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A Harvest Home Party
"RED EAR" party is what they called it in the invitations. It was the opening party of the year in the high school and the seniors planned it.
The cards they sent out said:
Oh, this time o' the year You'll recall the red ear (It will never go out o' date); So the members of "twenty" Have planned fun a-plenty At a regular Harvest Home fête - You're invited!
The school hall was delightfully decorated emphasizing the autumn colors. Bright tawny leaves banked the platform where the orchestra sat, and along the side walls globes of red and orange balloons glowed among the soft tans and browns of cornstalks. From the [37] ceiling, myriads of red and orange paper lanterns swayed brilliantly.
The dance programs were "red ears" cut from cardboard, and tiny red pencils dangled from them. Some of the names of the dances to excite curiosity were:
The Corn Stalk The Scarecrow Skitter Farmerettes Fancy Popcorn Waltz Orchard One-step Pumpkin Pie Walk Red Ear Dance Harvest Home Revue The Corn Stalk was in the nature of a grand march - everybody "stalking stiffly" round and round in time to the music, which ended in a rollicking one-step.
Then followed the Scarecrow Skitter. A dilapidated old cornfield character in all the crudity of flapping black was brought in and established in the center of the floor. In his shabby hat fluttered a handful of rusty crow feathers, and the feature of the dance was for [38] each boy to secure one of them in passing for his partner. The poor old fellow was nearly torn to bits in the process.
The Farmerettes Fancy was another name for "ladies choice." All the girls were given tiny toy rakes, hoes, spades, or other farm implements which they used as favors in choosing partners.
For the Popcorn Waltz, the favors were popcorn chains for the boys to hang around their partners' necks. There was a temptation to devour these adornments as well as to use them for decorative purposes, and on the whole they were a source of much fun.
The orchestra at intervals in this dance made use of some contrivance which sounded like corn popping briskly over the fire.
A shower of snowy white confetti from the balcony still further emphasized the popcorn idea.
In the Orchard One-step the boys were asked to pick peaches. The girls stood behind a high screen and thrust their right hands above it. The boys reached up, touched the [39] "peaches" they chose and thereupon the girls thus designated one-stepped away with their partners.
Instead of a cake walk, a Pumpkin Pie Walk was announced. The contestants could indulge in just as crazy, funny or pretty dance steps as they liked. The reward to the most original, entertaining and clever couple was a big pumpkin pie.
Then came the Red Ear Dance. Everybody was blindfolded and asked to pick an ear of corn from a big basket. When vision was restored the girl holding the red ear (an ordinary ear with a red crepe paper wrapping) was acclaimed queen of the carnival, and was presented with a bouquet of red roses.
During the dance a red glow by means of special lighting arrangements filled the hall.
The Harvest Home Dance came just before supper, and lived up to its name, in that paper costume caps designating fruits and vegetables were given out and worn, so that the whole room seemed to be filled with the "harvest." [40] Tomato, carrot, corn, apple, wheat, squashes, grapes, popcorn, watermelon and blackberry were all represented.
The supper dance occurred midway in the evening, and the other novelty dances described were interspersed before and after it.
The supper consisted merely of peach ice cream with sugared popcorn on top, served on grape leaves, nut macaroons, tiny pumpkin tarts and fruit punch. [41]
A high school dance written up as a model to copy, with the invitation verse, the decorations, the programme of novelty dances and the supper. Nearly every item on it turns on a reference the reader was expected to catch unaided.
- The red earThe party is named for a husking custom: when the corn was shucked in company, whoever found a red ear claimed a kiss. The invitation says only that you will recall the red ear. By the time of this party the custom has been made safer — a red crepe paper wrapper on an ordinary ear, and the finder is crowned queen of the carnival instead.
- A dance programme is a list of partnersThe red ear cut from cardboard with a tiny pencil dangling from it is a dance card. Each dance has a name and a line to write a partner’s name against, which is how an evening was organised when nobody engaged a partner for more than one dance at a time.
- The dances are current ones renamedUnderneath the corn and pumpkin names are the grand march, the waltz and the one-step, the actual steps of the period. The Corn Stalk is a grand march that breaks into a one-step; the Orchard One-step is a one-step with a partner-choosing device attached to the front of it.
- Pumpkin Pie WalkIt replaces a cake walk, a promenade in which couples competed in style and invention with a cake as the prize. The form reached white ballrooms from Black American dance by way of the minstrel and vaudeville stage, which is worth knowing before copying the idea. Here the cake becomes a pie and the competition stays.
- FarmerettesThe page’s name for ladies’ choice. Farmerette was a current word for a woman doing farm work, and the girls are handed toy rakes, hoes and spades to use as favours when choosing. The joke depends on the word being in the newspapers at the time.
- Two ways to let a girl chooseThe Farmerettes Fancy gives her an implement to hand over; the Orchard One-step puts her behind a high screen with only her right hand showing, to be picked as a peach. Both devices solve the same problem, which is how a girl chooses a partner without appearing to, and the elaborateness of the machinery measures how tight the convention was.
The seniors sign themselves twenty, after their graduating year, and they have dressed a school hall as a barn: cornstalks along the walls, tawny leaves banked round the orchestra, red and orange paper lanterns overhead. Harvest Home is an English name for the feast at the end of reaping, transplanted here onto an American high school’s opening dance of the year, with the agricultural calendar supplying every joke on the programme. The supper is the tell. Peach ice cream with sugared popcorn on top, served on grape leaves, nut macaroons, tiny pumpkin tarts, fruit punch: nothing alcoholic, nothing cooked on the spot, everything that could be made ahead made ahead, and the plates themselves improvised out of leaves.