At the estate sale I bought a young woman’s
dance card from a formal dance of the
Theta Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma
dated February first, 1915. More than a card
it is a small booklet on a string with five
pages and a brass mesh cover, the
facing pages listing Engagements
and Dances with the names of the
musical numbers printed out
Ballin’ the Jack, The High Cost of Loving,
It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,
When Grown Up Ladies Act Like Babies
and to end the evening, Good Bye, Boys.
The young men’s names are pencilled in:
Mr. C. Avery, Mr. Mann, Mr. Cook and
on line 13 the underlined note I kissed him
with his name given only as XXX.
Well well well! What might the chaperones
Mrs. Bella Kirkbride and Miss Fannie Sanders
have thought of that? And why did
this young lady keep her beau’s name a secret?
And whatever became of him? Of her?
Of Mr. Mann, Mr. Cook Mr. C. Avery
and all the others she’d written down?
They are all certainly long gone now never
imagining that a perfect stranger would
one day wonder about their lives and loves
about who and what they became
whether they lived happily ever after
somehow escaped the ravages of war
or more likely died young and bewildered
in a foreign country a lifetime away
from formal dances no chaperone
to keep them out of harm’s way.