A Noisy Surprise for the Newlyweds
Local residents revive the old-fashioned 'charivari' tradition to celebrate a neighbor’s recent marriage with a cacophonous midnight parade.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
At his home last week, Frank Naught and his bride, residing near the state line, were given a genuine old-fashioned charivari. A few nights after his wedding, he was awakened from pleasant dreams by a noise that would raise the dead. Upon investigation, he found all the young men of the community and some of the older ones, beating on pans and blowing horns. After the howling mob had marched around the house three or four times, the young benedict appeared with a goodly sum of coin in either hand, which he presented to the leader. After congratulations were offered, the party retired to the residence of a bachelor, where they awaited the arrival of the man who had been sent to the city for the refreshments.
“A few nights after he was awakened from pleasant dreams by a noise that would raise the dead.”
The charivari was a common, often boisterous form of community policing and celebration in frontier towns. While we've largely lost this specific, noisy custom of 'paying' for the intrusion, the concept of community-enforced neighborliness survives in modern social rituals.
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