Chivaree!!!!

Since it is the spring of the year and this seems to be a very popular time of year for weddings and such, I thought I’d tell you all about a custom we have in the mountains known as chivaree.

A chivaree was a noisy celebration of friends and family that took place on the wedding night of a loved one. The celebration was usually headed up the by brothers of the bride, or another close male relative. It was kept secret from the happy couple, but it was done to nearly every couple so I don’t know how much of a secret it was. I’m sure many happy couples hoped against hope that everyone had forgotten about honoring them with a chivaree.

After the wedding reception and after the newlyweds retire for the night, all of their kinfolk and friends would get together and surprise the couple with a noisy and raucous welcome into married life. The best time to start a chivaree was after the newlyweds turned out the lights, usually around midnight or a little later and kind of got settled. Then, all of a sudden the boisterous crowd gathered outside the house where the newlyweds were spending their wedding night. On cue, the crowd started hollering at the top of their lungs, banging on pots and pans, setting off firecrackers, beating on windows and doors, and hollering out the names of the newlyweds and yelling “chivaree”. This usually scared both of the newlyweds half to death, especially if one or the other had never heard of chivaree before. It really depended on the crowd, but sometimes they’d force the door open and gather up the bridegroom and rough him up a little.

I remember when my cousin Sal got married to her husband Kingfisher, they were given a pretty lively chivaree. The thing of it was, Kingfisher wasn’t from the mountain and he had never heard of such a thing as a chivaree, and Sal had neglected to tell him anything about it (she probably didn’t want to scare him off). After they had settled into their honeymoon house on their wedding night, and when their minds were occupied with other thoughts, the chivaree commenced.

A crowd of about 50 people surrounded the honeymoon house and were hollering out the names of Sal and Kingfisher. It liked to scare Kingfisher to death, he thought a horde of hillbillies were out to get him, and I'm sure it did look that way. Sal tried to reassure him that they’d stick around for awhile and it was just their way to honoring the marriage, but Kingfisher panicked and couldn’t understand why this crowd was gathered all around their house, hollering and screaming, banging on the windows and doors…and some of them were even carrying lit torches!

Then Sal’s brothers, who were really proud because of their sister’s wedding, decided they would really welcome Kingfisher to the mountain, so they decided to give Sal a chivaree like they had in the old days. First, they sent someone to fetch a rail from a nearby rail fence, and they then greased it up with lard. Then they got a bunch of men together and forced open the door to the house, and dragged Kingfisher out of the house kicking and screaming, and he was wearing nothing but his underwear! They told him to hold on, and they hoisted him up on the greased rail and paraded him all around the community, fully thinking that they were honoring their sister’s choice of husband by doing this. Of course, Kingfisher kept falling off the rail but the brothers would just hoist him back up on it and continue along the way. I’m sure Kingfisher had no idea what was to become of him.

Jubilant cheers of chivaree echoed all over the mountain that night. After the rounds were made, they brought Kingfisher back to Sal and expected to get asked in for some drinks and such, as was the custom. By this time, Kingfisher was fit to be tied, and was really angry at everyone, and started hollering at everyone to leave them alone and to leave. Well, that just offended Sal’s brothers, who really had thought that they had honored Kingfisher by riding him around the community on a greased rail, so they figured they cool him off a little. They grabbed Kingfisher again, and this time tied his arms and legs, and grabbing the greased rail again they tied him to it, they carried him to the water trough that was used for the stock. They dipped Kingfisher into the trough a few times, and each time they’d pull him up out of the water, they’d holler, “Chivaree…Chivaree”. Well, Kingfisher caught on pretty quick and told the boys, “Let’s go back to the house and have a drink.” They did, at which time Sal hastily explained to Kingfisher what a chivaree meant, and this time he listened intently, so as not to again offend the family he had just married into. He didn’t make that mistake again, and resigned himself to celebrating the marriage with his newly acquired family. An hour or so later, everyone left the honeymoon house flaming torches and lanterns in hand, some of them still beating on their pots and pans, and hollering out the names of the newlyweds and “chivaree’. The commotion soon faded into the distance and all was again quiet at the honeymoon house. Kingfisher had been welcomed into the family, and amazingly enough, he’s still a part of it!

These days, the festivities of a chivaree are nearly forgotten on the mountain, but everyone remembers the one that took place after Sal and Kingfisher’s wedding. After that whenever one of Sal’s sisters were married, immediately following their wedding reception they drove into Franklin to stay at the hotel there. I guess they didn’t want to take a chance on their brother’s honoring them with a chivaree.

Do any readers out there remember the chivaree? If so, what kind of things happened during the festivities? Anyone know where this custom came from?

A Sticky Situation

It’s about that time of year again, time to make maple syrup. Have any of you readers out there tried making maple syrup before? I have. I guess I always was sort of a food purist, perhaps it is more like I’ve always been curious to see whether I could follow some of the old-timey traditional methods of making stuff at home, so it was only a matter of time before I tried my hand at making maple syrup. I remember I was about 15 years old or so, and I had talked to a few of the older folks in the neighborhood about making syrup and they told me how it was done, though I didn’t let on that I was actually going to try my hand at it for fear of getting to much advice that would take the fun out of it.

I remember that I needed a spout to insert into the tree to drain the sugar water out, and I didn’t want to use metal or plastic pipe for a spout (which undoubtedly would have been the most convenient). No way, I was doing this the old fashioned way and I wanted a wooden spout. I hunted the woods for hours looking for a straight stick about an inch wide, then using my pocket knife I split it open. I cleaned out the doty center of the stick and I had two little troughs with which to siphon away the sugar water from the tree. I did try my hand at hollowing out a whole stick but it was just too time consuming, so my idea worked well enough.

I then took Dad’s wood bore and after scouting out the biggest sugar maple trees behind our house on the hillside, I took boring holes into the trees. I then inserted my little wooden “pipe troughs” into the holes, and had then dripping down into my catchment containers. After waiting a few minutes, I saw the first few droplets of sugar water trying to run down into my waiting mason jar. (Yes, mason jar…this was a small time operation!). I soon learned through trial and error that if I slanted my bored hole slightly upward, the sap flowed out a little better. Also, I found that a little spot of chewing gum dammed up the excess sugar water and made the sap flow out my troughs a little better, as well as securing my troughs in the hole. I know I must have drilled 20 or so trees, and I had jars, cans, cups, buckets and pretty much anything else that would catch sugar water placed under nearly every maple tree on the hillside. This was about mid-morning, and as the day progressed and it got a little warmer, the sap started running faster. Some of them ran like a slow running faucet. Since my catchment containers were rather small, I nearly ran myself to death emptying them into my larger 5 gallon bucket which sat at the bottom of the hill. Eventually, I focused on the larger and more productive trees and abandoned operations at the small trees. After a few hours, my 5 gallon bucket was full of sweet tasting maple sap. It looked like water, had the consistency of water, but it had a slightly sweet taste. After getting what I believed would be aplenty maple sugar water, I gathered up my jars, cans, cups, etc. and placed a piece of clay mud into the bored holes of the tree to keep out moisture so as to prevent rot.

An old drawing of a maple sugar camp.

So with my 5-gallon bucket of maple sugar water in hand, I talked Mom into allowing me the use of her kitchen to boil down my syrup. She told me I could but that if I made a mess, I’d have to clean it up. So, using her big stockpot, I filled it about ¾ full with sugar water and started heating it. Soon it was at a boil, and I kept adding more sugar water to the pot as it evaporated away. It took several hours of this, but eventually the boiling liquid started turning the lightest shade of brown, and I just knew that soon I’d have syrup. I couldn’t help but sample my work frequently and it was starting to get slightly sweeter, but still nowhere near syrup. So my pot kept boiling and boiling, and it was clear that I’d get no more than a quart of syrup out of this, but that was still fine. Well, about the time my pot had about a quart of liquid in it, I tasted it again…nope, still very watery…so I had no choice but to keep boiling. Everyone had told me that it took a lot of sugar water to make syrup but I figured I had enough. I had thought about going back out to the trees to get more sap, but Mom told me that I’d better wait and see if my experiment worked before I went and made more work for myself. I’m sure it was more like she wanted me out of the kitchen since I’d been there for hours and hours. So I acquiesced and kept on a-boilin’!

It soon became apparent that I wasn’t going to have much maple syrup at all when I got it boiled down. As it was now, I had less than a cup full in the pot and it was still rather watery. I became resolved right then to continue and get whatever syrup I could out of this…no matter how little… since I had spent all day at it. When the liquid had nearly all boiled away, I tasted my treasured substance, and lo and behold, it was just right! I had made maple syrup! However, when I measured it out, I had just over 3 Tablespoons of it (out of 5 gallon of maple sugar water). Everyone got a good laugh over that, but let me tell you, that was good maple syrup. I shared it with everyone there, and we all got a taste, and everyone agreed that it was really good.

And that's when the real fun started. Mom came out to the kitchen and told me to clean up my mess. I’d been really careful not to make too much of one since I knew I’d be the one to have to clean it. I washed the stockpot, and wiped off the stove and table, took my bucket outside, and thought I had it all done, then Mom discovered something. She looked around and had noticed that there was a sticky film all over the walls and ceiling, over the cabinets and refrigerator, over the countertops and the ceiling fan, even on the window panes! It seems that while my maple sugar water was evaporating, the steam had miniscule amounts of sugar in it, and it had coated everything in the kitchen. Hot, soapy water was the only thing that would cut the stickiness, and Mom said we had to clean the whole kitchen (yes, she helped!). She really didn’t say too much to me, probably because if she started she wouldn’t have been able to stop! It was way up into the night before we got the remnants of my first and only ill-fated attempt at making my own maple syrup. So for the love of God and all that is Holy, if you decide to make your own homemade maple syrup, take my advice and do it someplace other than your mother’s kitchen. I old guess the old timers had a reason for making sugar camps after all!

Christmas Memories on the Mountain

Thanks to my brother Jason, some Christmas photo's are finally starting to come my way. I was able to view the photo's that I took but I can't load them to my computer. I did go and look at new digital camera's this past weekend, but the one I wanted wasn't in stock anywhere that we went. I know I want a Kodak Easyshare C913, and since I've already made up my mind on that, I won't even look at anything else even though there are camera's out there that are probably better and less expensive, but my mind is set so they aint no use in trying to get me to buy anything else (as Shirley can exasperatingly attest). Anyway, you can see a glimpse of how Christmas on the Mountain went this year.



The Burns family Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. Shirley had already made her rounds, shook every present that she had under the tree and hypothesized what she may be getting the next morning after she took her annual beating from Der Belsnickel! Probably the best (and most surprising) gift Shirley received was a CD containing over 700 episodes of Fibber McGee and Molly, the old-time radio show. Shirley loves Fibber McGee and Molly.



After everyone opens their gifts, it has become tradition for everyone to pile all the gift wrap and (much to the chagrin of Shirley) boxes on top of her. We then take Christmas Shirl photos of her. Why do we do this? Besides it being great fun, well...we are bigger than her!!

Knowing how I am and how easily I get wound up in things, why someone would get me chinese finger traps is beyond me. They were a big hit though. After the finger traps got me excitable, I opened...

a huge jar of hot sausages and a box of saltine crackers. What you see here is me hissing at Jason. I thought he was going to try to get some hot sausages out of me. I told you the finger traps made me excited!!! I got even worse though, after a few moments of salivating over the pickled goodness in the half-gallon jar, Christmas morning took a dive to a new low...Matthew pretending to be Carmen Miranda....

Okay, a demented Carmen Miranda, but Carmen Miranda never-the-less. I'd have got up and done a little dance, but we all know I'm far too lazy to do that.

Later, after the gifts were opened, we settled down for a snack before we ate dinner. Here Jason set his biscuit and jelly in the kitchen windowsill. It made a pretty sight.

Fast forwarding a bit, evening found its way to the mountain. The sky was beautiful and cast a warm feeling over Spruce Knob in the distance.

The purple sky appeared just as the mountain evening gave way to darkness.



Another Christmas had come and gone on the mountain.

Berry Picking

In the summers of my childhood, my whole family would all get together and go berry picking, usually for raspberries and blackberries. We’d usually go up on North Mountain to pick raspberries or back in “Brown Bear Lodge” to pick blackberries. We’d usually pick gallons at a time and we would can most of them but we’d also save enough fresh berries to make pies and cobblers. I also recall that fresh raspberries and milk with sugar was a favorite.

To pick the blackberries we’d go back in Brown Bear Lodge where the blackberry briers would grow up over the road, and we’d just stay in the truck bed and pick berries which was a lot easier to do that go traipsing through the underbrush. We didn’t pick as many blackberries as we did raspberries because we didn’t like them as well…we thought they tasted like ink. We’d usually make pies and jelly out of the blackberries. Very few of them were eaten fresh.

One time when we was up on the mountain picking raspberries and mountain berries, we were picking on one side of a huge berry patch and heard something on the other side of the berry patch making noise and thrashing the brush. We wondered what it was but didn’t think too much of it until we heard the snorts and grunts getting closer and then we saw a pretty good sized black bear eating the berries as well. After that it didn’t take us too long to get out of there.

In late July we’d also go up on Spruce Knob or out in Dolly Sods and pick huckleberries, we’d use a picker for those and it wasn’t such a big deal to us as picking our favorite, wild black raspberries.

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