May Day, May Day!
By Mary Jo
A recent Wench blog by Christina had us describing our personal Easter customs and memories, which I much enjoyed, though I didn't have much to contribute. (I forgot to mention that we dye Easter eggs. And then devil and eat them. <G>)
But it got me to thinking about a little custom that I hadn't thought about in literally decades: my older sister and I making little paper cones, putting in a few flowers, generally daffodils since not much else was blooming then in Upstate New York, and taking them around to the neighbors. We lived on a rural road with not many houses within walking distance, but it was a pleasant little custom.
I remember one year when my sister had outgrown the custom so I went around on my own. There were a lot of Polish immigrants in our area of Western New York because there was plenty of good farm land. I didn't notice much difference in the kids at my school except that the Polish kids tended to be blonder. But many had Polish grandmothers at home.
On this particular year, I went to a small house on the corner of the state highway where we lived and a nearby dirt road. The little house had been a schoolhouse once, and my own father once was a student there. (When I think back, this is all pretty remarkable but at the time it was perfectly natural.)