Square dancing through the ages
During winter months as a kid, I remember going to square dances with my family at the Mica Flats Grange. I loved getting to stay up late, dancing with family and friends, and the best part was taking a break for “supper” at 10 p.m., which meant a vast array of homemade cookies and cakes and pies to eat! The live music was provided by the old-timers — Louie Anderson on fiddle, Marguerite Carder playing piano or Don Sausser playing the organ and Henry Larson was the caller. It would get so warm in that old Grange Hall with all those bodies moving around that they’d have to open up all the windows and doors to let in the cold air. I loved it so much that once, in my enthusiasm for dancing, I stepped on my sister's toes so often that, by the end of the night, she had bloody feet.
It turns out the history of square dancing at the Mica Grange goes back much further than just my childhood. Eight miles south of Coeur d’Alene, the Mica Flats Grange started out as the Mica School, a whitewashed one-room schoolhouse built in 1898 because there were six school-age children from surrounding farms who needed an education. A year later, in 1899, they started having dances there and have been dancing there ever since. In the early years, they would dance all night, according to Martha Mooney, whose husband Oscar calls out the square dances nowadays, a skill he learned from his father, Jim Mooney, who was also a caller. (Incidentally, Martha first met Oscar at a Mica Grange square dance in October 1986 and they got married there three years later!) As Martha pointed out, because they didn’t have headlights back then, “you’re not going to walk somebody home in the dark … So I think they had a real supper at midnight. And then they kept on, by golly, dancing … until daylight because nobody really had the lights to get home with.”
The hall continued to serve as a school through the 1930s when Nancy Mae Larson often rode her horse from her home on Swede Bay to teach there. Finally, the Mica School closed in 1945 because the Coeur d’Alene School District consolidated. The next year, in 1946, the Mica Flats Grange No. 436 was founded. Nevertheless, it’s still the same schoolhouse hall from the 1890s that hosts square dances to this day. As Martha put it, “The history of that building is resounding.”
And not much has changed. Last winter, I went back, this time with my own kids, and we had a wonderful time. The amazing live music still attracts a big crowd. Everyone was welcoming and kind. Even if you don’t know the steps, you’ll get a quick lesson if you arrive early or you can just pick it up and follow along. We still took a break at 9:30 p.m. for “supper” which consisted mostly of cookies and Rice Krispie treats. And it still got so hot that after a while we had to open all the windows and doors.
THE GOOD: As a form of exercise, you can definitely break a sweat when you’re square dancing, and have a good time while you’re doing it. And as a social exercise, Martha likes that “kids have to put away their cellphones in order to do this. … They have to meet each other on a personal level.”
THE BAD: Square dancing at the Mica Flats Grange only occurs once per month October through April. But if you want to square dance more frequently, the Coeurly Q’s are a local square dance club that hosts dances and teaches the 57 basic calls of mainstream square dancing.
THE NITTY GRITTY: Mica Flats Grange hosts square dances the last Saturday of the month October through April at 7:30 p.m. These are free events but donations are suggested. Coeurly Q’s beginning mainstream square dance lessons will start Oct. 17 from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Harding Family Center and will run every Thursday through May. $5 donation per session. To find out more go to: https://coeurlyqsquaredanceclub.weebly.com
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Dr. Emry is a family physician and partner at Ironwood Family Practice in Coeur d’Alene. Exercise Explorer MD will appear every other week in The Press and Dr. Emry can be contacted via email exercisexplorermd@gmail.com. © 2024. This work is licensed under a CC BY-ND 4.0 license.
Oscar Mooney (far left) holding the mic as the caller and Geoff Emry and his family at the back left.