Firefighters Host Aberdeen's Grand Masquerade Ball
Youth and beauty, hobgoblins and nuns, all crowded the armory for a raucous night of revelry.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The armory Monday evening presented a scene seldom witnessed in a city the size of Aberdeen. The members of the fire department had declared they would have the largest and most enjoyable ball of the season, and they proved themselves prophets. The hall was handsomely decorated with bunting, sections of hose, fire extinguishers and other firemen’s paraphernalia, all beautifully interwoven with evergreens. At 8:30, the ball opened with the grand march, in which a most motley as well as beautifully costumed lot of dancers participated. There were dudes and dudesses, hobgoblins and fairies, monks and nuns, old men and young, all marching through the figures. It was impossible to count the couples, but it was estimated that at 11 o’clock, the hour for unmasking, fully 110 couples were dancing. Every inch of floor space was occupied and the crowding was fearful, but everyone was in a good humor and took their bumps without complaint.
“The sublime and ridiculous went hand-in-hand.”
Public social halls were the beating heart of late 19th-century frontier towns like Aberdeen, providing a release from the intense physical labor of the lumber mills. While the 'armory' was then a multipurpose civic space, today's community centers still struggle to find the balance between accommodating massive local crowds and maintaining building code safety.
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