Barefoot Memories of A Hillbilly - Mass Eggs-odus (Free Access)

What with tomorrow being Good Friday, and Easter coming up fast, my mind turns to times of childhood when Easter (with egg hunts and small tidbits of candy) was nearly as special as Halloween. I know some folks that don't let their kids participate in either because they feel it goes against their faith, and that's okay, it's not my place (or my business) to judge them, or their beliefs, but at out house Mom and Pap allowed us to be kids. We attended Sunday School every weekend, without fail, went to every summer Bible school available, attended a church school where daily devotions/chapel was a must, and could recite commandments, books of the Bible and names of disciples like we knew them personally. In spite of our enjoying these childhood moments, and there were times Mom may have thought us to be uncontrollable hellions, we were never pagans.

You see, we were well schooled in the Bible, of God and Jesus and doing unto others, and we knew Jesus rode the donkey thru the crowd on Palm Sunday, and we knew about the last supper, Judas' betrayal, the crucifixion and the Reserrection. We knew the sounds of a Sunrise service on Tank Hill with joyful music on Easter morn. We attended prayer services where we were told about the cruel treatment of Jesus and his agony on the cross. We learned about loving our siblings, respecting our parents, and after Mr. Junior delivered us home from Sunday school, we changed into our play clothes and joined Mom in the kitchen to finish coloring eggs. I must confess, I believe some of us was still traditionally coloring eggs with her until we were well into our fifties.

At some point, we got some of those colored plastic eggs that you could hide candy in, and we hid those after we grew up, (yes, we still hunted eggs in our 40s and 50s) but we still colored real eggs too. After we ate our Sunday dinner we all gathered and took turns hiding eggs, hunting eggs, and doing it all over again and again. And after the real eggs had been hunted till they looked like a totaled Volkswagens, we gathered in the kitchen around a jar of JFG salad dressing and ate deviled eggs, pink and blue egg salad, plain boiled eggs, and such. Now is the time I point out that we were practicing what we had learned in Sunday school about loving out family, respecting the family, and doing so with joy and a feeling of sharing....we just happen to do it with colored eggs in a basket and a jar of mayo.

I hope each of you have a wondrous Easter, with a content heart, a loving manner, and remember we can enjoy family and friends because there was a first Easter.

I wear shoes now, but sometimes I have barefoot memories.