Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Portales High School is set to celebrate one of the oldest traditions in eastern New Mexico this week, with the winding of the Maypole.
Maypole came up in a conversation with my friend, Jean Grissom, a few months back. You may remember her as the former resident of this area who I wrote about last October after I learned she had kept a daily diary for 83 years.
Jean, who has lived in Paris, Texas, since 2009, turned 95 last month. In one of our periodic phone calls, I asked her if she’d answer a few questions about her memories of her 1944 Portales High School Maypole experience, because the contrast between that event and the glitzy modern Maypoles was fascinating.
Happily, she agreed.
First a little background: When Jean’s senior class was going through its end-of-year traditions in 1944, World War II was raging. Many of her male classmates had already enlisted and were scattered around the globe.
On the front page of the Portales Daily News for May 11, 1944, there was a plea for Roosevelt County residents to collect more wastepaper for the war effort — only a half of a boxcar loaded had been gathered and “in order to ship the paper it will have to be in carload lots.”
“Help Needed to Fold Bandages” was another headline, detailing an effort by the American Red Cross to get 18,000 bandages folded to make room for an additional 36,000 expected to the arrive the next week.
“Folders are needed each afternoon in the jury room at the Court House,” the article read.
Local movie goers could choose between Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Trigger starring in “Cowboy and the Senorita” at the Yam Theatre, and Gene Autry and Smiley Burnette in “Rootin’ Tootin’ Rhythm” at the Kiva.
One page 2, I found this tiny item: “Friday - Senior class night and the winding of the Maypole, 8 p.m., Junior High School.”
“All things were held at the junior high gym,” Jean told me, “as the high school building did not have a gym with bleachers for the public to sit on.”
Jean sent me a letter, handwritten on pink paper “since it is springtime,” wrapped around her copy of the Senior Class Night program from 1944, a yellowed mimeographed booklet with a hand drawn picture of a boy and girl dancing barefoot in grass as they wind streamers around a pole.
Only thing is, “no boys wound the Maypole” that year, Jean said.
In fact, at the Junior/Senior banquet held the week before at the First United Methodist Church, the Portales Daily News noted that junior class president Billie Joe Tucker gave the welcome, “mentioning in particular those boys who were unable to attend because they have deemed the service of their country the foremost and have donned uniforms.”
Except for sharing the same name and basic concept as today, the 1944 edition of Maypole was “so very simple,” Jean said.
“The Maypole was just that,” she said, “a big pole, probably put in storage for next year’s use. We students took strips of crepe paper, attached it at the top, and we wound it around … walked in circles around the pole up and down until all the paper was on.”
For decorations, “one girl and I took a sack over to Abilene Street,” Jean said. “We knew a lady with lots of rose bushes. She let us cut them and we placed them around the base of the pole on the floor.”
According to Jean’s class night program, 36 young ladies wound the Maypole that evening, forming 18 pairs.
“We only practiced once or twice at most,” she said. “We just signed up to wind. The girl I wound with (Margaret Gwin) was my bridesmaid also.”
Jean’s floor-length dress — no hoop skirts for this crowd — was made by her grandmother from light yellow cotton material strewn with pink rosebuds.
“She later cut off some of the skirt so I would use it for church,” Jean said. “No hairdos. My grandmother did let me wear lipstick. She let me wear fingernail polish, too. Some girls were not allowed that. No corsages. No parties or anything allowed. No meal. All very strict and plain.”
And yet, oh so memorable.
Jean has outlived most of her classmates now; she believes that Jim Warnica who died in September was “the last of the boys.”
But when they were still having reunions, the class of 1944 “had the best ones,” Jean said.
Perhaps that was in part because of the war and perhaps in part because memories were made so simply and so sincerely — with crepe paper streamers and a yellow cotton dress and roses gathered fresh from just down the street.
Betty Williamson wishes a beautiful Maypole to the class of 2022. Reach her at:
