Easter (Last Installment in This Series)

Before Easter, my mother kept her eye on the incubator, which stood like a thick table in the screened breezeway between our house and the smokehouse. She candled chicken eggs and duck eggs with a flashlight. Inevitably, an egg or two went bad, and, if not caught in time, left an unpleasant odor even after removal. All of this occurred back when I was in grade school.

Completing My Easter Sunday Wardrobe

With a Pair of Hollywood Celebrity Sunglasses

Memories of Easter crowd my mind. Every day when I walked home from the public school across the highway, I lingered beside hyacinths, daffodils, and tulips that my mother had planted as a border between the driveway and the white board fence surrounding the yard. The variety among the daffodils appealed to my artistic sense. Yellow, white, and orange. Tall and short. Large blossoms and small blossoms. The variations were many, making it difficult to choose a favorite. I delighted in the heavy perfume of the hyacinths, and I loved the delicate fragrance of tulips—a fragrance reminding me of Easter candy.

She may have taken her inspiration from a magazine, or she may have developed the idea from her own creativity, but my mother wrapped two cylindrical Quaker Oats boxes in green aluminum foil, glued construction paper decorations on the foil, slipped a stuffed bunny toy inside each box, and ornamented the lids with foil and bows. She claimed that the Easter Bunny himself had left the boxes for my brother and me. I kept my rabbit toy for many years, but, eventually, I must have lost interest in it before losing it altogether. I wish I had it now.  

There is one memory that tops the rest. In my bed at sunrise on Easter morning, I gradually awoke from my dreams because of a persistent peeping. As the nights were still cold, I had pulled the covers up to my chin. Dancing on my head were tiny feet. As my eyes opened, I saw my mother’s face nearby. She was smiling that beautiful smile that time cannot erase from my recollections. Her hands were stretched protectively toward the fuzzy yellow duckling that was peeping and sprinting across my forehead.

“You can hold it, but be careful not to squeeze it,” my mother invited. I slipped up into a seated posture and lightly held the duckling between my hands. It had just been born in the incubator and was full of life. My joy knew no bounds!

To this day, when I think of Easter, I think of that duckling and my mother sitting on the edge of my bed. She passed away in 1988, but I trust that she is full of life, smiling, and raising chicks and ducklings in a dimension just beyond my dreams.

Vehicles I Remember: 1951 Hudson

My grandfather bought a new Hudson in 1951. It was a Commodore 8 Sedan in basic black. He purchased many (if not all) of the optional features. A few years later, when I was old enough to appreciate cars, I thought Grandpa’s vehicle was the most spectacular automobile on the road.

Seymour Alfred Rhode's 1951 Hudson Commodore 8 Sedan

I was intrigued with the push-button radio. For better reception, a knob above the windshield could be turned to rotate a small antenna into an upright position. When doors were opened, small lights in the door panels came on so that the driver or passengers would not trip over the doorsills at night. The upholstery (dark green and golden tan, as I remember) felt swanky.

On Easter one year when we were boys, my brother and I were dressed in matching brown suit coats with brown shorts and brown caps with small bills. We were invited to sit in the back seat of the Hudson while Grandpa drove us the mile from our house to the church. I felt that we were riding in a high style indeed!

The exterior of the car was shaped like the back of a duck. Now that I think about it, the contours probably gave the automobile superior aerodynamic properties. I recall that the Hudson wanted to go fast down a highway.

When my brother attended Indiana University, he needed a car, and my parents agreed that he should have the Hudson, which they had inherited. I was an entering student at IU, and I enjoyed weekends when my brother and I took the Hudson off campus to visit neighboring towns. One of my favorite recollections is driving along with the windows down on a crisp fall day with the spectacular autumn colors of the Brown County landscape passing by. Life really did not get much better than that!

As I contemplate vehicles I have known and loved, I think what a difference various cars and trucks have made in my existence. While I have appreciated various cars that I have owned in recent years, none of them have carried the mystique that surrounded those automobiles that first entered my developing consciousness. Was I so young that I was more impressionable then, or were the vehicles themselves more exciting? I can attest that riding in the Hudson was a thrill in any year from the time when my legs swung off the edge of the seat until I was a college freshman.

When my father passed away, the Hudson was in a garage where it had been parked since my brother no longer needed it. While my brother and I were preparing for the estate auction, we discussed whether he wanted to restore the car. It had been sitting for so long that the tires were flat. Mice had invaded the interior and had destroyed the once luxurious upholstery. My brother wisely decided that a restoration would be a challenge too great for him at that time in his life. We sold the car at the auction. I hope whoever bought it brought it back to its former glory because it was truly a thing of beauty!