I recently saw that Gardner has just opened a new teen center, and that reminded me that we loved hanging around in Gardner when I was a teenager–Gardner had so much more going on. Who here remembers 1980s Chemical People Dances in Gardner in the mid 1980s? Having grown up in Templeton, where there wasn’t a lot going on at the time, my friends and I were pretty excited when some adults in Gardner started hosting dances for teenagers, held at the church across from Casa Lagrassa. If you’re from the area, you get my old reference because Lagrassa’s is long gone, but if you’re new to the area – – Chemical People Dances were held at the First Congregational Church (now the Maranatha Christian Church of America) at 28 Green Street.
I posted about the dances on Facebook, asking people for their recollections of the Chemical People Dances. I looked through some old photos and realized that I didn’t have any actual dance photos. My friend Kim chimed in with a fact–the reason we don’t have photos of it is because someone would have had to have an actual camera along in order to get photos, and we didn’t really do that back then. As far as the dance locations, my memory is being corrected by some of my classmates who remember these dances being held at various locations in Gardner. More on that in an update next month, I guess!
The dances were held on Friday nights, I think it cost just a few dollars to get in, and you could either walk or get dropped off, but it wasn’t one of those dances where the parents would hang around and socialize. Having now raised 6 kids through their teenage years, I have more respect for those people who went out of their way to create something positive for teenagers to do. Our parents liked it a lot better than our other Gardner activity, which was to just get dropped off and walk around before and after a movie when Gardner Cinemas was located on Parker Street.
We ended up connecting with a group of new people over the course of many Chemical People Dances, and I remember one night my Templeton friends and I got dropped off at the dance, met up with our new Gardner friends, and then promptly left the church and went back to somebody’s house – – somebody whose parents weren’t home. I don’t know what 15-year-old us were thinking, since signing in at the dance was mandatory, yet the chaperones must have noticed that a bunch of us were MIA. And since those were the days before cell phones, the only phone number you signed in to the dance with was your landline home phone, which your parents answered when the chaperones called. Got in a bit of trouble for that one.
I was recently at an open house and met a guy who had grown up in Westminster and somehow we got to talking about the Chemical People Dances, and he took it back a generation and told me about TAG (Teen Age Group) dances–which he remembers as being held in the 1970s and open to Gardner and Westminster teens. He thinks they were at local churches, and maybe the PACC. Who remembers those? I’d love to hear stories!
As I’m thinking and writing about this time in my life, I’m hearing songs in the background of my mind. And in the order they come to me, here are some Chemical People Dance songs, which bring back a lot of interesting, and some good, memories.
Fight for Your Right, Beastie Boys
Money for Nothing, Dire Straits
Careless Whisper, Wham
Shout, Tears for Fears
Rebel Yell, Billy Idol
Purple Rain, Prince
Sister Christian, Night Ranger
Free Bird, Lynyrd Skynyrd
That’s it, I’m making a Spotify favorite songs of the mid-80s playlist!
