Tangos

My main reason for signing up for dance lessons while I was stationed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia in 1950, was to impress Norma Jean Salina, the 15-year-old with whom I was in love back in Los Angeles. She was a great dancer and was hoping I'd learn to dance, too.

I mainly wanted to learn the "jitterbug" (aka the New Yorker, the Lindy Hop, and West Coast Swing) type of dancing. Norma was a very hot jitterbug dancer and I wanted to be just as good.

Well, I did learn to do the jitterbug, along with the fox trot, the waltz, the rumba and the samba—at an Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Alexandria, Virginia—but my favorite dance turned out to be the tango—the dance of romance.

I was pretty sure Norma Jean knew nothing about dancing the tango, and I could hardly wait to get back to Los Angeles and show her how it was done.

But that's another story.

My main memory of the time spent at the dance studio is of Carole.