CLARK JESTER'S BARN AND SQUARE DANCING

Clark Jester’s barn was an old barn situated along Hellertown Road (Industrial Drive in later years) about a quarter mile from my home on Belmont St. There were several old houses near the barn, though I am not sure if either of them was the associated farm house, or if indeed there ever was one. In those days the main things on that road were a Pennsalt Chemical plant, abandoned when I was a child, the Fowler Toy factory, which burned horrifically one Saturday morning, and Aerni and Hitzel’s coal yard.
The latter was a most interesting place because I learned in later years that what they had there was a coal breaker, way south of any hard coal deposits in Pa. They would get run of mine coal, which was rock coal just the way it came from the underground or stripping, and crush and classify it themselves in this coal breaker they had on the property. On Saturday mornings during the heating season we would hear it smashing and banging away and it was only in later years that I realized what it was. The building looked like organized firewood but served its owners for many years and survived the threat of fire. To be more precise, the buildings of the breaker survived until the Interstate was run through that area.
Anyhow, Clark Jester, who didn’t live anywhere near the barn where his name was on a wooden plaque above the huge double doors, was an excavating contractor who kept his dump truck, trailer, and excavating equipment in the barn.But on Saturday nights a magical transformation would take place. The equipment would be moved out, the floor cleaned a little, and there would be square dances held there. I was too young at the time and by the time I had attained an age where square dancing looked like a good idea, the barn and the dances were long gone.
They used to do square dancing in gym class in high school, but gym class in general was not a favorite of mine and I was not one of the in bunch and I found any sort of thing like that with girls was not yet to my liking.I have always dreaded being forced to do something I did not like. I was never a model of physical coordination in those days and I would have gladly sunk into the floor.
My father used to do a lot of square dancing before WWII, when he was still single. Many times he would play accordion for an impromptu dance session in a bar room where he happened to be. One of the fellows he ran with in those days was a good rolled up sleeves piano player but only when he was drunk, or so Dad said. They had been hunting near White Haven one day and stopped at a bar room where they were known to have a few before returning home. It was about 4 in the afternoon when they stopped. The guy who was the piano player started pounding away on an upright piano against one wall, and someone found an accordion for Dad to play. By the time they left they had been playing off and on for 12 hours.