"Niagara Falls or Bust"

Last month as I read "City of Light" set in Buffalo, NY during the early 1900's during the time Niagara Falls was becoming a source of power for electricity, I was reminded of growing up in the late 1940's and early 1950's when after almost every wedding the groom's car was decorated with "Niagara Falls or Bust" shoe-polished on the rear window.

Not many couples from Adams County Iowa actually went to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon (one of my classmates did) but it was still a destination to aspire to. For a kid with an imagination, it seemed to me it had to be a magical place even if I didn't understand about honeymoons. When Kenny and I were married in 1961 the double-entendre "Hot Springs tonight" had replaced "Niagara Falls or Bust" on the car window along with the shoes and aluminum cans tied to the back bumper.

Another post wedding rite was the charivari, or as we called it, a shivaree. A young married couple was often shivareed or serenaded by relatives, friends and neighbors within a week or two after their nuptials. The point of a charivari was to 1) surprise the newlyweds (often shortly after their bedroom light went out) and 2) to make as much noise as possible by honking horns, banging on pots and pans and ringing cowbells. Once the couple had been routed from bed, it was incumbent upon them to supply cigars and candy bars to the revelers.

The charivari I remember best (most likely because I was 12 yrs old) was the one for Richard Goldsmith and Norma Jean Boswell after their marriage in 1955. The couple had rented an upstairs apartment from Earl Johns. Besides all the noise we made and crowding into their small home, I remember someone in the kitchen putting salt in the sugar bowl and sugar in the salt shaker.

Even though Kenny and I had cigars and candy bars on hand for a shivaree after our November wedding, we weren't shivareed until the following February after my cousin Lila's wedding. The custom was to bring the newlyweds to town and make the groom push the bride up main street in a wheelbarrow and the bride push the groom down the Davis Avenue hill. Kenny and I were there to join in the fun when cousin Glen decided we hadn't been charivaried and needed to do the wheelbarrow thing after Lila and Darrel. Being the party-pooper I am, I refused and used being pregnant as my excuse.

Wedding anniversaries were another time couples were shivareed. When our neighbors and good friends, Dean & Crystal Firkins were celebrating their silver anniversary, the neighbors got together to plan a surprise charivari. We all met at the bottom of the hill north of Dean & Crystal's then drove in with lights off and horns blaring. Unbeknownst to the party planners, the Firkins had decided to drive to Omaha for the night to celebrate. Some of the neighbors involved decided to go into the house anyway and proceeded to make a big mess - not just exchanging sugar for salt but putting flour or something in the bed - and generally making a huge clean-up job. The fall-out was that Crystal blamed Mom and quit speaking to her. Until then they had been best friends and even though Mom said she wasn't involved in making the mess, Crystal didn't talk to her again for years.

After reading about Niagara Falls and thinking about how it had once been a destination for honeymoons, I added it to the list of where we might go to celebrate our silver anniversary.