The Patent-Leather Kid

MANNERS & MORALS

When a man's hair begins to drop out and his step grows heavy and the 20-year mortgage on his house is half paid--it is then that he feels romance burning in his veins. He may yearn to run off to the Galapagos Islands and rest beneath the palms with the local Liat (native girl in South Pacific), but usually he just starts wearing California sport shirts and loafers. John R. Winter Jr., 40, of Detroit, was a different sort. He went to the Arthur Murray Studio on Livernois Avenue.

A new world opened to him the second his shoes slid on the polished floor. That was last October. John was not the ballroom type. He was a plump, grey-haired grass widower, and the president of two unromantic family businesses: Winter Bros. Stamping Co. (auto parts) of Detroit and Winter Pressed Steel Co. (tractor parts) of Napoleon, Ohio. But John was dogged. He started right out dancing--and he danced ten hours a day.

His instructress, one Ellen Keene, told him he showed real promise, and John vowed to win his Arthur Murray bronze medal. All he had to do, after all, was learn the 60 different steps used in the fox trot, swing, tango, waltz, samba, rumba and mambo. After his hundredth hour on the floor, John decided to buy four Arthur Murray life memberships -- they only cost $7,650 apiece, and together they guaranteed him 4,000 hours of instruction and after that, eight hours of dancing a month for life. "It's like a kind of insurance," he explained. "Dancing is like any other kind of activity -- if you don't keep it up, you get rusty." A Gold Medal? At this point John fell under the spell of a dark, mustached Brazilian dance instructor named Chafic Sabino. "One day he asked me if I would like to see him dance. Well, a couple of turns around the floor with Miss Keene and my eyes nearly popped out of my head. He was wonderful. He kept on giving me little hints--told me to raise my hand a bit or drop it--things like that." Soon, John gave Chafic a job at the Detroit plant as his secretary at $2.31 an hour. "He told me he could make me a gold medalist in 500 hours." After this, things grew slightly confused. Winter says that Sabino borrowed his charge plate at a department store to buy a pair of shoes, but bought $800 worth of clothes instead, and then talked him out of a 21-in. television set. Sabino "bought" John's Lincoln convertible, promising part payment in dance lessons.

But then John's irate daddy, 76-year-old Industrialist John R. Winter, fired the persuasive Brazilian. According to John, Sabino forthwith threatened to "pump me full of hot lead," and made John write off all debts on the clothes, TV set and car, and on top of that had the gall to demand a $100-a-week salary for life.

An Improved Posture? John, meanwhile, had an even more discouraging setback--he threw his back out of , whack doing a tango and, after trying to keep on for two more days, finally stopped because of the pain. Daddy threatened to fire him if he ever started up again. Last week John was gloomily attempting to clear away the debris of his terpsichorean idyl.

He had Sabino (who loftily denies all his allegations) in court on an extortion charge, and was trying to recover $20,000 of the money spent on life memberships.

But his worst trouble was a strike of women workers at the Detroit plant.

"Sure, he has all that money for dancing and he can't give us a raise," cried Shop Stewardess Arlene Firth. "It really burned us all up." "Dancing," said John, "teaches poise and confidence. It awakens certain senses which may have been dormant in us. It improves posture." Nobody seemed to be listening to him.

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