Maude, Merrill, Billy and Cecil Hunt
My grandparents, Maude Knox and Cecil Hunt, met in 1902 at a shadow social in Lapeer, Michigan. This was an event where the girls made up picnic baskets and brought them to the school, then stood behind a sheet strung up across the room, with a light casting their shadows on the sheet. The assembled young men were invited to bid on the girls, and the winning bidder shared the picnic basket with the girl he’d bid on.
My boys were puzzled by this highly structured method of getting a date. I pointed out that the couples were committing to spend a limited amount of time together in a public venue, at a limited cost, based on very sketchy information about each other. Just like setting up a coffee date on match.com. The problem of how to meet chicks has been with us forever.
Maude was only sixteen at the time and she was a little nervous after agreeing to go for a buggy ride the next week with Cecil – a twenty-three year-old farmer from the next town. She secretly hoped it would rain and he wouldn’t show up. But Cecil knew what he wanted. He had already ridden a bicycle from Michigan to Kentucky once to see a girl, but apparently found her not to his liking. That same persistence saw him through a two-year courtship of the shy girl from Lapeer – who could put together a darn nice picnic for a hungry farmer.