The bass hits before you even reach the door.
That's the first thing you notice pulling into Herminie's lot on a Friday night—the thump-thump-thump bleeding through the walls, matched by the pulse in your chest. You'd seen the flyers around town, the ones with that hand-lettered look and a phone number scrawled at the bottom. "Beginner-friendly," they said. You've got your doubts.
But you walk in anyway.
The floor is maple, the kind that sings under new shoes. A dozen people already there, half of them trading jokes with the guy at the sound board—a gray-haired fella in a polo who looks like your uncle more than some fitness guru. That's Jim. He'll call the moves tonight, all three hours of them, and he'll do it like he's hosting a conversation rather than conducting an exercise class. That's the first thing that surprises you.
The Instruction
You expect someone to bark counts. To line everyone up and drill footwork until your calves scream.
What you get instead is patience—almost unsettling patience. Your first couple of calls, you fumble the direction, spin the wrong way, bump into someone's shoulder. The woman across from you laughs, but it's the good kind, the "we've all been there" kind. She shows you the hand signal for "trade," just a flick of the wrist, and suddenly it clicks.
Herminie's instructors don't teach like they're checking boxes. They've got this way of breaking down the hard stuff into moments that actually make sense—one of their teachers, Delia, she calls it "finding the door in the dark." You're confused until she demonstrates: you don't think about the whole pattern, you think about just getting to the next spot. One door at a time.
The advanced sessions get harder, sure. But they build on that same philosophy. You learn to trust your partner, trust the caller, trust that the floor will catch you if you commit to the move. That's not something you can teach with a metronome.
The Regulars
Come back a few Fridays and you start recognizing faces.
There's the couple who's been square dancing for thirty years—they met here, actually, back when Herminie's was a different location and the sound system was held together with electrical tape. They still compete, not for trophies but because the routine keeps them moving.
There's the younger guy, maybe twenty-three, who'd never danced a step before January. Now he's teaching the workshop section, explaining the Texas Star like he invented it. He's not exceptional in that way that makes you feel bad about yourself—he's exceptional because he showed up and kept showing up.
That's the thing about this place. Nobody arrived knowing what they were doing. They just kept coming back.
The Space
The floors are sprung, which matters more than you'd think when you're drilling for two hours. The sound system gets loud but never distorts—the caller comes through clear, which sounds basic but isn't, in a lot of dance spaces.
There's a kitchen in back with coffee and chips and a bulletin board covered in cards from old workshops, birthdays, a photo from a competition where everyone grins like they just got away with something.
The Point
You came in thinking square dance was your grandma's party game. You're leaving with calluses on your knuckles and a phone number in your pocket—the next workshop starts in two weeks, and someone already texted asking if you're coming back.
You are.
