Celebration of Life: Renn Tolman

From the Homer (Alaska) Tribune: "Homer boatbuilder and musician Renn Tolman passed away peacefully in his tiny beachfront cabin on the afternoon of Saturday, July 5. He was 80.
A celebration of Renn’s life will be held at his boat shop in Homer at 4 p.m. Saturday, July 12.
Renn was well-known in Alaska coastal communities for designing and building the Tolman skiff, a practical dory-style v-bottom boat that found wide use among hardy seafarers on Kachemak Bay and around the world. His two do-it-yourself books, describing an economical “stitch-and-glue” construction process involving plywood and epoxy resin, sold thousands of copies. Tolman skiffs can be found in Germany, Norway, Australia and other countries. An old-school outdoorsman, Renn traveled far across open water on hunting and fishing trips. At his death he had just completed a new design, the Tolman Trawler." (The link on his name has many photographs of his boats and a few of him.)

I have only just heard this news, and while I haven't actually talked to Renn in decades, he is part of the memory of my teen years in New Hampshire.

To celebrate his life today, at this great distance from his boat shop, let me just say that one of my treasured memories is sitting up in his cabin in Nelson, before he moved to Alaska, listening to my older brother and Renn playing music with their other pals. The cabin was smoky, dim, small and spare. It must have been a cool evening as there was a fire blazing while the harmonicas, fiddles, guitars, flutes and voices combined for a lovely flow of energy.

Renn was not an easy man to know, even if you were an adoring fan just because your brother was. But even then, he gave off the air of a hermit, a man who had much to think about and little to say, unless he sang it.

He was an integral part of the Nelson 'scene' with music and picnics and other dramas which others may or may not remember during those vibrant summers of the late '50s. Renn would have been in his mid-twenties then, and there were plenty of women who had their eyes on him. But there was something remote about him, almost ethereal, and however much I studied him, he was not someone I could easily describe to anyone else.

I know that when he moved away, his father, Newt Tolman, did not like to speak much about him. One night when we were having dinner at the Tolman's house, I asked him, "Are you angry at your son?" Newt cleared his throat several times, gathered up his voice, and with unusual sentiment for that crusty old man, he replied, "No, not at all... I just miss him something terrible."

Sometime after Renn moved to Alaska, my brother drove up there to visit, taking with him his strong-minded male Wiemaraner as company for the long drive from Massachusetts. I'm not sure where it happened, but along the way, apparently the dog decided he needed to get out to pee and opened the back of the camper and jumped out. My brother saw nothing until the flashing lights of a state trooper pulled him over to ask him if the dog that was chasing him was his. Reunited, they went on together and spent some of the summer with Renn. 

Having just watched the movie "Cloud Atlas," supporting the theory of reincarnation, which I tend to align with, I should expect Renn might be promoted to a distant star colony where his music and delicate soul can flourish.

(A more detailed obituary was published by The Sentinel (Keene, NH) and can be read here.)

Godspeed, Renn.

Celebrating Contra and Square Dancing

My younger brother sent me an antique photo of the Shattuck Inn in East Jaffrey, N.H. It was interesting to see one of the places where we learned both square and contra dances during the summers.

My earliest dance teacher was Gene Gowing, and I was introduced to him through Harry Holt, his mother and his sister, Diana. Somehow Mrs. Holt became the driver for a bunch of us who wanted to take square dance lessons in the mid-50's.

Mr. Gowing was a dashing looking fellow, charming in every aspect, and determined to take the uninitiated and unskilled and bring them up to his standard of dance performance. There was a correct way to stand, to address your partner, to do an "allemande left," and a right way to manage all the parts of the pattern of the square or the contra. And especially he was particular about the swinging with your partner. Men were not to crush the women too close, women were not to 'hang' on the man. "It's a balancing act," he would say. And in truth, swinging well during a dance does not come easily for many.

I had a huge crush on Harry, one that lasted for decades. But it wasn't just his Hollywood good looks that appealed to me. He was the absolute best dancer I'd ever danced with… whether for squares, contra or ballroom, thanks in large part to Gene, he said. And he can still have that versatile dancing title. If you're still out there, Harry, I have lots to thank you for.

Winter dances were rare, in part because of the snowy, icy weather in New England - hardly conducive to having a car full of teens giggling and jiggling with excitement. So the first summer dances usually began as school was coming to close, right around Memorial Day.

It wasn't until I began driving myself that my weekends were full of dances, starting on Friday nights, usually at the Peterborough Golf Club with Duke Miller calling. (The link features a complete dance he called in August 1965.)  Then Saturdays could be anywhere in the Monadnock Region… Greenfield, Fitzwilliam, Jaffrey, Dublin and Nelson or occasionally, Hancock.

At that point in my life, I was given use of a dark green 1932 Model A Ford and I think I probably put more miles on it in that first summer of driving than the poor old thing had up to that time. But I felt 'vested' in that car since I had helped my father restore her to new glory including genuine Naugahyde tan seats… the only thing that prevented her from winning awards at antique car shows.

With the top down, wind blowing through my hair and ruffling up my brother's carefully slicked down do, we rattled over the back roads, sometimes picking up Miki Shearer or Deanna Edmunds or other pals who wanted to go to a dance. We arrived in time to see the band setting up because I absolutely didn't want to miss one dance. And we stayed until the band played the last note, walking slowly out to the car, savoring the just-created memories of patterns, dance partners and conversations.

"I just love Cheat or Swing," I said to no one in particular. I recalled the very first time I learned the dance at Gene Gowing's instruction, and the very first time Harry surprised me with his swing style. From then on we were often each other's choice as swinging partners. He knew just how to keep his inside foot in place and he was smooth, never pumping his arm up and down in time to the music like so many did.

What made that dance such fun was it allowed you to choose to swing someone other than your partner and was a great way to find out if there were other good dancers to say yes to. In those days it was rare for a woman to ask a man to dance; you just had to wait, or tell your best friend to help you out.

If Harry was all the way across the room in another set, when it came time for the caller to say "balance with your partner, now cheat or swing," we would be off in a flash headed toward each other, whirling madly out-of-set and then dashing back to our partner and our home set, breathless and heady with the simple of joy of it all.

Both Gowing and his compatriot dance caller/teacher, Ralph Page, were instrumental in giving me the appreciation for the dance music of the squares and contras, as well as giving me the skills to dance all my life. Once you have learned how to dance in square or contra form, you can usually remember the patterns and pick it up again - just like riding a bicycle!

I feel more than a little guilty that I didn't write or call either of these gentle men once I'd grown up and left New England. They were phenomenal teachers, each in their own way, and it is a testimony to their efforts that I still recall each of them with great appreciation.

But perhaps it would give them some pleasure to know that I am still dancing squares and contras, still doing Chorus Jig, Money Musk and Petronella, sometimes feeling more than a little nostalgic for the Nelson Town Hall, or Peterborough Golf Club (since changed its name to Monadnock Country Club) or town hall, or the other town halls in Fitzwilliam, Jaffrey and Dublin.

Nelson gradually became one of my favorite places to dance, and Duke Miller, who was more of a Western square dance caller, did not appreciate the rowdy nature of their dancers in his venue of the Peterborough Country Club. However, those of us who danced "Nelson style"were allowed, during Money Musk, to balance (clog) loudly and be generally untrammeled once Duke called out "Nelson style." and after that we were supposed to go back to a more stately dance form.

Duke was a barrel-chested man with a good voice and terrific method of putting the calls to the beat of the music, and his style brought all the 'summer folk' out to dance. Some of his followers were true Western square dancers, meaning they wore the costume of frilly dresses with huge petticoats, black dancing shoes with heels and the men had jeans with large buckles on their belts, western shirts with pearl snaps, a lariat around the neck and a towel for wiping sweaty hands on the right hip at the belt.

Nelson style meant more than a dance step. It was also the sixties-style long cotton patterned dress with short sleeves for women and jeans or shorts for the men with t-shirts or other casual shirt. Many of us like to dance barefoot, too. And it was having Newt and Franny Tolman playing flute and later my mother, Kay Gilbert, playing piano, with Harvey Tolman sawing away on his fiddle until you'd think the strings would just get cut in two. It was a marriage of the musicians and dancers, each playing off the other through the hot summer evening, and if you arrived late, walking through the grass parking lot you could hear the sound of the feet on the dance floor like another instrument accompanying the band.

My last time in the Nelson Town Hall was the most memorable… my older brother, my younger brother, my younger sister and I all went and danced with each other. And we all were such "swingers!" Among my best-saved memories is that evening of dancing Nelson-style, whooping it up as if we knew it was the last time.

The little Black Diamond Community Hall outside of Port Angeles, Washington, has a contra dance on the first Saturday of each month, and Port Townsend's Quimper Hall has squares on the second Saturday through the winter. The Black Diamond group reminds me very much of home. As I recently looked at YouTube videos of dancers from Nelson, N.H., in 1983, I could swear some of those folks must have left their clothes to the 2014 dancers in Washington.

I'll be back in Washington in time to get to another dance on the first Saturday in June...