Happy May Day! May 1st has always been the most special of days. Or at least in the top ten. It is the-really-for-sure-beginning of Spring. Flowers are venturing out helping us shake off the winter blues. When I was a kid there was a very strange piece of equipment on the playground. 364 days of the year it was a tall pole with a revolving disk at the top. There were chains attached to it that hung down to the height of a child. At the end of the chain was a triangle made of steel. The object was to get a bunch of kids to grab a hold of each of the triangles and run as fast as he or she could. Soon everybody was flying through the air. Safe they were not, fun, oh yah! Most were outlawed in the sixties. The one day of the year they were safe was on May Day. Some poor custodian had to climb a very tall ladder to the top and add about fifty streamers of crap paper in pastel colors. That Day at recess every child had to take a streamer, half of us would facing one direction with every other student facing the other direction. When the music started we were supposed to go in toward the pole around the student facing us then outside the next one and the crap paper would braid around the pole. When it worked (seldom) it was very pretty. When it didn’t work, it was more fun. I think that May Day baskets were probably more traditional but the May Pole does stick in one’s mind. Happy May Day from Zed the Dragon and me.
