One of the most glorious events of my childhood was the May Festival.

Of course, to me any outdoor event in May would’ve been glorious, if for no other reason than it was warm.

Sadly, the May Festival is no more, having been replaced by Field Days. But, unfortunately, any gains made in fitness and jockstrappery, have been far out-shadowed by a loss of primal ceremony and artistic delight.

And what exactly was the May Festival? In its truest sense, it was a Rite of Spring, nothing more and nothing less.

Its finer details have become fuzzy to me, since the last MF I saw was 60-plus years ago. But the event itself has stayed with me like a favorite old photo — blurred and faded, perhaps, but still memorable and evocative.

The MF was a grade school thing — in my case, at the long-vanished Broadway School — and its stars were the kindergarteners. First, parents and the older students gathered in the schoolyard in breathless anticipation. Then, at the appointed signal, the kindergarten kids, dressed in white and in a line of boy-girl pairs, came skipping out, grinning ear to ear and strewing flower petals all the hell over the place.

Once the last petal had floated earthward, the wee poppets were herded stage left for the event highlight — the May Pole. There, each tyke was handed one end of a ribbon (the other attached to the May Pole) and at the proper signal they gamboled and cavorted their sweet little hearts out, round and round the pole, interweaving the ribbons till no loose ends were left.

No doubt other things took place after that, but to me at least, they were anti-climactic and not memorable.

The tradition was brought to the U.S. by English settlers, but its origins, lost in pre-history, were clearly pagan. As I said, it was a Rite of Spring, most likely celebrating rebirth, renewal and fertility. Those points were lost on us, thank God, and all we knew and thought about it was it was a fun time. Which, come to think of it, may have been all it was to pagan kids as well.

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The great escape …

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My first May Festival was in 1950, when I was 3. It was my brother’s kindergarten year, but I can’t remember anything about it. My second MF was the next year and I can’t forget it — no matter how hard I’ve tried.

I was 4, my bro was 6, now a grizzled first grader and thus would’ve been relegated to a minor role in the pageant. No matter. To be brutally honest, I was going for the whole schmeer, not my bro’s bit in the corps des shmendricks. Also, given my maniacal drive to see the festival, I now suspect they handed out candy as well as joy unbounded.

But it didn’t matter what they were handing out, because the morning of the festival my brother was struck by some bug that had him coughing, sneezing, burning with fever, shaking with chills, and worst of all, destroying my chance of going to the MF.

Actually, my chance of going to the festival, per se, had not been destroyed — only my chance of going with my mother and bro. I was perfectly able to go on my own, which is exactly what I did. So while my mother was playing Clara Barton of McClelland Street, I tiptoed out the door and was on my way.

Gong to the school was a cinch, since it was on the way to town, a route I’d taken with my family since I could walk. I just diddy-bopped down McClelland, turned right on Broadway, and the school was within sight, only 100 yards or so away.

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… and the greater failure

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I got there early. There weren’t many people in the schoolyard, but excitement was in the air and I was alight with joy and a heady sense of freedom. Then before I knew it, the whole scene went sideways.

The yard became jammed with people — huge, menacing people I didn’t know — and I was a stranger in a strange land, trapped, alone and poop-sick scared. I had to escape before it was too late!

Since the way I came in was now blocked by the mob, the only exit was at the back of the school, on Virginia Street. I sprinted out as fast as my little legs could carry me — a decision as disastrous as it was impulsive. If I’d gone out the front, to Broadway, I could’ve easily found my way home. But on Virginia Street I was as hopelessly lost as The Babes in the Woods.

On the verge of full-blown hysteria, my legs wobbly, my heart slamming against my sparrow chest, I froze in place. My eyes darted left to right, then right to left, unable to focus, hyperventilating. Suddenly I saw something familiar. It was Robin Smith’s grandparents’ house. At last I was on the road to salvation!

Robin was my pal and my mother had walked me to his grandparents’ for play dates a bunch of times. So once I saw their house, I realized ours was close by.

I calmed down a bit and again looked left and right, right and left, but this time I focused. And when I did, I realized the way home lay to my right. I headed out, first at a cautious walk, then at a trot, and then when I saw our back porch across a field, at a full-blown sprint. I tore across the field in world-record age-class time, up the stairs and into the kitchen.

I was greeted by the sight of my mother, who did not greet me.

“You … you … you,” she said, pointing a long menacing finger at me, eyes narrowed to death rays.

Clearly, she was furious. More clearly, I’d screwed up. And most clearly of all, I was about to pay for it.

Now, a note about 1950s parenting: There was no such thing. As a verb, the word didn’t even enter the language till 1958 and wasn’t considered a real deal till the ’70s.

At the time of my tale, “parent” was a noun, not a verb. They weren’t learning how to do anything. Instead, they were parents … and absolute dictators — benevolent or otherwise. Judge Roy Bean may’ve been The Law West of the Pecos, but east of them at that moment, it was my mother.

And while JRB was a hanging judge, my mother was a spanking one, but this time with a unique twist: Instead of using the old Palm-on-Tuchis Technique, she dragged me into the bathroom and grabbed a nylon hairbrush. Then after unceremoniously dropping my drawers, she proceeded to drive her points home — as well as the brush’s.

And thus my mother introduced a new phrase into the language.

Traditionally, spankings had been referred to as “tanning a kid’s hide.”

But due to my mother’s innovation, my hide wasn’t tanned, so much as it was ventilated.