May Day! May Day!

Each year in the little village of Mendon there is a celebration of spring called May Day. In all of the years I have known Kent I have never once been to a May Day celebration. Yesterday I found out that I really wasn't missing much. This year marks the 150 anniversary of the settlement of Mendon. Kent's mom, Mary Jean, was asked to give a speech at May Day about the history of Mendon. So Kent and I thought it might be nice to go and support her. When we woke up in the morning it was pouring rain. We decided sort of last minute to head on out to Mendon. When we got to the church no one was there, only one car in the lot, but there was a note on the doors so we thought we would go read it. Before we got to the door though there was a nice man in the parking lot sending everyone over to the other, bigger, church in town. We headed south to that church and it was packed with cars. We found ourselves a spot and ran through the rain to the church. It was standing room only. They were bringing in May Day Court and then the proceeded to crown the Queen of May (now I'm not certain of this, but I'm pretty sure the May Day Queen is drawn out of a hat). No one could get the microphone to work. 500 people packed into the cultural hall and not one of them knew how to turn on the mike. Then the singing began. Us, the audience, were expected to sing a song. It sounded a lot like most church hymns with only half of the people singing. They crowned the queen and then we sang a song about her, with her name in it and everything. After that the braiding of the May poles began. This is where it really started going down hill for me. I had always thought it would be fun to see a may pole braided but not this way. Those little girls had to sing 5 songs while doing this. That meant it took probably about 1/2 hour to braid the poles! And they weren't the most exciting songs. Finally the pole braiding was over and it was time for the program. But wait! Apparently there are now so many little girls in Mendon that not all of the may poles would fit in the cultural hall at one time. So they took down the braided ones and put up new unbraided poles. It was about to start all over!!!!
Now I love my in-laws. I know people complain about their in-laws a lot, but I really do like mine. But Kent and I had to draw the line there. We had already been there for an hour and it was about to start all over. We just couldn't do it. We will have to find another way to support Mary Jean on another day.
This all started at 10:00 and Mary Jean called us at 1:30 wanting to know why we had left. That means the entire thing went for 3 1/2 hours!