If you went to a Ewing school during my era this will relate to you. I was born in 1985 and graduated from Ewing High in 2003.
If you are from Ewing, you went to one of the following schools: Antheil, Parkway, Lore, Incarnation, Lanning(didn’t last too long) but you all ended up at either Incarnation or Fisher. Most Fisher kids would end up at Incarnation for CCD and would mess with all of the full time students desks.
Real cool guys! One place we all ended up together was the firehouse dances on Friday nights. Whether it was the girls soccer team Ewing United or my West End soccer team hosting the dance, you could count on every Friday we had a dance and the whole township would show up if you were in grades 6-8. Pennington Road Firehouse, The JCC, or the legendary West Trenton Fire House dances are where many a couple and memory were formed. I always remembered my brother who was four grades older than me getting all fired up for the dance on Friday.
He and his buddies would get all decked out in their freshest gear and head out. I couldn’t wait until I was in 6th grade so I could finally see what this magic place was all about. When I finally became a 6th grader, the first Firehouse dance was coming up and I was getting nervous. To preface this, I went to Incarnation so I had to a wear a uniform everyday so I really didn’t have “cool” clothes.
I wore my school uniform every day and then on weekends, I wore my soccer uniform or a basketball jersey and shorts. I remember going to the mall with my brother from another Bobby and making sure we had the newest Tommy Hilfiger Jeans, a Tommy Hil shirt and the cologne to go with it.
Everyone my age reading this knows that Tommy Boy or Tommy Girl smell. It was awesome at the time! My hair had to be on point too. Whether it was the bowl cut in 1996 or the Caesar cut with just the front of your hair spiked up, I did it. Shout to the gel company Dep because I definitely kept you in business longer.
You couldn’t show up to the dance looking anything but Super Fresh and I’m not talking about the old supermarket where the CVS now is.
Being a Catholic school kid at Incarnation, there were only about 40 kids in my class. Fisher had 100s of kids so we were definitely outnumbered when it came to cliques to hang out with. Luckily, I had my boys from my West End United soccer team and most of them went to Fisher. Bad news for me, those dudes were all in 5th grade so I basically had my buddy DJ, who was my public school liaison. He introduced me to a lot of people but I was still the catholic school kid.
The next few years at the dances would be awesome but the first dance, I huddled around my Incarnation crew gawking at the girls from Fisher. The girls at Incarnation were really hot and super cool but now there were 100s of girls who were hot and cool. Seventh and Eight grade firehouse dances were much better because I knew more people at the dances and I was always in the “dance circle.”
My best friend Karl and I would head to the mall on Friday right after school and head to Dapy which is now Spencers Gifts. We grabbed glow sticks so we could do a dance called “The Rave.” During this era, glow sticks were worth more than money. I’m not sure what all of the girls thought of us dudes “raving” in the circle but I thought I was cool.
Man, I miss those firehouse dances.
Present day, I created a playlist on YouTube and included just about every song that was played during my firehouse days. I posted it on Facebook and the reaction I got was silly. The Firehouse was the place to be on Friday nights.
Anyone want to do a Firehouse dance again? Can we start it earlier because I’m old and want to watch Jeopardy at 7 p.m.
Donnie Black was born and grew up in Ewing Township. He currently works at radio station XTU in Philadelphia as a producer, on air personality and promotions director.
