Advoken's Blog

Today, if you’re single and seeking a romantic engagement, it seems to easy. Just go online at eharmony.com, match.com, silversingles.com (the later site for those of us over 50) or one of the many other dating sites.

It didn’t seem so easy in our younger days, though. Think back to those days when, if you were like me, you had no “steady” and seemingly very little prospect of ever finding a mate. I have to go back to 1954 when I was 24 years old. I had been without a girlfriend for more than two years, and, along with several other guys, tried unsuccessfully using various strategies to meet up with “the” girl.

Often with Charlie, who had been my college roommate, we’d tour the bars seeking companionship, where the girls were either non-existent, were too old or even if we saw a girl with possibilities, we’d fail to get up the nerve to approach her, largely through our own fear of rejection. What sad sacks we were!

In our quest, we found the best places to meet girls were at Milwaukee’s many dance halls; in those days there was the Modernistic Ballroom at State Fair Park; the Wisconsin Roof atop an office building at 6th and Wisconsin, and the Paris Ballroom (which if memory serve me right, was at 20th and Mitchell). And there were ballrooms at old Muskego Beach and Waukesha Beach, two amusement parks in the area.

The place with the greatest possibility for a hookup, however, was Geo. Devine’s Million Dollar Ballroom, a huge, ornate room located on the second floor of the Eagles Club at 20th and Wisconsin, now known as The Rave. What a place it was on a Saturday night. Always crowded with three bands playing alternately to provide continuous dancing. There was a full-sized swing orchestra, playing tunes of the 30s and 40s; a smaller jazz band, and a polka band. When the polka band played, they’d perform the Promenade, where dancers formed two large circles, girls on the inner circle, boys the outer. As the band played, we’d march in opposite directions until the music stopped. Then we had to select the girl closest to us and dance. It was an easy way to meet a person of the opposite sex; occasionally, you might seek a further dance with them, perhaps even to the point of suggesting a future meeting. (I never connected, but recently, I met a couple who met exactly that way, dancing some 60 years ago at the old Jefferson Hall on W. Fond du Lac Ave.)

In my case, on June 19, 1954 I married my wife of 63 years (she passed in 2017). I met her at my place of work. And, my friend Charlie. He also met his future wife at work. All this proves is that sometimes you don’t have to work too hard to find your lover; she (or he) might be there, just under your nose, waiting for you. Ken Germanson, March 12, 2021