A forgotten tradition, hanging May Baskets brings up one of my earliest memories of doing such with my mother. It was before I was in school, so the early 50s when these old traditions may have been done more often. I remember that earlier in the week we drove to the closest 'big' town. A town that had a busy main street called locally, "Rockland Hill" with lots of shops. One was Peterson's Drugs with a fabulous soda fountain and counter seats. My mother bought or was given an empty white cardboard quart ice cream container. We came home and decorated it with colored crepe paper, attached ruffles of the same material, bent and attached several of my dad's pipe cleaners twisted together for a handle. We picked similar blooms as the chippie is looking at and arranged them in a glass jam tumbler inside the decorated 'basket'. My mother loved real baskets and had a lovely collection of very early ones that she couldn't part with, so we made this May basket from scratch.
Basket in hand we crossed the street to a house where two elderly sisters had lived since my mother was a child growing up in the same neighborhood. One never married, Miss Griggs, and the other, Mrs. Ryan was widowed young. I knocked on the door and they opened it and gushed over the basket. I don't remember much about the actual encounter, but my mother had one fascinating story about those sisters from her childhood. They 'taught her to swim' by having her lie on their carpet and mime swimming strokes, imagine. I never saw my mother, who spent her summers by the rocky down east icy waters of Maine do anything but wade in the water. So, I don't think the instructions were very successful.
For the Record,
This day came in windy with sun in the afternoon.
I retired from public school teaching after happily spending twenty eight years playing in Kindergarten. Now I fill my days watching cat antics, taking endless...
I have a very vague memory of hanging May Baskets. I also remember the soda fountain at the local pharmacy. Pharmacies just aren't as interesting any more.
