There’s something special about friends you’ve known since kindergarten, those bonds forged before life got complicated. For me, those friendships were built not just in classrooms, but on hay wagons and behind parade floats during Cheyenne Frontier Days. Going on 70 years later, we’re still connected through memories, tradition, and Cheyenne Day reunions.

I’d ridden in the parade before as an elementary school-aged kid. My mom was a member of the X-JWC (Ex-Junior Women’s Club), which sponsored a singing group called the Dearies, consisting of her fellow club members.

The X-JWC entered a float in the Cheyenne Frontier Days (CFD) Parade. All the Dearies had kids – Murrays, St. Clairs, Nichols, Lummises – and we all hung together during the summer, including during the construction of the annual float. My dad, who worked for Coca-Cola, provided a flatbed trailer that he hauled over to the Lummis’s barn.

I don’t recall any of the dads helping out much, except to attach the chicken wire skirt around the trailer. The kids weren’t very tall, and we were the best at stuffing white napkins through the wire.

This was before electric pianos, so the Dearies had to belt out a cappella, their old time classics like Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue, and Jadda, Jadda, Jadda Jadda Jing Jing Jing.

The moms brought us kids to the parade. Most of us rode the entry-level hay wagons. Back then, nobody minded gender identifying stereotypes. That was an initiation for kids to get involved with CFD.

The boys dressed up in their cowboy duds – hats, jeans, boots, maybe a bolo tie and western belt.

The girls wore long dresses, ribbons in their hair, and bonnets. The boys were instructed to be boisterous and yell “Hee Haw!” while the girls carried hankies and politely waved them at the crowd.

I grew out of selling pop at the parade and honed my social chops working at the Hitching Post. My next CFD phase was riding a wagon in the parades.

My CFD friends and I have kept in touch after all these years. That’s one of the good things about living in a relatively small town. We attended the same neighborhood schools and progressed through the grades together.

Our elementary schools fed into the same junior high school, which in turn fed into the high school. We are still in touch during Cheyenne Day, which is on Wednesday during Frontier Week.

3. High School Parade Rides:  One of my East High School classmates, named Janice Benton, had the pull to get me and my friends into the parade.

Her mom was a volunteer on the CFD Parade Committee, and for three summers through high school, we rode in the horse-drawn field ambulance wagon.

Janice dressed up as a Civil War nurse, and two guys moaned in pain with bandaged limbs hanging out of the windows. My crew over the three parade days comprised Jan, Eddie Frye (pictured in full regalia), and Tad Leeper.

We had messy jugs of red-colored water and let it run out of the corners of our mouths – pretty graphic for a family-friendly CFD, but the crowd loved it.

We also had this “bedpan” schtick, but I don’t need to go into any of the details about that!

We didn’t know it then, but all those summers of float-building, hayrides, and CFD antics created more than just parade entries. They created lifelong connections. Every Cheyenne Day, we pick up where we left off, as if no time has passed at all. That’s the magic of small towns, old friends, and staying rooted in your past.