The Catalyst

By Callie Varra, Reporter

As the year’s first formal dance grows near, you cannot help to hear about everyone’s exciting Homecoming plans. This annual event not only serves as a highlight to many students’ high school experience but also sparks romance among our student body. Have you ever wondered just how different our Homecoming dances are today compared to dances in the past?

Jayne Reiber, of the athletics department, looked back on the dance she remembers the most during her sophomore year, 1969. Reiber was asked by a senior, who she hardly knew as she was standing by her locker in the busy halls. She agreed to attend.

“I like how you guys ask each other now, it’s much more creative,” said Rieber.

She wore a Victorian style, white lace dress with long sleeves and a high neck accessorized by a thick, black, velvet belt with a rhinestone buckle. Her hair was in a high, curly up do. Her date wore a gold Nehru jacket with silver buttons and a large peace necklace. “Every time he would turn when we danced his peace necklace would swing and hit me in the forehead. I was mortified,” Reiber laughed.

Her date picked her up in his parents’ car and took her to dinner at Cork and Embers, a fancy restaurant that was once on Main Street in Grand Junction. Popular songs at the time were “Born to be Wild” and “Heard it Through the Grapevine.” She recalls feeling very nervous because she was a shy girl, but she stayed with her date through the whole evening until arriving home at eleven thirty, just in time for curfew.

As a tradition for football players at Cary/Grove High School in Illinois, Bill Schaefer , of the Science department,and his teammates would pile up in cars and parade down the highway driving about twenty miles per hour from one town to the other.

“It’s one of those things where the whole town was like,’ Oh its Homecoming’,” Schaefer said. Girls never asked guys and never did boys spend money on asking a girl to a dance. Schaefer said, “Calling was how we asked; saved you from sweatin’ it.”

Mr. Schaefer wore a nice button up shirt and plaid, polyester bellbottom slacks to his homecoming dance. He picked his date up in his parent’s Station Wagon and headed off to the dance. At every dance a live band was playing, “Always a hit or miss,” Schaefer admitted. “We were mostly into rock, not so much country.”

Linda Gallet, a math teacher, says that the most important part of the evening’s attire was a huge, yellow mum matching her school’s colors, attached to a fancy sweater accompanied by a mini skirt and capezio flats.

“The boys would just ask, maybe in a note…they were shy,” Gallet said. The first Homecoming she went to she was picked up by her date in his parent’s Mustang.

Gallet advises “Always stay loyal and true to your date, even if he is a dud.” When she was in high school, the girls would be sure to save every slow song to share with the boy who brought them then join their group of girlfriends to dance to the fast, upbeat songs. There also was no such thing as dirty dancing or grinding as we call it, especially at a school event.

Today, Fruita Monument’s homecoming dance is preceded by a spirit week where students and staff get the chance to represent their Fruita spirit by dressing up according to the theme picked for each day. Anticipation builds among the players of FMHS football team as the big homecoming game nears. Girls spend weeks maybe even months searching for the perfect dress to wear on the enchanting night. “I always wear short dresses to Homecoming because it is not as formal as the other dances,” said Senior, Olivia Johnston.

Boys hunt for the perfect date and an even better way to ask her. Excitement grows as large groups of couples form and dinner plans are made. Senior, Tyler Meredith reflects on some of his dance experiences and said, “The lines take forever, nobody really has school spirit, hardly any one dances and it is way too hot in the gym, but I like the music…all except the country music.”

Enjoy these moments and make them the best you can, one day you will look back and reminisce on the good times we shared at Fruita Monument High School. You may miss the majority of the student body cramming into one hot, mucky gym while others leak into the court yard to cool off. Or that night when you ended up dancing every song with one of your good friends after being ditched by a lousy date, who in return felt a lot worse when they found out you had better after party plans than they did. These are the days, the memories, all made thanks to one Homecoming dance.