One way of thinking of the 90s is as the Hoopla Era. At the 2001 reunion some of the 90s' staff had been gone just a few years, while others of course were returning after nearly a decade. (The recent FV decades are especially long in this sense.)Hoopla is a kind of program unto itself. (This past summer I overheard one camper say to another as they walked into lunch: "Oh, today's the last day of hoopla of the session. I hope it's really good.")
Hoopla is gumbo updated.
Hoopla is a cross between cheerleading, slam dancing, doing the dozens, and a seance.
Hoopla is shouting Olympics-style, only every damned-fool day.
What earlier generations called "cheers" - which is to say the post-lunch village chants and cheer-songs and shouts - more recently is called "hoopla." Actually the word was first used to describe all the post-lunch craziness in the mid-80s. In those days it was a synonym for everything--announcements, songs led from the front of the room, skits (usually one skit per day), spontaneous singing, as well as the cheers (only the latter being the villages taking turns to be loudly proud).
And the village-to-village challenges, one-ups-man-ship of the cheers chanted in turn...all that dates back to the mid-60s. When Hemlock chanted
Chip chop!
chip chop!
chip chop!
Forest falls again!
it was a big blow to Forest's collective ego. The next day, Hemlock got up and Outpost joined them. Uh, felt Forest. Worse. The next day they did it again but this time, immediately after the cheer was done, Forest rose and shouted "On you!" The next day Totem added a rejoinder after "On you!" and so on, until the Chip Chop cheer took about 20 minutes to get through all the sequences of rejoinders.
I'm not sure how seriously anyone should be taking any of this, but it surely is the second or third thing people remember from their summer days in the valley.
At the 2001 reunion there was a bit of culture shock for the older folks, as after one lunch the 90s' guys took over, gathering together in the middle of the dining hall tables, and did one cheer after another, many of them combined village cheers (e.g. "The Hill" for both villages in cabins 41-50 or "Silence," which began--I think--as a Hemlock-Sacky cheer). It was impressive. At the 2006 reunion I made a video of this same group--now a bit greyer and some with their own children in tow--did a wonderful reprise of "Silence." I'll try to find that video and put it up and link to this blog. Meantime, here's a photo from the '01 reunion.
"I was reading your blog," writes Ashley O'Hara (1988-1998), "the Silence cheer was a Sacky-Hemlock cheer. I was a camper the year it was introduced. Jeff Daly, Malik Jenkins, Tameka Brown...were all counselors that year. They made it up during staff training and we had our first campfire and they taught it to us. I will never forget that day when we first did the cheer during Hoopla. We did really silence everyone. It was an amazing thing to be part of during that summer. Great FV memories. Don't remember the year to be exact... I'm 27 now. Love reading all about FV."
