Fan dancers

When my mom was moving into an assited living facility a few years back, we were sorting through her things and I found a box of mementos from my dad, who died in 1981. Among the items was a little notebook where he must have jotted down his thoughts on an almost daily basis. I never knew he kept the little book, and reading its tattered pages brought tears as well as smiles as I reconnected with him through it.

Dad always talked of his adventures, and one of his favorites was his first trip out of Indiana to the Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. It was 1933, and as a 19-year old farm boy, he was quite taken with Sally Rand. Here’s what he had to say about it years later:

“People are funny.
Some object to the fan dancer;
Others object to the fan."

The quote made me laugh out loud. It’s so funny and pithy I can’t be sure if he thought of it on his own, or if he copied it down after he heard it from someone else. At any rate, I suspect he was one of the people who objected to the fan. Curtis Nolan was that kind of guy.

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