Excerpt: Come Dancing

Buckingham was built in the 1940s in the post-World War Two era, just as the Baby Boom began to pick up steam. Even back at the beginning, it attracted the likes of The Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and brought in a lot of tourists. The owners rarely remodeled if they could get away with it; the place seemed as though it was made out of stone, it could take so much abuse.

The interior had been designed based on the blueprints for Buckingham Palace in Great Britain. There was a grand entrance with somewhat of a grand staircase that led down to the dance floor. The stage, though somewhat small, lay straight across from the entrance; to its left was the secluded restaurant, its name I cannot recall for the life of me. To the right of the dance floor was a sectioned-off bar area where the kids would hang out. It held booths that had a pretty good view of the stage. The coat check was just next to the bar.

Above the staircase was a balcony, secluded and rarely ever noticed by the Buckingham patrons. If someone didn’t want to deal with the incessant high-pitched screams and mosh pits of the dance floor, they could easily find a spot in the balcony. The ground floor held no seats, save for the booths by the bar, but the balcony held close to one hundred plush, red velvet chairs.

It was classy. It was rambunctious. It was absolutely stunning. It was noisy. It was sophisticated. It made for a perfect evening and it came to be known as Laura’s home away from home.

I rarely went there without somehow running into my sister, if she hadn’t forbid me from going. Every time, she would shake her head at me and say, “Riley, are you stalking me?” The tone always varied, though it was usually playful.

The big name bands showed up at Buckingham. Their tours weren’t complete without a stop in Rochester Hills: Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, The Kinks, and Eric Clapton to name barely a handful. Despite the mainstream names, tickets were usually easy to buy.

But that was back in the days when music was, well, better. Today’s generation will not agree with me, but if you had been at any of those band’s concerts, you would understand. That was back around the turn of the 1970s.

The era of Buckingham is long forgotten, save for those who were present for its glory days. Laura and I can certainly be counted among those who will always remember. Looking back on it now, I never realized how much I would miss a simple concert venue or how it had defined Laura’s life and, in turn, my own.

A few weeks ago, I was going through my collection of vinyl records for the first time in years and stumbled upon an album by The Kinks from the early 1980s. Listening to it, I was surprised to find a song that defines my childhood perfectly:

"They put a parking lot on a piece of land
When the supermarket used to stand.
Before that they put up a bowling alley
On the site that used to be the local palais.
That's where the big bands used to come and play.
My sister went there on a Saturday.

'Come dancing,'
All her boyfriends used to come and call.
'Why not come dancing, its only natural?'"
-Come Dancing by The Kinks, 1982