Remembering Easter

When I was a kid I remember Easter morning.  It would start off as a normal day, get out of bed, go out and do the chores.  Which I remember would be gathering eggs, feeding rabbits and maybe bottle feeding the new orphan lamb.  As we dressed to go outside, pulling on our boots or grabbing a jacket, we would sometimes find a treat the Easter Bunny left hiding there.  A big ole peanut butter egg with rock hard colorful icing was always the biggest treat, seems like our name might have even been on the egg.  That was to avoid one person collecting all three peanut butter eggs as my brother might have done!!!  Ha!

Cindy in her Easter dress.....

I also remember my Grandmother coming down and my Uncle Billy for Easter dinner.  Ham and deviled eggs, mashed potatoes and gravy and an array of veggies and a jello salad.  It always ended with homemade pies, my grandmother and mom were the best pie bakers!!!!

I also remember having Easter Egg Hunts outside in our forest of trees.  We dressed up for the day in our pretty frilly dresses.  I can't imagine we wore those dresses very long or even putting them on after that Easter.  We didn't go to fancy places or even to church.  A strange custom as I look back on it now.

Whitey our Easter Bunny......

My grandmother always brought us big Easter baskets covered with colored plastic and pretty bows.  My favorite Easter memory was the rabbits she gave us.  Oh, did I love those rabbits.  After that Easter it wasn't long before we had baby bunnies running everywhere.  It was a good present for me who loved the critters. 

This spring I took my girls back to the home I was raised.  They never remembered being there.  I tried painting a picture for them about where our tree house was, pointed to a place in the trees that the chicken houses sat.  And told them where the rabbit cages were.  Their biggest shock was the fact that we had an outhouse!!!  

I think of my grandmother today, all the changes she must have seen in her life time.  She lived and raised a family during the depression, it was a hard time.  To have a convenience of indoor plumbing must have been major.  My children can't imagine running to the outhouse on a cold winter day!  They are shocked by this and look at me like I'm really old.  I haven't felt old, until that moment, when they looked at me with such disbelief.



Thelma Gladys Coak, Rankin
my grandmother

It was my grandmother (I assume) who instilled the survival lessons my mother needed to raise her family.  We had really big gardens.  We canned and sold our produce from those gardens.  We raised chickens and sold eggs.  We raised turkeys and rabbits and dressed them out for sale to people who placed orders.  It was a lot of work, I remember helping, even as a little kid, we picked green beans and pulled weeds.  I remember setting onions in the garden, a nice straight row and covering them up. 

I remember the pantry we kept along the cool outside wall of our kitchen.  All of our canned tomatoes, green beans, peaches and apple sauce were kept there.  I didn't even mention blackberry and raspberry picking and making jellies and jams.  When winter came we were prepared with the summer harvest.

So I am meandering again.........  going from Easter to summer gardens and surviving when times were hard and money was earned in many different ways.  It brings me back to my Easter bunnies, they weren't just a gift for me to play with, they also had their job in the big scheme of life during the time I grew up.