On a Powwow day… a few lines from As Brown As I Want, The Indianhead Diaries…

While Carlos and I were loading our clothes in the car, he got close to my ear and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone. I’ve packed us some extra food. You know, just in case…”
   “Just in case, what, Carlos?”
   “In case those fool Indians start dancing and ‘hy-ya, hy-ya, hy-ya’ right through dinner like they did last time.”
   I laughed at that. Sometimes, meals at powwows are catch as catch can and Carlos and I have failed to catch a few.
  One night, at the last powwow, we were so hungry we joined a group of Indians we didn’t even know. We were invited, but we decided to never tell our mothers because the last thing they’d said to us was, “Don’t wear out your welcome.”
   To us, sitting down at a strange family’s picnic table with her children and eating the last piece of fry bread on the paper plate certainly seemed to fit into that category.
   When we got back to our tepee that night, Mildred had three wrought iron pans of chicken frying, and we ate again, just so we wouldn’t hurt her feelings.