35 Years of ‘Swing Your Partner’ . . .

George Parish has had a steel pin in his back for about 50 years.

“I was knocked off a loading dock by a forklift truck and landed on a railroad track. I crushed four vertebrae in my back.”

Parish, 71, credits square dancing with keeping him out of a wheelchair.

“I tried roller-skating, I tried ice skating and snow skiing and water skiing and ballroom dancing and running and jogging. I tried almost everything, but the thing that keeps me going best is square dancing.”

Parish, who has been square dancing for about 21 years, usually dances two or three nights a week. His enthusiasm is not unusual.

Dancers Enthusiastic

Square dancers bubble over about the fun, the friendly people, the good exercise.

“It keeps me out of the gin bars,” Bill Pyatt joked at a recent meeting of the Single Squares. Pyatt is a hospital maintenance manager.

“I lost about 25 pounds since I started square dancing,” said Orpha Vasquez, who dances about four nights a week.

“It’s a good way to make friends,” said Yvonne Donaldson, a new member of Single Squares. “The only thing I don’t like is there’s too many women and not enough men.”

Square dancing is, for its enthusiasts, more than just a pastime. Dancers frequently embrace the whole life style--the special badges, the special attire, the trips around the country and around the world.

“It’s international,” says caller Kenn Reid. “It’s a language of its own. When we went to China we couldn’t converse with the Chinese, but the minute they heard the square dance lingo, they understood.”

35th Anniversary

San Diego’s square dancing event of the year, the Fiesta de la Cuadrilla, will be held Friday through Sunday at Balboa Park. The fiesta, organized by the San Diego Square Dance Assn., will celebrate its 35th anniversary with dancing and workshops for dancers at all levels. In addition to local callers from San Diego, many from out of town will be featured.

John Oliver, president of the association, said 3,000 dancers from California, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona are expected.

Well-known clogging “cuer” Dawn Farmer will lead the clogging--a vigorous form of square dancing done with taps on the shoes--and Silky Griffith and partner Betty GeFell will cue the round dances. Exhibition dances are free and open to the public.

The fiesta has grown in its 35 years, and this year will occupy seven buildings in Balboa Park, including the Conference Building, where square dancers and cloggers dance at least eight nights a month.

But they’ll have to look for a new home for the regular monthly dances, as the Conference Building is due to become a museum for antique cars in February.

Besides Balboa Park, dances are held all over San Diego County.

On a recent Wednesday evening, nearly 200 dancers packed the United Portuguese Hall near Shelter Island. It was the regular night for Single Squares, a plus-level club. There are four levels of square dancing: mainstream, plus, advanced and challenge. A plus-level dancer must know at least 90 steps. Many of those dancing that night had just graduated from a class that had met weekly since January.

Oliver estimates that Single Squares is the largest in the association of 27 clubs, with close to 300 members. Other large area clubs include the Vagabonds, the Calico Twirlers, the Ray-Lin Cloggers and the Quarter Notes.

Members and visitors from other clubs came to dance, and all seemed to abide by traditional square dance etiquette: no alcoholic beverages consumed before dancing, no smoking and appropriate square dance attire--meaning full, frilly skirts for the women and long-sleeved Western-style shirts for the men. Parish wore red pants, a checked shirt, a neckerchief and a small hand towel hitched to his waist.

‘Square ‘Em Up’

Reid, in powder blue trousers, navy blazer and spangled bow tie, stood on the stage watching the squares and rhythmically calling out the steps: “Two two-steps. Strut. Two two-steps. Strut. Hitch. Lace across, and twirl that girl. Two turney. Twistey. Put her in front. Strut.”

Reid broke up each square dance “tip” with a round dance. A tip is a pair of square dances, one an impromptu “patter” call and one a singing call. Some dancers sat out the round dances, which are more akin to ballroom dancing.

“Round dancing is too sedate. It’s boring,” said Ron Palmer, who prefers the vigorous aerobic workout of square dancing.

“Let’s go, gang. Square ‘em up,” Reid announced. Whenever a square didn’t have eight people, someone would raise a hand. All evening, Reid mixed in colorful phrases such as “pass the ocean,” “load the boat” and “trade the wave”--calls that indicate a specific square dance movement.

Reid, a caller for 28 years, said he began square dancing as a teen-ager after his family moved to El Cajon from Canada.

“People said it was a great way to meet new people, and it is,” he said. During practice sessions at the mobile home park where he lived, Reid, then 17, began filling in as the caller and enjoyed it so much he eventually quit his job at a bank to do calling full-time.

Leads Classes, Tours

Reid now calls and teaches weekly for several local clubs. He also takes out-of-town bookings, publishes “Local Square,” a monthly directory of square dancing in San Diego, and occasionally escorts groups on square dancing trips and cruises around the world.

Along the way, the dancers will meet with other square dance groups, though often on a hectic schedule.

“If we don’t have much time, if a group is meeting us, then they’ll just bring their amplifiers and we’ll square dance on the dockside,” Reid said, “so we can say we danced in Alaska.”

Not all callers approach calling the way he does, Reid says: “My philosophy is I want to get people through the dance and keep them dancing. I feel people come out to dance, to relax and forget their problems. But don’t get me wrong: They like a challenge.”

Some callers intentionally muddle the dances and wind up making the squares “break down,” he said. That is, the dancers can’t follow the caller’s instructions and have to go back to their starting positions and wait for the next refrain.

“A lot of the biggest smiles you see is when a square breaks down,” said Catherine Hamelin, a 41-year-old cytotechnologist.

Callers’ Qualities

Square dancers have specific ideas about what makes a good caller.

“Some callers can make it a heck of a lot of fun,” Oliver said. “Some callers make it so dry and dreary that you don’t feel like dancing. It makes a big difference.”

“Kenn is an excellent caller,” said Mary Simpson, a 43-year-old bill collector who is president of Single Squares. “He’s what you call a directional caller. An unsure dancer can listen to the directions. He makes it easy for people to visit here. Other callers act silly: They’ll break you down and say, ‘Oh! Did I mess you up? Are you mad at me?’ ”

Ev Rotge, a member of Single Twirlers, also praised Reid, saying he is a good teacher because his calling is very structured. “He repeats it often enough in such a way that you can catch it and you can learn it. Some callers let you hit and miss.”

“A caller can really make a difference,” pointed out Don Hartman, vice president of the San Diego Square Dance Assn. “They’re magnetism on the stage. How much they put into it comes out on the floor.”

Interest Began Early

Hartman said he has been square dancing since he was “knee-high to a grasshopper,” first learning steps in the family kitchen in Burlington, Iowa.

“Our kitchen was big enough for three squares. My father used to call every Saturday night. As teen-agers, my wife and I used to dance in a square exhibition team for the Moose Lodge.”

Hartman dropped out of dancing for a while, but became involved again in the early 1970s, he said. “I think it’s growing in popularity. This past year it seems to be in a decline across the nation, but this fall our classes seem to be larger than last year. We’re getting people interested.”

Bud and Arlene Olsen had been dancing for about 12 years, but they, too, dropped out for a while. The easy-going socializing it offers beckoned them back about four years ago, however.

“One time our grown married daughter came with us,” Arlene Olsen said. “When we came home she said, ‘Mom, you’re so different with all your square dance friends.’ We were all hugging and kissing.”

Pins, Badges Significant

Like many of the dancers, Arlene Olsen wore several badges and pins. One badge reads “Under the Bridge,” a memento collected when she danced under the London Bridge at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. The flower on her club badge means she contributed toward the square dance float in the Rose Parade.

Olsen, clad in a girlish Mexican-style turquoise blouse and black lace-trimmed skirt, remarked that at a square dance, “you can dress up really frilly and not feel silly.”

Rotge said that she too likes the fluffy, feminine attire. Her partner, Ron Palmer, 50, enthusiastically agreed.

“It takes 10 years off my life every time I see the ladies dancing and all the lace and the spinning and the bright colors,” he said. “It really turns me on.”

Hamelin, who started square dancing in 1979, said that at first, she thought the women’s attire looked ridiculous. “But I’ve gotten to enjoy it a lot,” she said. “And it does cover up the hippy areas.”

With no small measure of delight, Oliver pointed out that square dancers on the West Coast wear their skirts considerably shorter than the dancers on the East Coast. “It looks great,” he said.

“With a sharp eye you can tell when a girl doesn’t wear her sissy pants,” one male dancer confided cheerfully. “But I wouldn’t want to give square dancing a bad name. It would get too crowded.”