Easters from childhood

Perhaps a little premature, but I wanted to post this so I didn't miss the holiday altogether this year. I'm speaking of Easter, which will be upon us in another week or so.

Easter was a little different when I was a child. Naturally, we had colored egg like the kids have today. Ours were a little different. My mother would boil them, as your mother probably did, and my sisters and I would get to color them. We didn't buy the Paas coloring packages that they have now. Our mother used food coloring and mixed us up some little cups of color that we could roll the eggs around in. It was fun, and they always came out so beautifully colored.

I remember one year we bought a couple of colored chicks. I can't remember what happened to them, but they disappeared at some point, never to be seen again.

Chocolate was a big deal in the Easter Sunday's of the 1950s. Sometimes you scored one of those hollow chocolate bunnies. And every once in a while, if you were truly lucky, you'd get one that was solid chocolate. That was the best. And jelly beans were a big deal back then, too. I especially enjoyed the Cadbury creme-filled eggs, which they still have today.

If I remember correctly, Silly Putty was an Easter item, since it was packaged in an egg-shaped plastic container. And a New Testament of the King James Bible was also something we would get occasionally. Naturally, we would get all gussied up in our best outfits and head off to the church for Sunday School services.

My mother would usually prepare fried chicken for lunch afterwards. No KFC back then. It was home made and started out as a whole chicken, which she chopped up into the right parts and fried in a big cast iron skillet. Of course there was mashed potatoes and gravy. And cold milk. And real butter.

I'm getting hungry now, so I'm going to stop right there and see what's in the fridge.