Harvest Moon Ball

Sixty-six years ago today the Harvest Moon Ball was held at Madison Square Garden in New York City. This was a prestigious annual dance competition emceed by Ed Sullivan, and one of the celebrity entertainers that year was Ray Bolger, fresh from his immortal appearance as Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.

I don't know what Ed Sullivan might have gotten out of the deal, but I do know for sure that on that night Ray Bolger received a wallet embossed with his initials and the legend "Harvest Moon Ball 1940," and that he put this wallet into use and it became filled with both usual and unusual wallet-stuff over the course of the next five or six years, at which point it was retired.

After a gap of about six decades this wallet came into my possession. It took me awhile to put together the above-described facts and circumstances. It took me so long because the legend "Harvest Moon Ball" seemed so self-explanatory to me, "Harvest" suggesting the image of a scarecrow, "Ball" of course evoking dancing - a dancing scarecrow - and "Moon" adding the appropriate element of mystery and magic. It all seemed so perfectly right and descriptive and sensible that I didn't require any more explanation than that.

Needless to say, though, I did get more explanation than that - and so now the phrase means all of that other stuff too.