In high school one time a teacher asked me: “what are you going to do when you graduate?”

I said: “get a job!”

She said: “why don’t you go to college?”

So I did. I was a physical education major because a dance major didn’t exist at that time. I took all of the courses that I could, then went on to get my master of fine arts in dance. This experience was a defining moment in my life.

I belonged to the dance company of Eric Hawkins. He was married to Martha Graham. He and Merce Cunningham were the first two men to dance with her company in the 1930’s.

At the time, modern dance was very popular with many different styles. Today, dance isn’t an art form as much as it is an entertainment. I see a lot of hip hop, but not a lot of dances that are artistically done.

In college I had a lot of really good friends. I tend to keep my friends. I still have good friends from high school, and good friends from college. We stay in touch regularly and visit one another.

I had fun in school; I was ornery; and, I almost flunked out of school. When I told my mother that I was flunking she said: “well, we just won’t tell your father.”

So I went to summer school.


When I Worked at Heinz 57, the Catsup bottles Fell like Dominoes

In college I worked and took classes. Several of us lived in a small house. There were two rooms in the house: the front room was called “the nook,” and the back room was called “the cranny.” Every week, we put $2.00 each into the kitty for food; we ate a lot of pasta.

One year I was working as a lifeguard while my friend Barbara McDonald worked at the Heinz 57 plant.

She told me “you ought to come up here. The pay is good.” So I did.

We went to work before it was light. We worked twelve hour shifts with 30 minutes off for lunch. I worked in the chili sauce department.

After the tomatoes were scalded, they came down the chute where workers pulled off the skins. At the bottom of the chute was a milk glass with a strong light underneath. You had to suck the remaining seats out of the tomato.

Once an hour, a supervisor would come by and say: “look at how many skins were in that batch! Clean up this mess!”

You couldn’t talk to anyone in this plant the noise was so deafening. I used to sing and yodel to myself.

The boss used to come over to me and say: “you have to stop talking.”

I would say: “I’m not talking. I’m singing.”

One night, they asked me to work overtime in the bottling plant. Of machine would sterilize boxes full of bottles. I had to operate the machine with a foot pedal. I sterilized about four boxes, and then I knocked over one bottle. It was like a line of falling dominoes!

The boss came over and said to me: “Patton, don’t ever volunteer to work in bottling again!”

Working with all of the immigrant workers in that plant made me study a lot harder. These were seasonal workers, eastern Europeans mostly, who went from one job to another. I worked with them in Bowling Green, and the whole town reeked of tomato sauce, catsup, and chili sauce.

Now I love tomatoes, but on this job I got so sick of looking at tomatoes that I couldn’t eat one for quite awhile.


I Begin a 34-Year Career as a Dance Teacher

One of my other jobs was working in the physical education department as a typist. We had to make carbon copies; we didn’t have a Xerox machine.

Barbara McDonald and I always used to laugh because each of us made so many mistakes in our typing. Thank goodness that Ellie Ferrara could type, because she got the final product out.

After graduate school, the head of the dance department at North Carolina told me about several schools that we’re looking for instructors. She told me about Bradford College. I was there for three years, and it was a good fit for me.

Then, I got a phone call from Bowling Green. They wanted me to come back and teach dance. I knew that if I stayed at Bradford I would probably die there. It was a very small school and my career wasn’t going anywhere as long as I was there.

At Bowling Green, it was hard for the people who had been my professors to accept me as a colleague. I wasn’t included in a lot of their social activities, but I had a lot of other friends.

One time, Eric Hawkins came through to teach a master class and I asked him for a scholarship. He gave me one, so I quit my job, sold my car, and moved to New York. I lived in a room with three other former students; the bids were lined up right next to one another.

Then I got a call from the women’s branch at Rutgers to teach there. Then, Margaret Coffey, who had interviewed at Rutgers, took the job at the University of Massachusetts. She recruited me to teach at UMass. So after my first job I didn’t even have to file an application anymore. The jobs came and found me.

I was at UMass for twenty eight years. Many of my students had been very successful; some of them have started their own dance companies. Others have danced in Canada with the royal ballet, or Le Ballet Jazz. A couple of my students were Rockettes, and if you were even show girls in Las Vegas!

I was very close with my last graduating class, the class of 1990. I’ve been to all their weddings and we just had a reunion in August of 2006. It was great. They all had at least two kids, and one woman had four.

In all, I taught dance for 34 years.

In 1973, I founded the university dancers and that dance out of the physical education department. I got it into the department of music and dance. I formulated the dance major.


In 1973, We Tour Europe and the Middle East

Also in 1973 we’re invited to Tehran, Iran to perform. The shah of Iran was still alive. We did 36 concerts that year. We went out on tour, we sold cookies for a dime, we held a hole – in – one golf tournament at Hickory Ridge, and we got a few grants.

On the way over to Iran, we stopped in Rome and data performance there. Then we went to Tehran and did two performances there. We went to Patras, Greece, where we did a performance in an amphitheater that was built in 600 AD. We strung lights, and had armed guards and each end of the stage for that performance.


In Iran, We Experience Strong Cultural Differences

At Teheran, we were performing during an international conference and there were people from all over the world. The Muslims that we were in contact with were very modern. The women didn’t wear headdresses, but we had been warned to make sure that we were covered, and not to go outdoors in shorts.

In spite of this some of my women dancers were still spit upon.

When we got to roam we were in the middle of a postal strike. I had to use every cent I brought to get us out of the hotel. I had some money wired to me in Iran. I had gotten very sick while I was in Iran, but I had to hop the cab to go pick up some extra money.

At the postal counter I stood there, and stood there, and stood there and no one would wait on me. But every male who walked up was serviced immediately. Finally a young man who was Iranian, but who had gone to school in New York, got the money for me. They paid me in Rials instead of dollars. Then, I had to go to another window and endure the same kind of treatment before this fellow came over and got the Rials converted into dollars.

So there’s a real caste system in Iran. But I did notice that even the women who were covered up, if the wind blew, it would often reveal a mini skirt.

Plus, they drove like crazy!

In spite of all this, we retreated loyally. We got to meet the queen and were entertained and fine country clubs, and a fine food. The other thing I remember is that when we got off the plane it was 130°. He was withering; you always had to have a bottle of something to drink.


Away From Dancing

I retired from teaching in 1992, and then I sold real estate for six years. What a thankless job!

Everyone expects you to drop which are doing and show them what they want, when they want to go. Everyone thinks an agent makes 6%, but in fact an agent only makes 1.5%. You have to sell $1 million to earn $15,000.00. My first sale was $49,000.00.

When I moved to California I didn’t want to get into the real estate rat race. I preferred to pursue my photography and my knitting. I love California; love everything about it. I think it’s a very calming atmosphere. People complain about traffic, but it is nothing compared with the east coast.