In April 1913, 90-year-old Henry McHenry walked out of the Chelsea Old Soldiers Home, telling his friends he was going to town – which they assumed meant Boston – and he didn’t come back. Three days later, word arrived that he had surfaced in New York City with a pocketful of cash. McHenry pointedly told police, who wanted to send him home, that he would leave when he had seen what he came for. What enticed this cantankerous Civil War veteran and retired stonemason to travel all the way to New York? He wanted to see this new dance phenomenon everyone was talking about: the tango. The year 1913, the writer H.G. Wells noted, was “the year of the tango.” This new dance where couples danced cheek-to-cheek, legs and arms pressed close against each other in an erotic embrace, had everyone’s attention.
Families would put pictures of their dead loved one and put them up in or outside the home. skulls would be hung around the house and candies would be everywhere. families would gather together to remember their loved ones that passed.
