Enjoy the merry month of May

In 1949, when I started as a paid journalist at $35 a week in Lancaster, I covered school and water Boards and other overstretched meetings for the Antelope Valley Ledger Gazette.

At the time, there were no cities to establish councils. But they came later.

While searching for appropriate words to the tap into a battered typewriter, I soon found a three-letter gem that could help me get through often iffy situations.

When I was invited to speak to the members of local service club, I revealed the journalistic secret that had been around for many years.

It was “may,” which could be used to write about actions that could be flip-flopped later with no civic damage.

A sample: “The Board may decide to buy some more real estate in the future.”

The word did not demand a firm commitment, which was often handy in the proceedings.

In my youth, I read that poets loved to use “The merry month of May,” in their lyrical writing.

During the 1930s, Maypole dances were popular in the spring with young girls twirling around the pole, tethered to it by colorful banners of cloth or paper.

But later, I began wondering why such a pleasant custom had also inherited “May-day, May-day” as the

“international radio-telephone signal for help, used by

ships and aircraft in distress.”

The month was always welcomed by school children

because it raised the curtain for three months of summer vacation.

Google provides some primary uses:

“Used to indicate possibility or probability you may be right things you may need — sometimes used interchangeably with ‘can’ one of those slip-ups that may happen from time to time.”

Poet Robert Frost said, “Sometime used where might would be expected you may think from a little distance that the country was solid woods.”

As for the signal of distress, the “May-day” entered the language in the 1920s.

“With the development of audio radio transmitters, there was a need for a spoken distress phrases, and “May-day” (from French m’aider “help me”) was adopted by the 1927 international Radio Convention as the spoken equivalent of SOS.”

Particularly in the 1950s, there were a number of aircraft distress calls as new and refitted aircraft were tested from Edward Air Force Base and Air Force Plant 42, located in Palmdale.

Nevertheless, now is the time to enjoy the merry month of May.