Dorris pulled his chair over closer to the corner where Clyde was sitting. "You just oughta've been here for their shivaree, Clyde! Man, we made enough racket to wake the dead!" "Yeah?" "We didn't shivaree 'em till they moved out to themselves. Old Ollie thought we'd forgot 'em." "Who all was in on it?" "Oh, me and Bess and Jim-Bo and Hi and Casey and the Hansen girls—the whole gang of us young folks. And we took along everything we could lay our hands on: cow bells, washtubs, five or six syrup buckets with rocks in 'em! Captain Jones even let us borrow that fife and bugle of his!" "Don't forget that I was blowing Papa's hog-calling horn!" "Yeah, Bess had that steer horn Papa's got. Man, we nearly scared the daylights outta Ollie and Lucille! They admitted the next day that they thought the world was coming to an end!" "Y'all sure enough surprised 'em?" "And how! See, we waited till about nine o'clock that Saturday night, when we knew they'd be sound asleep. Me and Jim-Bo and Hi climbed up on the roof with the washtubs and hammers while the rest of the boys and all of the girls were easing their way up through the hall. Then, when Jim-Bo let out the whoop, we all cut loose! Wow! What a din! "We heard Lucille scream! Next minute, Ollie came running out in his nightshirt! Then they saw who it was. As soon as they could pull on some clothes, we all went in. We stayed and stayed. I reckon it was nearly midnight when we left, wasn't it, Bess?" "Yes, Lucille cooked us so much ham and battercakes and stuff it took a long time to eat it all up." "Did y'all ride Ollie on a rail?" "No. We boys threatened him. Then we told him that since he'd married himself such a fine cook, we'd postpone his ride. But 'course he knew as well as the rest of us that the riding on the rail part of a shivaree is sorta passed over nowadays. Still, he made like he thought he'd had a close call. He told Lucille that only her good cooking had saved him from a nightmarish ride through Rocky Head Bottom!" "Foot dool!" Grandpa told Dorris. "When I was young, we rode 'em all on a rail! Many's the shivaree I helped pull off! But you know something, boys? We've been laughing a good bit here tonight about weddings and infare dinners and shivarees and all. I'm here to tell you—laying all jokes aside—that the day a-body marries is just about the most important day of his life. My advice to you, Clyde, and you too, Dorris, is to look around. If a man wants to enjoy his daily bread after he's prayed for it, he'd sure better be particular who he picks to stir the dough!" Chapter 8 I was learning fast. I learned why you have to have Christmas Eve Day before you can have Christmas. It's so you can sit on the kitchen floor and string popcorn to hang on the big tree at church. Mierd told me that. And she was in a good humor, even laughing, when she said it. The next minute, though, Mierd was fussing, saying I was bad, tattling to Mama.