A long, long time ago The first Spring Break By Steve Hathcock “Beer bongs, wet t-shirt contests and cruising the boulevard; South Padre Island owes its humble spring break origins to a small group of valley natives,” says Kay Lay, whose family moved to the Rio Grande Valley in the late 1950s.             “A group of us kids from school began coming to the Island for Easter vacation in the mid 1960s,” Kay recalled with a smile. “We always gathered at the Sandy Retreat Hotel.  Among other things, it had two very valuable commodities; a swimming pool and restroom facilities. One year, a local band set up their equipment in the parking lot which drew a small crowd.  The word spread quickly and by the following Easter the number of kids had multiplied substantially. Eventually, the Sandy Retreat blocked off its parking lot to through traffic for these gatherings so we could all just hang out and dance. Soon the crowd included college kids who were home for Easter vacation, some of whom had brought other friends home with them for the school break.  Easter break slowly evolved into Spring Break and kept growing from then on.” But the idea of celebrating the arrival of spring, as we shall see here on South Padre Island during the next month, is not unique to the twentieth Century Once, a long, long time ago, in the times of Greek mythology, the people worshipped a certain son of Zeus, named Dionysus.       Dionysus, the god of wine and cheer, showed mortals how to cultivate grapevines and make wine. Miracles were reputedly performed during his festivals. Other mysteries, shared only with those already initiated into the cult, inspired his female devotees, the maenads, or bacchantes to leave their homes and give over their lives to ecstatic, orgiastic devotion to Dionysus. They wore fawn skins and were believed to possess occult powers. Dionysus was good and gentle to those who honored him, it was said, but beware; those who would spurn him or the orgiastic rituals of his cult would surely suffer great tragedy and destruction. According to tradition, Dionysus, dies each winter and is reborn in the spring. His rebirth, accompanied by the seasonal renewal of the fruits of the earth, embodied the promise of the resurrection of the dead. The yearly rites honoring the resurrection of Dionysus, gradually evolved into the structured form of the Greek drama. Important festivals were held in honor of the god, during which great dramatic competitions were conducted. It was at the most important festival, the Greater Dionysia, held in Athens for five days each spring that the famous dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides all wrote their great tragedies. Somewhere along the next five hundred years, Greek Mythologists have Dionysus fathering a son named Priapus with Aphrodite. Priapus, personified by his famous appendage, was the god of fertility. So it went in hand, as it were, that the presence of Priapus at the orgies was a welcome sight to all. As for Dionysus himself, he became known to the Greeks as Bacchus, a name referring to the loud cries of the devotees as they worshipped him during the raucous orgies held in his honor. These celebrations became so outrageous they were outlawed by the Roman Senate in 186 BC. Though the cult of Bacchus eventually disappeared somewhere along the misty corridors of time, I'm sure the god of debauchery will smile his blessings upon the hordes of hedonists who are about to descend on our Island.