c. 1904 – ?

Selling May Baskets in Simmons’ Store

Grace Simmons’ sister [Louise] told me how to do this, but we took the cardboard ice cream containers, and did your fancy crepe paper all around there with a handle and you made flowers out of the crepe paper and put them on there. Now, you could probably fill that little basket up for five dollars. It would be brimming over. But today, I don’t think you could fill it for twenty! So you would fill that up with all kinds of goodies, it could be candy and cookies, maybe seeds, or whatever you wanted to put in there, and you would leave that outside somebody’s door that you liked. Knock on the door, and of course, we would go hide. That person would come out and collect their May Basket. I don’t know what it was all about really. It was just a tradition and I haven’t heard about it for years

Based on an oral history interview with Leslie Deschene.

First published in “Remembering Adamsville” by the Little Compton Historical Society, 2013.

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