House Parties
by Ute Carson
In the 1950s “sock hops” were popular in American schools and at proms. They were held in armories or at country clubs. At the same time European households cultivated “Hausbälle.” These were not family,
holiday or graduation celebrations but dance parties in private homes for youngsters after confirmation into a Christian congregation. After attending bible classes for two years my friends and I were “confirmed” in our mid-teens. House Parties were primarily a middle and upper-class custom, a right of passage similar to the college years for American youngsters. It was mainly children who had passed the demanding exams into a Gymnasium who attended these parties. Students who entered practical apprenticeships or technical schools were seldom invited. Few house parties catered to the less privileged.
What were the parties like? Calling cards were mailed or privately distributed in which families invited friends of their children to a dance party at their home. We waited with bated breath for an invitation. Tears were shed if we were among the ones left out. Sumptuous home-cooked snacks were served. Record players were turned up full blast. The living room was cleared of furniture to make a dance floor. Parents were sitting comfortably on chairs in the background, watching. Between eating and moving to a waltz or a tango, we clustered in corners and talked. Everyone was expected to help wash and dry dishes afterwards. Among swirling dishtowels and clattering plates, friends drew closer. There was banter and much laughter. The parties never ended late and everyone left with a group or was picked up by parents. Most of us had some elementary dance instruction and were eager to show off at home the new steps we had
learned from a friend at a party.
The parties were signs of class privilege, and parents tried their best to host at least one a year. It was shortly after the end of World War II. We were refugees from the East and poor, but by virtue of our aristocratic title we were considered upper class. My mother gave me a party in the vacant entry hall adjacent to our neighbor’s apartment. She had discovered a used Chinese kimono with a wide-brimmed black hat, crowned with yellow feathers at a flea market. She beamed when she brought the costume home. I was embarrassed because I knew no Chinese person but did adore the large, plumed hat. After the party I found my mother sitting on her bed, her face buried in her hands. “So few came,” she murmured, and even my assurances that it had been a splendid party left her sighing. Our neighbors and several immigrant families who lived upstairs in cramped quarters didn’t show up. The two boys in the flat next to us went to a technical school, and Ingrid, a friend several years my senior, had a sullied reputation, having been seen arm-in-arm with the local tailor. She and the boys snickered as they walked by our decorated dance hall.
For adolescents the “Hausbälle" marked the transition from child-to adulthood. They were a slow initiation into the wider world. Recalling the many house parties I went to, I must confess that there was a certain
protectiveness, even an innocence to those dances. We had crushes and flings but kisses were quick and secretive. Admittedly, we knew of exceptions. My friend, Wölfi, got his girlfriend pregnant in a garden shed on one of those occasions. And Angelica was caught by her father just as her boyfriend tried to lift her over a garden fence. Houses harbored cellars where canned vegetables, fruits and wines were stored. One section of the cellar was built as a coal chute, another hoarded sacks of potatoes. It was tempting to descend the rickety wooden steps into a cellar’s darkness and exchange brief affections. But parents were wise to these hideouts, and many a youngster was dragged back upstairs into the light by the scruff of
his or her neck.
Garden parties were the most desired ones. One could rush behind a bush for a hushed embrace while colorful paper lanterns were swinging from tree branches and candle smoke was mingling with the fragrance of cut grass and blooming flora. The first taste of wine was as delicious as a forbidden paradise apple. Smoking was not known to be harmful, but we all coughed when inhaling our initial puffs.
These parties influenced us in subtle ways, giving us access to a secure place to socialize and have fun. But for some these events had a deeper meaning. My friend Ulla was one. She was not a typical participant but I can still see her sitting among a large group of friends, leaning far forward in her seat, talking nonstop while gesticulating with both hands, her lips trembling with excitement. I also remember that she was always picked up by her father who remained sitting in his burgundy BMW sedan in front of a house, ushering Ulla into the car as soon as he spotted her leaving a party. And she was never allowed to attend any of the girls’ slumber parties.
Ulla’s parents seemed old. Her corpulent father was a shrewd businessman who transported his holdings from the Baltic Sea to the calmer regions of Swabia early in the war. In the small provincial town of
Nörtlingen where we all landed as refugees, he reestablished his clothing business and became a very wealthy man. He was benevolent to outsiders but strict on the homefront. His wife reminded us of the proverbial spinster, bustling about and seldom speaking except to remind her two children, a daughter and son, of their duties and chores. She always wore a white apron and a checkered blue head scarf pulled down over her forehead. Ulla’s room was decorated in pink, from the walls painted with rosebuds to the frilly lavender curtains to the pink bedspread. At parties Ulla's clothes were laced with pink chiffon whereas at school she wore sedate plaid skirts and blouses. When Wölfi and I lingered after school hours at a brook, setting paper boats afloat, Ulla always rushed by us toward home.
I tried to figure her out. Was she stunned by her upbringing by an inflexible father and an implacable mother or was she a strange person at heart? Tales floated about her. Once on a crowded tram in Wiesbaden she
was seen standing abreast a tall, well-dressed man. Suddenly she looked at him perplexed and exclaimed, “Oh, sorry.” She had absentmindedly twiddled a large brown button from his vest. For her confirmation her father had given her a diamond ring accented with tiny rubies. Before an opera performance in München she went to the washroom, laid the ring on the brim of a basin, and went to the toilet. On her return the ring was gone. She was able to convince the family jeweler in Nörtlingen to make a copy of the ring. Her father was never the wiser.
Ulla was intelligent and an eager student. She loved history and politics and joined the debate club. She was fluent in English and French. But because she had no interest in science, she failed a class. Like many
others, she could have repeated the class or gotten a tutor. Instead, her father pulled her out of the Gymnasium and made her an apprentice in his firm. All her life she detested that job even though she later inherited her parents’ fortune. She continued to improve her language skills and read newspapers in foreign editions. Even though she disliked her father's rules, she always obeyed them. Living under her parents’ thumb she enjoyed very few dates. When she liked someone, her parents chaperoned her every move. Her father gave her some room to mingle with people at clothing markets where she represented the firm. She fell in love with a teacher from Wales whom she met at one of the retail exhibits. He came to introduce himself to the family but Ulla’s father refused to see him. He told Ulla that the man didn’t measure up to expectations and under no circumstances would he consider him as a candidate for his daughter. He gave Ulla a clear choice. Leave the family and be ostracized forever or drop this suitor. Ulla did the latter. Frustrated that she was still a virgin in her late twenties she offered a guy she had recently met a night with her at the hotel, “To get it over with.” Her younger brother opted for the opposite. When the girl he loved was deemed not good enough for his parents, he left and never reentered the family circle.
All these affronts might have turned another person into a bitter victim. Not Ulla. She remained outgoing, optimistic, deeply committed to political affairs. Much later in life she took one trip after another until she had seen the world. She would ridicule her own situation. “Can you believe that I stayed in the same small town all my life? I always envisioned myself living far away.” She followed her caring, responsible heart when she married a wealthy neighbor several years her junior after his parents were both killed in an automobile accident. They had a daughter, Rita, and a son, Max. Ulla’s father thanked his son-in-law with a large check, saying “You gave me grandchildren.” Both children remained single and stayed with Ulla all their lives. She cared for her husband after he was diagnosed with cancer but never stopped pursuing her own interests. She was the local representative of Amnesty International and helped organize camps for refugees. She was known for her tolerant views. She was always the first to bring a casserole to a sick neighbor or flowers to a hospitalized friend.
I had my own unusual interactions with Ulla. She was a loyal friend, and once we fooled her father. The pastor who had confirmed us was a pious, uncomplicated man who sometimes had surprising insights. Not only did he tolerate Wölfi who followed me to my Sunday readings in nursing homes where he lounged in the reception area, crumpled and smelling of alcohol, and awaiting my return. Our pastor only smiled when a resident confronted him. “What in the world does Ute see in this slovenly young man?” “He needs her.” He showed similar astuteness in regard to Ulla. During a conference with her father, the pastor convinced him to let his daughter join me at a spiritual gathering held by nuns in a nearby cloister. Ulla’s father himself drove us to the retreat. Ulla was able to smuggle her portable radio and a large cake into our shared room, which she quickly stashed under our bed. She and I enjoyed three spirited weeks, debating beliefs and munching on the cake after we had peeked into the nuns’ dining room and watched them devour a full meal while we had been sent to bed with growling stomachs. Through the years Ulla and I had lively discussions about books we read. In all her activities there lurked a hectic restlessness.
I was already married, living in Rochester, New York and teaching German in a local high school when Ulla, vacationing in Florida, announced her visit. Without ever considering our cramped one-room quarters, my
husband was decamped to a sleeping bag and Ulla crawled into bed with me. She brought along a tiny crocodile from Florida for her brother. We kept it alive in a pen with lukewarm water for a day or two before it died. Ulla wore sandals and had packed only several light summer dresses. It was November, it had snowed and was bitterly cold. My wardrobe was sparse but she borrowed what she needed because she insisted on driving to school with me. She stayed in my classroom all day long, patiently awaiting the end of the school day. Seeing that our kitchenette boasted only a few pots and utensils for two, she invited me and my husband out to dinners. We didn’t own a television, so she treated us to movies.
When my first love, Eberhard, died, I traveled to Nörtlingen for his funeral. Ulla picked me up at the Stuttgart airport. It had been years since our last meeting, so we chattered through the night and got drunk on red wine. Groggy the next morning, we fumbled into our dark outfits, only to discover that Ulla’s stockings had broad runners. On our drive to the cemetery we stopped to buy a new pair into which Ulla struggled as I drove. It was too late to stop at a flower shop. Instead, we ran through the cemetery,grabbing flowers right and left from freshly decorated graves. We sank into the last row in the funeral chapel, flushed with drooping bouquets.
I was never able to figure out Ulla’s feelings for her children, Rita and Max, and why neither one left home. They attended university for a semester or two and then returned to live in their parents’ house. Ulla’s
attitude toward her children seemed at once caring and detached. She imposed no rules on them and seemed to have no expectations.
My husband and I met her one spring in Paris with Max as her companion. He was solicitous, polite and a charming traveler. At that time, I was slowly making my way with my walking stick down steep Metro steps
when he turned around and walked backwards in front of me so he could catch me if I stumbled. In the evenings after we retired Max always disappeared. One morning Ulla arrived alone for breakfast. Max, after
having been mugged and robbed at a bar, made his way back to the hotel near daybreak. He was sleeping now. We presumed that Ulla would want to remain with her son. Instead, she replied forcefully, “I’ll leave him a note. I want to enjoy the day in Paris with you.”
Thinking about my friend, it occurred to me that she often behaved in a way diametrically opposed to what her parents had stood for. It was as if she was playing role reversal.
Recently I had a conversation with Ulla about Hausbälle. “Do you remember them?” I asked her. “Oh, do I remember them? They let me out of my shell. They were the only freedom I had.” She laughed. “Of course, I had no idea how the world worked but that did not matter at the time.” I, on the other hand, already had a taste of the wider world. Those parties provided a different reprieve for me, a time of forgetting things I had
experienced as a little girl, fleeing westward with my mother and grandmother as Russian troops advanced on our home in Silesia.
Now, I only need to close my eyes to imagine myself again at one of the many house parties. We dance, our bodies at an arm’s length. I feel a tingling crush for my dance partner and an old, faded sentimental love song in the Swabian dialect vibrates through the air…”Auf und nieder…auf und ab…da ich die ganz Nacht mein Fensterl auf hab…”.
Bio: Ute Carson, a German-born writer from youth and an MA graduate in Comparative Literature from the University of Rochester, published her first prose piece in 1977. Colt Tailing, a 2004 novel, was a finalist for the Peter Taylor Book Award. Ute’s story “The Fall” won Outrider Press’s Grand Prize and appeared in
its short story and poetry anthology, A Walk through My Garden, in 2007. Her second novel In Transit was published in 2008. Ute’s poetry was televised on the Spoken Word Showcase 2009-2011, Channel Austin. A poetry collection, Just a Few Feathers was published in 2011. The poem “A Tangled Nest of Moments”
placed second in the Eleventh International Poetry Competition 2012. Her chapbook, Folding Washing, was published in 2013 and her collection of poems, My Gift to Life, was nominated for the 2015 Pushcart Prize. Save the Last Kiss, a novella, was published in 2016. Her poetry collection, Reflections, came out in 2018 and In the Blink of an Eye in 2023. Ute received the Ovidu- Bektore Literary Award 2018 from the Anticus Multicultural Association in Constanta, Romania. In 2018, she was nominated a second time for the Pushcart Prize by the Plain View Press. Gypsy Spirit was published in 2020 as was her essay, Even a Gloved Touch. Yellow Arrow Press issued Listen in 2021, and once again, Ute was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her essay, Deep in the Heart of Texas, was published by the Bullock Texas State History Museum in February 2023 and in the summer, the magazine Bewildering Stories featured her essay
“Caught in the U.S. Healthcare Maze.”
The author resides in Austin, Texas with her husband. They have three daughters, six grandchildren,
and a clowder of cats. Connect with her at www.utecarson.com .
