I watch a lot of television these days. With my knees bothering me so much, it is most comfortable to lie back in my recliner and watch mysteries on TV. I have noticed only two Easter-related commercials. One is the ever popular Cadbury Bunny tryouts and other is the Swiss chocolate commercial. Where are the Easter baskets? Where are the colored hard-boiled eggs?

I remember when my Mother's parents lived out by the bay on Lake Huron in Michigan. They had a twenty acre farm. Not much by today's standards. They raised sugar beets for the Saginaw Sugar Company and tomatoes for the Detroit market. With no tractor and only one horse for farm power, that was all they could physically do.

During the Great Depression in the late thirties, every Easter we knew that Grandma had a treat for us. It was always the same thing: hard boiled eggs and a few jelly beans, no basket. We would find that treat in a hollowed-out nest in the straw stack at about a ten year old's easy-to-reach-in height.

Grandma didn't have that egg-dyeing kit you find near the check-out in Food City at Easter time. She did it the old fashioned way. A kettle of water with enough eggs to cover the bottom and a bunch of dried yellow onion skins. The eggs would boil to a nice orangy-brown finish. Grandpa would hollow out three nests for my brothers and me in the straw stack out by their small shed that housed their horse and milk cow. Grandma would fluff up the straw and lay three or four dyed eggs in each nest surrounded by a few jelly beans. She would lightly fluff more straw over the eggs. The eggs would just barely peak through.

That is one memory. Another is when my children were of Easter egg hunting age, back in the fifties and early sixties. The Saturday before Easter I would boil up two or three dozen eggs, small ones, preferably. The kitchen table would be covered with layers of newspaper. There would be a coffee cup for each color. They watched with fascination as I poured hot water into each cup. They then stirred each cup to dissolve the coloring. A teaspoon of vinegar and we were ready to go. What a mess, but what fun. As they got older, to spice up the task, they would write their name or draw a picture on the bare egg with crayons, then dip it in the dye.

Easter morning was met with anticipation. They believed in the Easter Bunny for a while. The Easter Bunny doesn't come into the house, you know. He hides each child's basket out in the yard. What joy they had searching out their basket. When they are of an age to question his existence, their joy never wavered. The egg dyeing ritual was still fun.

I am writing this after the Easter holiday. There are no children in my house anymore. With the pandemic we are sheltering in place, so no visitors. One thing about memories, there is no pandemic there. I am free to relive yesteryear in my mind's eye, AND SO ARE YOU. Happy Easter!