Oomancing Monday

To many Americans, an egg roll is something on the menu of a Chinese restaurant; to the citizens of Washington, D.C., however, it is a mystic sign of spring. For generations, every Easter Monday, young Washingtonians have been aroused at cockcrow and subjected to the city's egg rolls. On that day thousands of citizens flock to the Lion House hill at the Zoo to hurl Easter eggs around, lounge in the sun, litter the grass, trample on other citizens, and harass the police and the National Parks maintenance men. Hundreds more attend egg rollings at churches, schools and private homes. But the biggest numbers always converge on the White House. Last week, as usual, the grounds of the Executive Mansion looked like a mob scene on a field of egg foo yung as 17,000 Washingtonians congregated for the big event. As usual, most of those on hand had no idea what an egg roll was supposed to be. Smacks for Easter. Egg rolling is a mysterious, long-coddled folk custom that is neither a game nor a rite, not colorful or thrilling, and no more pointed than a jelly omelet. Only an ooemancer could tell how it all began, or when--or why. Egg rolling is probably related to an old Central European custom called by the Germans Schmeckostern, or Easter smacks. The men beat the women with birch boughs on Easter Monday and the women beat the men with birch boughs on Easter Tuesday. (But in Durham, England, the men used to take off the women's shoes on Easter Monday and the women took off the men's shoes on Easter Tuesday.) In Bohemia, the women pay the men for the Easter Monday beating they get. The payment: dyed eggs. The beatings and egg-giving occur in the morning. In the afternoon everybody--tired, bruised and happy--goes egg rolling. In Scotland, bannocks (wheel-shaped oatmeal cakes) were rolled down the hillsides, later gave way to hard-boiled eggs. Across the Irish Sea the custom was known as "trundling," and one Irish historian noted suspiciously that "it is a curious circumstance that this sport is produced only by the Presbyterians." No Presbyterian, President Rutherford B. Hayes, a para-Methodist, established egg rolling on the White House lawn. Before his time, children had rolled their eggs down the Capitol slopes as a climax to their annual Sunday School Union parades, but Congress was fussy about its grass, and ordered them off the premises in 1877. Hayes welcomed them to the White House grounds. By the first Administration of Grover Cleveland, the annual egg roll had been souffleed to its present overwhelming routine. The custom continued for 63 years. In 1941 all records were smashed when a crowd of 53,258 turned up at the White House (ten were grounded with heat exhaustion, four fainted, and 73 children got mislaid). The following year egg rolling was banned because of the war. After the war Mrs. Edith Helm, the White House social secretary, denounced egg rolling as "an orgy of wasted eggs," announced that President Truman would not revive it. But two years ago, egg rolling made a triumphant reappearance at the White House at the suggestion of Mamie Eisenhower, who thought it was a pleasant and harmless old custom. The ground rules of egg rolling are simple enough, but few people know them and fewer observe them. The egg rollers should pair off and one bowls an egg down a grassy slope. The other tries by rolling his down to touch the first. This almost never happens. On the next try, the one who rolled first now rolls second. If, improbably, the eggs do touch, then the owners go into Phase 2 of the competition. This is identical to egg picking, another old Easter custom. In egg picking (or butting) one competitor holds his egg point up, protecting all but the tip with his fingers. His rival taps downward with the point of the other egg. WThen one cracks, the contest is resumed with the large end of the egg. The one whose egg is cracked on both point and butt surrenders his egg. If the point of A's egg and the butt of B's are cracked, then the butt of A's should be tested against the point of B's. Sometimes, the butts and points of both eggs crack. Then the contest is decided by tapping the sides of the eggs against each other. This phase, known as "sidesies," is probably a fairly modern corruption. Before the age of abundance, everybody got tired before coming to "sidesies" and simply ate the eggs. At the White House last week, nobody bothered to roll eggs or pick eggs or butt eggs; it was much more fun to throw eggs at one another or to mash them into the grass. Calling Mr. Bailey. In preparation for the big romp, gardeners rolled out 3,000 feet of storm fencing to protect flower beds, shrubbery and the presidential putting green. (Many visitors draped themselves over the fence around the green in the hope of finding lost golf balls as souvenirs.) Shortly before noon, President Eisenhower appeared, smiling in the brilliant sunshine, and greeted the crowd from a small platform. "Last year," he said, "there were quite a number lost. But we found out it wasn't the children that were lost at all; it was just the parents. This time I hope that everything will work out so that you can all stay together and have a wonderful time." After the President retreated to the White House, eggs whizzed through the air, and the loudspeakers bleated a request for the lost father of Tommy Bailey. By 6 p.m., after eight lost parents had been found and the last guests had departed, 49 White House yardmen went to work on the debris. In three hours not a mashed jelly bean could be seen, and a gentle rain began to fall. "No damage at all," crowed Chief Gardener Robert Redmond. "One of the most orderly crowds."

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