Grange Hall Birthday
A puddle of community
Cars in rows on the gravel in the dark, rain-punctuated night in front of the old building that needed a coat of paint out away from town.
Into the entryway set out onto the gravel. A puddle right in front of the stoop, dancing with rain drops in the porch light. This is the Willamette Valley of Western Oregon after all. Famous for the rain.
We are at an old Grange hall outside Philomath, Oregon. The occasion is a fiftieth birthday for a woman working at the large state University nearby. I don’t know her, but I am with a co-worker of hers and we are all wholeheartedly invited. We open the door to a blast of ska.
A ska band is a brilliant thing. Ska can turn any cover song into universally danceable fierce, silly joy. The outfit on the stage thrived on 80s and 90s songs. Those of us who are 50 in 2025 can really bite into them.
The stage was at the end of the room from where we entered. In front of us were rows of tables populated with dark figures. Past them an open dance floor. To stage right (our left) was the open kitchen, glowing with artificial light.
Some younger people stood in the light, teenagers and just beyond. A woman and a man talking, she holds a seltzer can in one hand, an arm swinging it in an arc from where her elbow is pulled into her body from her other hand.
He is laughing and she is laughing.
At rows of tables in the dark main room sit the adults, people my age. The old people.
Some get up and dance together for a song or two. One woman brings a very small child with her. In 2025 it could be her daughter or her grand daughter; families work out all sorts of timelines. Perhaps those two just met and wanted to dance together. The kid tries jumping up and down, tries crouching and jiggling back and forth, tries raising her hands straight up and spinning around. The tall woman follows along, presenting adult versions of the brand new kindergarten dance craze.
I was not immune to the siren ska call. They went into “Take Me On” at a fast clip and I joined the circle of dancers laughing and misstepping together, trying to look cool and remembering when it was so important to look cool that you might just die. Being older involves a lot of laughing ruefully at memories. Laughing in motion is the best kind of dancing.
I looked around. I zoomed out. This was a dozen people moving in their own way standing in a circle for the less than three minutes the song lasted (ska flies by). They were on a dark old hardwood floor. Tables behind them had a scattering of people eating cake and drinking beer. On the outskirts of the circle a human (hard to identify) had put on an oversized helmet, a prop a la 1987’s comedy hit Space Balls, and was dancing with dangerous little situational awareness.
We were together in a room protected from the rain. A room built to house agrarian community practices 91 years ago. Built for gathering, with a suitable stage and a kitchen to serve from. The container to grow community.
Small university towns get blessed with unexpected diversity. We chatted with a doctor and her professor husband, both from big complicated Indian families. Their marriage was not exactly arranged, but the families had a great deal to do with it. They are not exactly welcoming, but actually demanding that you accept hospitality. That you agree to travel with them. That you have some cake right now.
I met a professor who studies cars and bikes moving. This is something of great interest to me (an element in my upcoming novel) so we had a great half-yelled conversation about roundabouts over the ska band.
That ska band, whose verve never waned.
I ended up back in the lit open kitchen area getting another beer and stayed there for a time, out of the direct path of the ska. I got to talking to a contractor living in the area. We noted how the electrical wiring was routed externally on the old parts of the building. I looked up and lost myself realizing the rafters were rough hewn. Old pine marked by a hand tool pulled across it. Bark and branches sliced off, pared down to pure wood. They were notched and cut for where they seated.
Philomath is a wooded land, so I imagine these trees came down somewhere near. Perhaps chosen for purpose from a stand on a Grange member’s property. Hand felled and brought to this site.
We stepped out into the rain, the puddle right at the end of the stoop where all these people coming to the Grange to gather have pounded down and pushed aside the gravel. I picture someone putting a shovel full back on it every year, and every year footfalls make a space for a puddle again.
Addendum: Mary’s River Grange, Philomath Oregon
The first Grange in Philomath was founded 1873 and met for 19 years (1892).
The Mary’s River Grange in which I danced to ska covers of 80s hits (#685) was formed 35 years later (1927). Rev. Morris Goodrich of Chapel Church was the first Master.
The current building was built by volunteers, opening in February of 1934. Those hewn logs I saw were put up 91 years ago.
In 2009, it nearly closed, but John Evelund, who had been operating the nearby organic Gathering Together Farm for 20 years with his wife, restarted it, built up membership, and preserved the building. Membership is now around 60. Anyone can join or donate.
The website features the text of this song:
The Grange Hall by the River
Written by Katie Hoyt, lecturer, Marys River Grange
(Tune: The Wild Bird)
In the evening let us wander,
While the stars shine above,
To the Grange hall by the river,
Where we meet friends we love.
Then the Bakers and the Huffmans,
And the Seedenburgs, too,
Meet the Bennetts and the Botkins
With a glad, “How are you?”
By the river near the hillside,
In the Grange Hall you know,
Built by Patrons from the valley
And the nearby hamlet.
‘Neath the old hall’s heavy rafters
Gathers many a throng;
Happy hours are spent together
That we’ll never forget.