Friday Night, Just Got Paid

Prince Hall--Founder of Black Masons

"Just around corner, just across the tracks . . ." The Temptations, 1969

Weather bleached floors greeted dancing feet at the door on Friday or Saturday nights depending on the football game. Music floated out the door with each new arrival letting the warmth slip past and into the night. Once inside, it took a few seconds for the eyes to adjust to the dim party lights, but once they cleared there was nothing to see except the other people.

The Masonic Lodge building sat at South Penn and East Cedar, just North of the railroad tracks, on the edge of the woods, which seemed only right considering the times. I started going there at nine-years-old when I attended a real Halloween costume party. Of course, in those days we had serious chaperones in fathers. We considered them old folks that just came to mess up the party, but looking back these were young men in the prime of their lives that had no qualms about taking you to the bridge.

Folding chairs provided seating and a 45 rpm stereo kept the feet sliding across the worn wooden floor. Of course, I was in my usual place--holding the wall up with my non-dancing buddies, waiting for a slow song. The word for us then was "lame." Today they'd call us "tired," "whack," and who knows what, the gist of the entire notion was that we were "uncool."

Occasionally, Sunday's would bring a jam-session with local musicians Ben Young, Pete Williams, Clarence Sharp, my brother Fuzzy and the fabulous "Gold Dust Twins", Netty and Betty Sharp. It was all good clean fun for a Sunday, especially considering there were no chaperones there. All of these musicians went on to distinguish themselves professionally, but we didn't know that then, to us they were just good. Every now and then Bob Wesley would drop past and hit us with a little serious crooning.

If I remember the Masonic Lodge for anything, it was the string of cars stretching up Cedar and Penn and across the railroad tracks into the woods. I remember it because people sometimes disappeared from the party when the chaperones weren't looking and went to the cars and steamed the windows. I wasn't one of the lucky ones because I didn't have a car and when I got one, the Masonic Hall was nothing but an abandoned building.

Years ago, long after the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge fell into disrepair, Gayle Anderson and I went past to look at it up close in full daylight. The red bricks still held firm, but the windows were boarded shut and the weeds grew wildly along the edges; the back steps had started to crumble and evidently had become a place for winos to sit, judging from the muscatel bottles stacked in a rude pile near the steps. Around the southwest corner of the building, the Southern Pacific train tracks nearly took off the hall's corner. We measured and found that the train only cleared the building by 38 inches, not much room for freight train rolling through.

Before we could leave a familiar gravely voice rang out.

"Hey! What you black motherfuckers doing down here?"

Then came the signature cackle that both Gayle and I knew so well. We both turned and answered in unison,

"John Gallagher."

That's another story that I'll tell another time. Meanwhile, does anyone have a picture of the Mason Lodge?

Don R Barbera

Get Down on It

There's a thrill up on the hill, let's go, let's go, let's go!--Hank Ballard and the Midnighters--1960

In front, the cars would park side by side just off the asphalt on either side of the street on a slight incline. A 100-watt light bulb covered by a green and white ceramic shade hung above the wooden entrance making just bright enough to keep teenagers from slipping into a car with their girlfriend or boyfriend especially on those bone-chilling Kanas nights.

Down the slope, through the woods, near the river and up the hill to the Lone Chief Cabin we'd go. The Lone Chief became party central on Saturday nights if you didn't R. D. and Jim Brown strolling through the crowd saying "You youngsters need to put some air between you," an easy way to let the dancers know they were dancing too close. My dad and Lucky Epps worked the other end of the room. Charles "Moosty" Wilson worked the perimeter of the building breaking lip locks and stopping roaming hands.

Even with the eagle eyes of the chaperones, they couldn't see everything, or, at least thats what we believed. The light would be off with the only illumination pouring from the kitchen connection where the snacks, punch and record player provided entertainment and nourishment. If it was cold the fireplace threw off enough heat to make dancing near it for any length of time nearly impossible.

I usually came with Troy Wilson or Bucket Head Johnson long before the girls showed uo. We hadn't figured out how to make and entrance, so we just stumbled and looked like the idiots we were, but we were cool or so we thought. Although I didn't know how stupid I was, I did understand the arithmetic of adding math of adding a short boy with a tall girl and I liked the sum. That's why you could find me in the shadows near Rosemary Knighten.

The original Lone Chief Cabin, built in 1934 as part of a WPA project, was a real wooden cabin constructed of logs taken from the park area, but it later burned to the ground. The Lone Chief cabin most Indy residents know completed construction in 1948. Like the story of the three little pigs, the new cabin was built of bricks and stones. Today, the grail parking is gone, replaced with an elevated stone retainer and cement parking areas.

Secluded and even romantic, the Lone Chief Cabin still holds memories of close dancing, glittering eyes and stolen kisses in the light of a winter moon despite the best efforts of the parental police--chaperones.

"There's a moon out tonight, let's go strolling . . ."--the Capris