Here's to May baskets, birthdays and fast horses

I love my birthday month of May, which I celebrate all month long with a hundred or so Main Street Birthday Club friends, starting with May Day, the Kentucky Derby, Cinco de Mayo, Mother’s Day, then Memorial Day. I can stretch out a celebration like nobody’s business.

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Are May poles and May baskets still a thing? Fond memories of my youth with the playground tetherball pole transformed with ribbons for May Day and delivering little construction paper baskets of flowers to the neighbors to celebrate the beauty and abundance of spring. May 1 falls halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice.

Many friends, especially those falling in the Boomer age range, have memories of playground maypoles, making construction paper baskets and delivering the flower-filled baskets to neighbors' front porches. Coeur d'Alene's Judey Brown has the most incredible May Day memory, though.

As a third grader who loved May Day, she decided May 1 would be the perfect day to get married. Her mother had given her a big 100-year calendar poster, which Judey hung on her bedroom door. She looked to see which years that May 1 would fall on a Saturday when she was of marriage age.

In 1976, she would be 20, which she thought might be too young. The next May 1 Saturday was in 1982, when she would be 26. She decided that waiting until 1988 and age 32 was a little too old to walk down the aisle, so she circled May 1, 1982, on her big poster. Judey was in the third grade at the time!

She met her future husband, Leo, in 1980 and when they got to the point in their relationship where they were discussing marriage, she told him she'd already selected a wedding date, May 1, 1982. May 1 happened to be his parents' wedding anniversary, so he was all in.

The couple were married for 27 years.

Judey most certainly deserves the Main Street May Queen title!

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Full disclosure, I have no inside information or really no knowledge of any of the field of horses running for the roses in Saturday’s 151st Kentucky Derby.

When I was a little girl, accompanying my grandmother to Santa Anita, she told me to always bet on a gray. I’m assuming because there are so few gray thoroughbreds, but who knows? This year, there are two grays in the 20-horse Derby field: No. 17 Sandman and 30-1 longshot No. 3 Final Gambit. But since two other horses have names I can't resist, Journalism, the favorite at 3-1, and Publisher at 20-1, it looks like I'll be placing four $2 bets!

Now you know why I’m not a professional gambler and only follow the Triple Crown horse races for fun. Here’s to big hats, mint juleps, long shots, seer sucker, fast horses and $2 bets.

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Happy Main Street birthdays on the last day of April to Bailey Jaworski, Michele Jensen, Amy Lyons, Christina Bollman, Keith Ekness, Luke Griffin, Louise Zimmerman (60!) and Jai Nelson. First day of May greetings to Marlee Eldridge, Jeri DeLange and Suanne Harris. On Friday, Becca Atkinson (20!), John DeLuca, Jan Bryant,  Miranda Hamilton, Tre Lewis and Randy Hurt will blow out the candles. Randy Bates, Destiny Johnson, Jim Thorpe, Tracy Flaa, Peter Willits, John Hayes, Robbie Canfield, Brooke Harris and Becky Camarata put on their Kentucky Derby hats Saturday. Kay Poland, Kenley Link, Jeanette Bangs, Garrett Brown, Scott Hayden, Rand Wichman, Brittany Smith and Scott Jacobson celebrate Sunday. Cinco de Mayo birthday wishes to Robert Cliff, Liz Thorpe, Ben Miller, Joni McCroury, Carol Toomy, Lisa Peterson, Teri Farr, Angela Erickson, Faith Brodwater and Andy Fischbacher. On Tuesday, Dusty Flamand, Tamatha Dougal, Kristi Pope, Connie Clark, Steve Eachon, Jeff Rhodes, Meagan Guerreo, Dave Tester, Jerry Shriner and Karen Ouren celebrate another year.

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Kerri Rankin Thoreson is a member of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and the former publisher of the Post Falls Tribune. Main Street appears every Wednesday in The Press and Kerri can be contacted on Facebook or via email thoreson.kerri@gmail.com.