Basket Full of Easter
By
Gerry Niskern
Easter is next week and everyone will be recording the events with their cell phones; memories saved for anytime they want them.
I have a basket full of memories of Easter as a kid, but most weren’t recorded in photos because cameras and film development was too expensive. My mother started a roll at Christmas, took a little at Easter and maybe finished it to be dropped at the drugstore after a birthday party. So, special memories you just learned to keep in your head and close to your heart.
When I was just past two my uncle had a Candy Store. He sold chances to win a large stuffed rabbit at Easter time. I don’t know if it was just a coincidence, but my mom won that rabbit for me. It was taller than I was. Mr. Rabbit stood upright with orange and green stripped trousers, a green tuxedo coat and very long ears. The rabbit got dirty very quickly in that little coal mining town with me playing with him all the time. One day I looked up and saw him hanging on the clothes line by his ears. Mom had washed him! I was heartbroken because I thought she was hurting him and she couldn’t convince me otherwise.
My dad had serious surgery that year and everyone who came to visit brought him one of those big decorated chocolate covered Easter eggs. Mom always said that every time they went to have one they found a tiny tooth mark where a bite had been taken out of each end of every one! I think I took “the fifth”. I don’t recall that memory.
Up until I was nine I had to wear brown hi top corrective shoes. I hated those shoes. One Easter memory that I fondly remember is when my dad said, “Hey, while we are waiting for everyone to get ready for church lets play a game of checkers. Get the board.” I reached up high on the mantle and resting on top of the board was a pair of brown and white low cut saddle shoes, for me! My very first pair of low cut shoes like everyone else was wearing and that made my Easter!
When my kids were growing up their grandma and grandpa colored dozens of eggs and left early to hide them out in the Carefree area among the boulders. When the kids and their cousins arrived there was a wild Easter Egg hunt. Everyone was fine every year until they noticed Grandma taking the youngest toddler that year and showing him where the eggs were. “ No fair,” they complained. “Grandma is showing him where the eggs are”. Of course she was. She was the Grandma!
So, do you have any memories in your Easter basket that are not recorded in photos and are yours and yours alone?