I Bet He Would Really Be Confused If Someone Mentioned The Chivaree They Were Invited To…

@exexec I’ve only been to one Chivaree. I am nearly 70 years old and it was when I was in third grade. We lived in a village where my grandpa also lived. He got remarried, had been a widower for 8 years. Well the people in the village got together and decided to throw him an old-fashioned Chivaree. It was the first time I ever heard of that word and didn’t know what it was. They didn’t tell us till the day it happened (right before sundown). My mother told us to gather up some noisemakers. We got pans and large metal spoons to bang around, Halloween noise makers etc. Right before sundown everyone in the village started marching towards Grandpa’s house and making as much noise as we could to tip him off that we were headed that way. The village had about 100 residents and most elderly but many of them came along with some family members who lived in a town nearby. Oh that sound of all those loud noises and clanging etc. We got to the house, my Grandpa opened the door and welcomed us inside. He handed out cigars to all of the men and Hershey bars to every woman and child. Grandpa’s bride made coffee and served it and made Koolaid for the children. The men gathered outside some of them smoking the cigars and congratulating the newlyweds. We kids (including my older cousins) went out back. My cousin, Judy, who was on the simple side decided it would be funny to pull pranks on the newlyweds. She got some small rocks and we snuck into the bedroom and put them under the sheets. Then she got a bar of soap and soaped the back windows on the house. And other such things. After about an hour and a half or so of these frivolities the party was over and we walked back to our homes. This was the liveliest and funnest thing that I ever saw or knew that ever happened in that little village.

@cherokeepatti That is great! My grandparents mentioned them, but I never knew what actually went on. Sounds like a lot of fun for everybody.

@exexec Good memories for me. It would have been sweet if there were more like that.

@cherokeepatti As our family historian, I regret not spending more time listening to my grandparents and their siblings. They had such great stories!

@exexec Wouldn’t it be fun of some of these old traditions were brought back. Make our own entertainment like this. And make some little videos encouraging more of it. Too much money is spent on restaurants and other venues which benefit corporations. This is home style fun, warm and inviting.

@cherokeepatti I vote for that!

@exexec Same and it was due to family circumstances and us being spread out in different states. I wanted to sit down with my remaining grandparent, my mother’s mother, and have long talks with her. But she was nearly deaf by the last few times we visited her and it was impossible to have a long fluid conversation with her. So many things I would have loved to have talked about, how it was when she was a newlywed homesteading a farm in Nebraska, that lifestyle and the hardships, the community and how they survived back then. And about our ancestors, the culture etc.

@exexec I imagine so many things that we could do to strengthen communities and families and bring back local fun. Call me old-fashioned but we have a new generation who never got to experience these things and they resort to electronics, expensive forms of fun and maybe not make these connections either.

@cherokeepatti I have more than 50 letters that my great-grandmother wrote to my grandfather in 1906-07. They are hard to read: pencil on all kinds of paper that have turned brown. She used very little punctuation and random capitalization. I would love to know the stories behind some of the things she wrote, but nobody remains with any knowledge. Even the town they lived in does not exist any more.

@exexec Needs to be kept for documentation and to share with others. This type of thing is really important. I worked with a woman a bit younger than me. Her father was the chief of the Kiowa nation when I worked with her. Her mother tragically drowned with two other relatives while returning from a pow-wow one night after it started raining and a flash flood swept their van into flood waters. I encouraged her to talk to her father and ask him stories about his childhood, about their ancestors and things they went through and the cultural things that may not be so common today as before. In order to document it for history because it is very important for the people in the future who are interested in history to know about. I was also hoping that by doing so that it could help her work through some of her grief for losing those loved ones all at once so tragically.

@cherokeepatti I have written three books on our family history and have given them to lots of family members. I rarely get a thank you. Nobody seems to care about the past, but maybe they will eventually.

@exexec People usually care when they mature and start thinking back on their lives after elderly loved ones have passed on.

@cherokeepatti I hope so. One problem is that a lot of people forget that half of their ancestors were women and that their maternal lineage is just as important as their paternal lines.

@exexec Cherokees don’t forget that.