Tuesday, December 14, 1999
Ball organizers have true foothold on tradition
By Bill Whitaker
Brian Stovall lost his cowboy hat to a bit of Anson holiday
tradition the other afternoon.
Wife Kelly, 28, used the well-worn hat to top the Christmas
tree at Pioneer Hall, site of this year’s famed Cowboy Christmas
Ball, an affair marking its 65th consecutive re-enactment Thursday
through Saturday. As usual, the organizers were a mixed bag, at
least when it came to age.
Of the dozen and a half members of the Cowboy Christmas Ball
Committee on hand Saturday, several were young or middle-aged,
but there were always seasoned veterans standing nearby, such
as 81-year-old J.L. Beasley and 78-year-old Chester Faulks. They
made sure the decorations went in just the right place.
Among the fixtures: Memorial wreaths embracing the boots of
Cowboy Christmas Ball organizers who have gone the way of the
Star of Bethlehem. For instance, dance-happy Clyde Cooper, who
kept the ball going from 1962 until 1990, is represented by his
old dancing boots, respectfully framed by an even older horse
collar.
“It all lends to the tradition of the ball, which is so
important to those who come year after year,” Suanne Holtman
said during the committee’s Christmas sprucing up of Pioneer
Hall Saturday morning. “Fortunately, we have a number of
older folks around here to make sure we get it right!”
While some small-town Christmas traditions have withered and
died along with the towns that gave them birth, Anson’s Cowboy
Christmas Ball is alive and well, its reputation so intact that
celebrated western singer Michael Martin Murphy never misses playing
the ball at least one night each and every year.
In some respects, the survival of the Cowboy Christmas Ball
is a testament to West Texans’ passion for old-timey, fiddle-filled
western music, even if some religious officials in Jones County
have occasionally frowned upon the tradition. Anson was also,
after all, the town that long forbade all other public dancing.
Having a ball
To hear some of the ball’s old-timers, there were those
in Anson who would’ve preferred killing off that bit of footloose
nonsense, but decided that taking on the Cowboy Christmas Ball
would be akin to taking on Christmas itself. The three-night dance
owes its existence to rancher and poet Larry Chittenden’s
poem about just such a ball in Anson in 1885.
That was four years after Anson came into being.
“For a while we didn’t have any problems,” 80-year-old
Juanita Beasley said, “but later some of the churches got
after us about it. We finally got some of the preachers to come
out. Well, they saw it was just a big family affair and that we
even brought our children. I mean, my granddaughter is 11 and
she hasn’t missed a year.”
While today’s Cowboy Christmas Ball has its roots in the
dance mounted at the Morning Star Hotel 114 years ago, the ball
only became a regular event in 1934, and then partially due to
the spirited attendance of some footloose folks from nearby Stamford.
In any case, enough folks in Anson realized they had something
special to mount the re-enactment again come 1935.
Leafing through the old ledger kept since 1934, it’s obvious
the Cowboy Christmas Ball was a seasonal beacon for all Texas
in those early years. Radio broadcasts of the dance became common
soon after the ball became a yearly event. And no less than famed
folk-song hunter John A. Lomax came as an observer in 1939.
Although the dance was held in the school gymnasium during
the Depression, a stone building constructed by the WPA and dubbed
Pioneer Hall became home to the ball in 1940. The building was
used for other purposes, ranging from livestock shows to chamber
of commerce banquets, but come Christmas it was always set aside
for the ball.
Dancing in Anson
It’s little wonder the ball has evolved into a joyous
family tradition. Not only is drinking forbidden, so is smoking.
And organizers allow no unruliness or loose behavior. Happily,
Juanita says, they’ve never had to toss anyone out with the
exception of a woman who showed up in a frightfully short skirt
one year and seemed intent on snaring away every man she saw.
“I finally had to ask her to leave,” Juanita said.
Such rigorous standards have kept the ball going, even though
Anson remains a place where dancing is sometimes questioned. While
the ban on public dancing is now a thing of the past, few if any
dances take place in this old-fashioned town. The one exception
arrives the three days the Cowboy Christmas Ball is held.
Happily, there are increasing signs more and more folks in
this town of 2,700 have decided that, after this many decades,
the ball is a West Texas tradition well worth keeping. For example,
Nettie Lee, manager of the Anson Chamber of Commerce, has made
it one of her duties to help sell tickets for the now sold-out
Friday evening that Michael Martin Murphy sings.
“She does this for us for nothing, just because she sees
it as good for Anson,” Suanne, 55, told me. “We told
her we were going to have her in the grand march as our way of
saying thanks, but she said, ‘Oh, no, I can’t —
I don’t dance!’”
The doors for the Cowboy Christmas Ball open at 6 p.m. with
the dance beginning at 8. Tickets for Thursday and Saturday are
$5 and available at the door. To get to Pioneer Hall from Abilene,
turn right on the unmarked street just past the City Park sign
and drive till there’s no more road. Bill Whitaker can be
reached at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com.
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