Friday, February 10, 2006
Chechakos Initiation!
Newcomers to Alaska are known as Chechakos, a title they retain until they have been in the state for 30 years, and then they graduate to Sourdough status. They must be initiated. A common tactic is to take a cup of hot water and throw it into the air directly over your head—it will evaporate and float away. The Chechako is handed a cup of cold water and asked to do the same. He will, of course, get showered with cold water. Other ceremonies are performed when a person crosses the Arctic Circle for the first time. Caveat suckus! Let the sucker beware!
Tenderfoot initiation comes at an early age for most of us. If you live in a rural area you may recall going on a snipe hunt at the tender age of eight or nine. A group of teenagers and an older brother, if there is one, will take you into the woods at night and give you a tow sack and a flashlight—if you are lucky—and tell you to place the sack on the ground and pick up the other side so that you can catch any snipes that will wander into your bag. You are told to make a funny clucking noise to attract the birds. They then take their sacks and spread out to cover more territory. In reality the only territory they will cover is a fast retreat to the car and they will drive off unnoticed while you are busy clucking. Sometimes they will come back in a few hours, but it may not be until after sunrise.
The next great initiation comes as a college freshman. When I first matriculated, everyone across this great land of ours was still required to wear little beanies on their heads—generally for six weeks. Although at times the period could be shortened if some miraculous event occurred such as winning a big football game. It was sort of like Groundhog Day. If you won, you got to ditch the hated beanie, but if you lost you were stuck with it for another two to three weeks. Other obstacles could loom as well. At Rice University every Sunday a beanie would be placed on top of a twenty-foot pole. If you could somehow get the cap, then freshman initiation was over. There were three problems with which the frosh must contend. First, the pole was in the midst of a drilling mud pit. Secondly, the pole was greased. Thirdly, there were hordes of sophomores waiting to take anyone down who attempted to climb the pole. Some of the best mud wrestling that I ever saw took place at the pole. The year before I landed on the campus a group of precocious freshmen came up with a simple remedy to all the problems. They hired a helicopter and flew over and grabbed the beanie. Smirking freshmen, however, just cannot be tolerated. Next year helicopters were ruled ineligible and freshmen were once more subjected to sophomore torture.
When I was a freshman at Southern State College I was forced to parade around campus with the hated beanie—which marked you as fair prey to all the vindictive sophomores, which is to say all the sophomores. After all they had been waiting a full year for payback time and all is fair in war. Please note there is no mention made of love because the sophomores bore no love toward their newly arrived victims. For the first two weeks of school I managed to fall under the sophomore radar. But then one day I found myself in the company of two of them as I left my algebra class. As we walked along together in a tight formation, they proceeded to tell me what I could not do, such as date freshmen girls. They then said they would be happy to accompany me back to their dorm room in Cross Hall where they would give me lots of tips on dating. Since I was not permitted to date freshman girls and I knew that the two guys did not bear any real sense of noblesse oblige to a lowly freshman like me, I was naturally suspicious of their offer of assistance. It was an offer that I would gladly have refused under more ideal circumstances. However, since they had had rather tight grips on both my arms and I had been literally unable to touch the ground with my feet for the last two or three minutes, it was an offer that I could not refuse. Inside their dorm room I was given one important piece of advice. Never approach any female unless your shoes were thoroughly shined. After shining their shoes and the shoes of everyone else on that floor (they were apparently anticipating a lot of dates with freshmen girls), I was convinced that I had spent enough time on dating homework. When they moved slightly down the hall, leaving their doorway unguarded, I made a mad dash out of there. Thereafter, until our beanies were trashed, I never went anywhere alone but always traveled in packs of five or six other beanie clad friends.
It could have been worse. Homer Stout told me many years later that one night they rounded up a large group of freshmen boys. They took them to a manhole cover that concealed the underground steam tunnels that crisscrossed the campus. They escorted their prey into the tunnel and left them there while they climbed out. And then they parked a VW on top of the manhole cover. Freshman enrollment was way down the next year.
Newcomers to Alaska are known as Chechakos, a title they retain until they have been in the state for 30 years, and then they graduate to Sourdough status. They must be initiated. A common tactic is to take a cup of hot water and throw it into the air directly over your head—it will evaporate and float away. The Chechako is handed a cup of cold water and asked to do the same. He will, of course, get showered with cold water. Other ceremonies are performed when a person crosses the Arctic Circle for the first time. Caveat suckus! Let the sucker beware!
Tenderfoot initiation comes at an early age for most of us. If you live in a rural area you may recall going on a snipe hunt at the tender age of eight or nine. A group of teenagers and an older brother, if there is one, will take you into the woods at night and give you a tow sack and a flashlight—if you are lucky—and tell you to place the sack on the ground and pick up the other side so that you can catch any snipes that will wander into your bag. You are told to make a funny clucking noise to attract the birds. They then take their sacks and spread out to cover more territory. In reality the only territory they will cover is a fast retreat to the car and they will drive off unnoticed while you are busy clucking. Sometimes they will come back in a few hours, but it may not be until after sunrise.
The next great initiation comes as a college freshman. When I first matriculated, everyone across this great land of ours was still required to wear little beanies on their heads—generally for six weeks. Although at times the period could be shortened if some miraculous event occurred such as winning a big football game. It was sort of like Groundhog Day. If you won, you got to ditch the hated beanie, but if you lost you were stuck with it for another two to three weeks. Other obstacles could loom as well. At Rice University every Sunday a beanie would be placed on top of a twenty-foot pole. If you could somehow get the cap, then freshman initiation was over. There were three problems with which the frosh must contend. First, the pole was in the midst of a drilling mud pit. Secondly, the pole was greased. Thirdly, there were hordes of sophomores waiting to take anyone down who attempted to climb the pole. Some of the best mud wrestling that I ever saw took place at the pole. The year before I landed on the campus a group of precocious freshmen came up with a simple remedy to all the problems. They hired a helicopter and flew over and grabbed the beanie. Smirking freshmen, however, just cannot be tolerated. Next year helicopters were ruled ineligible and freshmen were once more subjected to sophomore torture.
When I was a freshman at Southern State College I was forced to parade around campus with the hated beanie—which marked you as fair prey to all the vindictive sophomores, which is to say all the sophomores. After all they had been waiting a full year for payback time and all is fair in war. Please note there is no mention made of love because the sophomores bore no love toward their newly arrived victims. For the first two weeks of school I managed to fall under the sophomore radar. But then one day I found myself in the company of two of them as I left my algebra class. As we walked along together in a tight formation, they proceeded to tell me what I could not do, such as date freshmen girls. They then said they would be happy to accompany me back to their dorm room in Cross Hall where they would give me lots of tips on dating. Since I was not permitted to date freshman girls and I knew that the two guys did not bear any real sense of noblesse oblige to a lowly freshman like me, I was naturally suspicious of their offer of assistance. It was an offer that I would gladly have refused under more ideal circumstances. However, since they had had rather tight grips on both my arms and I had been literally unable to touch the ground with my feet for the last two or three minutes, it was an offer that I could not refuse. Inside their dorm room I was given one important piece of advice. Never approach any female unless your shoes were thoroughly shined. After shining their shoes and the shoes of everyone else on that floor (they were apparently anticipating a lot of dates with freshmen girls), I was convinced that I had spent enough time on dating homework. When they moved slightly down the hall, leaving their doorway unguarded, I made a mad dash out of there. Thereafter, until our beanies were trashed, I never went anywhere alone but always traveled in packs of five or six other beanie clad friends.
It could have been worse. Homer Stout told me many years later that one night they rounded up a large group of freshmen boys. They took them to a manhole cover that concealed the underground steam tunnels that crisscrossed the campus. They escorted their prey into the tunnel and left them there while they climbed out. And then they parked a VW on top of the manhole cover. Freshman enrollment was way down the next year.
