Full Text of the Excerpt

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were talking about your father's singing and playing for square dances. When you all were coming up, did you do things like that?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Oh, yes, we used to go to square dances. I never did make any music, though. I done it all with my feet. [laughter]

JACQUELYN HALL:

You were a dancer, not a musician?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes. We used to go. When we were first married there for a long time we'd go around; they had square dances. They used to have them out here, two a week. Right up here at Conover, that was before we was married, but Mary Brown and them had this one up over a grocery store up there. They had a big old building. That was the first dance I ever went in up there, square dance.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Just a room up above the grocery store?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, go upstairs. About twenty-five or thirty couples, maybe more. That's the first dance I ever went in to square dance. A woman in there, one of her neighbors it was, Mary Brown, was the first woman I ever danced with.

JACQUELYN HALL:

How old were you?

GLENN HOLLAR:

I was about seventeen, I reckon, eighteen. But they did have calling( ) over here at this old glove mill, up here where 3-D and this Carpenter Real Estate() up here. It used to snow back then. There was a bunch of girls from up in the Sandy Ridge section stayed out here in that old boarding house there at the railroad and worked at the mill. We'd get out here with the snow lying there fresh(), and we'd sleigh ride in this big old field there at about midnight. Gang up a bunch from the mill, go out there in the snow. When I lived here at Conover, I used to go with Daddy as Santa Claus when I was a little fellow. He'd always go as Santa Claus at Christmas. They'd fix me up, and we'd come up to Conover, walking all around, then go back all around down in St. Paul section at Christmas-time.

JACQUELYN HALL:

He'd just walk all around?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, we just walk.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Would he be dressed up like Santa Claus?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes. At one time he had one made. walked up there like a big old horsehead(). Had a stick he would carry it with.

JACQUELYN HALL:

[Laughter] He just went just walking around?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes.

JACQUELYN HALL:

Was he giving out little presents?

GLENN HOLLAR:

Yes, he'd have a little candy or peanuts or something.