotta Hike's Melissa Goodwin. That, plus a whole new lineup of stories, are in the hopper for the new year, plus a new way to support the show. If you go to kaatscast.com and click the "Support" link, you can become a "Kaatscast" member with freebies, bonus material, and just that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with being a listener supporter. Join us as a bluebird, a red fox, or a black bear. Details at kaatscast.com/support. Thanks also to our local business sponsors, and speaking of which, Campbell?

[00:15:40] Campbell Brown: This episode is sponsored by Ulster Savings Bank, a local bank with a long history of serving the community and offering the modern conveniences of online banking. Visit their locations in Phoenicia and Woodstock. Call (866) 440-0391 or visit them at ulstersavings.com. Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender; and by Briars & Brambles Books, the go-to independent book and gift store in the Catskills located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily! For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call (518) 750-8599. "Kaatscast" is supported by the Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for the local region such as the Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, Cobleskill Herald, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call (518) 763-6854 or email: mountaineaglenews@gmail.com.

[00:16:41] Brett Barry: "Kaatscast" is a biweekly production of Silver Hollow Audio. Production Intern: Olivia Sippel, Announcements by Campbell Brown, Transcription by Jerome Kazlauskas. Follow us on Instagram [@kaatscast] and be sure to sign up for our newsletter at kaatscast.com, where you can search all 133 episodes and counting. I'm Brett Barry. Happy New Year, and we'll see you next time!