It’s almost May Day and every year around this time you hear murmurs of a tired refrain. It centres on some folks’ vehement opposition to organizers hosting a beer garden.
I love May Day but if you don’t have kids, there really isn’t a lot to do. During the dark years of beer garden prohibition, I remember friends and I filtering away after the parade, feeling the whole deal was kind of anti-climactic.
If nothing else, the beer garden offers a central perch to meet when the cacophony of the parade, races, crownings and logger sports get overwhelming. One of the unintended charms of our May Day celebration is the fact that you can almost count on running into everyone who has ever gone to school here. That’s what May Day is for— catching up with relatives and old friends and making new ones.And is it wrong that some see that as a party?
The moral know-it-alls insist parents at the beer garden have abandoned their children, pointing to instances of passing money through the chain link to buy themselves more time. So?
If parents are neglecting their child on May Day, chances are they would be neglecting them with or without a beer tap. Or they’d find a beer tap somewhere else.
For 64 years the Madeira Park field has been the proving ground for up and coming track stars. A chance for the awkward years of learning how to walk to pay off in one confused stagger to a row of screeching Mommys. At age 4, getting a ribbon is better than cotton candy. Those memories last a lifetime. May Day should always be about the kids. But it has never been only about the kids.
I was a May Day kid and, with apologies to my parents, I don’t recall ever giving a flying fig what they were up to. There was more adventure to be found in one May Day than all the family time I would ever experience. I think parents are to often pressured to provide supervised entertainment.
Leave them be — a little neglect is fun. I recall some of the best memories from the early May Days were the token drunk people — it was all just part of the action. Those who insist we should shield our kids from adults socializing should find another party. To me, it’s the worrying about all of the things that could harm your child that is going to turn him or her into a social gimp.
So, relax. Have another beer.
It’s May Day.
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