Not half so important as we’ve made them now, the holidays of my growing up were still bookmarks, distinct cross-sections in our daily lives.
All Schools Day and the May Fete
Begun in 1914, All Schools Day was a county-wide celebration to honor eighth-grade students from the one-room schools. As well as those in town. At a time when too few of those graduates matriculated to high school.
By late April, every grade and middle school child in McPherson began practicing to march up and down the street. Really we just walked – but the skill was to keep up with the three other kids in the row—not necessarily from your school—in a somewhat even line. Arrayed tallest to shortest. It got us outdoors in those days when the wooden-sashed windows at school were wide open and we couldn’t pay attention.
On the day of the parade, we marched to the assembly point–Wall Rogalsky Flour Mills by the railroad tracks–and were each given a balloon on an eye-threatening slender stick.
School children marched at the head of the parade so that when we’d reached the Old Opera House at the end of Main, we could dodge back, find our parents and watch the rest: paper-napkin floats carrying May queens; August San Romani and his wind-blown tie directing the high school band; Shriners making fools of themselves.
And then in the evening, the May Fete at Lakeside Park Bandshell.
Each Fete had a theme and Mrs. Kohler, the high school music teacher, did her best to fit an odd assortment of hopeful, talent-challenged teenagers into relevant song and dance numbers.
Eighth grade girls began the night by winding crepe paper around the two Maypoles to the year’s theme song,
And one frightening and exhilarating year, I was chosen to play the piano for May Fete REHEARSALS. Not good enough, you see, for the actual performances – but adequate to the preparation.
The theme that year was “Thanks for the Memories” to which lyrics never sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross defined the program.
It was all, really, the close of school—no matter how many days followed.
And a way to welcome summer.
Memorial Day
Mother “held” a profusion of peonies in the refrigerator—willing them to bloom on that last Monday of the month.
Then added a few straggly roses to Mason jars on the day itself for our short trip to the Cemetery.
We picked up Grandma Sherfy, crossed the railroad tracks, drove through the gates, headed straight up the middle lane to the Mausoleum, turned left and kept turning left at the first curve and watched for John Sherfy, settled under his red granite marker while he waited for Leona whose name was already engraved beside his.
Fourth of July
A day for driving to the Dresher or Hayes farms,
For cranking homemade ice cream in its shiny steel drum surrounded by ice and rock salt and gratefully relinquishing the task to a grown-up as the going got tough.
And when it got dark, for lighting the black pellets that fumed alive into ashy snakes and the sparklers that sizzled at the end of our dancing arms.
Halloween
We played dress-up all year long.
Trick-or-treating was, in Mother’s eyes, an exercise of unbridled greed.
In first grade I pleaded with her to join my friends.
Mother offered the option of dressing up, knocking on our neighbors’ doors, and saying, “If YOU guess my name I’ll give YOU a treat.”
I gave that a try and never asked again.
Thanksgiving
I remember only one: the year Mother left the giblets cooking in the Chambers Gas Range Thermowell when we headed out to the community church service. Those stinky guts burned right through the heavy aluminum pan before we could get home.
It was the one year we’d invited company other than family to join us.
We ate dinner with all the windows open and the mingled smell of burned flesh and industrial air freshener.
We didn’t much feel the Lord’s blessing that year – except to be chastened and hastened.
Christmas
Santa Claus did not stop at 830 North Ash.
Mother assured us that we were all Santas to each other. So I remember:
The years Mother wrote greetings in soap on our enormous living room mirror;
When I learned to write and draw and present gift cards– “I Owe You’s”– for chores that my family could redeem on demand ;
Or create some bedraggled, crooked-stitched embroidery for Grandma—having learned that handmade gifts in which we’d invested our time mattered more than anything store-bought;
The year Mother—obliged to feed only the four of us—served up sausage patties, green beans, mashed potatoes and a face wreathed in smiles;
The tender, tedious de-nuding of the tree before New Year’s—one aluminum foil tinsel filament at a time.
And still the exquisite miracles that Mother and Daddy—Mother especially—conjured to honor my deepest heart’s desires: home-made crinolines, one string of pop beads, a book of my own;
New Year’s Eve
Lightly attended by grown-ups who wouldn’t have been out drinking anyway.
Trapped with youngsters in the church’s “social” rooms,
Organizing board games and half-baked contests.
The lights were always too bright,
The refreshments skimpy,
Intentions flimsy and mixed.
This wasn’t about Jesus or doing good.
Just a “Christian” diversion from the hazards of the night.
Valentine’s Day
Every year, my dad mailed my sister and me each a valentine.
The cards arrived, with a brass clink, through the slot in our knotty pine wall.
Creepy-sweet and mushy.
Mother didn’t get one
Even as she helped us decorate the shoe boxes we took to school to receive kiddie cards from well-raised class members.
Even in those years, I wanted only valentines dispatched with love—not obligation, not need, not ersatz affection.
Easter
Needless to say the Easter Bunny didn’t visit our family either.
But what a roller coaster.
Love feast and communion on Thursday evening where I learned that—at the Last Supper–Jesus and his gang ate canned peaches and ground roast beef sandwiches on buttered white bread. Followed by thimbles-full of grape juice and tasteless homemade crackers.
While the pianist played quiet hymns, the men headed off to one set of Sunday school rooms and the women retreated to the nursery for the foot-washing ceremony.
Which wouldn’t have been so bad had we not all (women and girls that is) been wearing nylons held up alternately by girdles, garter belts or garters.
Friday brought an early out from school so that we could go with our mothers to Good Friday services.
However exciting Sunday sunrise services sounded, we almost never attended. The “young adults” did.
I was home instead trying to array myself in that year’s hand-me-downs from cousin Barb or sister Sonja. And find shoes that might or might not stay on my feet through Sunday school if I scrunched up my toes.
Willing myself to feel pretty.
May 1
The best holiday of the year—bar none.
Mother supervised the making of construction paper May baskets glued or stapled together, complete with paper handles.
And helped us fill them with candy corn and little violets, lilies of the valley, gumdrops.
The play, the ceremony, was to hang them on old ladies’ doorknobs, ring the bell and run.
Not to frighten,
But to offer joy with no expectation of thanks. ©
