This event occurred in the spring of 1950, I assume on or
close to May 1 since that is the traditional date of the May
Day celebration.  I was in Ms. McCown's second grade at
the old Rockingham Grammar School, which is where
this event took place (on the playground).  That's the first
time Gloria (from one of my previous essays) was in one
of my classes.  I think the city elders wanted to do
something special since they thought it was the beginning
of a new half-century.  Actually the first day of the new
half-century was January 1, 1951.  A similar error was
made on January 1, 2000; as the first day of the twenty
first century and the third millennium was January 1,
2001.  The reason for the confusion was that there was no
year zero.  Our current Gregorian calendar and the
predecessor Julian calendar went straight from the year 1
BC to 1 AD.  So the first year of the first century was the
year 1 AD (which concluded on December 31, 1 AD), the
second year was 2 AD (which concluded on December 31,
2 AD).  Obviously from this you can see that we had to
complete the year 100 AD (which concluded on December
31, 100 AD) in order to complete the first hundred years.  
So the first day of the second century was January 1, 101.  
All this implies that Christ was born at exactly midnight,
December 31 of the year 1 BC which is more or less the
same as one second after midnight on January 1, 1 AD.  Of
course historians never knew exactly when Christ was
born.  The Pope finally proclaimed the celebration to be
held on December 25 in order to prevent needless further
arguments on this subject by bible scholars.


The entire Grammar School (grades one to six) was
involved in the May Day celebration, which took place one
school day afternoon and lasted about an hour.  We were
allowed to go home after the celebration was over, which
was more or less the same time we would have been
dismissed from school anyhow.  All students were
involved and were separated into three groups.  There
were the Maypole Dancers, the Cardinals and the Cotton
Farmers.  Remember that the cardinal is the state bird,
and cotton (along with tobacco) was one of the principal
crops of Richmond County at that time (and probably still
is).


To be a Maypole Dancer, the first requirement was that
you had to be a girl.  The second requirement was that
your parents had to be willing to purchase a nice outfit
for you, which was not cheap.  They used plaids for their
skirts; so they looked like Scottish Highland lassies.  
That's quite appropriate since a large portion of the folks
there were of Scottish or Scotch-Irish decent.  By the way,
the only difference between Scottish and Scotch-Irish is
that the Scotch-Irish spent a few years in Northern
Ireland after leaving Scotland and before they immigrated
to North Carolina and other parts of North America.  My
memory is fading on this, but I think the girls also had a
sash (small plaid cloth strip say four inches by about
three or four feet) that they wore diagonally across the
chest and back draped over one shoulder.  They either
wore a belt to secure this or else they tucked it into their
skirts.  They wore plain white blouses.  This strip matched
the plaid in their skirts.  I think they also had a small
plaid cap with a solid colored bob in the middle (however,
that thought may have come from a Scottish travel video
in my later years).  There were at least fifty parents and
city officials present.  There were some speeches, but
since they didn't have loudspeakers (amplifiers), I
couldn't hear what they were saying.  I was standing with
my group under the shade of four or five large oak trees
on the east side of the playground.  The speeches were
made about twenty-five feet north of the water tower,
over seventy-five feet away from where we were.  Also the
building may have partially obscured my vision from
where the speeches were being made and from where we
were standing.


The Scottish plaids are called tartans.  They vary by which
Scottish clan your family is in.  There are at least two
hundred different clans.  There may be many families in
one clan; for example my family name is in the Graham
clan.  When men wear kilts, their clan determines the
pattern.  The ladies wear the same family or clan plaids as
the men, but their skirts are usually much longer than a
kilt.  If you ever get the chance to watch the Scottish
Fiddle Orchestra on public TV, the entire cast wears their
family tartans.  The men are in their kilts, and the ladies
are wearing their long skirts.  It appears as if everyone is
wearing a different tartan.  But on May Day 1950, I can't
remember if the Maypole dancers wore their family
tartans, or if they all wore the same plaid.  I would
assume they all wore the same plaid, since the cost to
provide individual family tartans would have been
prohibitive.  


The Maypole Dance itself was quite simple, but with small
children, there were always possibilities that something
could go wrong.  First you start with a simple pole
anchored into the ground that could be from six to ten
feet above the ground level.  Then you take about ten to
fifteen young ladies evenly spaced in a circle say ten feet
from the pole.  Each girl holds one end of a long narrow
strip of crepe paper; the other end of the crepe strip is
attached securely to the top of the pole.  The crepe paper
is usually of alternating colors such as red and white.  The
next maypole might be blue and white.  That is, each girl
is holding a different color from her most immediate
neighbor in her particular circle.  This of course implies
you must have an even number of young ladies in a circle.  
Then when the signal is given, the girls start moving in
and out from each other to weave a solid image of crepe
paper.  All the time each girl continuously holds onto her
end of the strip of crepe paper.  When they were finished,
the result looked like a cloth anemometer (wind speed
and wind direction indicator) you would see at small
airports during this time period.  It was really pretty to
watch particularly while they are weaving.  Then some of
the circles would reverse this entire process; I would
assume these were the older girls (sixth graders), as this
was more complicated.  And then they would repeat the
whole thing over again.  It took less than five minutes to
complete the task one time.  If you ever get an
opportunity to see one live, I suggest you take advantage
of it.  The cost was trivial to the school (probably the PTA)
since the parents provided the outfits.


Now the second group of participants was the cardinals.  
Although not required, the vast majority (if not all) of
these were boys.  Again the cost of your outfit was a
requirement.  This was not near as expensive as the
Maypole Dancers' outfits.  All that was needed was a
ten-cent package of red crepe paper, and enough red cloth
to attach it to so you could slip it over your regular
clothes.  The cloth was reusable.  Also there was a hat
with a bird-bill made of thin cardboard (as you would use
to make a poster).  Some of the hats differed by
individuals.  I was able to convince my Mother to spend
the money to allow me to be a cardinal.  The cardinals
didn't do anything special except to stand in a group and
show their red colors.  We may have flipped our wings a
little, but I don't remember much about that.  As
mentioned above we represented the State bird.


I have found one picture of this event on the website
www.rockinghamrockets.org, but it only shows the
cardinals.  It was probably taken by one of the cardinal's
parents.  Also you could go to My Favorite Links on this
website.  Choose the second entry Rockingham High
School Class of 1961. Then choose Photo III.  The second
picture is entitled Mayday.  I don't recognize anyone in
this picture including myself.  I'll try again as soon as I
can get myself a good magnifying glass.  I counted almost
fifty cardinals in that picture, and that is about the total I
would expect.  So I have to be somewhere in that picture.   
 


The third group of students was the cotton farmers.  They
were the default group for everyone whose parents were
not willing or not able to provide costumes for the other
two categories.  Probably seventy-five percent of the
students were in this group.  They were asked to wear
farm clothes, which consisted of jeans and a farm shirt.  
Straw hats were optional.  Some wore bib-overalls.  Back
in the 1950's, girls were not allowed to wear anything
other than a dress or a skirt at school  (they could wear
pants on a cold winter day from home to the school
building and return, but they were required to switch to a
traditional dress or skirt during school hours no matter
how cold it was in the school building).  (I still hear about
this injustice from my wife who was from upstate New
York where they had this same rigid rule for girls back
then).  I don't remember what the girls wore if they were
cotton farmers.  I assume they wore jeans in the form of a
dress (like Dale Evans).  The cotton farmers didn't do
anything special either except to stand around in a group.  
They and the cardinals for the most part just watched the
Maypole Dancers, as they were indeed a sight to behold.  
Now fifty-five years later, I still have yet to see another
Maypole dance in person.