A Scene from Old Weird America

I took the boys to church yesterday. After opening hymns, the call to worship, and a reading from Exodus there was "special music" listed in the bulletin. Our town's former chief of police walked up front--bare footed, wearing Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt opened up to reveal a necklace of wooden beads. Now, it should be said that when this man was chief of police the rest of the force despised him and he was basically forced out because the sergeants beneath him said they had no confidence in him. Why? The story they sited was an incident where a robber ran into a house and took a woman hostage. The police surrounded the house and then called the chief. When the chief showed he took off his uniform, put on civilian clothes, handed over his weapons and walked inside the house to talk to the frightened fugitive. An hour later, the chief walked out with the woman and the robber. Apparently, this act was totally against protocol and the rest of the force resented him for it.

At church the ex-chief stood in front of the congregants with palms open, turned outward. His wife sat next to the piano with a middle-eastern hand drum, the pianist (the town mechanic) began to pound out an island melody and sing out in Hawaiian. Immediately, the fifty-something ex-chief began to do a hula--hips moving side-to-side, arms and hands rolling like the waves of the ocean. Smiling broadly, the Chief stepped toward the congregation, holding his hands over his heart and then opening them wide in a gesture of welcome. He made signs of the sun and moon, boats paddling on the ocean, skies opening up, fish jumping, birds crossing the sky. At one point the chief cupped his own heart and then held it out for all of us to see. The movements were so lovely and vulnerable that if the chief had been a young woman we all would've fallen in love with him. But the chief is a white man with a balding head, a hairy paunch, and tattered mustache and so the dance, at first, was simply odd and startling.

In the front pew, the chief’s teenage, autistic son, who normally fidgets and whispers and counts fingers sat mesmerized watching his dancing father. I too sat mesmerized--at times with horror, at times with restrained, snot-blowing laughter at the strange audacity of this guy dancing a hula in church...but the more the man danced, so honest and full of heart...well, I noticed a strange joy, a joy that burned off the shame that often shrouds my interior. I wondered, once again, about the many fears and prejudices that hem me in. Why are they there? What's the evolutionary explanation?

After church, when I asked my sons what they thought of the dancing chief, they smiled and said, “that was cool,” and I could see they meant it. I recalled this past fourth of July when these two middle school boys ran from our house to meet their friends on a terrace at the local college, to hear a salsa band play. I remembered them scanning the clusters of people, then excitedly rushing over and grabbing the hands of their dance partners, making their way to the dance floor, eager to try out their new Latin steps, while fireworks sprayed the black sky.