As
a kid in the 1950’s I always looked forward to and enjoyed Easter. After the
previous Christmas, it was the next kid holiday, followed months later by the
Fourth of July and Halloween.
When
I was very young it was just my sister Sue and I. After my father died in 1954,
and my mom remarried a couple of years later, our family doubled in size as a
“yours and mine and ours” family.
Sister Sue &
Steve
Dressed in their
Easter Best c1950
At
Valencia Park Elementary School in Fullerton, California in the 1950’s, we kids
got out of school the week before Easter as Easter break; today it’s called
Spring Break and doesn't necessarily fall on the week before Easter. After the
week off playing cowboys and Indians and baseball in the street and flying
kites in the spring winds, it was time to get our Easter baskets ready while
mom boiled eggs.
It was the fun of a group effort to color Easter
eggs, have an Easter egg hunt, and maybe even a picnic in the park. And as my
family wasn't very religious, the religious aspect of Easter didn't interfere
with the pure fun of the kid “holiday.”
Coloring Easter Eggs – And Everything Else (web photo)
An Easter Picnic c1952 (web photo)
There is an
especially memorable Easter picnic our family went on in the later 1950’s.
While we kids were busy ruining our appetites eating Easter eggs and chocolate
bunnies and other Easter candies my mom was in the kitchen cooking a picnic
lunch. Finally we were on our way to the Fullerton City Park. After playing
while she and my dad set the picnic blanket for eating, meat and potato salad
and such picnic fare, we sat and started eating. I had thought we were going to
get chicken – we always had chicken, but this meat tasted different. As
the oldest kid in the family I asked
“What is this?” Nonchalantly my mother replied, “Rabbit.” “Rabbit!” I blurted out.
It wasn't that I
had never eaten rabbit before; to a kid it was more symbolic than that. Who
serves rabbit for Easter dinner? We were eating the Easter bunny! I lost what appetite I had left after
eating goodies all morning.
Alas, as we kids
got older the magic of Easter lost its luster. How many high school kids do you
know who go on Easter egg hunts? Going
door-to-door on Halloween is one thing, but hunting Easter eggs? What high
school kid would want to be seen on an Easter egg hunt? How childish!
It’s too bad that we have to grow
up.
Things did
change later in life, though. As you get older you don’t worry about what
others would say about you going on an Easter egg hunt. On the first Easter
after my wife Kathy and I were married in early 1977, her mother Ruth invited
Kathy and I and her two sisters and their boyfriends to an Easter egg hunt at
her home outside San Diego, followed by Easter dinner. Kathy and I decided to
go and humor the old lady.
And the Easter
egg hunt was fun, mostly because of what we found in addition to the Easter
eggs her mother had hid around the yard. Kathy’s father Hank was an alcoholic,
and as we looked through the bushes around the yard for eggs we kept finding
the old man’s secret stashes of booze bottles. To avoid being seen drinking in
the house he had hid bottles outside to drink while supposedly doing yard work.
You know, pulling weeds out of the planters and taking a few drinks here and
there. We all thought it was funny, left the bottles where we found them and
agreed not to tell Ruth about our finds. I suspect, though, that Ruth knew
about her husband’s secret stashes. Women always seem to know.
After Kathy and
I moved from San Diego to Oklahoma City in 1979 we had our own little Easter
egg hunts just for fun. It was just a matter to reliving events from our
childhood, and it was fun. We would also go on our own Easter Sunday picnics –
but we never had rabbit for our Easter meal.
Steve & Kathy
on Easter Sunday 1988
Steve &
Kathy’s Easter Picnic 1982
I lost my wife Kathy to
cancer in 2001, and with her death I lost all of the little traditions that we
had and enjoyed. But all is not lost. I’m an old man now (I turned 69 years old
in March 2014) and live with my family. I have watched first the grand kids grow
up and have their Easter egg hunts, and now there are six little great
grand kids ranging in age from a few weeks to four years old and I am reliving
my childhood through those little tykes. I can’t get around as well and I once
did, but I can still take pictures and enjoy the great grand kids excitement.
Today (April 20,
2014) is Easter Sunday, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the great grandkids
on an Easter egg hunt around my family’s home. Then we had dinner. And rabbit
was not on the dinner table.
Grand kids Hunting
Easter Eggs 2000
Any comments? Write me at steve@dukeofcushingshire.com
