Spring
Has Sprung……Things Have Changed
By Patricia White
The Easter season is almost over and I’m just not
quite ready for Summertime and all that comes with it. I’d rather bask in the memories of Easters
past and the things from my childhood that have stuck in my memory and in my
heart. When I was a little girl, during Easter week, my sweet daddy would load my
two sisters and me into our army jeep (our only mode of transportation) and
drive us just a few blocks to a nearby lake, where he would point out over the
still water to the big white shiny orb, free-floating, in the silky blue sky
over the State Capital Lake in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was magical. Daddy
called it the Big Ole Easter Moon, and said it would be there every Easter,
and it always has been. My grands and greats are not so enamored with it when I
tell them the story, but the sweet nostalgia and tradition are mine, not
theirs. Things have changed.
We always had new Easter dresses and shoes, no matter how
much money there was. My mama could take fifty cents worth of material and copy
and make any dress she saw in the display window of Tots and Teens on Third Street.
The five of us always showed up at St. Agnes Catholic Church on Easter Sunday,
marching in with McDonald pride. Things
have changed.
On Easter morning, our baskets were filled with dyed
eggs in every vibrant color in the rainbow. Sprinkled in the green store-bought
grass were jelly beans, malt-ball eggs and maybe a Goldbrick egg or Heavenly Hash egg or two. Sometimes,
we got those large sugar eggs with a peep hole in the end where you could look
inside the egg and see an Easter scene. As
we got older, there was always a specially-wrapped gift beside our basket that
contained a pretty pair of silky summer jammies or some other treat my Mama
knew we’d love. I thought we were the luckiest girls on earth. I was the oldest
of
The Three musketeers. I’m not sure I always deserved or wanted the
pressure of being the oldest, but I was the self- proclaimed chairman-of-the-board
for as long as they allowed me to be. Too many bossy personas. Things have changed.
Easter usually entailed an outing with my parents, a group
of friends and their kids. When we moved to a house with five acres in the country, our home became the
gathering place. But in the 50s, we were the lucky family with acreage on the
Old Hammond Highway and an outdoor brick barbecue pit. We thought we were rich. Wish I had
a picture of that relic. It was roughly constructed of white bricks and mortar
with a tall chimney. The grill was huge and could hold at least ten chickens
and fifty hot dogs. Friends came out from town to spend the day bringing every
kind of food and dessert, not to mention adult beverages. We had a basketball
goal, croquet set, badminton gear, a pond with a homemade raft and a 45-record
player. Those gatherings were so much fun. We played games and danced all day. Things have changed.
One memorable Easter Sunday, as we were driving to
church after a hard rain, the roads were muddy in places. As daddy neared our
church, he hit a puddle and splashed muddy water all over three little girls
walking along the road in their Easter finery. We were horrified, and Daddy was
so ashamed but couldn’t bring himself to stop. Mama was speechless, but I’m
sure she and Daddy had a come to Jesus meeting when we got home. I prayed to God in church and told Him that he didn't mean it. Daddy never forgot that day and reminded
us of what he’d done every Easter Sunday for as long as I can remember. I still think of that awful sight every year on Easter
and wish there were some way I could pay it back to those children. If you were
one of them, I’m sure you will let me know.
Shortly after Easter, we started thinking about the
end of school and summertime and all the fun we anticipated. Many years the
summer included a trip to Grand Isle for a week. We swam, crabbed and played on
the beach all day. When the sun set, we dolled-up to go with our parents to the island juke
joint, Tony’s Rendezvous, where we danced with the local boys and girls,
and where we learned to Shimmy. Hubba Hubba. The nuns would not have approved,
but they weren’t there. The adults sat at another table and enjoyed their adult
beverages and gaggled on. They kept (maybe) one eye on us, but we were to be seen and not heard on those occasions
unless someone was bleeding or unconscious.
During the years that we stayed home all summer, the days and nights were filled with adventure as we roamed the State Capitol
grounds by day, riding the elevator to the 34th floor (the
observation deck) and taking the stairs back down, stopping to sneak into the
empty Senate chamber, then as a finale, walking around the ledge that circled
the huge State Capitol building (about three stories from the ground). It was
more fun than a roller coaster with many Hail Mary moments. Hours were spent devising
a plan with needed tools to get into the old Fort that sat behind a mysterious
ivy-covered brick wall. Our only summer rule was, Be home for suppertime. After checking in and eating, we were back
out into the neighborhood until dark-thirty, after at least ten games of hide
‘n seek. With no air conditioning, we took a cold bath to cool down enough to
go to bed. Dressed in our Easter jammies, we crawled up on the bed in the room
we three girls shared, to listen to Baby
Snooks, The Great Gildersleeve or The Shadow Knows. Daddy switched on the
big fan he’d built into a frame for the window. That fan magically drew the
cool night air from the window across the room as we listened to the radio or talked
about the next talent show we would produce in the back yard. If we were lucky,
every now and then we got a bowl of ice cream before we settled down to sweet
dreams. No cell phones, color TVs, or video games. Can anyone say imagination?
Things have changed.
Daddy was a do-it-yourself man. He told us, If
Daddy
can’t do it, nobody can. Once, we asked him to make us some stilts and
the next day, he came home from work with lengths of wood and nails and by
nightfall we had three pair of stilts, made to order. He smoothed the wood, so
we never had to worry about splinters. We spent days learning to walk on those
stilts, then dance or cut didos. He taught us to make walkie-talkies out of tin
cans, buttons and string. What happened? Nobody makes anything anymore. Along came
Amazon. Things have changed.
I remember once when we were on an outing with other
families Bar-B-Q-ing and hanging out in the woods. I needed to go to the bathroom.
Daddy walked with me until he found a fallen tree with a forked branch for me
to perch on. That’s the way he was. He always found a solution for everything. He
was a can-do person. He set the bar
high, and when I became a parent, I always tried to be the mama who made things
happen too. Only the Shadow Knows for sure.
When I was a growing up, happiness was a pair of
skates, a table radio, jacks, a bolo paddle, a book of paper dolls, a pair of
stilts and Grand Isle. For my kids it was bikes, forts, fishing, tent camping,
s’mores and Florida. Things haven’t changed much for me. Give me a book, a skein of yarn and a crochet
needle, a Motor home and Laptop on the lake’s edge and I’m happy.
For kids today summertime means………. the
battery on my I-pad is dead, I don’t have anything to do. I can’t even
relate. It’s going to be summer before
long and a long summer for some Mamas. Somewhere on that long road, things
have changed!
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