“Though April showers may come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May.”---B.G. De Sylva
“All things seem possible in May.”---Edwin Teale
When we were kids, May was the binoculars we looked through to make Summer seem closer, the last countdown month to the end of school. You could smell the beach from May, watch the lilacs bloom, oil up the baseball glove, stay out later without freezing. The Kentucky Derby was run the first Saturday in May, Mothers’ Day was the second Sunday. The nearby Canobie Lake amusement park opened in May. The Red Sox played at least a dozen home games then. April was a dreary time, with the last remnants of snow and sleet, then rain, but May stepped in and put an immediate stop to the foolishness. May was sunshine and warming temperatures, a time for optimism and planning vacations. You could walk to the movies in May, swim in the public pools and fish in the Shawsheen River. The girls began to wear skirts and dresses in May. And if you had nothing better to do, you could lie on your back with friends in a grassy meadow and watch the clouds frolic through the skies. Hey, that one over there looks like a unicorn!
Sunday night, Siobhan and I walked out to the yoga circle, lay down on the new platforms and looked up through live oak branches into the firmament. These days of peril have granted us one boon, more time to pause and reflect, to stop and smell the magnolias. It’s still May, after all, and nature is undisturbed by man’s troubles. The birds were wrapping up their commentary on the day but the sky was still blue, the temperature a perfect 75, the clouds floating by on the wings of soft breezes. If you looked carefully, that one over there was a dead ringer for a unicorn.
Non-Superheroes May Apply
If you lived on our block---or most any block---in South Lawrence, Mass. in the 1940s-‘50s, you were either a practitioner of Roman Catholicism or Jackie Fournier, a nonconformist Protestant troublemaker if ever there was one. There might be what you’d call “relaxed Catholics” afoot in the land, but not our land, where Mass on Sunday was the Law and the punishment for outlaws was severe. The kids from St. Patrick’s grammar school had their own class sections in the chapel for 8:30 Mass under the steely gaze of the Sisters of Charity and the thought of someone not showing up was laughable. Take the worst thing you ever saw happen in a Frankenstein or Dracula movie, multiply it by ten and that’s what would happen when the nuns got hold of you after a no-show, or so we imagined since nobody we knew ever tried it.
Not only was Sunday Mass a requirement, you also had the scary nuisance of confessions to attend to on your own time, which was still better than going to Hell, although not by much. Various church celebrations regularly dotted the calendar, many of them requiring a personal appearance, including the dreaded Stations of the Cross every Friday during Lent. This meant that when school concluded at 3 p.m., all the kids would truck on down to St. Patrick’s to watch a priest and several altar boys slog around from station to station, recalling Jesus’ unpleasant ambulation up the hill at Golgotha to his eventual demise. This death march, which had fourteen (count ‘em—14) stops was accompanied by the most pitiful dirge you ever heard, sung by the lot of us. This song made nails scraped along a blackboard seem like pure Nirvana.
As if all that wasn’t enough, each year the sisters produced a May Procession, dedicated to the Mother of Jesus, which featured the students in the early elementary grades parading from the school to the church all decked out in white garb, including, for some reason, capes for the boys. Not that we didn’t kind of like the idea of capes, Batman and Superman being heroes of the day even then. Although all the clothing was white, the Mother Superior allowed a modicum of spirited nun competition into the fray by permitting the capes to be embellished by some perimeter adornments. Our teacher, Sister Joseph Ambrose, chose sort of a blood red furry fringe. One day, she asked us who could volunteer their mothers to help sew the fringe onto the bare capes. I immediately offered mine, knowing her to be an exceptional seamstress. I mean, who wouldn’t want to help the sisters out a bit in their time of need?
“You WHAT??” my mother gasped in a fit of apoplexy. “How many capes ARE there?” Well, there were exactly 42, I thought, but Mrs. Blanchette would take half. “Billy, that’s 21 capes---do you know how long that will take? Don’t ever do something like that again!” She looked over at my father, who shrugged and tried to hide a brief smirk. “He’s five years old, Marie. He’s proud of his mother’s handiwork. And now you’ll get to be a big cheese with the nuns.” he said, affably. My mother sucked it up and got the job done. Matter of fact, she beamed with pride at her little creations as the May Procession moved onto South Broadway and into the church. “Tom,” she said to her husband, “I like my capes a little better than Mrs. Blanchette’s. I think mine are neater. What do you say?”
Tom Killeen looked studiously at the capes. Moved over to get a better angle and went back to where my mother was standing. She looked at him, waiting for his imprimatur. “I think,” he said finally and with officious demeanor, “that all fringe is equal in the eyes of the Lord.”
May Days
May 1 is Hawaiian Lei Day. As an avid adherent to special days of the month, I have always tried diligently to observe them to the best of my ability, but the English language occasionally promotes confusion. The first time I heard of this particular day, I immediately went looking for a female Hawaiian who might be in a proper mood to celebrate. You can only be slapped silly so many times without some serious reconsideration. Since this unpleasant experience, I have always made a point of checking the special days in print rather than just hearing about them.
The first Friday in May is always International Tuba Day, and just in time for the next day’s Kentucky Derby. The often-maligned tuba, the lowest-pitched instrument in the brass family, is an important prerequisite for all marching bands and serious polka competitions. Try playing The Beer Barrel Polka without a tuba. It’s like a BLT without the bacon.
May 2, as everyone knows, is Naked Gardening Day, introduced in 2005 allegedly to discourage body shaming and encourage acceptance of all forms of the human body. We think it was more likely to promote hanky-panky in the weeds. Siobhan will absolutely not celebrate this important occasion with me, so I have to garden by myself. I’m hoping she’ll lighten up by Topless Gardening Day (whenever I can get it on the schedule). Herb Day is also on the second, so this year a fan could have killed two birds with one stone (so to speak) by bringing reefer to the Derby. Alas, they postponed the latter and herbophiles were left high and dry.
May 3 is Lumpy Rug Day. No, really, it is. Take a lumpy rug to dinner.
We’re a little worried about Cinco de Mayo. With the Covid-19 rules in place, we’ll have no drunken parades, no free tacos at Chipotle, no mariachis belting out Cielito Lindo on the San Antone riverwalk. All a fellow can do is eat a lot of flan, bust open a few pinatas and glug down a couple of bottles of tequila. Could be worse.
We don’t know what’s going on with socks. May 8 is No Socks Day, but then May 9 is Lost Sock Memorial Day. It’s hypocritical. First, you eliminate them, then you memorialize them. The same thing happened to beatniks and hippies and Barry Goldwater. They didn’t even get a day.
May 11 is the always dangerous Eat What You Want Day. At first glance, this seems like a happy occasion, but the day’s very title discourages moderation and good sense. What if what you want is to eat chili dogs all day? Have you ever been to an outdoor event where the aisles are full of attendees carrying large economy-sized boxes of nachos smothered in mustard-colored cheese? Are these for actual eating or do you slap a rowdy rival fan over the head with them? If someone eats more than three do they turn into Pancho Villa? Here’s even worse news. If you go to a Colorado Rockies baseball game, you can eat your regular nachos and then get Apple Pie Nachos for dessert. The rational mind reels in despair.
In the southern United States, they sell boiled (local pronunciation—“bald”) peanuts at football games. Of all the torturous things a sadistic person can do to a peanut, this is the worst. If you are tempted to sample this curious delicacy, a few words are in order. First, bring a hand towel. Boiled peanuts are wetter than the deathslide at Wild Waters. The brown paper bag containing the peanuts was made for sturdier things and has been known to disintegrate, leaving a customer with a lap full of soggy detritus. Second, do not feed them to anyone allergic to slime. We’re talking hagfish slime here, eel slime, the kind of slime that remains in your boots after a twenty-mile hike through the Everglades. SLIME.
Now, I might be okay with soaked peanuts festering in slime if they tasted like pate de fois gras, but they don’t. They taste like soaked peanuts festering in slime. Kinder gourmet reviews will gild the lily and tell you they taste like dirt, which is the ultimate insult to dirt. As a kid, I occasionally ate dirt that was reasonably tasty, but I would only eat boiled peanuts if they were offering a night with Barbarella with each bag. Make that two nights and you can throw in some saltless grits.
Disa And Data
We hate to bring this up at such a creepy moment, but the Wall Street Crash of 1893 began on May 5 as stock prices fell through the floor. By the end of the year, 600 banks had closed and several major railroads were in receivership. Another 15,000 businesses went bankrupt amid 20% unemployment. It was the worst economic crisis in United States history up to that time. Don’t worry, though. Prominent economists of the era assured us it was very unlikely to happen again. Say what?
The Renaissance ended with the sack of Rome on May 6, 1527. German troops killed over 4,000 Romans, imprisoned the Pope, looted priceless works of art, ravaged libraries and stole 10,000 boxes of thin crust pizza. Booo!
Pope John Paul II was shot twice at close range in the pre-Popemobile era while riding in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981. An escaped terrorist, already under sentence of death for the murder of a Turkish journalist, was immediately arrested and convicted of attempted murder. The Pope eventually recovered and had a meeting with the would-be assassin during which he gave the man a stern spanking on his bare bottom with leftover fronds from Palm Sunday.
On May 18, 1804, Napoleon became the Emperor of France, rudely snatching the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII during the coronation ceremony and crowning himself. The Pope eventually recovered and had a meeting with Napoleon during which he gave the man a stern spanking on his bare bottom with leftover fronds from Palm Sunday. Once again, history repeats itself.
On May 19, 1943, during World War II in Europe, jolly Royal Air Force bombers successfully attacked dams in the German Ruhr Valley using innovative ball-shaped bouncing bombs that skipped along the water and exploded against the dams. Who says the British are no fun?
Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic on May 20, 1932. She departed Newfoundland, Canada at 7 p.m. the previous day and landed near Londonderry, Ireland about 13 hours later, completing a 2,026-mile flight. Five years later, Amelia pushed her luck, flying with navigator Fred Noonan, when she disappeared while trying to fly her twin-engine plane around the equator. A popular song about Earhart claimed “her plane fell in the ocean far away.” Others speculated she was shot down by the Japanese and captured. Meanwhile, an elderly woman bearing a striking resemblance has been reported to be operating a ramshackle bed-and-breakfast on remote Howard Island. They say her scones are delicious but the dent in her forehead is offputting.
A Final Word
History tells us that not a single U.S. President has ever died in the month of May, so don’t get your hopes up. This would be a good time for the current fuehrer to prove his brass by taking on Toro in a bullring or skydiving into a smoking volcano. So you get a little roughed up, you know you won’t die. The masses will think you’re the second coming of Houdini, or at least Borat. It’s worth a try, right?
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
