It’s Saturday night and Helen Bolling is shimmying in a corner booth at the Golden Pine restaurant. A usually quiet, sparrow of a woman, the 65-year-old cups her hands and screams over the loudspeakers for the disc jockey to play “Cotton-Eyed Joe.”
“I love fast dances,” says Bolling, who clomps her feet on the floor to the music.
This is an especially daring act in Pound, a conservative town of about 1,000 people in the Appalachian coal mining country of Virginia’s extreme western corner.
Public dancing is illegal without a permit and the Golden Pine doesn’t have one. Owner Bill Elam, who got a judge to throw out an old anti-dance ordinance as unconstitutionally broad, refuses to apply for one.
After his court victory, the Town Council enacted a new ordinance just last year, writing it to pass constitutional muster. The maximum penalty is a $500 fine.
The new law is applauded by local church leaders, some of whom consider dancing a sin.
“I can never see a time when dancing can be approved of, especially with people who are not married,” said Tim Shepherd, an evangelist for the Church of Christ in Pound. “Dancing is one of those things that entices. It imitates sexual contact.”
There are communities with similar bans elsewhere in Virginia and elsewhere, but unlike Pound’s new ordinance they’re often in antiquated sections of legal code that have been ignored for decades, said Kent Willis, director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
“I’ve never heard of a town actually trying to enforce something like this,” Willis said.
So far, no one has been ticketed for dancing, but town officials have been discussing what to do about the Golden Pine.
“We’re planning something, but I can’t go into detail right now,” said Police Chief Jeff Rose. Elam probably will get a court summons, said town attorney Gary Gilliam.
Elam, 48, has been a thorn in the town’s side ever since he bought the Golden Pine in 1996. “I won’t be run off,” he says.
His old building is shabby and its electrical system shorts out from time to time, but it’s a perfect place for a night club, Elam said. It’s close to a dry county in Kentucky and the only competition is the Holiday Inn 20 miles away in Norton.
“I knew I could make a killing here,” Elam said.
But when he arrived, an 18-year-old ordinance denied dance permits “to anyone who is not a proper person, nor to a person who is not a person of good moral character.”
After he got the law struck down in federal court, Elam hung a disco ball from the ceiling, tore down a wall and laid tiles for a proper dance floor.
In spite of the new ordinance, enacted in February 2000, hundreds of people gather on Saturday nights to boogie at the Golden Pine.
As disc jockey David “Chic’nman” Gent starts the music, girls smoking cigarettes head to the dance floor. Carl Addington pulls up in a red Corvette wearing a leather vest and jeans. Curtis Caldwell comes in from the pool tables and talks to a pretty blonde woman in a red top.
“This is just like a dream,” Elam says as he watches.
In her corner booth, Helen Bolling has been waiting for the music.
Until a few months ago, Bolling had never danced, not even at her wedding. But after her husband died of cancer last year, it was the only thing that made her feel better.
“She would just sit by the window and cry to herself 24-seven,” said Rhonda McHugh, the youngest of Bolling’s 12 children. “So I said, ‘Mama, let’s go to Pines.”‘
By 9:30 p.m., the place is packed with coal miners and old timers and college kids, all dancing in a swarm of cowboy boots and tie-died shirts.
When Gent finally plays the country dance tune “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” Bolling gets up and stomps her pumps on the floor. She joins her daughter, then some younger women step in and soon there is no more space on the floor.
“I think it’s good for people to dance,” Bolling says, smiling like a teen-ager. “I’m not too good, but it makes me feel a whole lot better.”