A Walhalla Saturday Night

Since Leigh passed away in 2012, I’ve seen her or imagined seeing her on several occasions. Whenever I see a young woman running along the road, I imagine that it is Leigh. That thought doesn’t last long, for I see that she isn’t running nearly as hard as Leigh would be. The latest sighting (and Louise saw her too) was in Walhalla, SC last Saturday night.

Some of our closest friends invited us to join them for pizza in Walhalla, to be followed by a Swinging Medallions concert. The pizza was great at a little place on Main Street called Carolina Pizza. The concert was held at an old school auditorium that had been cleverly converted to a concert hall. You may remember the Swinging Medallions as a 1960’s beach music group from Greenwood, SC. Their biggest hit was “Double Shot of my Baby’s Love” in 1966. I don’t know how many were in the original group, I think 8, but there are 10 of them now; only a couple being of the original band. They came out dressed in matching psychedelic pajama pants and T-shirts with “Swinging Medallions” on the front and their name on the back. They really put on a great show – I highly recommend them if they are ever in your area. You can tell they’ve been performing together for over 50 years, as they had a different dance routine for every song and they were perfectly in sync down to the hand movements. They all sing and all are excellent instrumentalists, most of them playing several instruments.

On about the third song, they invited the audience to dance in the aisles if they felt so moved. This being an old auditorium, there wasn’t a designated dance floor, but that didn’t stop the revelers. I should point out that the place was sold out, and the average age of the audience was about 70. Looking around the room, I felt young, and not just from the music. The first person to get up and dance was one of the younger women in the audience. As she danced down the aisle, she started urging others to join her, even pulling some folks out into the aisle. I slunk down as low as I could in my seat so as not to draw her attention. She danced every song, and eventually had about 50 or 60 fools following her. At one point, I said to Louise, “That woman is having entirely too much fun – she’s annoying.”

Louise replied, “Claude, that’s Leigh!” I had to agree that was exactly what Leigh would have been doing if she were there. This lady was still annoying, but after that exchange, I began to tolerate her much better.

After about two hours of singing and dancing, they closed the show with “Double Shot” and the entire audience were on their feet through the entire song, screaming and clapping. You would think we were at the OD Pavilion. (How many of you know what “OD” stands for?) It was a great Saturday night in Walhalla.

And by the way, they put on concerts almost every Saturday night at this old school, with some really great entertainers. They even have concessions where you can purchase beer and wine ($7 for a glass of wine, but you get to keep the glass). I would say it was even worth missing the first half of the Duke basketball game.